Hilltopper39

I wouldn't recommend sleeping on Kraken but if you're at SeaWorld during the week in early February you might be able to. Just grab an inside seat in a middle row, fall asleep and the ops probably won't even notice you.

I never got to experience Boardwalk and Baseball but it always seemed like a pretty unique place. I don't think I've ever really read the full story of the place but I'd love to have a time machine to go back and see it. Also that King Cobra video brings back some memories. I know it sucked later in it's life but I've got a lot of nostalgia for that ride and kind of wish it was still around.

Maybe I'm the wierdo but I rode Tigris 3 or 4 times this past year and never noticed the comfort collars. They seemed unnecessary but didn't effect the ride experience for me one bit.

Wait, what's wrong with the back and forth launch all of the sudden? I mean I still think this ride looks like a lot of fun for what it is, which is smaller coaster with a lower height requirement in a park with three huge B&Ms that are 54 In minimums. It'll be fine, probably won't crack the top 100 on the TPR poll or anything, but it'll be fine.

I haven't been to Kennedy Space center in years, probably more like decades, but my kids went this summer with some friends and had a blast which kind of surprised me. Might have to make a trip down there when all of this is finished. Also is it just me or do these concept art images look kind of bad? I mean they're fine, accomplishes what they need to, it just looks super cartoony or something.

We don't have anything planned as of right now but I'll for sure be hitting BGT for Iron Gwazi and SeaWorld for Ice Breaker, and would like to take the kids to Universal sometime since they've never been. Would like to hit SFOG sometime since it's close enough for a long weekend trip, maybe over Spring Break, but still waiting on their operating calendar to be released.

I saw this in the news a few weeks back. It looks like for now all of the cruises are 2 night trips which is a bit limited but I like the idea of a Friday to Sunday option for a nice short little weekend trip. Will be interesting to see some reports of the ship and the whole experience after they start operating in April. I know some people are crazy about Buffet and the Margaritaville brand so I'm sure this thing will be successful.

Yeah I'm mostly being a smart ass but I do think there's some reality in my statement. Especially considering how many other options there are in the Orlando market, I mean Volcano Bay and Aquatica kind of blow away Disney's water parks these days but why invest anything when your parks still do pretty well. I think another reason is that Disney does like to stick to the themeing, and integrating something into Blizzard Beach and having it work would probably be a bit more costly than at Typhoon Lagoon. As much as I'd love to see them add a modern water coaster or something they can't just plop it down on the backside of the mountain and make it work like they did with Crush n Gusher or Miss Adventure Falls. I'm sure they could come up with a way to make it work and be awesome but again why spend they money when the parks do just fine as is?

Because it still draws like a million + visitors a year anyways through all the multi day tickets Disney sells so why bother?

I just saw on Twitter that the drop tower is $12 and the slingshot is $30. Not as bad as I was expecting for the drop tower honestly. $20 for the drop tower and the StarFlyer is a pretty decent deal, I will be stopping there with the kids next time we're in town for sure. Free Fall: $12 Sling Shot: $30 Combo: $40 Free Fall, Slingshot, & Starflyer: $50 Free Fall & Star Flyer: $20

Any word on what the pricing for the new Drop Tower is going to be? I'm guessing it will be fairly high, but hopefully they offer some kind of combo ticket or half price re-ride or something. This will probably be a do it once and never again kind of attraction for me but a 400 ft. drop tower is a 400 ft. drop tower so I'm sure it will be fun.

