Hilltopper39

Any chance this project ends up being somewhere besides a traditional park? The whole vibe of this "announcement" feels kind of a weird, Ride Entertainment stating that they're building a record breaking Gerstlauer coaster somewhere in a challenging location, I don't really recall anything like this in the past other than maybe some very loose announcements at IAAPA. Could this be for a separate development somewhere like a mall or an entertainment complex? Vegas? Orlando? Maybe one of those Polercoasters that got announced forever ago is finally going through. Remember when one of those got "announced" for some kind of recreation sports complex outside of Atlanta then absolutely nothing was ever mentioned about it since? I think there was one attached to some city development project for like San Diego or Baltimore or something as well as one time.

My kids went through the up charge Kangaroo insider tour on our most recent trip and it was really fun for them. Just a heads up but If you're interested in any of the insider tours book them as early as you can since the prices will go up. My oldest wanted to do the Sloth tour and about 3 months prior to our trip it was like $50, but then the week before it was all the way up to close to $90 (which is why we changed to the kangaroo tour for about $25 lol).

Is the E-Ticket Avengers ride still planned for this expansion in the future? If so that's going to be a really awesome lineup eventually with the Guardians Tower, the Spiderman ride, and the Avengers attraction. I don't really have any expectations for the Spiderman ride other than I hope it's a lot of fun, then again never Disney really doesn't miss so this should be fine.

I've been to plenty of opening days for coasters at parks like Kings Island and Holiday World several years ago, but back then it wasn't as big of a deal as it is now. It was pretty much here's the opening day of the park, the new coaster for the year opens that day, there might be a 2 or 3 hour line for that ride but the rest of the day was still pretty enjoyable. It's just a different world now with social media and how popular the parks have become. Opening days are kind of a fun experience though, lots of energy and excitement, I just hate how now there's so much uncertainty around the opening day for new attractions at major parks. Like if I showed up at 6am at IOA on June 10th, will I even get to ride? Will it be on a virtual que where's it's a crap shoot to get a slot? Mechanical break downs aside are they even going to run it the entire day? Something like Iron Gwazi or Ice Breaker I'd go to opening day for no problem, but attractions at Disney or Universal it's not worth it anymore to me.

Drake's is a pretty solid place that I'm pretty sure has a location not far from Kentucky Kingdom. Just a typical sports bar but really good "bar food" and big beer selection. It's a chain that started in Lexington so it's kind of local, but they've got quite a few locations across the area now. Depending on when you're there in the Summer Churchill Downs is right across the street from Kentucky Kingdom and has live Racing May-June. They do a Twilight Session on Thursdays and Downs after Dark on Saturday nights which is a lot fun. General admission is like $5 so it's a pretty fun way to spend an evening even if it's just to check the place out for a few hours.

Kings Island hasn't opened for 2021 yet. I mean I get your point but I'll be shocked if the adherence to the covid policy's in 2021 is anywhere close to as good as it was in 2020, in general at most parks at least.

Yeah, I've got one just over 54 and one over 48 that should be at 54 by next summer. When they're both tall enough for everything Fiesta Texas is on the short list of "parks not in Florida" that I really want to take them to. The short list is pretty much Carowinds, Kings Island, Hershey, Cedar Point, Silver Dollar City, and Fiesta Texas but Fiesta is way up there. Great report as always, I kind of forgot about the Road-Runner arrow mine train. I think the only time I visited Fiesta was in that thing's opening year way back and /i remember that one being really good for a Mine Train, glad it's still around.

I'm no valuation expert but $2.37 million seems like an absolute steal for this place. I wonder if the Covid pandemic was in a way *good* for the prospect of this park reopening. I mean it closed for a reason, probably because nobody was going to the place, I don't really remember hearing anything about for years. Now with stuff reopening it seems like everywhere is drawing a crowd, especially amusement parks so the timing worked out pretty well. Good news though, that log flume over the lake always looked like fun.

Great Pictures! Seems like a fun event if you're local, nice way to spend a day.

I think all of the free months of passes from Covid closures are expiring soon, either now or in April, so I'd be willing to bet Iron Gwazi and Ice Breaker don't open until after that period and the time after that they promote renewals. Just my guess but I've been getting an email like every day to re-new my passes. I posted about this in the TPR facebook page but just a heads up to anyone visiting soon, but we were there last Thursday and they had several rides closed throughout the day for high winds, which I don't really remember hearing about much of at this park in the past. A team member told me that every coaster closes for gusts of 40mph, and sure enough throughout the day pretty much everything was closed at various points. Even the wild mouse, Schwarzkopf and long flume which was kind of funny. A 40mph gust can be pretty regular in Florida so just be ready for closures if it feels windy outside.

