ejot

Zero Gravity Thrill Park in Tx has a SCAD tower. Terror-dactyl at Cave of the Winds in Colorado. Moses Mabhida stadium jump in S.Africa. Heritage Park in Calgary has a vintage midway setup with one of only two operating Caterpillar rides left in the world. Great thread!

Wicked Cyclone is the archetypal "great layout" ride. It just oozes genius.

Holy continuous fourth order derivatives, is this exciting! I really cannot wait to ride whatever improvement Vekoma comes up with, assuming they've realized a bit of math is in order before the welding torches are fired up.

Its worth looking through this thread for some must-do food stops (some cheaper than others): Good Eating Outside of Theme Parks Otherwise, generally: Keep your eye out (or search with GPS device) for Waffle House. Really cheap, really good breakfast food & sandwiches, open 24h. Other reasonably worthwhile, totally random, food chains of various styles you may end up near (I'll let you look them up for details): Panera, Chipotle, Steak n Shake, Biscuitville, Red Robin, Famous Dave's, Buffalo Wild Wings, TGI Friday's. There is an extremely popular gas-station/convenience store chain that sells excellent sandwiches and coffees, all over New Jersey, called Wawa. Pennsylvania has a similar chain called Sheetz.

My take as a non-expert: This all just took a wildly bad turn. Ditching any rides and pushing back the Ferris Wheel timeline so far that it too will probably be cancelled? Blowing a huge portion of the budget restoring a half-million sq ft space and relying on its historical appeal as the attraction? Underwhelming, poorly detailed promises: a fountain, a light show, a light tunnel, and a vaguely referenced "3D animation", "green space", and "fire show"? Almost completely ditching the retail space? It's like they're trying as hard as possible to recreate the disaster that was Six Flags Power Point in Baltimore. On the bright side, the hotel addition sounds lovely. I've stayed there and it was already quite nice. And the food/booze trucks in old train cars is brilliant. If there were any decent attractions backing up those elements, they could have really been onto something. But overall - a massive train wreck - pardon the pun.

^^ To give some perspective, in inflation adjusted dollars, only about 5 or 6 US theme parks have ever cost over a billion dollars to develop and build from the ground up. EG: Magic Kingdom, Epcot, IoA, DCA. A typical Six Flags or Cedar Fair park does not have a market value near $1B. I can't find what Six Flags was asking for Magic Mountain when they put it up for sale in 2006, but that would be very interesting to know. With regards to the original question, I would certainly buy Conneaut Lake Park (presumably for $1), pay off their debts, clean it up, restore the hell out of Blue Streak, and add a few flats. Then operate at a loss while continuing improvements.

I think something got mixed up, somewhere. Has to mean Great White. When did M&V retrack it previously?

Rcdb has the greatest trip planning tool ever, for this kind of question! As you can see, Hershey could also be up for consideration. It is an outstanding park, one of my very favorites. But I also don't see anything wrong with visiting SFA if your family is going on a trip that is otherwise centered around DC. I had a perfectly enjoyable day there and will probably visit again within a few years. The final helix on Wild One is great!

Premier's decision to put track on both the inside and outside of Full.Throttle's vertical loop is an elegant solution to what was presumably a budgetary constraint. It looks great, rides great, and eliminates tons of steel (literally...).

Chronologically: Arrow - DrachenFire PTC - Phoenix Schwarzkopf - Whizzer B&M - Raging Bull NAD/IAD - Colossus (SFMM) GCI - Apocalypse: The Ride Giovanola - Goliath (SFMM) Premier - Full.Throttle Intamin- Superman: Escape from Krypton CCI - GhostRider Vekoma- Boomerang (KBF) TOGO - Shockwave Dinn - Wild One or Mean Streak Mack - Dark Knight Coaster (SFGAd) Maurer - Gotham City Gauntlet: Escape from Arkham Asylum Zierer - Catwoman's Whip Gerstlauer - Pandemonium Gravity Group - Wooden Warrior Zamperla - Super Flight Morgan - Steel Force RMC - Wicked Cyclone Chance - Toboggan (Lakemont) Reverchon - Crazy Mouse (DelGrosso's) E&F Miler - Kozmo's Kurves

Sadly, it looks like the dream of a new Miracle Strip is now dead: UPDATE: Miracle Strip evicted for failing to pay rent

This is great! It was very clear how well cared for everything at Waldameer was when I visited this summer, and these pics really highlights that.

They just need to jump on Valentines Day and St Patty's and we could be year-round by the 2020's. "Bar Crawl in the Park" ... Summer Shandy will still be on tap. And the visible parts of Nitro finally get repainted...green w/ green supports. It will turn out that B&M's can actually run in sub-zero temps, but it won't matter because global warming will be spiraling out of control. The future is bright, indeed.

I got some great riding in between 2:00 and 3:30 yesterday - everything was station wait or even walk-on. Then between 3:30 and 4:00 it's like someone opened the flood gates. I've never seen a park fill up that quickly, totally crazy. Got in one last lap on Nitro around 4:00 with only a 10minute wait. Then checked out Batman and Poinsettia queues.... totally slammed... so I bounced. It was literally 70F according to my car. Walking around in a t-shirt was really weird with the holiday atmosphere.

New York State Fair this year. It was pushing 100F the day I was there. I will conclude this story with a photojournal and leave the rest to your imagination. Mondial ... you &^%$# *&^^%%$ @!$$&* !!!!!!!!! This is... also a thing. This is a thing. Let's get started.

I need some Poinsettia Peak in my life. Think I may head to the park tomorrow.

I haven't been to the UK, just through Heathrow. I'd love to ride the wooden Wild Mouse at Blackpool. And another vote for Steeplechase.

Raging Bull. I was incredibly terrified of coasters but a date somehow dragged me to SFGAm. We get to the big B&M hyper and my knees are shaking and I can't even look up at the ride without feeling a strong vertigo. That was about two years ago. Things have changed.

^It's not a strong preference. The entire experience kind of underwhelmed me, thus the small slopes on that graph. I've only had one visit, less than a half-dozen rides, none at night - so this take will almost certainly evolve in the future. With that said, I did find the middle a little smoother on my particular rides. This was especially notable because, for whatever reason, Millie was really triggering my annoyance with it's wheel chatter. Ka and Toro similarly rattle/jackhammer, but strangely, I'm not nearly as bothered on them. (shrugs...) Secondly, the airtime moments seemed to endure a bit longer, be gentler/floatier, and more inline with the massive scale and sweeping/large radius curves of the ride. The middle seat rides, just seemed to "fit the coaster's personality" better, for a lack of a better explanation.

These charts describe my seat preference on a few various coasters:

..... at Magic Springs & Crystal Falls, that's the one!

I like Millennium Force right in the middle of the train.

^Nope, it is in North America.

Let's hope all the other parks in the Northeast "copy" the idea for holiday events w/ coasters, too! Knoebel's: Your move.

Yes! I never get these... Next up for consideration: