2012jarrett

Hello! My name is Richard Young and I'm in charge of the design team for Lionsgate Entertainment's first theme park! Lionsgate, the same people that brought you Rambo, The Expendables, and the SAW Series, (which actually has its own amusement ride in England), have decided to take their wildly popular Hunger Games franchise and turn it into a full-blown theme park. Set to open in 2017, just a year after Mockingjay Part 2 is released, this will be how the series lives on even after the movies are finished; a Disney-esque park that's always growing and changing. Parkgoers will have a wide expanse of options when it comes to Hunger Games-themed attractions. Fly on the wings of a Mockingjay through the ruins of the destroyed District 13 cheating death on close calls with the smoldering wreckage! If thrills aren't your thing, however, head to the Capitol on the high-speed train from District 12 through the postapocalyptic landscape of Panem. Once there, shoot at targets in the Capitol's training center in order to recieve a good rank from the Gamemakers. Take a relaxing tour through the woodlands of the 74th annual Hunger Games where all the action happened including the burned section at the edge of the arena, the Cornucopia where nearly half the tributes were killed, the riverside cave where Katniss and Peeta went for shelter, and the tree where two tributes were killed by a falling nest full of angry tracker jackers. However, you can still get that adrenaline flowing on a fast-paced launching roller coaster experience through the arena on the run from wolf muttations. Go back to District 12 and enter the coal mines of District 12 through perilous situations on a family friendly indoor-outdoor roller coaster or just look around at The Hob, taste fourteen different breads representing the 13 Districts and the Capitol at Peeta's Bakery, or dig for gems in the District 12 mines. At night, make sure to try your hand at outrunning those mutts through the forest after dark or return to the Capitol as an honored guest of President Snow at his mansion as it lights up the night and make sue to save room for all the gourmet food you'll be served. However, if you want to actually enter the Games, you can either try volunteering in District 12's justice building and get in on a laser battle to the death through a foreign course littered with booby traps, or race against the clock in the 75th Quarter Quell on the world's first robotic arm roller coaster as you evade traps set by the Gamemakers all leading up to an explosive finale! There will be so much to do when this park opens in 2017, just a year after The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 brings the films to a close, allowing for this to be the next step for the series. The Capitol where you enter the park, District 12 and its subsection District 13 accessible by high-speed train, and the arena of the 74th annual Hunger Games that has been converted to a vacation spot for Capitol citizens will make up the initial state of the park, with the potential of adding a trail connecting District 12 and The Capitol that includes small pavilions set up representing Districts 1-11. I've been at work on this project for about three months now, posting to a design blog sanctioned by Lionsgate, but I've been asked to take to a few public forums to get enthusiasts in on the action. Let's take a tour! Before we begin, please keep in mind that these are all computer simulations. Nothing is set in stone, and I can and will change what I need based on feedback to make the park perfect by the time construction permits are filed! This is the first thing you see when you enter. This is the City Circle. When the Games happen three times a day (nobody dies, don't worry), the reaped tributes will ride down this strip in horse-drawn chariots with the anthem of Panem playing. Parkgoers watching the Games will be encouraged to cheer for and support their tributes, from buying flags with their district seal on it to screaming at them on the large screen as the tributes duke it out on video feed broadcast all over the park. Behind that facade at the end of the City Circle midway is Quarter Quell, the world's first robotic coaster. A dark coaster featuring numerous of special effects paired with cutting-edge technology, Quarter Quell is based on the traps in the arena from the 75th Hunger Games featured in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Quarter Quell's queue (Try saying THAT five times fast!) is heavily themed to the new training center built in the movie, complete with force fields and lasers. Here, the Hunger Games: Nation of Panem app that will be of much use in the park will have a feature built in where you point your phone's camera at these lasers and you unlock a mini game where you select a weapon and have to hit holograms in training. It's details like this that will truly make Katniss's world come