Hilltopper39

^Yeah, I was thinking that the bottom floor of the AMC or one of the theaters on that side of the building would be gutted for a few hoels or something and have some cool indoor special effects, but I guess not. I wonder where the entrance to the course will be, I'm guessing it will be somewhere close to the very front of Citywalk near the end of the moving walkways.

yeah, I'm not very familiar with the layout of the CitiWalk buildings but I was thinking half of the course would be inside on the bottom level of an unused building or something but I guess not, regardless it still looks awesome.

The mini golf course looks great. Is there an indoor section to the course? I remember the press release mention an indoor/outdoor course, but I could be wrong. Does anyone know if it will be only one 18 hole course, or two (18's ,or 3 9's or something? I love me some mini golf but I could see an 18 hole only course at a place like Citiwalk getting VERY crowded and having an awful pace of play. Hopefully there will be two courses to help that.

Just to throw my two cents into the GCI airtime debate, I've always felt that GCI's in the front seat give great little "pops of ejector" air. Not crazy OMFG ejector air like Cyclops, but good pops or out of your seat air kind of like the bunny hops on Magnum. To me GCI are fairly consistent in that most every one I've been has that kind of air in the front seat but nothing more than really good "floater" air throughout the rest of the train.

Awesome, I always felt like the Daytona beach boardwalk area could use a coaster of some type, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind but it will work. If I remember correctly the Daytona Lagoon water park where this is going was a fairly decent water park with some nice body slides, wave pool, mat racer, lazy river, go karts, mini golf and is right across the street from the beach. Nice place to spend half a day on the way to/from Orlando. TPoRlando Group takeover of the new credit when it opens?

It will be interesting to see what kind of settlement they give to the families of the victims, I was reading somewhere that per some European maritime law there is only a maximum of around $75,000 that the owner is legally responsible for in the event of a death or a passenger. I have no idea how accurate that is but if it is it will be interesting to see if Costa compensates the families more than the the required amount. The more I think about it 14K seem fairly reasonable, if it were a 21 night cruise on a high end luxury liner like Seabourn or SilverSea that would seem low but for a the majority crowd that was likely on that boat and survived with little trauma $14,000 is probably a pretty reasonable.

Surprised to see Balder slip so low, and Voyage continue to stay so hi. I can't remember the last time I heard some give a review of Voyage other than it was violently rough and not nearly as good as it used to be.

^Waiting patiently as always keeping my fingers crossed for a Chesapeake Bay Area Bash Weekend.

Looks great, I'm still betting on this being the surprise hit new coaster of the season. Looks great to me. I guess my only complaint is I wish they would have found a way to kind of "plus" the final drop but instead this one looks a little smaller and less intense than the old BBW drop. I know it's kind of a dumb complaint especially considering the ride is more of a "family" coaster, but I'm sure the ride will still be fantastic. Can't wait. I really need to put together a BGW/KD trip this summer, may be the last chance I have to take good coaster trip for a several years

I wonder if Bobby Bowden is considering un-retiring to try and get a few more wins.....

Is it too soon to make jokes about Joe Pa, or should I wait about 10 years before saying anything ? But in all seriousness, the jury is still out for me on this whole situation. I do think that Joe Pa was a great football coach and did a lot of great things for the university, the community, and all of the kids who played for him over the years. However I still think that there is a lot of information about this situation that is yet to be revealed and may farther involve Joe Pa for better or worse. I think when it's all said and done Joe Pa will still be a great man who inevitably made a poor judgement concerning a situation that was bigger than he realized.

This is great news and with Dolly's name attached to the project I'm sure it will get done right. Opryland was a great little park I had the opportunity to visit once when I was younger and loved the place, very unique. I know the park was loved by the locals and it has been missed every since it was demolished for the mall, and they have been anxious for something like this ever since. I've got several "non themepark friends" who had facebook post the past couple of days that are pretty excited about this announcement. Kind of funny some of them have been discussing old attractions they hope will make a return, like Chaos and Grizzly River Rapids haha. I would be a nice touch to see the new park pay homage to the original in some way, just hopefully not an enclosed Vekoma, or an Vekoma SLC, or any Vekoma for that matter.

I know I'm a little late here but congrats to the winners, I really like the new front page designs. I was going to say that one of my favorite websites recently, grantland.com, just re worked their front page a few days ago and I really like the new version. Ironically enough it reminds me quite a bit of the two winning submissions here. Can't wait to see the new page.

Wow, I was going to say this is fairly unheard of to remove such a new, signature attraction but I had no idea that WIld Wadi had been around for 12 years. Either way I'm excited to see what the replacement is, should be exciting.

