Hilltopper39

This is kind of a cool project, should be interesting to follow considering that rumored Fast n Furious coaster coming to Universal Hollywood is also probably from Intamin. Might see some similar technology used, or it could be completely different and unrelated but more coaster dark rides is never a bad thing.

Great report man. We made a trip to Dollywood for Christmas last year and were just talking recently about how much fun it was and how badly we want to go back. It really is a special place and even more so around the Holidays. I've always wanted to check out the water park up there but if given the choice between visiting in the summer or over the Holidays it's hard to not pick the holidays.

Yeah, it was just a joke, that thing was a hunk of junk lol.

Imagine is they never tore down Roller Soaker, then the line up would really be stacked.....

Yeah the layout of this looks great, and looks kind of like a mix of a bigger version of Untamed and shorter version of Iron Grazi maybe? I know a lot of people maybe slightly criticize RMC's for having very similar layouts/pacing/feel but those are 2 rides that seem to be universally well liked so should be a great coaster. I haven't been to Hershey in like 10 years, but lots of new stuff up there for me so might be time for a trip!

Seems like an awfully big chunk of land to just retheme everything but that's a project that could move quickly and modernize and fairly dated section of the park so could work. I'd love to see the Woody Woodpecker coaster replaced with something a little different. Doesn't have to be anything crazy but the fact that there's a nearly identical coater right next door at IOA has always been odd to me. Maybe go with a pair of dueling Vekoma family Boomerang coasters or something. Increase capacity, new ride style/system, throw a DreamWorks theme on it. why not.

Nice report Adam, I went last Thursday and the event was absolutely dead. We had a good night, plenty of rides and minimal waits for all of the haunts, but it did feel like it lacked a little bit of energy this year maybe because of how thin the crowd was (and how sober I was). Then again this year with the waterfront area and Manta open there is quite a bit more space, the parking lot was pretty full so maybe there were more people than there than it seemed like there was. Speaking of Manta they were using a temporary entrance near the photo shop, and the exit snaked through a back stage area back over to the path by the Pizza restaurant, which I suspected they would do when I saw some temporary walls there back in September. Houses were good but a bit hit or miss with how many actors we encountered, that could have been because it was a slow Thursday night. Beneath the Ice and the Pirate house were the standouts this year for me. We had a great time and I'd go back in a heartbeat, especially with Pipeline opening next year.

Nice report Bert, this event looks awesome. I love HHN and HOS as much as anyone but these "corporate" events do have kind of a cleaner consistent feel to them to the point that I kind of miss these grittier homemade style haunts. I would go to something like this in a heartbeat if it was around here. Thanks for sharing, looked like a great time.

I think the website has already stated it's 54 inches. I feel like the point about height requirements at SeaWorld is one that everyone is making, myself included, but maybe they don't care about having things for people under 54 inches? For now atleast? I mean my youngest hit 54 inches when she was almost 7 years old, maybe they realize that in the Orlando market that if you've got little kids and want rides for little kids you're gonna go to Disney, no matter what SW builds, so why go after that market? And with as many "adult" events as they offer (7 Seas Food Fest, Brews n BBQ, HowlOScreams) maybe they'd rather focus on thrill rides for those guests.

Yeah I didn't realize it was that different in the Winter but like Bill said if this works at KD it wouldn't surprise me see KI open for Weekends starting in like early/mid-March instead of Late April/early May.

Did they not make an announcement for year round operations for King Island? I feel like that's the park in the market where it makes the most sense compared to Carowinds and KD, similar climate to KD but a much more well run and attended park. Maybe they just haven't made their announcement yet.

My biggest issue with the older models was that the larger ones (Chang, Mantis, Riddler to some extent) were just really uncomfortable from the forces in the standing position, but the smaller ones (Scorcher, Iron Wolf and Vortex before they got older and rough) were mostly fine, Schorcher probably being my favorite. This one seems to be somewhere in the middle, similar speed but a lower height, being a B&M I'm sure it will be smooth and relatively forceless, which on a Standup is probably okay. I feel like everyone is overthinking the "bouncy" aspect a little too much, whatever kind of pneumatic/hydraulic actuator is in there probably only moves about 3 inches so it's just going to be a subtle little feeling in certain spots in the layout. I do like the 2 across trains, most B&M's with OTSRs kind of suck in the middle seats but these trains being wide open should have some great visuals in every seat.

