ZeroGravity55

Double post! Work on the Mayflower as begun! According to the Holiblog, work started some time last week. www.holidayworld.com/holiblog/2014/02/07/round-thing-mayflower/

^ To like The Legend, you have to be one of those people who enjoy riding the classic scrambler ride. Some people enjoy getting slammed side to side and others don't. A lot of people mistake the extreme laterals as roughness, because they can leave you with a good battle scar.

I don't if anybody has realized this, but that drop out of the overbank is going to be really steep. I'm going to guess it's pretty close to 80 degrees.

I think they're getting better at predicting who some of the top players are, but putting together a list of 300 players and saying they're the best 300 players in the country is a little outrageous. To me, it's about what coaching staff is good at taking the players they get and developing them into their full potential. I always think of Boise St and former coach Chris Peterson. They never got the ranked players, but they were great at finding kids who were overlooked and developed them to their full potential. Right now, Michigan St and Mark Dantonio seem to be really good at doing that.

I would hate to be one of the guys that has to go out and re-track the ride every off-season. It has feel like they're putting in all of that work, just for the ride to tear it all up 2 months into the operating season. Topper track seems to be like the only solution, but I think the sampling of the product is too little right now for HW to make definitive decision to go on with it. I think they wanna see more results. Yeah, Outlaw Run is great right now, but it could be rough in a few years. That seems highly unlikely, but you just don't know. It makes sense to sit back and wait, before they make a decision. They don't wanna make another decision that puts them in another money pit like Timberliners did. If it doesn't go right this time, they could lose the ride for an entire season. It wouldn't be as simple as just running the old trains until the new ones are ready. You can't put the old track back on, because the new one isn't delivering.

There could be, but that would seem weird considering HW does all their maintenance in house. They only brought TGG into re-profile the turn around on The Voyage a couple years ago and that was just the design part. HW did the rebuild themselves if I remember correctly. It wouldn't surprise me if they did have an agreement of some kind though. Those guys just designed all three of their woodies. As for topper track on the Voyage. If HW decides to do it, I hope they do the whole ride and fix it for good. I wouldn't be opposed to seeing RMC trains on the ride either. If there is topper track on the Voyage, it should be considered a wooden roller coaster. Just like all the other wooden coasters that have topper track.

As soon as I saw that RMC was involved, I started thinking about an S&S/RMC brand new 4D wooden roller coaster concept. Then I realized that there would be way to many clearance issues with the wooden structure, especially on any type of inversion. I'm interested to see what type of supports they use on the I-Box track. I wonder if it could open up the possibility of RMC building completely brand new steel roller coasters with high-G inversions?

The ambulance also has to go down that road to get to the first-aid building. Part of me thinks that building this covered bridge is a way to give privacy to guests who may have to leave park via ambulance. That bridge lets you look right down at the first-aid building and would allow you to see everything that's going on if an ambulance was taking a guest away. I'm wiling to bet something like that happened last season (they just re-located the first-aid building to it's current location in 2013.) and a lot of people on the bridge were stopping and staring at what was going on.

Has anybody checked out the parks new website yet? It took me awhile to get used to it, but I really like it. http://www.holidayworld.com/ Also, I came across this Holiblog. http://www.holidayworld.com/holiblog/2014/01/16/best-staff-meeting-ever/ I wish my management meeting at work would go something like this. Going to see Saving Mr. Banks sounds a heck of a lot better than talking about food costs all the time!

Looks like Alabama may have found there next QB in Jameis Winston's former back-up QB. Jacob Coker is transferring to Alabama and his former QB coach at Florida St had some high praise for the QB. "I've never had anybody with his size who throws it as well as he does." "Jake has a really quick release with tremendous arm strength. Rarely does it not spiral or not go where he wants it to go." Asked if Coker's arm is even better than Winston, the resident Heisman winner, Sanders paused for a few breaths before saying, "Coker's arm is kind of at a different level. Jameis has a very special arm, and this isn't any knock against Jameis, but Jake's probably the best I've seen in 25 years at throwing it." He's a redshirt sophomore, but he's eligible to play right away because he's going to graduate this spring. My only question is, if he's as good as the Florida St QB coach says he is, why did he loose the job to Winston over the summer? http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/10333856/sources-qb-jacob-coker-expected-enroll-alabama-crimson-tide-being-released-scholarship-florida-state-seminoles http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/writer/bruce-feldman/24402411/the-rise-of-florida-state-backup-jacob-coker-a-very-hot-commodity

Remember, these inversions are low force inversions that don't put the track or structure under any more stress than a normal wooden coaster element does. There is always going to be high forces involved in the drop and they probably do have the technology to do a vertical drop, it's just a matter of finding a park that is willing to build a coaster that big. As for a Maverick style drop, that just seems impractical. Anything beyond a 90 degree drop on a woodie would cause the track to dip back into the structure supporting the lift, essentially eliminating the structure supporting the top of the lift. I'm not saying it's impossible though. Nothing is impossible when Alan Schilke is the designer. I can see RMC installing dive drops like you see on the B&M wing riders on their future coasters.

