Hilltopper39

That's awesome that they added a separate entrance for the event down the backside of main street, last year the whole front gate was a complete mess at the 4pm entrance time so I'm sure that helps things a bit. It never ceases to amaze me the fact that Disney will let you take absolutely anything onto some of their rides, candy bags, backpacks, cameras, whatever. One year during MNSSHP I wore a cape and ate candy on Space Mountain, never see that anywhere haha.

I don't know, looks like it might be the new Proslide RocketBlast model that uses the water propulsion, either way it looks like a really cool slide.

But when was the last time you checked? Cause those things can change all the time......

I don't have specifics of who owns what but I do know that youth soccer/baseball is insane and those people are crazy so whoever owns what will likely make a pile of cash off of this endeavor.

^^Yeah, that's true, I kinda forgot about the hotel expansion but strictly speaking about new attractions it seems like 2017 might be light by comparison. Then again I guess Valraven was the only major coaster that was opened chain wide in 2016 so maybe it's not all that different. Is the sports complex being entirely funded/developed/operated by Cedar Fair or is that a joint venture of some type? I haven't heard much about that project since it was announced.

This may have mentioned but it seems to be a pretty light year investment wise in 2017 for all parks. What one major coaster from Cedar Fair which is a GCI (should be a great ride but not the same level of investment as a B&M), and no major coasters announced thus far from Six Flags? I know Six Flags hasn't made their official announcements yet but there are usually some clues out there for major projects (footers, earth work, leaked fake aquatrax layouts etc.) by this time of year, but the whole chain seems fairly quiet on 2017 projects. That doesn't mean they don't exists just that they might be a little lighter on the pocket book than in years past.

Whenever I see a zip line advertised in Florida I'm skeptical because ya know, it's flat, but this place looks pretty cool. Might have to check it out some day.

I was just thinking the same thing, I've never seen a picture of the park where it looks remotely busy. Maybe once the enw parks on Yas Island open the place will pick up but I'd be curious what their annual attendance was.

^^At this point it appears to be a random suggestion from a market watch reporter.

^^I have a feeling the the executives at SEAS are and have been thoroughly evaluating what they're doing, they have a strong plan in place and they will recover and be fine. As far as the parks getting sold, I don't think anyone outside of the C-suite in that company has any real insight into that, especially some random analyst. With that being said if they were to be sold Merlin kinda makes a little sense because it would give them the ability to sell multi-day multi park ticket packages in Orlando and Sand Diego, and give Merlin existing assets in a few other American Markets where they don't currently operate. Build a SeaLife and Dungeon attraction in Williamsburg, a Lego Discovery Center and Madame Tussaud's in San Antonio, it's not the craziest idea I've ever heard. Not sure if Merlin has that kind of cash or not, looks like they do have a pretty good chunk of current debt but what's another billion?

Kinda weird to see a report from a financial analyst stating something as specific as cutting a dividend to investing in new roller coasters, especially since that's pretty much what they did this past year, and already have one new coaster announced for next year.

Gotcha, thanks for the info. Our date are pretty much set on the weekend of Oct. 21st, just not sure what day we would be going yet. We do have little kids so we're trying to figure out some combination of day time and hour with and night without kids so we'll see. It looks like that weekend is the 10K/Half marathon at the park, any idea what kind of additional crowd that brings on a Sunday?

Quick question for the locals, in October during the Halloween event it looks like the park is open 11am to 7pm on Sundays, are the houses open on Sundays or is it just rides only without the Halloween event stuff running? Also, during the Halloween event is Fast Lane the same price or are there different levels of Fast Lane available for the rides and the mazes? We're planning a trip in October and it doesn't look like any of the Halloween info is available on the website yet.

Maybe I just got lucky when I went to La Ronde for half a day when I got to Montreal early for a conference. Went in with extremely low expectations and intentions to only really ride Goliath, the Batman Clone, Monster, and Dragon but I remember actually having a pretty decent day. Yeah, it's not the best park in the world and it had some run down abandoned looking areas (maybe they film zombie movies there, isn't there a lot of tv/movie production in Montreal?), but other areas seemed nice enough. The fort, the kids section, and the area around Dragon and Ednor were actually kinda pleasant. The crowds were pretty light in the morning I went and I was there the same weekend as the international fireworks competition (yes that's actually a thing) so maybe they picked the place up a bit. Overall I was expecting the worse but ended up having fun.

^I do have a feeling that some average park guests would be more reluctant to go on this again without the park doing something than they would a coaster like Texas Giant or Ride of Steel just because of the nature of the ride. Of course that is all dependent on the results of the investigation into what actually happened but I would expect the ride to re-open eventually, and I also anticipate the park would do something with it whether that's a different type of harness or modification to the netting or removing the camel-back part all together. Honestly without the camel back it's still the worlds tallest slide and would probably be just about as fun.

I guess that in addition to a condescending remark I could give an actual answer. Indiana Beach was pretty overrated to me on my only visit some 10 years ago or so, back when it was still fairly highly regarded by people. The charm I was expecting never really came off as all that charming to me and the place just felt kinda run down and dirty. I usually love dynamic settings in parks with ride and attractions interacting with midways and the place just felt busy and unorganized.

^But......if you have children under 10 it's pretty amazing.

I know it's not the same, but that doesn't mean other operators won't take precaution to thoroughly investigate their rides before reopening them to their customers, especially if it is recommended by the manufacturer to do so. If I owned a slide that had netting on the ride path I'd probably be taking a close look at everything involved with that attraction today, even if it was a different kind of slide with different specs. and the possibility of something like this happening seemed completely unlikely I would still want to take a look at it.

Okay, that make more sense than calling kids sandbags. Do they require 3 riders or can 2 adults who are in the required weight range ride?

^.........? What?

Have any other Master Blaster style rides been closed for further investigation out there in the world? I know Veruckt is a completely different animal with it's size and speed and airtime, and the the rafts are entirely different than the standard rafts with the restraints, but there are a ton of master blaster rides out there in the world and mostly all of them have a similar net structure around the exposed portions of the slide. Heck I rode one two weeks ago with my daughter in the front of the raft, and while the jets on that one are not nearly forceful enough to lift my fat butt out of the slide path it kinda makes me wonder if two smaller kids were to ride one could the combination of conditions and forces and whatever other human factor are in play could something like this happen on a slide with a 15 foot drop instead of a 50 foot drop?

I've only been to Knoebles once and only rode the Huanted Mansion once but I remember that ride being one of the absolute coolest rides I'd ever been on, just so much fun. Really is shame more of those don't exist anymore.

Gargoyles is an interesting choice, VR on an SLC at Discovery Kingdom is not an interesting choice.

No arguments there with Antartica. (also how hard/expensive would it be to reprogram/rework Antartica to make the ride more interesting, has to be feasible?) Wait, I thought Legoland's waterpark was closed October through December or so? Unless your talking about Legoland California. And in Tampa I still think they could create a really unique property in/around the Savannah section of the park that could be successful. Well maybe not unique, more like similar to that African savanna themed resort an hour to the east, but still it could be successful. Hotel choices in that part of town are not the best.....