Hilltopper39

Awesome report man, Six Flags Mexico has to be one of the most elusive parks in the world, right up there with Silverwood. I'll probably never get a chance to visit so I'll have to live vicariously through other brave travelers' reports. I don't think I've ever read a review of Medusa, anywhere. Has anyone ever ridden that thing!?

Great Update, looks like they had a good crown for opening weekend! Glad to hear Mean Streak is back to a tolerable state again. Fast lane looks awesome, there's no way I'm ever going to a Cedar Fair park again in the future and not buying a Fast lane for the day.

I've done bourbon soaked chips before and they were great, but it's was awful hard to waste a cup of perfectly good (albeit cheap) Kentucky bourbon just to soak wood. There's too much bad Tennessee whiskey in this world to waste perfectly good Kentucky bourbon on soaking wood chips . I bet the corporate show room is incredible! There are so many cool accessories and gadgets for the egg that I can barley go to ACE Hardware anymore without but something new, the corporate show room would probably bankrupt me!

People dribbling basketballs around the park annoys the hell out of me!

When I lived in Central Kentucky (near Lexington) I visited Kentucky Kingdom and Holiday World about the same amount of times each summer for whatever that is worth. While the two parks are in competing markets I think that Louisville is a large enough city that Bluegrass Boardwalk could have a fairly large amount of season pass holders that visit on a regular basis. It will be interesting to see what kind of ticket options they make available to guests and if there are any options that include admission to Holiday World.

That thing FLIES over the top of the lift! Looking great, can't wait to hear some reviews from opening day!

I've wondered if it would possible to turn SOB into some type of gigantic extreme ropes course zip line type attraction thingy. I'd pay $50 to climb up the lift hill and then zip line down towards the Rose Bowl or something, be better then letting the thin sit completely dormant till they figure out what to do with it.

