2012jarrett

^Haha, I love it! Nice work on that one! Though I have to ask, how'd you get the Full Throttle logo on the front? Did you just print it and glue it or something? I just ordered the Statix and it should be in in a few weeks! Can't wait to get started on it!

Like other enthusiasts, I keep a top 10 list of my favorite roller coasters, and at the moment, Maverick sits as my third favorite coaster, Millennium Force as my second, and Cheetah Hunt as my first. I bought at Millennium Force Statix model online last fall because they were on sale, and my parents got me a Maverick Statix for Christmas this past year. However, I would like to have Cheetah Hunt so I could build a display case/shelf to mount on my wall with my top 3 on it. But they don't make one, so I've been thinking about how I could make one. PROJECT RUNDOWN: 1. Obtain a Maverick Statix from the online Cedar Point store. 2. Remove train from track, remove track from base, paint track green, use Microsoft Word and sticker paper to make a new Cheetah Hunt logo to stick on the little name plate. 3. Use a heat gun/blow dryer to remove the stickers from the trains, use Goo Gone to get the adhesive off. 4. Take the train apart and paint the seats and restraints black. 5. Remove the train walls and paint them yellow. 6. With the front car off, obtain measurements for the train wall piece with a set of calipers, recreate it in Sketchup or Inventor, modify zero car to look like Cheetah Hunt's abstract cheetah faces, 3D print this piece at school. 7. With a very thin dowel rod cut into pieces on different biases, stamp black ink onto the train bodies in a pattern that looks similar to the pattern on the actual train. 8. Find a can of spray paint that can paint detailed mists and spray a white spot onto the zero car to create the gradient that exists on the real thing, detail brush the black onto the eye and nose ornaments. 9. Put the trains back together, put them on the track, put it back in the box, and enjoy! APPROX. TIME: 3-5 weeks APPROX. INVESTMENT: $30-$40 Does this sound like a feasible project? If it does, I'll order the train and this thread will become the update thread for this model.

Those two pictures are fabulous! Both (particularly the one on the bottom) go to show just how huge this ride is! Can't wait to get on it on media day!

Childhood = in the toilet... It looks like that "Theme Park" game that (if I'm correct) was the PC that started this genre. The graphics are worse than the originals, I'd gladly put RCT2 on my iPad, wouldn't waste a penny on this! I think Theme Park Studio is going to mop up most of the audience this was intense for tbh.

Live in Ohio, and while I don't do that, I do think LSM noises in my head when I speed up on a big road. *You see a picture on one of those lists of natural wonders and think, "MAN a coaster would be awesome there!" *You have had dreams about finding coasters you had forgotten about at various parks that were never there in real life.

Watching it test on the webcam and the wide trains on the track both there and in the pictures look gorgeous! Can't wait to ride it next month!

Thanks! I haven't heard much on the real-life project it's based on but you might get to if the odds truly are in our favor! -x- Hello! It's Richard here again! I know this project hasn't been terribly active recently and there are several reasons for that, but it hasn't disappeared and should pick back up here soon. Today I would like to show you one of the Arena attractions; their restaurant. Careers' Bar & Grill will be a restaurant overlooking the wooded mountains of the Arena providing breathtaking views. Decorated like an upscale Capitol bar inspired by the train scenes in the movies, the place will serve traditional bar food such as wings, pretzel sticks and cheese dip, potato skins, and other appetizers. You'll also be able to get alcohol there; it will be one of the few places around the park that will serve it. Also available will be two park specialties. The first will be Capitol Groves Wine, a non-alcoholic drink served in a fancy wine glass that tastes like non-alcoholic sangria. It will mostly be served cold and bubbly like a soda, but because the park will be open year-round, we will also serve a warm variety that's a bit more like a cider to combat the harsh Tahoe winters. This drink will be available at both Careers' and Presidential Banquet, though the warm variety will only be available from Careers' in the winter due to Banquet's inability to operate in the winter. In addition to Nation of Panem's version of Butterbeer, you will also be able to try Girl on Fire sauce on your wings. This sauce, made with ghost chili peppers, is NOT for the faint of heart and if you want, you can take our Victor Challenge and try to eat twelve of them in ten minutes, winner gets a free t-shirt. The Capitol aesthetics hit you in the face like a ton of bricks when you walk in. The green chairs were directly inspired by the ones in the film. The idea is to sit down and watch either the Games going on in District 12 on TV while you eat and drink at the bar. While it is a bar and you are supposed to eat at the bar, there are also a few tables and a booth for anybody that wants to sit down and look at the view while they eat. Once the trees are rendered into this window, it should provide a view like no other. Alright, NEXT TIME you'll see my concept sketches, I swear! They're done, I just need to figure out how to scan them.

