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The Raptor model has one across trains and ridiculously low capacity. I wouldn't put it past the park to not really care all that much about capacity (ahem Joker ahem) but if there's another model that does exactly the same thing and is higher capacity and more marketable I imagine they go for it. The Joker is low capacity but the Raptor model is stupid low. 410 at max efficiency which we know would never happen so more like 250-300 range.

Oh God it's everywhere

It will be a 500 ft. Matt Ouimett ripping apart classic flat rides at the park and giving us Planet Snoopy expansions until the end of time. ...I take it you haven't read the last headline link in this thread.

Like the massive expansion going on at SFA right now?

I don't know if the difference would be quite as exaggerated, but El Toro with an empty train in the cold is above average at best, but at night on a 90 degree day with full trains is OMFG INSANE. Ride it when it's not set up to suck and I'm sure you'll have a different opinion.

To be honest I don't mind the burnt orange at all. Cedar Point is known for the bright, vivid colors lining the skyline so I'm not sure a dark grey/black would really "fit in" (though I think Kreke/Oblivion look awesome themselves). They probably wanted to keep it bright without doing another blue or red, and I think this color looks good. At the end of the day, who the hell is going to care what color the ride is when they're inching down the edge on the holding brake?

^You literally just proved my point. We trust people enough to just say "Caution: Restricted area--Keep out" rather than "Don't jump the fence or you'll die." Why should we change anything? People should be smart enough to follow park rules like that. Unless you're also suggesting people are too stupid for that, in which case I'm very confused, lol.

Let's be honest... anyone stupid enough to jump a fence under an operating inverted coaster isn't smart enough to read the signs posted on the fence, and changing the wording of the signs wouldn't change his decision to jump. And no, I'm not saying that as "I'm smarter or better than him."

Why are people so condescending recently? Holy crap guys the offseason is coming to a close... chill out. It's nothing to do with "feeling smarter or better than people." Nobody ever said that. It's everything to do with even hinting that the park should take some responsibility for the incident. Cedar Point was at no fault and suggesting they could've/should've prevented it is ridiculous.

Kings Dominion now has a live stream cam on their site so you can be even less productive at work than you already were! https://www.kingsdominion.com/online-fun/live-webcams

*Fireball And it's not exactly a "park the ride" type situation. Fireball is a good amount taller than similar portable rides. Then, once the crane has erected the majority of the ride, there is the utilities hook ups and small things before the ride can actually cycle. Now I know it is this way for non-flat rides, so usually it is more focused on the amount of cycles instead of the amount of hours. Some rides have to cycle each vehicle thousands of times, but I'm not sure if that applies to flats like Fireball. He's being sarcastic. I know you're not all over the other threads because you're really busy so it's understandable, but he posts almost the exact same thing in a different order pretty much weekly.

http://rcdb.com/35.htm That was built in the 90's? I thought for sure the natural volcanic rockwork predated some continents, and the coaster came soon after. Well... I stand corrected

Unless SF St Louis is drastically different than every other SF park (which it isn't), I don't see why anyone would expect them to open this ride on opening day. They haven't attempted to do that across the board in years, so why would you expect that to change? If you didn't know, Six Flags shoots for Memorial Day openings.

^^Raptor is the best thing that came of the 90's, period.

^Thanks so much! The website says the park usually closes around 10, so we'll have to see how long we want to stay with a three hour drive ahead of us that night to Colombus. That's going to be quite a long day, with a 4.5 hour drive to Kennywood that morning. I'll look into the options this week. Thanks for all the help guys, any other random tips are appreciated.

If it is a B&M dive coaster I would be surprised if it breaks Valravn's records. I would imagine Cedar Point at least made an effort to require B&M to not build a larger one within X number of years, but it's anybody's guess really if that actually happens or if B&M agreed/would agree to it. It's an interesting question nonetheless.

^I agree, we don't need our version of Magic Mountain's Apocalypse at Great Adventure. They've done a pretty good job maintaining El Toro as it's aged, but I don't know much of that is the pre-fab design that prevents it from getting rough with inconsistent work done on it.

So we're officially making Kennywood the add-on park of the trip. I just printed two tickets from their leap day sale for $29 each, so we'll save a few minutes from trying to find the store near the park for discounted tickets. If anyone is planning on visiting Kennywood this year check out their website for the sale that ends tomorrow--not a bad deal! As for motels, we've decided on the Motel 6 in Sandusky for three nights (averaging $86/night). Everywhere jumps way up in price for the Friday night compared to the other two nights beforehand by Cedar Point. They're also the only place I've called that is very clear on their policy of minimum age 18 to check in, so that's a huge relief to find that. If anyone has some input on a decent cheap motel off I-70 or I-270 between Kennywood and Kings Island, let me know! How long should I expect to need at Kennywood so that we can cut out a chunk of the drive to KI before the next morning if we're arriving at Kennywood sometime between 12-2pm on Monday, 7/11? It looks like there are some options in Colombus, but does that leave us enough time to do all of Kennywood without leaving too late? Cambridge, Ohio has a few options, but that would be another hour or so the next morning. I want to make it to the 9:30 early entry at KI the following day, so I don't want too long a drive in the morning, but I don't know how much time is appropriate for Kennywood. Is it worth it to stick around late for night rides on Phantom's Revenge, or does it get dark too late for that to be worth the time lost sleeping/driving late at night or early the next morning?

