ZeroGravity55

Hopefully, it will end soon. I bet the park wishes it would have started in early July, when they were still in daily operation season. This summer has been quite cool and I'm willing to bet park attendance has been down a tad bit because of it.

It's always a fascinating spectacle on the TPR forums when a new B&M for the states is announced. I've been a member for three of them so far (Banshee, Thunderbird, and now Fury 325) and the reaction seems to be the same every single time. Comments range from "This ride looks like it won't have any forces" or "they could have spent this money on something so much better." Then you get the park fanboys (yes I'm guilty on HW thread to an extent) who defend the ride to the death saying things like "this looks so awesome" or "how can you not like this? It's looks so much better than (insert said ride built by B&M)." There are 5-8 posts out of 30 complaining about the ride and that turns into 20 pages of people complaining about complainers. Reading some of those posts throughout those 20 pages is enough to drive a man to drink. Fury 325 looks like it will be a fun speed filled coaster. Am I absolutely OMFG blown away by the animation? No, but I don't need to be. Could they have gotten something so much better with the money they spent? Maybe, I don't know. It was Cedar Fair's money to spend, not mine. I would like to think they have a very reasonable and justified answer for choosing B&M over Intamin. I would love to know and I'm sure a lot of other enthusiasts would like to know as well, but that is none of our business.

I hope they get the immelmann up before the waterpark closes. I'm pretty sure I'm going the final day it's open and I would love to get some great photos from Hyena Falls!

^ Idk I just remember there being a building to left of the second break run and that structure seems pretty close to that clearing. I could be wrong though. The park posted this on twitter!

^ It appears the station is starting to go up as well! Edit: Actually looks like the storage building for the trains.

Take this for what it's worth, but Alan Schilke did say he was looking forward to getting his hands on a really long roller coaster at IAAPA last year.

If there was ever a competition for who did the best Ice Bucket Challenge video, Holiday World would win!

While I'm sure everyone at the park is going to get a good laugh out of this, I guarantee that the construction crew members will be fully aware that they're on a live streaming web cam as soon as possible. But, part me thinks he probably knew and had to go really bad. If this was the case and it happened at a Six Flags park instead of HW, I would say the term YOLO might be appropriate in describing this situation!

These RMC crews waste no time!

He must not be aware that there is a camera looking at the construction site!

If they're going to combine both sides and make it a continuous track, in my opinion, one side at least has to have a launch and needs to be a completely different ride experience from the other side. I know one thing, Alan Schilke will give this thing the best most creative design he's allowed to give it.

Well unless I'm color blind (which I'm not), this and this looks different than this.

^ My personal favorite was the water tower. It's in the picture...

Love this photo the park shared on Facebook! One of their coaster cats was "taking his break" on the second hill of The Voyage a few days ago and snapped this photo while he was up there. This wins my vote for the best spot to take a break.

^ Yes with much older slide complexes, not a brand spanking new one. It's a waste of money (not to mention they've already threw nearly 5 million down the drain with PP) and it is not impossible to work around it. Thunderbird is probably as far back as the Thanksgiving section will go. I'm sensing everything else will go to the right of Mayflower and where PP currently sits and out in that field, then kind of wrap around Hyena Falls. They can then create a new walkway going to Thunderbird and its placement will make much more sense. I'm actually starting to think the current walkway to Thunderbird will be temporary until the rest of Thanksgiving section can catch up.The bad placement of Hyena Falls was the hand management was dealt. On the heels of a 22 million dollar investment and loss of a 5 million dollar investment, it is not a good business decision to spend several million on something that can be worked around. Edit: Here is kind of what I'm talking about. You'll notice that once the temporary plan is finished, it becomes a candidate for waterpark expansion. With this, the placement of Thunderbird starts to make sense. Understand though, they had to add Thunderbird to be an anchor to allow them to add all the small rides needed to expand the Thanksgiving section to whatever their vision of it is. So many possibilities that can be explored and done in this situation. Temporary plan for now. Plan for the future.

I'm still saying the Efteling dive coaster is the red track that has those new looking rail ties. Nothing that has shown up at HW matches it at all, plus the color difference in HW's orange to that red is different. I know it is not at the plant, but they do have to ship it overseas. So I'm saying it is currently on it's way to Efteling.