Thanks for all of the comments everyone! I really didn't know what kind of interest anyone around here would have in the Big Green Egg or grilling in general but with thanks for the views so far! How about another creation on the Big Green Egg? This week lets try one of my favorites, a smoked Boston Butt. One of the nicest features of the Big Green Egg is the precise temperature control that you can obtain by slightly adjusting the bottom air vent and the top daisy wheel. That combined with the insulation of the ceramic material makes it possible to smoke meats at consistent temperatures for long periods of time without having to add more fuel or constantly monitoring your temperature setups. For the Pork Butt, I ideally like to keep the temp around 200-225 degrees F for as long as possible till the meat is done. I usually don't like to cook by time but instead by internal temperature. For the pork butt, I try to cook it to an internal temp. of 195-200. You can safely serve it at around 160 but you wont get that real nice and juicy pulled pork until around 195 when all of the connective tissue has broken down and melted away. Enough talk, here are some pictures! Light the Egg First lets get the egg lit. For a long cook like this I would usually fill the fire box all the way to the fire ring but was a little low on charcoal this day and had to use all I had. It turned out to be enough. Add in soaked wood chips. Now for the smoke I used apple wood chips that had been soaked in water and some coffee for a few minutes. 8.5 lb bone in Boston Butt Roast Here is our Pork Butt (which is actually the pork shoulder, there is a reason they call the cut a Boston Butt but I don't know what it is), this one is about 8 pounds with the bone in. I usually like to use bone in when possible but have done boneless with the same method and had very similar results. Cover in yellow mustard ( actually used a datil pepper mustard) I start by covering it in a plain yellow mustard then applying a dry rub. The mustard doesn't really add any flavor but give the rubb something to stick to and creates a nice "burnt" crust when the smoke is complete. Apply the rub Now apply the rub, I was all out of my special pork rubs so used a combination of Salt, pepper, Tony Chacheres Cajun Seasoning, cumin, brown sugar, garlic powder, chili powder, paprkia, and Cayenne. Both sides are rubbed up and we're ready to go The setup I use in the Egg itself for a indirect cook is as follows. The Big Green Egg makes a device called a plate setter that basically covers the interior of the egg and deflects the heat (and smoke) around the meat indirectly and out the top vent. You use the plate setter to cook pizzas, breads, ribs, anything you want to cook over indirect heat. The Big Green Egg plate Setter, feet down Plate Setter Feet up The I use the plate setter feet up, with a drip pan under the meat (just to keep my plate setter from getting too dirty more so than to catch the dripping), then the grate installed on the feet, then the roasting rack with the meat on top of the grate. Plate setter in the egg feet up Plate setter feet up, then a drip pan, then the grate, and the pork butt in a V-rack. Another picture of the set up After the meat is in the egg, close the dome and adjust your vents accordingly until you get the temperature you want, in this case around 225. Bottom vent top vent temp I love that last picture, no better way to start a nice Saturday then with a giant piece of meat in the smoker at sunrise! I had the pork butt on the egg and ready to go by around 7:30 am. The rest of this report will be pretty minimal since after I have the temp set I usually won't open the egg for another 8-12 hours. I usually monitor the internal temperature of the meat with a probe, but my probe broke the week before so I had to open the Egg every couple hours to manually check the temp with a meat thermometer. About 4 hours in It's slowly getting there, the slower the better! After about 10 hours Temp is getting close to where I want it, around 195 And we're close enough The next step is my super top secret step for delicious pulled pork. I remove the butt at around 195 degrees F, cover in a little bit of sauce and honey, then tightly wrap it in several layers of Aluminum foil. Once it's wrapped I'll place it in a cooler (with no ice obviously) and let it sit until I'm ready to serve it. I like to let it rest for at least an hour but I've kept it in the cooler for 5-6 hours before without the temperature fluctuating more than 4-5 degrees. Letting it rest in the foil at that temp the meat just steams itself and comes out unbelievably juicy and tender. Remove from the egg and set on some foil Where the bark fell off you can see the the pink color that the meat turned to from where it absorbed the smoke. Add a little sauce, then wrap tightly in some foil let rest in a cooler Let it sit as long as you want at this point, until your ready to serve it. Lexi approves! As always I need the approval of an qualified food expert before I serve it to anyone, she approves! After about an hour in the cooler we are ready to pull and serve. Remember earlier when I said that I like to use the bone-in Boston Butt roast? Well the true test of quality and doneness comes when it is time to remove the bone. If the meat is tender and juicy the bone should slide right out without any effort, let's see. ready to be pulled Looking good! The true test..... And the bone pulls away without any effort Lots of delicious juicy pork After 14 hours it was worth the wait! This Butt turned out really well but wasn't my best. I usually like to leave the dome lid shut for the entire duration of the cook and just open it to remove when my internal temperature probe is at the temperature I want but since my probe was broken I had to open it every couple of hours to check my temp. It still turned out really well though, and that's the thing I love about barbecueing, it's pretty hard to mess up! Good barbecue is really really good, and bad barbecue is still pretty decent. Over cooked and a little dry? throw some sauce on it! Not a ton of flavor in the meat? throw some sauce on it! Under cooked? throw it back on the grill or in the oven or in a skillet, then throw some sauce on it and it will still be pretty decent! Thanks for Reading! Feel free to leave comments, tips, suggestions, sarcastic and suggestive jokes about meat and temp probes, constructive criticism, mean criticism, or any requests for future recipe reports! Have a great weekend everyone!

I guess you were right !

The interactive elements on this thing look amazing! I can't vouch for the ride experience itself since I haven't been on it but visually it looks great. As good as Wild Eagle at Dollywood looks I think the ride experience would have benefited from having a few of these "fly through" elements. I'm interested to see how people review and rank X-Flight, reviews of Swarm and Raptor seemed to be more good and less great which I could see this being consistent. ^^^Steve I agree with overall theory of your 1st grade physics lesson but Wild Eagle was surprisingly more forceful than I was expecting, the Wing Riders might actually have the potential to provide an intense ride experience. I'm flying into Milwaukee for work in a few weeks and will have the majority of a day, can't decide if this thing is worth the trip yet or not (I have almost every other credit at the park, the good ones at least).