Kings Dominion actually has very manageable crowds almost all the time. If you want to do a lot of riding it both parks I'd suggest Kings Dominion on Saturday so that BGW might just be a little lighter on crowds because it is a busier park. You might also catch I-305 running two trains on a Saturday but it's not really an issue anyways since it seems to top our around a 25 minute wait. I'm sure you've done a little research and know to do Dominator early entry at 10, then go to Volcano and you're golden. Other than that as far as parks go you shouldn't get any skip the line pass until you see crowds since its April, but I've never needed more than about 5 hours to ride all the adult coasters at Kings Dominion (you should stay longer though because it's a nice park). Have fun!

Really? I was a gadv pass holder from 2008-2011, but I haven't been to the park since. I'm making my return this summer, and I'm really curious to see just how much has changed. Golden Kingdom and Plaza del Carnival were both excellent when they first opened. That was under Premier ownership, which is long gone. Once Shapiro took over he scrapped all those plans for ride removals and budget conscious decisions. He actually tried to cancel El Toro, but (THANK GOD) it was just a tad too far into construction to cancel. Supposedly Premier had plans to continue expansion into 2007 and beyond but obviously that didn't happen. The park isn't a whole lot different today than it was in 2011 but I don't think anyone would say it's considerably worse (I'd say the opposite actually).

^That would make sense, but then how can you explain that once Cedar Fair got some seriously faulty rides from Intamin in 2010 they just happened to be the last rides they purchased from Intamin? And with Arrow before Iron Dragon and Magnum, Dick Kinzel didn't even think of doing anything like Magnum until 1988 (correct me if I'm wrong as I don't remember the exact ride that inspired Magnum, but its in Japan), so would he have just said "some ride that nobody knows about yet"? As I said I don't believe they design and engineer the ride when the contract is signed but I'm sure they would have an idea of what they're getting themselves into and a price point. That wouldnt have been possible if there was an Arrow contract. Going back to a point I had made a few days ago, in a separate interview with Rob Decker from a site that I can't mention here, Rob said that for Fury they went out to different manufacturers for the contract, and B&M came out on top. If they had a multi ride contract with B&M there would be no "shopping around" to do.

Yes, Six Flags did in fact sign a contract with RMC for their products starting with the Texas Giant. The Roar I-box refurb is the last ride on the contract, and is the last ride SF can purchase from them at a discounted price. The purpose of this was that the first coasters were a gamble for SF, so RMC gave them a discount for giving them a chance. I don't see any reason why B&M would ever want to do something like this, considering they have no shortage in demand and have a proven track record. Source is a Q&A from RMC's Facebook page months back.

Supposedly Kingda Ka and El Toro were just phases one & two of a multi-year plan to overhaul every themed section of Great Adventure. If that park had even one more outline for something as groundbreaking as either of those rides then that takes my vote.

^Okay, here's my counter-argument then. You say that Cedar Point (and large budget amusement parks in general) are 3-5 years ahead in planning stages at all times. I agree; that's a generally accepted fact. If you've seen the Devin Olson Gatekeeper documentary (which you should watch, it's a great piece), you'll remember Rob Decker saying Gatekeeper went from nothing to essentially an agreement within the span of IAAPA 2011. It's arguable whether or not this is the whole truth, but for discussions' sake we'll assume it is (it's cutting it close but still possible). If they had a multi-ride deal with B&M for Gatekeeper and Valravn (as you're arguing) then that means the outline and agreement/contract was signed during IAAPA 2011 as well. If that's the case, Rob's story was false. He says he asked Walter (of B&M) what they have that's new, and they gave him the wing coaster. The Dive machine has been on the table since 1998. If they're designing each coaster chronologically, why would they design Gatekeeper and Valravn at the same time, within the span of a few days? I don't buy that. As for all your previous examples using Cedar Point (namely with Arrow and Intamin) it becomes even more apparent that this is impossible. The best reason that comes to mind is that Dick Kinzel was inspired by a 1988 Arrow 150+ foot tall non-inverting steel coaster for Magnum's design. That deal would have had to have been signed in 1986 or earlier for Iron Dragon to be a possibility, which alone makes Magnum impossible since the concept didn't come out until at least 1987. With the Intamin projects in the 2000's, it's safe to assume that MF, Wicked Twister and Dragster would've been in the same deal. I do remember reading that talks for Maverick began as soon as Dragster opened. This deal would have had to have been signed in 1999 or earlier. At this point in time, Intamin had never made a hydraulic launch coaster (the first being Xcelerator in 2002). I have no proof of this, but don't you think Intamin wouldn't have signed a deal for the tallest coaster in the world with launch technology that had yet to be proven successful until at least after they determine if Millennium Force was successful? And was Cedar Point really ready to invest $60 million in Intamin coasters at once (MF, Wicked Twister and Dragster) before seeing they even worked? From my perspective, it seems that Cedar Fair waits until a manufacturer's product is a success before singing the papers for the next one. My proof? Wouldn't we have seen *something* else from Intamin after I-305 and Shoot the Rapids, which were conveniently built in the same year? I think it's safe to assume they had been taking all of these projects one at a time, only signing up for the next upon the previous products' success. It would seem a little fishy that I-305 and Shoot the Rapids would be two lone projects on their own after this supposed chain of Intamin rides across the chain in the 2000's. Sorry for the long, nerdy post, everyone

Can you provide us some examples? To support your facpinion? Can you provide a reason why this is such a blasphemous and unheard of concept? Because there's no proof of anything at all and you're arguing this opinion to death with nothing to back it up. You don't have any solid evidence that what you're arguing is actually how real world business transactions happen in the industry, and when people ask you why you think such a thing happens you're saying "it just makes sense." Why are you so set on being right? It's really not a big deal.