It looks like the only noteworthy attractions scheduled to be closed this week are the sky ride and the rapids, according to the website atleast.

I try my best. But seriously how many times are people going to judge a ride before it's actually open based on some testing videos? This isn't anything new, just wait to ride the thing before calling it slow, or bad, or disappointing or whatever. Personally I think it's kind of cool to have the first half of the ride be a little slower through the scenic elements and the rockwork, then hit a mid course launch into a second half that's way more intense and exciting. It's such a brilliant design concept that it's almost like they planned it that way or something.......

Imagine having no desire to ride a perfectly decent coaster lol.

Eh, there's caves all over that region, might not be a hard as you think.........

Oaklawn aint hosting the Breeders Cup anytime soon but I know what you mean. Kentucky is kind of the same way where there's so much potential for growth but the horse racing industry won't relinquish control of any type of gaming to anyone else. Meanwhile sportsbooks right across the rice in Indiana are absolutely raking it in, oh well.

Interesting to see Orion so high after it seems like so many people compared it to just another B&M Hyper after it opened. Not that there's anything wrong with B&M Hypers (personally love them) but for Orion to beat out rides like Nemesis, Kumba, & Montu which have been highly regarded for a long time was a little surprising. Also should be interesting to see where Orion lands on the poll next year with more riders, this may be a case where lower ridership from covid but still enough to qualify it for the poll might have skewed it's ranking a little bit.

Biggest missed opportunity I've had was riding Antarctica, Empire of the Penguin at SeaWorld opening year. Missed an opportunity to have a couple of hours of my day to spend somewhere else in the park, hours I'll never get back.

This is interesting, we'll see what kind of attractions and pricing options are announced later this summer but an upcharge attached to the existing park is a strange choice. Seems like I remember seeing some rumored plans for this last year and wasn't very impressed. When my kids were younger they LOVED Peppa Pig but even then I'm not sure what kind of extra money I'd be willing to spend for a small section of rides and some character meets attached to Legoland. $10? $15 maybe?

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I haven't looked very closely at the percentages but since you mentioned it I went to 50%, so coasters that are essentially win half of the matchups against other coasters, and that's around rank 340. 343 is an Intamin inverted coaster (Tornado at in Parque de Attracctiones in Madrid), 350 is Road Runner Express one of the better Mine Trains I've ever been on, and Loch Ness Monster 349, all pretty decent coasters all things considered. So yeah there's just a lot of good rides, and they don't really get "questionable" until well into the 300s.

Especially in Kentucky, last I checked there are quite a few manufacturer's of fine distilled spirits in the area that I'm sure would love to partner up and have a tasting room at the park...... Seriously though I think this park has a pretty bright future. I'm from KY, don't live there any more, but in the time I've been gone tourism in the state has grown exponentially. Lots of new hotels and restaurants and stuff, even in the little town I'm from, and plenty of people traveling there for the Bourbon distilleries and other attractions. I'm not sure what effect Covid had on all of that but the dynamics of that region are much different now than when Six Flags was operating the park, and much different than Wild Adventures in Valdosta which this has been compared to quite a bit.

Yeah as much as I love to dig into the results of this poll I really kind off look at the results in tiers. The top like 30 or 40 or so are really elite level coasters. 50-125 or so are all really really good, then like 130-250 are all good coasters that I'd be more than happy to have at my home park. It's so hard to put together a definitive ranking of anything people evaluate subjectively. When Tennessee Tornado, a glass smooth arrow looping coaster in the woods with a great drop through tunnel on the side of a mountain is ranked 218 then ya know everything below that is pretty good. I mean the B&M Superman clone flyers would be the best coaster at hundreds of parks across the world but they're collectively ranked 261 whatever that means. With that said thanks to everyone who puts this together every year, it is fun to see the results every year. I particularly like to see where new rides wind up in the list and how the top 20 or so shuffles around. Wasn't Medusa Steel coaster #1 overall a few years ago and now it's dropped to 11? 2020 was obviously a weird year but I wouldn't be surprised to see Velocicoaster, Iron Gwazi and Pantheon really shake up that 20 next year.

That's understandable with Celebration City but I kind of see this being exactly like Wild Adventures, where the park stays open and does pretty well for a small regional park. Might not see major new attractions every other year but the park will be clean and well operated, and they'll probably add a lot of fun festivals and seasonal stuff.

I doubt much will change at the park aesthetically outside of some beautification projects here and there, it's not like they're going to overhaul entire sections to fit a theme that the park doesn't have to begin with. As long as Herschend keeps the park profitable and open then don't see any negative to this really.

Cheetah Hunt was 69 but I'm still working on the correlation to make a joke about it.