thedirtyspaniard

Gurnee Mills, as someone said earlier, is your best bet if you want to park for free and stay at the park for the whole day. However, I have a long-time trick I've done for the past few years to visit the park without being stabbed in the pocket when having a season pass with no parking pass: NOTE:This doesn't work if you plan on visiting for the whole day, only about the last few hours (usually the 2 or 3 hours before the park closes.) Basically, if you show up about 2 or 3 hours before the park closes, there will be no parking attendants in the booths of the lot and you will be able to park closer to the front gate (since some people will have left already) and most importantly, for free. It's one of my favorite ways to visit the park, especially since I had to work during the day on weekdays and the park empties out a bit more at night. Of course you also need to add that to the fact that rides at night are more fun and you've got yourself a pretty good deal. I'm sure multiple people are already aware of this anyway, but I thought I'd just throw it out there.

Does anyone know if any more pictures from last weekend's construction tour have surfaced anywhere??

Where was the 3rd picture taken? From the US Rte 41 Overpass on Washington Street, or right here: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/42.3596929,-87.8935531//@42.3596433,-87.8958544,18z/data=!4m3!4m2!1m0!1m0

Seeing it in person is something else entirely... I took these pictures just this afternoon. You can pretty much see Goliath's overbank and even the tip of the dive loop as a part of the SFGAm skyline in the distance when approaching the park from any direction... when the lift goes up, it's going to be stunning. From the behind employee lot fence.. my jaw was on the floor; the structure is massive... Rails and track elements in the distance, no sign of trains onsite anywhere Hard to see, but if you look between the two towers of V2, the angled line and large block structure is Goliath's overbank... again, this is going to be quite a nice addition to the skyline from this view.

If I had to be completely honest -- I love eagle's rickety feel -- it does get a bit out of control in the helices, but at the same time it's a ton of fun. Eagle to me was never meant to be as smooth as glass or anywhere near that, half of the fun of the first few airtime hills is the mixing of the shaky, positive g's at the bottoms of the hills and then the smooth flotation over the tops of the hills. I have only thing to suggest that would improve the ride experience on eagle -- turn off the trims after the huge turnaround helix. Every time I'm waiting for the front row on either side.. I always peer into the ride op booth and look at that knob labelled "trims" with positions 1,2,3 and all. And I always try and ask the ride op if it would be at all possible to just turn it to the 1 or 2 position... but alas.. I will continue dreaming, or just getting lucky when I go on days in the early/late season where the trims are off. As for Goliath, it looks like they didn't do much vertical construction aside from adding more track on the ascent into the large overbank that you can see in the foreground of the picture.

Don't want to be a negative Nancy here -- but if you'd like to consider that which "holds the train in the air", you should also include the wooden spine of the track as well as the wooden supports of the ride, as well as all of the nuts and bolts that hold all of that together. Oh and the concrete footers as well. And we know what's going to happen if we start discussing supports. A reason which I believe justifies the legitimacy of Goliath being considered a wood coaster: The spine of the track is wood. Someone is going to say "yes but the rails are steel and--" Stop, right there. The spine is wood. The spine is attached right below the rails at all points; it is shaped to the exactly same twists, curves, and overall dimensions as the rails. It's actually serving a much larger structural purpose than the steel rails. Same deal on a 'traditional' wood coaster -- just that there is less steel to the rails. Which leads me to my next point. The rails of the coaster are the actual surface the wheels ride on throughout the ride, not what supports it. If I may use a definition from the Merriam-Webster dictionary: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rail Rail, noun: 3. a : a bar of rolled steel forming a track for wheeled vehicles. If you'd like to think about what rails are on a steel coaster -- they're the surface and relative shape which the wheels directly ride on, not the cross ties; they are the metal tubular rails. On a wooden coaster, the wooden spine, ie layers of wood, is like a set of infinite cross ties, holding the flat steel rails. While they contribute to the ride feel due to their shape and warping over time - the same can be said about any other component of the support structure, such as bents, footers, etc. - just to a smaller extent. I won't say anyone is incorrect or correct in their measures of how they'd like to consider what a wooden coaster is, I just wanted to lay this out from an engineering perspective. Back to the topic at hand: I wonder if the twist and shout will be completed today/by the end of this week. Also, SFGAm should snap a picture to see how Goliath looks from the parks midways sometime soon.

I'm gonna go ahead and say the restraints will look almost exactly if not exactly like this: (From SFGAm Facebook Page)

I was waiting for someone to say this... I don't see what the problem with having orange/red rails will be. Yes, currently they stand out a bit and might not look as nice, but you've got to remember that when you look at pictures of the coaster -- It's winter. The red stands out so much because there's no background color besides white/grey -- also the wood is wet and hasn't really shown it's true nice golden brown color yet.

I'm very impressed at how much construction has started to move again now that some of the temperatures are a little warmer and it hasn't been as windy. Does anyone know if they've started any of the work in the tunnels besides footers?

I still haven't quite figured out why everyone is so concerned with the station either... I don't remember X-Flight's station receiving this much attention during construction updates and that thing is a tent..

Given that 2013 was kind of a limited year for me in terms of theme parks visited, I didn't have a large selection of ride experiences to pick from. 3. Mean Streak - in the back row, with a friend who had never been to Cedar Point (or known of the pain and suffering that is riding Mean Streak.) Call me evil, but I couldn't stop laughing the entire ride from my friend saying "ow. dammit. what the ****. ow. why?" the whole time. 2. GateKeeper - I know this coaster (and wingriders in general) receive a lot of complaints about tight restraints, no forces, and whatever other nitpicky things, but just one ride in the front right seat was all it took for me. Absolute sensation of flying and just an awesome ride to ride at night. Also, back left seat gave some very nice airtime when I rode it on opening day, must have been the winds giving the train an extra boost 1. Viper Backwards (SFGAm) - Classic ride I've been on countless times, but the airtime was just taken to such an insane level with the trains backwards. Even after having ridden it so many times forwards, every single drop was loaded with airtime in the last row (technically the first on the forwards train) and caught my completely off guard. I seriously can't remember a time when I had as much fun on a roller coaster as I did when I rode Viper backwards the first time.

So.. I drove by SFGAm today, and I've got to say that what's been built of Goliath looks a lot bigger in pictures than it does in real life. That isn't to say it isn't actually big or isn't going to be impressive. However, the only place outside the park where you can see the ride from is the employee lot, otherwise it's not distinguishable or visible. I'm excited for how much the skyline is going to change in the back corner of the park once the overbanked turns and the first hill go up. It will stand out for sure then, but for now it's a work in progress. Driving up to the park off Washington St. While this isn't a great picture of progress so far, I think it gives a fair idea of the relative height of what's been built. What looked like some of the concrete footers were still sitting off to the side in the storage area, not sure if these are spares or have yet to be placed. Stacks of wood presumably for Goliath.

I'll be driving by the SFGAm area later today, I'll try and take a few pictures if anything can be seen from the road or if I can get in the entrance of the employee lot

I was watching the webcam some today and it looks like they dug out most of the trench as well as got some wood onsite to start going vertical hopefully on monday... can't wait to start seeing this thing go up. I live about 10mi from SFGAm, once you can start to see Goliath from outside the park I'll be sure to head there and snap some pictures to share on here

^Thank you for that markers aren't footers but they're better than a plot of dirt by a long measure. I didn't know SFGAm had an instagram... I will have to add that to the list of things to check for updates on construction