alive. Those with a keen eye will catch plenty of neat little bits hidden throughout the park. First scene of Quarter Quell. Get ready to enter the Games! It's a transitional scene, but it's a favorite of mine. This is the force field scene, based on the part in the movie where Peeta accidentally chops the force field with his machete and it nearly kills him. Run! The fog is poison! Monkey Mutts! This one's actually a bit scary, the arm holds you out over the foliage in the faces of these animatronics. Next comes the wave that soaks the beach. This bit actually gets you a little wet, though we plan to hold off a true water ride until we can expand, adding a river rafting ride in the Arena or a log flume in District 12. The decorations in this room are done, the effects are still being worked on. But plenty of holograms and pyrotechnics will prove it to be worth the wait. It won't disappoint. Promise. And then the robot arm really shows its potential on what would be a trimmed double down found on a family coaster. The arm simulates a Thirteen-esque VD element as you enter the brake run room, themed to the collapsed arena at the end of Hunger Games: Catching Fire. The piece from the score that played as Katniss was lifted from the arena will be a loop playing there, suiting it for stacking. The ride is designed to stack on the blocks. In a Disney-style park, it runs 4 people per train, we'll need to do it and we'll need to do it seamlessly. Quarter Quell's a marvel of engineering, it can't be the next Rip, Ride, Rockit. Don't eat it before your Quarter Quell ride, but this Subway is one of two sponsor buildings in the Capitol. Extended from Lionsgate's contract with them to promote Hunger Games: Catching Fire, you'll be able to order both of the Hunger Games-inspired subs they had there. (POSTING AS JARRETT: I actually took on the polar vortex that hit the Midwest head on on Monday to go grab one of these! I usually get either that, the chicken teriyaki, or the cold cut combo, and the steak sriracha sounded good. I was doing it mainly to help out and get lunch for my mom and sister, but that's why I picked Subway. Took me 45 minutes to get the car operable with the rough translucent ice that had solidified on all of the windows I needed to see through but 5$ footlongs and chicken and dumpling soup made up for it...I guess.) This is the one Covergirl came up with. Though I still have no idea why you'd want Capitol makeup! XD Just next door from the Capitol Beauty Studio is Training Days, a dark shooter ride where you aim at dummies and targets and are scored from 1 to 12 at the end, just like the tributes. This room, where you have to blow up a camp, serves as a finale to Training Days. Perhaps you desire something more decadent? Head down the street to President Snow's mansion for a nice outdoor lunch. This place is sort of a sophisticated fast-casual place by day. They serve club sandwiches, chips, and of course, lamb stew. At night, however, it becomes a five-star restaurant with a dinner menu. It's still a work in progress (though more complete than some of the other stuff) but I plan to add platforms for sword swallowers, plate spinners, and fire breathers! Inside the mansion (actually a facade) is the Presidential Rose Garden. This is where President Snow grows his infamous white roses, and you can take a stroll through this arboretum. Who says you can't stop to smell the roses when you're at a theme park? If you feel bad about enjoying yourself in a city that forces teenagers to kill each other on live TV, why not jump on that train and go to District 12? This is one of many things that has a complex multi-loading system in the park, but it's a decent capacity ride. Basically, you can reserve a ride time or walk-in for one, these two quantities are split. From there, you go through the turnstile and wait on the platform before a conductor assists you on the train from one of five loading points, scanning your district card to make sure you can be on that train. The interior is supposed to feel incredible, a mixture of Roman and Industrial Revolution architecture went into this. It's based on the one from the film but not a copy in any way. Adios, Capitol! District 12 has three flagships. One of them is District 12 Mine Ride, the prototype Maurer-Sohne P-Coaster. This indoor-outdoor coaster is themed to a job in the District 12 mines having to get the coal to the surface, racing through underground danger zones, the car swaying on the tracks as it tilts from side to side, barely missing sharp rocks and dangerous mining machines as it twists through the layout. Because of bits and pieces of feedback I've gotten, I've got this ride in the chop shop, trying to improve the atmosphere and making it a bit more claustrophobic, but this room might be the best one I have. Those rocks don't feel far enough from the train and the cave feels pretty tiny to begin with. It has a