Yet another late one but Happy Birthday, KidTums!

So I was planning a trip to Vegas in May and my cousin and her husband (who I'm staying with) were going to spend two days in the SoCal area to pick up some of those credits in addition to all the Vegas ones. However, I was wondering what the general consensus among enthusiasts was about that area because unlike Central Florida, nobody really "sees" these five parks as competitors. So, here are the parks I was thinking of as "grouped:" *Six Flags Magic Mountain- More coasters than anywhere else on the planet, plenty of unique ones including X2, Tatsu, Green Lantern, and Goliath. *Disneyland- The original Disney, they have Space Mountain, Matterhorn, Soarin' over California, plenty of good stuff. *Disney's California Adventure- Who HASN'T seen pictures of iconic California Screamin' and its surrounding boardwalk area? *Knotts Berry Farm- The more family friendly park on the scale of SFMM, but it still has Silver Bullet and Xcellerator. *Universal Studios Hollywood- I think the only well known rides here are Mummy and Jurassic Park but park size is just a number. So of all of these, which ones are good and which ones are bad? I hear plenty about them but none ever compared to each other like Disney World/Universal/BGT are.

Very guilty of this one. I remember being kind of pissed but in a way finding it funny when we were studying a loop and the teacher transmitted the idea that if, for some reason, the train does not carry enough speed, it will fall instead of rolling back, but then most people don't know roller coasters have upstop wheels Our physics professor gave us an in-class problem about centripetal force in a loop...assuming the loop was perfectly round. I know that Schwarzkopf coasters have perfectly round loops...so why he used pictures of two elliptical loops and a corkscrew I will never know. And the other day we were given a calculus problem where we had to make sure a coaster's drop wasn't too steep by using a derivative...saying that if it was too steep the train would fall off the tracks. As somebody who wants to design roller coasters with their degree, I found this incredibly insulting...

*When your car shoots out a part upon being started and you think, "LOL, Smiler!" before "Oh, no! My car might be toast!" *When there are certain restaurant items you associate with certain theme parks forever because you had them near that park that one trip. *When you are willing to have a day where you wake up at 4:30 am, go to Banshee media day, drive an hour, take a chemistry exam at 5, and drive back down for Scream for a Kid Again. *When you postpone your spring break vacation just because one park was closed during it. *When you feel any sort of abnormal force (accelerating while a plane takes off, when you go over a hill in a car) and instinctively put your arms up. *When you get legitimately frustrated at the inaccuracy of some of the physics/calculus problems involving roller coasters you're given. Guilty of all of these, of course!

Wild Eagle! Love the theme of choice, and love how they executed it! The inspirational posters in the queue really set the stage for your wait in the giant lodge. Beautiful from both inside and out. Another one I'd like to mention is Millennium Force's. The lights above the train and the music make it absolutely terrifying the first time you ride.

My junior year we had a guest speaker come in to my chemistry class to talk to us about engineering. Being an engineering major myself, I was really excited when he got to mechanical engineering, my branch. He started by asking us, "how many of you have been on Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point?" A few hands go up. I got excited since it's what I want to do with my degree. He then explains to us that it uses a magnetic launch and shows us how an LSM system works. I'm sorry, but if you're doing a presentation on a roller coaster, MAKE SURE YOU KNOW HOW IT WORKS BEFORE "EDUCATING" EVERYBODY!!!!!