My "trick" to actually enjoy the old B&M Standups was always to "sit" on the seat and not have you knees locked out, so I'd imagine this will work roughly the same way.

When I first heard this was going to be a "standup" I was kind of skeptical, but a launched standup with bouncy seats....might just be kind of fun? Two other random thoughts about this addition, 1 it will be nice to have this open during Howl O Scream, so Mako, Manta, Ice Breaker and bouncy standup coaster is a pretty decent lineup of coasters for a Halloween event. 2, the location of this in the renderings with the pathways and the interaction on the waters edge all look great. I used to love that area of the park past the stadium and around towards the water front but it was only open during special events and stuff seasonally. It will be nice to have that area open all the time after this coaster is built.

There have been several years in the past when we've looked at a trip to Carowinds over Spring Break but our spring break was always a few weeks before they opened for the season. Will be nice to have that option available now.

Has anyone here ever sailed on MSC before? This weekend we were talking to some friends who told us about a sailing they had booked for Spring Break and we looked into it. Turns out that for a 4 or 5 day cruise in a Balcony room for the whole family was ridiculously cheap, maybe like $1100 for all of us? So we booked it, but now I'm trying to figure out why it's so cheap lol. I mean the ship looks pretty nice, so how bad can it be?

So we just got back from a 2 day cruise on Royal Caribbean Independence of the seas and had a pretty awesome time. It was originally a 3 day cruise, scheduled to leave Friday and come back on Monday morning, but Hurricane Ian delayed departure by a day so we sailed out Saturday Morning and back on Monday. They credited us back 2/3 days of the cruise fare, and I think maybe 1.5 days worth of our drink package? I don't remember all of the details but the whole trip ended up being very cheap when it was all said and done, so it was worth it. We originally had just booked an interior room since it was kind of a last minute trip, but after the delay we figured there would be a lot of cancelations so we asked about a room upgrade. I believe we were told that there were only maybe 2200 people on the boat vs the 4000+ person capacity, so they upgraded us to a balcony for $50.00. Got a nice look at the Carnival ship with the Bolt coaster on the side during sail away which was cool. Not sure if I'll ever make it on that ship but it's cool that Carnival offers that now. The sailaway was really fun because there were like 5 ships all leaving at once, probably because of the delayed departure. The weather was absolutely beautiful the whole trip, sunny, no rain, incredibly calm seas, and the boat being half empty was really nice. It still felt like there was a good crowd, especially in the bars and casinos, but dinner and the pool deck were empty which was nice. We didn't do any of the specialty dining options other than some wings in the sports bar since it was such a short cruise, but all of the food in the buffet and main dining room was good. Nothing was bad but nothing was "great" either if that makes any sense? For a 2 day cruise it was fine, but on a longer sailing I probably would have tried the steak house or something. Here's a picture from our 8pm dinner seating where the dining room was basically empty lol. There was a family next to use but yeah, the place was dead. We didn't get to go Cocoa Cay which was a bummer, I was really looking forward to seeing that place, but I'm sure there will be another cruise in the future for that. We sailed to Nassau and back, but never got off the boat in Nassau because we stayed on the boat to watch the Jags vs Eagles game. This trip was originally supposed to have been a trip to Philly for that game, but we cancelled that trip for various reasons and booked the cruise instead. Glad we did because the weather in Philly was awful and the Jags blew the game (typical), so I'd rather watch that from a boat in Nassau than from the stadium in Philly. We did the drink package, so a pre-dinner martini on the balcony was pretty awesome. The drink package as a whole was really nice, and we drank way too much. I think the fist day we had like 28 charges on our account, so yeah the all inclusive package was worth it lol. The ship was great, I've been on 1 Disney cruise, 1 Carnival, and this was my second on RCCL, but this felt like the nicest most modern ship I'd ever been on. I loved how the whole interior was open end to end with bars and shops and restaurants everywhere. It really didn't feel like a cruise ship on the interior. The ship was also really easy to navigate considering how big it was. I remember our Disney ship being much more confusing. The activity schedule was a little limited since the cruise was cut short by a day. Grease was the musical on our sailing but we didn't have a chance to see it (I love musicals but Grease isn't my favorite so it's fine). We did check out the juggling comedians show, an adult game show thing, and played Bingo. Other wise we pretty much just gambled and ate and drank, drank a lot, for 2 days. I did take advantage of short lines for the Flowrider Saturday morning when we were in port, that's always fun even if I fall on my head. So all in all a very short trip, but still a lot of fun. I've only ever been on 3 day cruises because it seems to fit our scheduled better but I really want to try a longer sailing in the future sometime.