few somewhat terrifying scenes, though. There's a series of hops that goes through a really tight tunnel and storms through a really tight hole in an iron brace, and the second lift hill, built over a pitch black floor in a dark room made to look like a very deep abyss...held up by really weak-looking supports! The outdoor portion is the finale of the ride, when the train barrels down a steep drop, over an airtime hill, swings through this overbank, and careens back into the building while dodging mining hardware. Further down past the mines is The Seam. The Seam is mostly a visual walkthrough, but there are three attractions here. This archery range is a midway-style game. You have to shoot the bulls-eye while missing the obstacles in your way to win a prize and a front of the line pass for Mockingjay or District 12 Mine Ride. This is Hunter's Smokehouse. Here you can try all sorts of North American game, such as antelope, elk, and venison. Katniss's house is just another clone of the other Seam houses, but twice a day, a handler will bring a goat out to milk it, and let volunteers try their hands at it. Eventually, though, there very well could be an interior you can walk through. The Seam is located just on the district boundary for twelve. Some say that not far from twelve are the ruins of District 13. If you pass the district boundary, maybe you'll end up in thirteen. Just outside of The Seam is a subsection of twelve called District 13. It'll hold a simulation ride (haven't started it yet) and Mockingjay, the park's wing coaster. It's not up yet, but these two rusty metal keyholes will hold the District 13 seal between them. It has a long way to go, but when it's done, Mockingjay will be a B&M wing coaster that gracefully soars through the ruins of District 13, cheating death as it narrowly misses destroyed pieces of the smoldering ruins. This pond already has a spillway that dumps radioactive sludge into it, but I want another water effect. Iron Dragon misters or Maverick water bombs? The Arena is the final section of the park I'd like to show you, and it's also the least complete. When you enter through a tunnel, the Cornucopia is the first thing you see. It should serve as a decent photo op for families. The station for the Arena's coaster, Muttation Run. The Capitol architecture should go well with the woodland setting of this park section. Muttation Run, which is based on the muttation scene from the first book in the series, is a Mack LSM multi-launched coaster that hugs the terrain of the Arena as it bolts through the trees. It's supposed to feel like you're running from the wolf muttations. We needed to theme Mockingjay's trains but not Muttation Run's. The industrial look of the Mack trains with the chrome combined with how we want it painted fits the Capitol aesthetics beautifully. Overview of the layout. (POSTING AS JARRETT: Ignore the in-game supports, I'll be custom supporting it next time I hit it.) This unique element, called a Panem turn, flips you over the river that runs through the Arena. It's one of five inversions found on the ride. Pretzel loop towards the bottom of the layout a la Helix. The part between launches 2 and 3 really isn't much; it's just hopping around these rocks. Ending with a barrel roll? Yup, it's a Mack. For those of you who may want to take it easier in the Arena (though in The Hunger Games, that's a REALLY good way to get killed ), Arena Tours might be more your speed. It's a studio tour-esque ride through the woods past sets similar to scenes from the movie. Here you can see the Cornucopia, and later, you'll go past the burned section of forest, the cave where Peeta and Katniss hid, and the wheat field where Thresh hid. Though I did hit a major setback when I wasn't thinking when I rendered the riverbank; it looks horrible and needs redone. Towering over the Cornucopia is Countdown, the park's drop tower. Countdown is an Intamin drop tower built around suspense. It has onboard audio that plays the score from the countdown in the movie as it slowly lifts you to the top of the 249-foot tower before it drops you. Well that's Nation of Panem, folks! Keep an eye out as this project continues to grow! Next time you'll see some concepts I had considered adding that didn't make the cut, and get to decide which ones I reconsider adding! POSTING AS JARRETT: Realized I never took my projects over to enthusiast sites so here's one I've decided to take over! Let me know what you think, and if I should change anything. Though please note that this park is a computer simulation being designed, so that's why it doesn't look half complete...yet. Also, as an engineer, this is a big step for me. Partially because I'm making my own CS, partially because this is a real project that was proposed that I decided to do because I wanted to see it done. So Nation of Panem is the first thing I design that could be a reality, just not designed by me.