Great Updates of some out of the way parks that I had no idea existed! It's amazing how even the "crappy" parks in Italy seem to have better themeing than some of the better parks in America haha.

Those inner-tubes are awesome! This water park seriously looks like a great addition to Legoland and will probably be my excuse to finally take a trip there.

yeah I'm with ya, I don't see what the complaints are about, but go read the comments on CP's Facebook page on the announcement of Fast Lane, or find the Fast Lane announcement in the Kings Island thread on here and you'll find plenty of people who's opinion differs from your and mine.

Tool- Ticks and Leeches, the opening drum line always makes me question how many arms Danny Carey really has.

Nice to hear an overwhelmingly positive review of the Fast Lane system after reading so much bitching and complaining on various Cedar Far parks' Facebook pages and even from some member here. Glad to see more parks offering this option now.

^^Yeah, that's insane, it's a dark ride-period. Just to throw in my two cents for the backyard coasters argument, for me if the coaster is gravity driven as a result of some sort of motor powered chain/rope/fishing line lift hill, is full circuit, and has a train that is actually attached to the track then I would count it. If a guy rides a wagon down some boards and off a ramp it doesn't count, but if some guy actually fabricates a train to fit on a custom built track that runs a full gravity powered circuit then I think it counts. By those qualifications there are all of about two actual working backyard coasters in the world so the rarity of the credit alone should make it count as a credit, in my opinion. I am by no means a credit whore, I've personally never seen the point in traveling hour out of your way to ride a miner mike just to say your rode it and add it to your count, but that's just me. If I'm at a new park and I've ridden everything I want to ride and have time to spare then I might waste 20 minutes waiting for a random wacky worm credit, but kiddie coaster credits for me are always last (and usually after I've re-ridden the good stuff).

I'm sure it will be a popular ride since it is new and unique, but I got a feeling that after a few years the appeal may wear off a bit. I rode Wild Eagle three times on opening day and thought it was a really fun coaster, great for the park, glad I got the credit, but I was content with spending the rest of my day at Thunderhead.

Flame me all you want, but I got a weird feeling that X-Flight might be a little bit of a disappointment, even to the GP, at this park.

It wasn't always a terrible park, actually used to have a lot of charm for small local place. Other than being limited by height restrictions from the airport the location is actually pretty decent, right next to the fair grounds, Churchill Downs, Pappa Johns Stadium, and very conveniently located off of the interstate within about 3 hours drive of several decent sized cities (Lexington, Louisville, Bowling green, Nashville, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Dayton). The ride selection isn't great as far as coasters go but it's a pretty decent selection of flats and water slides compared to a lot of places. It's not going to be Cedar Point or Knobles after year 1, but all in all it's a decent palate to start with and develop a new park.

There's usually a bad wreck at Talladega every year, that was a pretty nasty crash but wasn't half as bad as the wreck Carl Edwards had last year.

Yeah, it does seem a little low, but if they are just planning on getting the place opened and running again it would probably be enough, might even be able to add something new to the water park. I think I'm most interested in seeing if they keep the park layout basically as is or if they do a major overhaul and expand the water park into the old Chang land plot (or elsewhere).

Just bought pre-sale tickets for My Morning Jacket and Band of Horses in August, so I'm listening to My Morning Jacket - One Big Holiday

That sounds like it should be an element on Busch Gardens' new for 2013 attraction "Bench: The Ride".

I was just about to mention Horror Nights! Q-bots for Horror Nights could be a life saver, it will be interesting to see how they implement those for HHN. Thinking about HHN just reminded me that there will be no more Jaws night rides ever again , just another reason to possibly skip it completely this year in favor of Halloscreams.

^Yeah, it does look to have a little more "oomph", I wonder if the physical dimensions of the drop track piece itself is any different from the one at Legoland? That quick Verbolten clip it looks like it actually "free falls" a longer distance before being stopped by the brakes but you would think that from a manufacturers standpoint it would be easier to produce one one universal drop section that can be programmed for different levels of intensity for different types of rides, but maybe not.