Yes! It’s not the best case scenario but if they’re gonna give us a bunch of credits to come on board for 2 days we’ll just hang out and drink and eat and watch football, which is what we would normally do anyways, so why not? Maybe we’ll get a room upgrade.

Yeah, still no official updates on my sailing but sounds like they'll make an announcement about it tonight by 8pm. I'm optimistic because it says Mariner is now scheduled to leave Friday (We're sailing Independence, also scheduled to leave Friday), but Disney has already cancelled their 3 day cruise this weekend out of Canaveral that was scheduled to leave Friday. So who knows at this point.

This seems like a really cool addition that I'm sure will be really popular. Do we know the manufacturer of this? Is it Intamin? If so I do have to wonder about their track record with this kind of ride system. Their last 2 flumes in America aren't open any more, I guess there's still a couple operating overseas that seem to be doing fine, but hopefully they've got the issues figured out and this thing is a success, which I'm sure it will be.

Thanks, that's a good tip to follow him. Yes we're sailing on Independence of the Seas, I never thought about it just staying in port in the Bahamas on Friday if necessary but that makes sense. We're local and have travel insurance so I'm not really that worried about what happens either way, was just looking forward to a little weekend getaway lol.

Anyone here happen to have any previous experiences with a cruise being effected by a hurricane? We're supposed to leave on a 3 day Royal Caribbean out of Port Canaveral this Friday which is pretty much when this storm is supposed to be making it's way through the state. It's still too early to tell how much of the weather will hit Canaveral and when but do cruises ever have a delayed departure? Would this Friday-Monday sailing ever turn into a Saturday-Tuesday sailing or something? I doubt the sailing would get outright cancelled but does that ever happen? It seems like all the "official information" on the website is pretty vague and I'm sure there won't be an official announcement on anything until the last possible minute so just curious if anyone has had an experience like this in the past.

This is such a cool concept to me, I love how they're reusing the existing space, and the switch tracks that will allow two laps around the circuit is pretty neat. I hope this concept is successful because I feel like something similar to this could work really well at some other SeaWorld parks. I know SD has something similar in the works for their existing Wild Arctic building but if I recall that looked to be more of just a building for the station, but It would be really cool if SW Orlando could re-purpose the Antarctica building for a similar attraction, or just build this in a box with some themeing backstage somewhere at BGT.

Looks like a great addition. I love the concept of a swing launch on an invert, that inverted stall in the backwards launch looks amazing.

I did make it down to the park yesterday for a few hours with my little one and it looks like that new house is inside/around the SeaPort Pizza building. They had the walkway next to Manta's pretzel loop blocked off but the facade for that house was up on the south side of the building, and the outdoor seating are on the opposite side had a tent looking structure over it, pretty much where the netting is in the google street view image below. Not the biggest area for a house but I think there' some other pavilions/backstage area back behind that you can't see. One other thing that I noticed was there was looked like a newish/temporary fence underneath the brake run area for Manta around what I believe is normally a service road, which makes me wonder if for the event if they intend to reroute the entrance for Manta maybe through that backstage area so that you don't have to walk all the way around to the front. Logistically it makes sense, and on the event map that pathway is kind of blacked out/not included, so we'll see. Either way I'm glad it's open for the event wherever the entrance may be.