I've got a couple that I have pictures of... Parents got me this GateKeeper one and a Raptor one (no picture...yet ) for Christmas and I must say, both are awesome! Modeling my Wild Eagle one. Got my Banshee stuff ready for next year...AND a Wild Eagle hat as a bonus! I have several more, I'll probably post here a few times as I photograph them.

So "Break into the North Pole and Bother Everybody by Shooting at Them: The Ride?" It's weird but I like it. But it needs a warning announcement that says, "be careful with your blaster or you'll shoot your eye out!"

If you see a wrapped package under the Christmas tree and after picking it up and feeling the contours of the display cutouts, you are able to figure out that it's a Statix in under 30 seconds. (Guilty!)

Dragster! It got SO crowded the day I rode it!

FINALLY!!!! I was so hoping they'd do that so I could make an accurate decision about the issue after hearing both sides. I was initially for them turning the current Shamu show structures into a habitat for non-releasable whales that guests could watch, but reading this changes that. My two biggest issues were the health of the whales (dorsal fins flopped over, lifespan, ect.) and separating families. Here Seaworld just flat out stated that they don't separate calves and mothers, putting that issue to rest. Now here's where it starts to get gray for me, health. I believe that these conditions Blackfish speaks of (dorsal collapse, failing to live full lifespan) are a direct result of their enclosures, if they exist, but Seaworld says that they're working on improving them, and if they're working on it, then I feel this issue, if it exists, is just part of a transitional thing for them and in 10-20 years, they'll be living to be 100. When I went to BGT this past fall, which is in the same chain as Seaworld, I got a vibe that they really cared for the animals. They didn't run the Cheetahs for some reason, probably because they weren't up to it or something, and I got to see them feed the elephants at Nairobi and they seemed to be having a heck of a time breaking the corn in half with their trunks. I got the vibe that they really cared about their animals and if they feel they can give them the conditions they deserve, the Shamu shows should continue if the whales have fun doing it. Blackfish even included a clip of a trainer saying that a whale wasn't doing it because they had to, they were doing it because they want to. I've always wanted to go to SWO and maybe do a San Antonio trip involving SFFT and SWSA. Manta looks fab, and Steel Eel looks fab. Really hope they can push through and restore what they've lost in attendance, if any. -2012 "I was wrong" Jarrett

Cheetah Hunt's POVs tend to feel really inaccurate to me. In them it looks like you're just flying slowly over grass and concrete trenches, but now that the foliage has grown back in a little, it really feels like you're dashing over an African savanna. And that force that you feel pulling you down and out of your seat during the heartline roll took me completely by surprise, I really didn't expect it. Volcano's POV also feel's a tad inaccurate. You really don't get a sense of how high you are or how footchoppy (Is that a word? It should be.) those supports are.

It feels like Batman meets Montu meets Raptor...call it BatMonRaptu: The Ride! I really like the helix threading the loop and that wingover looks really tasty! And I thought I was nuts for ditching my mom on Mother's Day to go to Cedar Point to ride GateKeeper and get the cred (which was a bust due to wind), but I've never spent 700$ on a credit before! That's awesome!

I collect theme park shirts, looks like I'm taking selfies tomorrow! I really like that Black Diamond shirt, though. But in the meantime, here's an Iron Rattler one I got from my TPR Secret Santa!

Well my mom brought a package in and told me that it was my "major award." They actually seemed a tad crushed when I told them that somebody already got one of those on here. XD Santa was good to me! A bucket list coaster for me! I was a tad confused pulling this banner out but the note attached revealed just how cool this is to have. It's from the year Six Flags Fiesta Texas opened and was used as a decoration is something called Spasburg. It's 21 years old (two years older than I am!) and per the letter, it is DEFINITELY the coolest thing you could've gotten a TPR member, and I'm moving the stuff on my bedroom wall from Mexico around to accomodate it! Close-up of the hat! Thanks so much for this, I don't have any with flat brims yet so this is a great addition to the collection! Thanks, Ninjaturtle159! I love it! Happy/Merry/Joyous ChrisHanKwanSivus!

The more of this tower they build, the less I want to ride it! Totally terrifying! Do we know if they plan to build any sort of structure around the base like BGW did with Mach Tower? I could see them throwing up some logs and stretching some Cheetah Hunt-esque African banners onto it that match the Pantopia color scheme. It should look really nice when it's done either way, but I'd love to see them theme it a little.

We roll into Pigeon Forge. It's pouring buckets of rain. We wait the storm out and go to Dollywood around 5. Nobody's there. We walked on Wild Eagle for my first ride on it. The Smoky Mountains are doing that thing that gets them their name where you can see the rain evaporating off of them. On Wild Eagle's view. Still the best ride I've ever taken on that thing. There was another time when another TPR member, his friend and I were at Kings Island in the Flight Deck station when we discovered we walked all the way over there to find it closed to wait out a storm. And all three of us ended up SLEEPING IN THE FLIGHT DECK station while the storm passed. It wasn't comfortable but the ride ops didn't care!

This is why I like TPR. I buy the DVD and I get Insane Coaster Wars chapstick and a pen because you're just awesome like that! Thanks to everybody that made this happen, you're awesome! Gonna watch it now or tomorrow! Because I'm really tired but I REALLY want to watch it! Edit: Forgot the pic! How could I forget the pic?

Vekoma Flying Dutchmen! Those things are not only uncomfortable with all your weight on those tiny restraints, but they're absolutely terrifying when they flip at the top! I feel like I'm going to fall out every time! I've ridden Firehawk and Nighthawk, and I'd have to say that Nighthawk is better because of the water and corkscrew/barrel roll/things and Firehawk's helix is vile, but I could really do without either.

Busch Gardens Tampa! Great park, one of my favorites, but some of the ride operations there are simply disgusting! Had I not found a ride operator and told her I was a single rider, they would have dispatched a Cheetah Hunt train with an empty seat in the FRONT ROW!!! That and how long it took them to get a single Scorpion train out. We were there on a less crowded day so it wasn't a huge problem, but had we gone on a weekend I would've been really mad.