When we went to Florida in the fall we picked Busch Gardens Tampa (TOTALLY worth it, got my new #1 and had a blast) but seeing this makes me think I could have had fun had we picked SeaWorld too. It's a park I've always wanted to visit. And as somebody with a neutral stance on the whole "Blackfish vs. SeaWorld: The Final Conflict Driving Down the Highway in Space in a McDonalds on Robotic Legs Chased by Ninjas with Bad Electronic Music Playing in the Background 4 and a Halfth Edition" thing (don't want to go too far into detail on my stance because some people might not fully agree with it and I don't want to start a fight, but I can safely say I'm not a Blackfish person. Not necessarily somebody to go out of my way to support SeaWorld, but at the same time I'm not a total Blackfish person) I can safely say that while the bands who decided not to perform had every right not to, it's a real shame that they did because even with two musical acts that aren't really my cup of tea, this looked like an amazing event and what a way to spend a Sunday! Go to Bands, Brew, and BBQ and then watch the Superbowl, love it! I'm not legal in the States yet but I've been legal for a week on vacation in Mexico and know what kinds of beer I do and don't like, but in a year and a half when I am I'll definitely make an effort to make it to this! The ribs looked amazing and I loved the stage setup with the palm trees and Manta in the background. And I WANT that dressed up Shamu costume. No idea what I'd do with it, but I'd find a use! Makes me wish Wildwater Kingdom had stayed SeaWorld (wasn't it or Geauga Lake that started life as SeaWorld Ohio?) so I could have gone to it at some point. This and Wizarding World make me want to go back to Florida sometime! Today I would have much preferred to be there than driving on roads covered in icy slush. Hope everybody who went had a blast!

Hey, Richard here! Over the past three weeks I've been working with our creative team on those concept sketches (yes, it's coming!) while also working on one of the park's many attractions for non-riders that will be a staple of a day at Nation of Panem. The Hunger Games: Arena Experience will be the biggest laser tag complex at an amusement park in the world. Arena Experience, which will be located behind a facade styled as the Justice Building in District 12, will allow park guests to represent their districts in a "fight to the death" on televisions tuned in to cameras stationed around the complex. Places that will include TVs tuned to these will be the large projection screen mounted to the turnstile building in the City Circle, a certain restaurant that will be unveiled in the arena in due time, the queue line TVs for Muttation Run, potentially in one of the concept attractions that gets selected. Once tributes make their way through the outdoor cattlepen designed to look like a Reaping, groups will be put in a pen together, and then selected and placed by ride ops based on their district number. From there, twenty four tributes, a boy and a girl from each district, will be taken to the vesting rooms (actually a hallway split into fourths) and put their vest on and get their blaster. A ride op (dressed as a Capitol stylist) will then go over the rules (no running in the arena, no horseplay or foul language, pretty much everything you're SUPPOSED to do in the real Hunger Games! ). From there, the actor will leave to escort the next group to their maze and shut the door behind the tributes. The door to the arena will open and they will then enter one of four unique mazes. The complex contains four mazes, both with different layouts, different themes, and a trap unique to each. Their first stop will be the Cornucopia, where they must shoot a small sensor in the mouth of the Cornucopia for any of their hits to be considered valid before the twenty-four tributes duke it out for the entire park to see. At the end, they will be taken to the gift shop to get their scorecard, which will bear the mug shot on their district card as well as which place they came in, and whether they lived or died. This attraction will be the central part of the main event for a day at the park; The Hunger Games themselves. Two or three times a day, a reaping will be conducted at the District 12 Justice Building. The twenty-four tributes selected will be escorted by peacekeeper actors to the train, taken back to the Capitol, paraded down the City Circle with real horses wearing simple jackets reflecting their district (green plastic with copper ribbon circuits for District 3, patchwork for District 8, cow print and leather for District 10, you get the idea). After that, they will be taken back to 12 and will play a round in The Hunger Games: Arena Experience. The victor will then receive a coveted "Horn of Plenty," a small model Cornucopia containing a few line jump passes, a t-shirt, a souvenir cup, some coupons, a keyring, and a Mockingjay pin. It should be roughly 30$ in merchandise and five line jump passes, given out 2-3 times a day. Alright, here's what I have. I've finished the four mazes and I'm working on the vesting rooms and outdoor preride area currently. If anybody knows where I could get some laser tag vests for my CAD unit it would be much appreciated. This is the underground spring maze. Notice the little dot in the middle of the Cornucopia? Gotta hit that to hit anybody else! It should get everybody close together before the Games start. Underground spring is a labyrinth-style maze and features a landing where the Cornucopia is, two labyrinth sections on either side leading up to a claustrophobic cave tunnel, and a beautiful theming display in the middle that will turn to be deadly. The idea is to go to the openings in the labyrinth and shoot across the theming display while not being found yourself. The labyrinth is simple (we can't have people getting lost) but it will pose a challenge and create a cool landscape for the Games. The tunnel at the back connecting the two labyrinths has stalagmites sticking out of either side which can act as places to hide...but from only one side! Maze two! This one's a steamy hot bayou! The bayou maze is shaped like a circle with this small island in the middle. You WANT to get here. It allows you to shoot virtually every space in the room, is safe from the trap that comes with it, and it's really hard to find since the only way there doesn't look that special. The fake foliage will look beautiful. Unlike most cheap laser tag complexes that use blacklight, we're going for semi-realism. Well this next maze is...cool! The icy cavern maze has the smallest square footage of any of the four, and is designed to force tributes together. A decent amount of large hiding objects, though. Though the trap is on the moment you walk in; we will chill this one to 30 degrees at all times. This is one of two that contain an elevated steel platform, this one at 4 feet. It allows you a perspective of the crammed, claustrophobic arena you wouldn't get from the ground, and best of all, there's just a small gap connecting you to the main part of the arena so it's easily guarded. Didn't get the Cornucopia of the volcanic jungle maze, but it's right in front of the volcano. This one was a little bit of everything. There are two steel platforms at ten foot elevation that can be walked on or under; get up there and you have access to pretty much that entire half of the arena! Here you can see the old laser tag column maze made from fake palm trees. Need to hide somewhere? Hide behind a glowing molten rock! Plenty of shootouts should happen up here... Alright, the moment you've all been waiting for; TRAPS!!! Let's start with volcanic jungle. Halfway through the fight, the volcano will emit a loud rumbling sound, flash orange strobe lights, and belch fog, killing visibility in part of the room. You might have noticed the cave firefly mutts in the underground spring maze. They will be made of twinkling LED lights suspended along lengths of cord from the ceiling and will flash violently, creating a hard-to-ignore distraction. And finally, the bayou's trap. This is hard to see in this shot, but here's an animatronic gator muttation that opens its mouth and reveals what I can only describe as a "laser disco ball." This will tag everybody that gets hit by one of the twenty lasers that will pour from this ball, and since it will be scored by the times you tagged people minus the times you were tagged, it can really hurt your score. So that's that. You just needed to see that attraction because one of the concepts is an extension of it. Have a good day!