I agree. Right by Voyage and not in the water park? Really? Let me insert some plausible common sense into this scenario. The majority of the cost for these slide complexes, water rides, ext, comes from the concrete, and water pump installation. It seems quite complex, actually and probably costs more than the slide parts alone. So we're going to spend several million dollars to move a slide complex about 100 yards from where it currently sits? Was the placement of the slide complex poor? Yes. Now that was a different management team who made that purchase and choice. Now I have my thoughts and a few rants on why they put it there, but I'll keep that to myself for now. So let me say this, there is still a way around this and a way to keep the dry park separate from the dry park. You guys are over thinking this just a bit. There is a tunnel like walkway that used to be the way to get to PP from SS. That has been blocked off. If they go ahead and remove the rest of the concrete and water pumps from PP, they can keep the walkway and create a pathway from The Mayflower that goes through that tunnel. They can then expand upon the walkway already there right by The Voyage's third 90 degree turn and take a separate pathway right next to the one going to Hyena Falls and take it all the way up to Thunderbird. I'll finish with this. If the park could expand the water park around The Legend, why can they expand the dry park around Hyena Falls.

When you're driving on a back road and you see a hill and think "If I go fast enough, I might get some airtime". Then you do it and get a bit of airtime, but it wasn't strong enough for your liking, so you proceed to take that hill at a faster speed every time you come upon it. Also, when there are several quicker ways to get to HW off the interstate, but you take Highway 162 out of Dale, Indiana because that road quite possibly has the best series of bunny hills on a road in the U.S. You're almost guaranteed airtime no matter what speed you're going.

Trust me, there are probably parks out there that wish their CCI (or CCI's) ran as good The Raven and The Legend do at this point in their life span. One is nearly 20 years old and the other is almost 15 years old. Maintaining both of these rides wouldn't be as big a problem if it wasn't for The Voyage. They have to pour most of their time, effort, and money into keeping it ride-able every year. It is their #1 dry park attraction (soon to be #2 with the GP) and they have to try and make sure it runs like a number one attraction. Do they always succeed? No. There is not a park out there that could try and keep up with this monster of a ride. Now if I'm looking at numbers at the park, I wanna now how much money the park has spent on Voyage maintenance on average per year, since the ride has opened. Then, I wanna quote from RMC to find out how much a full topper track conversion, with two new RMC trains will cost in a single investment. Then I wanna know how much Silver Dollar City has spent on maintenance on average per year, since Outlaw Run has opened. I would then crunch those numbers and if that full topper track conversion with the RMC trains will cost the same amount of money or less in a singe year than the normal maintenance typically performed over a ten year period, I would pull the trigger on the topper track conversion. In my opinion, if they're going to do topper track on The Voyage, they might as well do the whole dang thing. Put the RMC trains on it (they were designed for the RMC tracks), I think The Voyage would become a whole new experience. This would allow them to focus more on The Raven and Legend every year. Overall, this would improve guest experience tremendously.

^ Yeah I've never seen those supports on The Legend before. I noticed it right away as I was walking up the queue. I'm not sure if I just noticed it because it was new wood or not. I've actually never seen a wooden coaster with that type of bracing before. The brace went from the corner of the ledger to the opposite footer and it looked like one huge board. I can't remember if it was two boards connected together. It looks like it took some of the give (or sway) out of the structure though.

^ I think this has been mentioned before, but The Legend has received some new bulky lateral cross bracing in some sections. These supports appear to be new the structure, as opposed to just being replaced.

Kind of funny how the first supports go up the day after daily operation ends. Can't wait to see more go up!

So I swear every time I watch a YouTube video, this ad keeps showing up. Part of me wanted to laugh when I first saw this, but then I thought, why waste the money when your park has multiple issues that could probably use that money to fix them? Then I remembered, it's Mt. Olympus, so logical thought doesn't apply to this park. Anyways, the opening part of this ad is what makes me laugh. "The Mt. Olympus Experience". Perhaps some of you could enlighten on this "experience" this video speaks of?

So I don't know if anybody has given this any thought on Iron Colossus, but how about RMC combining both tracks together with the first circuit being a normal lift and the second being a launch? Maybe changing up the ride experience and elements for both tracks? I saw somebody pitch that idea on one of them stupid Save Colossus Facebook pages. That would give them the longest coaster record and both sides would have different ride experiences.

Well they just can't rip the tack off in some spots because they don't want to damage the supports below it, seeing they're going to need them. Like most of the other converted coasters, this one will follow the original layout of the footings, but the ride experience and elements will drastically change. The only RMC converted coaster that changed from the original layout was Iron Rattler, where they removed the two helix's from the ride. Now they still did use the original footings to create a new ride layout.