I actually built a small roller coaster-ish thing back there once! It was a rig similar to a zipline but we put a pulley on the cable and attached it to a seat. To this day I'm not sure if it's a credit, but it was a lot of fun! It was just a straight shot but the cable would actually oscillate a bit after the initial drop with the wait tugging at the elasticity and because it was built really close to the ground on a hill and you felt like you were going to hit the ground (and a few people actually did when we first tested it ) Sadly it had to come down because one of the trees supporting the top cable got infected by the emerald ash borer (invasive beetle that kills ash trees) had to be cut down before it fell and hurt anybody, but it was a lot of fun! It was a huge hit at my graduation party! Well, on my property, I could maybe see us cramming a MACK Wild Mouse in if we were to remove our deck, or maybe the most epic PVC coaster ever, since our backyard is built on really hilly terrain. There's also a spot where we could MAYBE cram in a Polercoaster right outside my window. The thing is, my house backs up to a nature reserve, which really isn't our property, but there's a lot of really hilly forested land back there. I'd really like to maybe have the neighborhood buy an L-shaped plot of land back there from the city and we could get either A. an epic wooden coaster or B. something like Cheetah Hunt (my favorite!) but in the woods with more terrain action. That forest is epic, though, there's a few small storm creeks, a large cliff, and a 25-foot deep ravine complete with a waterfall into it, if we had permission and money we could easily put a world class coaster back there. Final answer: Propety- GCI kids wooden coaster along the perimeter of the forest that turns and does something (lift hill, I don't care, something) along this big epic hill in our side yard. I'd KILL to have those minilennium flyers in my yard! That and maybe a small slingshot in the crook of the layout. Viscinity- Polercoaster in the yard, Intamin LSM like Cheetah Hunt in the woods that dives into that ravine, has the same barrel roll but over the cliff, and has a helix around a giant ancient oak tree. And a windcatcher. Yeah, wishful thinking but it would be SO cool!

Splash Mountain at Magic Kingdom. We got stuck before the drop with those stupid crows saying the same friggin' thing over and over and over again. For twenty minutes.

I never thought I'd say it, but they should tear this down and put a boomerang there! That thing looks worse than a boomerang! Not kidding! And that turn into the corkscrews looks so yuck I can't even begin to describe it...

The thing is, I've never had any desire to go to New York City, but seeing this actually changed my mind! Looks like a great trip, and seeing the pictures posted to the Facebook page while watching the parade on TV actually made me wonder if I'd be able to find the building where you guys were. But it looks like you guys had plenty of fun! Definitely something I'll have to do someday!

While I am particularly thankful for Cheetah Hunt, Millennium Force, and Maverick, I am also thankful for any coaster that isn't Ninja or Gwazi. And this amazing site. And goats. We should take some time to be thankful for goats every day.

Just ordered it! Can't wait to get it!

Club me, taze me, pepper spray me in the face, taze me again, tie me up, and throw me off a bridge for it, but Son of Beast. The ride as a whole was awful but the loop and drop were AMAZING!!!!!

Forgot to post a good one I heard at Busch Gardens Tampa! [probably referring to Cheetah Run] "They's the most fast, agile animals on the planet; there's no way they're not jumping over that fence!" And talking to a friend on the bus, I got "Didn't they take out Son of Beast's loop-the-loop because someone died on it?" And according to my parents, roller coasters kill more people a year than planes...

Can't ride it, I'm a compulsive smorker and have smorking episodes at least three times an hour. I have to be on the run from the cops trying to cane me publicly because they don't like it when people smork. Yes, I'm talking about the use of a tool that has a beekeeper's smoke canister thing on one end and a dinner fork on the other. Ah, who cares. It looks like it should probably join Ninja at SFOG as an "artificial reef coaster," what I call a small coaster that would be of better use dumped into the ocean and used as an artificial reef.

I usually take my infamous red Diamondback drawstring. Inside it is usually: *Phone (iPhone 4) *Wallet *Crappy point-n-shoot camera I use for my infamous lengthy trip reports and music videos. I usually wipe it to take lots of footage since to me the second best thing behind the actual park is making the trip report. *Rain slicker if rain is a possibility *Ziploc Baggie for electronics if it rains *Extra pair of socks for the same reason *Plenty of extra space since I always haul a ton of souvenirs back. *Phone charger *Camera charger *A remote that releases the hounds (JK )