We just got back from spending 2 days at Dollywood and a couple more days in the area for Christmas and honestly it was one of the best park trips we've had in a long time, we really had a great time. Here are few notes from our trip. First off Lightning Rod. I know there's been a ton of talk about that thing here over the past couple of years but for the 2 days we were there it was running consistently with 2 trains both days. On the 22nd it closed at 7:30 along with everything else in the park because it was just under the 34 degree mark (VERY cold night). On the 23rd the park opened at 11 and an operator came out and said there was still frost on the track so it would be opening a bit late. We grabbed some cinnamon bread and headed up toward Firechaser/Wild Eagle and by the time we got halfway up the mountain it was cycling trains and probably opened around 11:45 or so. So anyways 2 days of consistent operations and man that thing is still an absolute beast of a ride. I got a few rides in 3 years ago before the refurb and honestly I don't know if it's slower now or whatever, but it's still a top 5 ride for me. I got 2 rides the 22nd and ended up getting 5 on the 23 in about 1.5 hours, two in standby with my kids and three through the single rider line. Such an awesome ride, so hopefully these operations carry over into next season. Shoutout to Dollywood for running Wild Eagle with a 50 In height requirement instead of 54 like every other B&M in the country. My youngest was able to ride this year and loved it. Thunderhead as running pretty well for it being in the 40s in December. It's wasn't the smoothest GCI I've ever been on but was good enough to knock out 4 rides in a row with no wait. Mystery Mine seemed more temperamental than Lightning Rod while we were there but that's still a really fun ride, and I love the view you get of it from the path to Wildwood Grove (which was new to me). Speaking of Wildwood Grove, I get the complaint about ripping out the trees up there as it does look a little out of place, but it looked great at night with the Christmas lights and the kids had a blast. Can't wait to see what the new coaster for 2023 will be. Is Dropline the best drop tower in the world? No it's not, I know it's not, but man the views on that thing are amazing and there was NEVER a line for it over 2 days which was weird. Thunderhead and Mystery Mine would both have 45 minutes to an hour long que at times and Dropline was still a complete walk on? When all the coasters closed at 7:30 the 22nd, you guessed it, Drop Line still an absolute walk on. So again it's not the best drop tower in the world but that view makes it one of my favorites. All of the Christmas decorations looked great and the fireworks show at the end of the night was a nice close to the day. We also watched the "Twas the Night Before Christmas Show" which was really cute and well done for a 45 minutes theme park stage musical. Wait times and crowd flow at this park are kind of weird. Lightning Rod would have a 2 hour line in the mornings then be down under 30 minutes at mid day. Thunderhead was all over the place all day, from 45 minutes to a complete walk on. Mystery Mine and Firechaser stayed pretty consistent around 45 minutes- 1 hour both days. One thing I really appreciate about Dollywood is that Tennessee Tornado and Wild Eagle were pretty much walk ons all the time. Maybe we got lucky but it's nice to always have a decent coaster available with a short wait. The park was closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas day but we headed over to Dreammore for breakfast at Song and Hearth and had a great meal. That resort is really nice and I'd love to stay there next trip. The breakfast was just a buffet, but a pretty decent one, and for $18.00 I'd go back in a heartbeat. We also grabbed a couple loaves of cinnamon bread at Dreammore with NO WAIT to take back to our cabin, which made for a nice treat on Christmas day. So again overall we had a great trip, the park is as beautiful as it ever was and I found the operations to be pretty good for the 2 days were were there. My only complaint is I wish they could find a way to have the cinnamon bread line move faster. If this park was like 3 hours closer I'd probably go twice a year, but we'll be back in 2023 for the new coaster.

Yeah I'd be willing to be that's not electrical, the middle car in that picture of the train looks to be completely out of alignment. It might be an optical illusion with the angle of the train and where the picture was taken from but pretty sure there was something that when wrong, maybe with one of the bogeys. If you turn up that video it sounds like there is some loud clanging when the train doesn't make it over the hill, then the whole way back down into the valley sounds pretty rough. Hopefully nobody was hurt.

Quick Dollywood question before our trip this week, but what's the bag policy for rides? I can't really find anything on the website but can you leave loose articles (bag, jackets, water bottles etc.) in the station or do you have to put everything in a locker before entering the que. Are there any ride that require locker and others that don't? I think this will be our first family park trip without a stroller for the kids (FINALLY, I hate dragging that thing around), so I've kind of forgotten what it's like to go to a park without one lol.

We've got tickets for a few weeks from now and I kinda freaked out a bit when I read the post about the reservations, but daily tickets have a reservation already included. I'm a bit out of the loop but haven't reservations been required for a while now? Maybe they haven't been checking or enforcing them or something but seems like every time I've gone to the website over the past several months there's been a disclaimer about reservations being required.

Nice report man. World's of Fun has always been an interesting park to me, it's kind of like Dorney a little bit. Not really worth a trip on it's own because the coaster lineup isn't great, but it's good enough that it's worth stopping into if you're in the area. Ironically I've been to KC and Allentown a couple different times for various reason's and have never visited either park. One of these days I'll get there, maybe.

That is good news, we've looked at going in the past for Spring Break but the park wasn't open til the following week. Nice to have that option in play now.

I've always loved the parody of the TPR poll and seeing which rides move to and from which spots every year, but honestly I expect Velocicoaster to be on top of the poll for a while based on how good it seems to be and the sheer number of riders that thing is going to get every year.