I don't know if I would go that far, he has been a pretty good coach for them for most part and even if these rumors are all completely true I still don't know if that is enough cause to fire the guy, but maybe it is. It's going to be interesting to see how much attention (if any) all this gets in the national media. So far it's been pretty quite and now that College Football season is a few weeks over I can't see these rumors really grabbing the national headlines unless there is someone within the organization who comes forward and gives a full interview with all the details of what happened. That would really be throwing yourself and your team under the bus though so I doubt anyone will do that. Football season is over, where is the College basketball thread? Go Cats.

^^I never heard that, but arriving at the stadium barley 2 hours before game time couldn't have been their normal pre-game schedule. Everything about that game seemed very weird when it was going on, which further makes me wonder about these rumors. There was also some kind of altercation at the post game press conference involving T-Bob Heberet's dad (a former NFL player and local sports personality) confronting Les Miles but all of the reports about what happened are kind of unclear to me.

Has anyone else heard any of these rumors about some things that might have happened within LSU's team leading up to BCS championship game day? They're probably just all rumors but some things are interesting. Arriving at the Superdome less than 2 hours before kickoff seems really strange... http://neworleansrising.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/is-there-smoke-is-there-another-reason-why-lsu-lost/ If that article is true, Les Miles sounds like a modern day Bud Kilmer.

Outer Limits, Space Mountain, Revenge of the Mummy, and Rock N Roller Coasters are all particularly good in my opinion.

This And This Wild Eagle looks like a nice ride, but this thing is just incredible! I still think Dollywood should have incorporated some kind of tree fly through element or some type of themeing half way on par with this thing and X-Raptor, but Swarm looks incredible. I really think a ride like this with this level of themeing could work at Disney park (Avatar, hint hint), it will most likely never ever happen but I think it could work.

I would have gone to the Contemporary, other than that, best report in TPR history.

There's a good chance that will happen, I think USC is going to be really good next year. Some of the mid 2000's Pete Carrol USC teams were some of the best college football teams in recent history, and I think they're about to be back where they were. I don't know who from the SEC will be in contention again next year, but depending on who goes pro it will be probably LSU, Bama, Arkansas, and maybe Georgia. USC vs LSU , I wonder what the early lines on that are?

I think it was a little bit of both, I mean 5 of the top 10 defenses in the country were in the SEC this season (Bama, LSU, Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida) where as the highest rated defense in the Big 12 besides Texas at 14 was Missouri at 60. I think you put a team like Arkansas in the Big 12 and they are easily a top 15 offense, but it you were to put a team like Stanford or Oklahoma in the SEC and they wind up somewhere in the mid 20s or 30s. I could be wrong but we'll see what happens next year when Texas A&M and Missouri play an SEC schedule. I like the concept of a +1, but some years it might be unnecessary. This year an Oklahoma State vs Alabama game where the winner would have played LSU would have been great. I would like to see they play that preliminary "playoff" game the week after the conference championships and allow the winner to advance to the BCS championship and the loser to advance to their respective BCS game.

^Agree, I don't really understand the HRRR criticisms either, I've been on it at least 10 times on 3 different trips and sat in all kinds of different seats and have never had a rough ride. It's not my favorite coaster in the world but it's far from rough. As far as the topic question goes, Vekoma meh, I've heard great things about the Mauer launch coasters but a launched S&S El Loco would be pretty cool. I'd go with an El Loco if they existed.

If your are going to do SeaWorld and Busch Gardens I would recommend considering a trip to Discovery Cove. Discovery Cove is an amazing experience but can be a little expensive, however for an additional $50 on top of the Discovery Cove ticket you can upgrade to unlimited admission to Busch Gardens, Sea World, and Aquatica for 14 days. In other words depending on what day you go, for a little over $300 you can have two weeks admission to Busch Gardens, SeaWorld, Aquatica, and get an incredible all inclusive day at Discovery Cove, it's one of the best deals in Orlando in my opinion.

Did you ever actually watch Bama and LSU play on defense? They were statistically #1 and #2 in the country in total defense, while playing in the SEC. LSU beat Oregon, Arkansas, Georgia, West Virginia, and Alabama, while all 5 teams were ranked in the top 30 in total offense. In those 5 games against top 30 offenses LSU gave up an average of 16 points per game, and they weren't even as good as Alabama. Both teams were completely loaded with pros at every position on defense, they were nasty. Boise or OSU might have scored a few TDs, but it would have still been beatemdown. I was kind of pulling for an LSU or Bama vs. Boise game just to see Boise get destroyed.