^ I think he just wants to add more pace to the offense, not necessarily change his offensive philosophy. Saban wants to implement some of the hurry-up, because he's afraid they won't be able to score quickly enough keep up with offenses like Texas A&M, Auburn, and Ole Miss in the coming years. I don't think they're going to change what they do at Bama, just add more pace. Speaking of Kiffin, Bama plays at Tennessee next year. I wonder how much the fans and media will blow that game out of proportion?

^ I agree. SFSTL's management team does a great job with what they're given and they take pride and making the park the best they can make it. When I visited during Fright Fest, I lost count of how many suit's and ties I saw carrying around a broom and dust-pan.

I think it will eventually happen. A lot of it probably has to do with the length of the drop and the forces involved. The drop needs enough length to reach a 90 degree vertical drop and then have enough left to pull out of the drop without having high forces putting the track and structure under a lot of stress. This is a wooden structure were taking about, so it will always be tricky to do, but it's certainly not out of reach. RMC is close. I say they'll hit the 90 degree max vertical angle around the 190-200 foot drop range.

Lane Kiffin might get the nod as Alabama's new offensive coordinator. Even though they're friends, it would be interesting to see him and Saban working together. Apparently Kiffin as been intrigued by the hurry-up offense since he was fired by USC.

http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/10257706/booster-red-mccombs-bashes-texas-longhorns-charlie-strong-hire Anybody see this story about this Texas booster who said Charlie Strong was a bad hire and he'd be a better position coach or coordinator at Texas than a head coach? I have a feeling this booster is going to put his foot in his mouth in a few years. If Strong makes the right staff hires, he should be able to recruit Texas easily, plus we all know how well he recruits Florida. What his teams did at Louisville on the field speaks for itself.

I'm probably being biased, but I think the The Legend and Voyage at Holiday World are very photogenic in the fall.

I wouldn't count Auburn out next year. They return a lot of guys on offense and the defense can only get better.

^ My bad. I thought he had a defensive background for some reason. He did play linebacker in college, but you're right. He coached under a lot of great offensive minds before working his way up to becoming a coordinator at Oklahoma.

^^ That "new" coaster is 20+ years old and was a hand-me-down from Six Flags Over Texas. Six Flags St Louis deserves a "brand new" coaster that they can call their own.

^ Sumlin is supposed to be a defensive guy too. A&M played a lot of freshman and sophomores on defense this season, so they should be better next season. I honestly didn't understand why Michigan St was such a big underdog. I've watched about 6 of their games this season and I thought their defense was way better than Stanford's when they announced the game. I think a lot of people made too much of a fuss over Michigan St losing their captain linebacker who called the plays and made the defensive adjustments on the field. It would have been a much bigger deal if they played a team like Oregon with their incredible pace. There is only one more BCS game until the National Championship game. I still think Auburn's O-line is going absolutely maul Florida St's defense with that run game. Even with a month to prepare, I think Auburn's offense is going to be hard to stop. You can't simulate that I kind of pace with the variations of the zone read and triple option at full speed in practice. Can Auburn's defense stop Florida St? That's the only question. I think the first team to score 40+ plus wins the game.

I was watching the ESPN 30 for 30 on Maurice Clarett and Jim Tressel and occurred to me that Jim Tressel only has 3 more season on his show clause sanctions. It also occurred to me that he only has to serve the sanctions he would have served at Ohio St if he decided to coach before the show clause was up. Those are sitting out the first five games of the season and the bowl game. Maybe Texas would take a shot at hiring him? He's won a national championship, ran a major college football program, and is a great recruiter. The only thing holding him back is the sanctions for one season and it'll probably take a couple of seasons to get the program running in the right direction. He probably won't get hired at Texas, but I thought that I would throw that out there.

American Thunder- smooth as glass. The Boss- Gave me a nice back and butt massage. Eagle- Needed to have the track greased. Those were my takes from the last time I was at the park. I honestly think that new trains would help Boss. Those Gerstlauers make you feel like your sitting right on the chassis. Eagle definitely needed the track greased. The train was squealing around every turn, but it wasn't bad in terms of roughness. American Thunder was one of the most re-rideable woodies I've ever been on.

If they fully enclosed the bridge, it would become a sauna. It would eliminate the point of covering the bridge, which is to give people some shade from the sun and heat.

Dry-hot weather, bad maintenance and wooden roller coasters do not mix well at all. If you're going to build a wooden roller coaster in that type of climate (especially Southern California), you better be prepared to meet the maintenance costs. If Apocalypse is as bad as it sounds, could it be the first GCI to get RMC topper track?