I mean I have no idea if that's true, nor do I really care, but I have a feeling there are more than 2 people at RMC that have made them as successful as they have been over the last decade. They'll be fine.

That is true, but you didn't have to pay extra for FP+.

Noted for next time, if we'd of done that we might have been able to squeezed in one more LL on a crowded day. The Alien Swirling Saucers ride had a 45-60 minute standby most of the day, it was that kind of crowd levels.

Yeah they have those Genie+ tips saved on their Instagram stories and I read through them before we went, but the park was so crowded the day we went that using it like that would have been impossible. At 9 am were were boking for return times around noon, and at noon for return times after 6pm. On a slower day it sounds like the system is great, but with crowds 2-3 LLs is probably all you're gong to be able to get at that park.

Okay that makes sense, book one at 9am then you can book a second after 2 hours regardless if your first one has been used or not. If we would have done that we could have gotten Slinky Dog sometime around 5-7 then whatever was available at 11 am, which would have probably been everything but Slinky and Falcon just with a return time again in the 5-7pm or later range. I guess we did okay getting 3 LLs for the day, and like I said maybe my expectations were just too high. There were individual LLs available for Runway Railway available most of the day but we got on it early with a short wait and didn't need it, but they were available.

We tried to book Rise earlier in the morning but I don't think it let us until the park opened at 9am, and by then they were all gone. Even at 9am Slinky and Falcon were already at a return of like 6 or 7 pm so if we booked those then they would have been the only reservations we had for the day. There may have been some user error on my part but I was constantly in the app trying to book a new LL but it would only let me make a new reservation after the existing ones we had were redeemed.

We went to Hollywood Studios this past Saturday and used Genie+/ Lightning Lane for the first time and gotta be honest I don't have a lot of good things to say about it as our experience was pretty disappointing. First off we purchased the Genie Plus option in advance, then when the park opened at 9 am there were already no Individual Lightning Lane reservations available for Rise of The Resistance for the whole day, all gone before the park even opened to resort guests only I'm guessing. That was pretty frustrating, the main reason we opted to use Genie+ was to be able to pay for a reservation for Rise only to find that they were more or less completely unavailable to non-resort guests, yeah thanks. We booked a lightning lane for for Rock N Roller Coaster for like 9:30 then hit Runaway Railway at rope drop and waited about 30 minutes for. My first ride on that thing, what a great attraction, super cute and just really fun. We redeemed the RnR lightning lane around 9:45, and immediately booked another lighting lane. At this point, around 10am an hour after the park opened, the return times for anything good was already into the 4pm-7pm range. Slinky Dog wasn't even available and Smugglers Run was around 7pm. We booked Toy Story Mania around 12, then after Mania at noon got a reservation for Tower around 6:30. After the 6:30 return time everything was obviously gone but I'm guessing most all options other than the Muppets and a few shows we completely unavailable by around 1 or 2pm or so. The park was pretty crowded, like very crowded, we ended up getting on Rise of the Resistance by waiting in a 2.5 hour standby line. I normally would never wait that long for anything but at that point in the day everything else in the park was posted around 80-100 minutes or something and Rise was posted at like 130 so I figured we can either wait 100 minutes for Slinky Dog or 2 hours for Rise. We also got on Smugglers Run but again with a 90 minute standby line (only posted at like 65). Additionally the standby lines for everything were so slow, like painfully slow, the merge cast member at Smugglers Run must have been going on a 90-10 ratio for lightning lane to standby. We all got spoiled during the pandemic and the days of the nice steadily moving lines are gone. I hope I don't sound like I'm complaining since we did end up having a pretty decent day, there was just with a lot of waiting. I think we ended up getting on like 8 attractions (which included Muppets and Beauty and the Beast with no wait) in like 10 hours, and that was with 3 lightning lanes. Maybe I should be thankful that we were able to get 3 LL reservations and my expectations were just too high but I came in thinking we would be able to get like 4-6 LLs with a lot of flexibility for when and what we were able to use but that just wasn't the case. We could have reserved Slinky Dog or Smugglers Run early in the day but with the return times that were available that would have been the only attractions we could have booked for the whole day. Seems like a lot of people were pretty frustrated as I overheard a lot of conversations in line and between guests and cast members voicing frustrations with the systems. Maybe it was just very crowded, I think there was early entry which maybe contributed to resort guests getting all the reservations before the park as even open, maybe Studios is just a bad park for the system, or maybe I'm an idiot and didn't use the system correctly. I'm not sure but first my first impression of the new system wasn't great.