As somebody with a desire to go into the engineering aspect of the industry, that was really cool! Love the spare parts prototype and the technical stuff! Makes me want to tour a similar factory even more now!

Not ridden any of the wing coasters with inlines so I might be wrong but from POVs they always looked to have some snap entering, though I could be wrong about that. I really can't wait to see the station and The Bat later, though. I wonder if that station will be the only theming for these two rides they add.

I bet it's done on Thursday. Really can't see the inline roll that well but I bet it will provide a bit of classic B&M snap.

I was already doing the charity thing but more Banshee's more Banshee! I'll see about my schedule! EDIT: Have a chemistry exam at 5:00 that day but I've been told it ends at 2, plenty of time for me to get to school. What are travel accommodations normally like for someone living an hour away since it starts at 4:30?

My money's on Thursday, though it could get pushed back into Monday with the polar vortex hitting us again on Tuesday and Wednesday, though it shouldn't be as bad as the last one we had.

Probably Banshee! Donated money for the first rider auction and I'm PUMPED!!!!!

Thanks! I try.

Thanks! Muttation Run will be a Cedar Faire-style coaster. Not themed, just styled. The ride itself will just be a run through the woods, no theming. It will have onboard audio, though. Thanks! The concepts for attractions you'll see posted soon will include plenty of non-coasters. Thanks! There's plenty more to come!

I don't see them building an actual falcon, but maybe an artistic stylized one would work. Like something Cheetah Hunt-esque with the Cheetah Rock but with a falcon, perhaps made out of fake sticks tied together. Though concept art just shows a block with a pattern, so that's what I'm expecting.

Well since my home park (Kings Island) is getting Banshee next year, I don't expect much in 2015. Maybe a makeover of the aging Oktoberfest area like Cedar Point did with the Gemini midway after their new coaster.