ejot

Timber Wolf - WoF

I hit up Hershey's Christmas event the first weekend it was open with my sister, mom, and niece and nephew. It was really well done and I had one of my best park visits of the year despite the fact that "only" three big coasters were running. The light show set to music in the Hollow was stunning. The Christmas show at the Chevy Theatre was extremely professional. The view from the Kissing tower overlooking the decorated park was incredibly beautiful. At 5:30 we had tickets to ride the Hershey trolley through Sweetlights, a drive-thru display of hundreds of 2D still and animated scenes illustrated in decorative Christmas lights. The trolley entered from the Hotel Hershey grounds (which I hadn't even seen, it's beautiful) and skipped a huge line of traffic for the attraction entrance. Check out some pictures of this (other than mine, which suck, lol) if you haven't seen it - definitely worth the tour. Plus we got to sample all the Hershey Kisses flavors. Lines were modest and got lighter as the evening wore on. Almost all the flats were running, and the kids had a really great time bouncing around to all kinds of different rides & getting in plenty of consecutive cycle rerides on flats. My mom might be the most ride-averse person on the planet but we convinced her to hit up Scramber, Carousel, Wave Swinger and Skyview with us. I've never heard anyone scream louder on a swing ride, LOL. Looper and Wildcat were walk-ons when we finally got to them. My niece and nephew braved Looper for their first adult coaster ride. He loved it and she had a big smile when she got off, but didn't want to go again. So he and I rerode Looper and I told him about Wildcat, which he totally wanted to ride as well. I warned him it would be rough - keep in mind it was in low-40s and really, really windy. Well - we both totally enjoyed the ride on Wildcat. There's something special about riding a classically styled coaster in the cold, crisp, holiday air with the park so beautifully lit up as the backdrop. Plus I actually totally like Wildcat anyway. We finished the night off with a ride on LaffTrakk, which had about a 25min wait. Both kids really liked it. We could have enjoyed another full day at the park - there was a ton of stuff I wanted to do - like ice skating - but time did not allow. I highly recommend the event, though I'm sure it's a little busier now. My photos aren't great but here ya go.... (This video looks a lot better on YouTube in a bigger window) Sweetlights. These pic do not do it justice. The theme park panels were animated, really cool. This was part of the 12 Days of Christmas displays which they made us sing as we drove though

Agreed that the coaster waits at Dorney are generally very minimal. But we did hit a busy Saturday last year. After waiting 40min for Hydra and just getting to the station, it went down, and we gave up waiting 20min later. Then we waited 15min in the Talon queue, got halfway to the station... and it went down. Long lines at Dorney and broken B&M's... I'm pretty sure we'd torn a huge hole in the space-time thingy and entered some sort of parallel universe.

One of my greatest Toro memories is riding seven consecutive laps in the sleeting rain / high-30's temps at the end of last season. It was running "slow" but I was having too much fun to really care. I have a hard time being snobby about the ride because it just puts the biggest d@mn grin on my face .... every. single. lap. I'm glad the opening weekend for HITP was pretty successful, and I'm excited to check it out in the next few weeks (even without the bull).

My first ride on Meanie just happened to be completely magical, thus the strangely high ranking. It was cold, blustery, and rainy. A thick blanket of fog covered the lake. The ride had already shut down twice for weather while we were queued for it earlier. We gave it a third shot and ended up the only riders, taking the front seats. It just started drizzling, and they were on the radios, seemingly ready to deny us once again. But we went. It was the most lethargic coaster ride I can remember. But that was totally fine, because the whole experience felt like being on another planet. With the wind whipping and the rain bullets gaining more momentum by the second, and a with this view into a foggy, alien, infinite oblivion: My stomach just dropped straight through my butthole. "What the everloving &@#* have I gotten myself into?" It was just a wonderful coaster moment that cemented itself as one of the highlights of the visit. But I totally get why many don't like the ride.

1. Yes, used as a computer monitor, replacing dual 1080p 2. Seiki 39", the cheapest out there 3. YouTube4K-compatible but capped at 30fps 4. Sometimes, but I don't really seek out 4K content in particular. 5. Totally noticeable but not mind-blowing 7. I Would be interested in both but would also consider models with one or neither. 4K > 3D

Maybe!!! Pier Extension Application May Bring Smiles to Roller Coaster Fans

Only at Great Adventure... This is the park that literally sold/may still sell a shirt with a stick figure drawing of Ka that reads, "Dude, we're all high up here". Though, I can imagine some MM guests getting their medical on.

I've only been once, last spring. It was the perfect day, five 20-minute rain showers interspersed throughout the day kept lines to 0 the rest of the time. We got in over 30 rides without a flash-lane thingy. Anyway, had a very different take on CP than most: 1. TTD 2. Mean Streak <3 3. Millennium 4. Gatekeeper 5. Raptor 6. Wicked Twister 7. Maverick 8. Iron Dragon 9. Mantis 10. Cedar Creek 11. Gemini 12. Magnum 13. BlueStreak

Definitely: Cedar Point, King's Island, Wildwater Kingdom, Canada's Wonderland, King's Dominion, Dorney... Someone bought a Platinum Pass.

My plans changed I guess, lol: "unplanned" parks I did visit SF Discovery Kingdom Luna/Deno's Lakemont Hershey Conneaut Lake Great Escape Waldameer Martin's Fantasy Island Seabreeze Adventureland Dorney

Each car on a coaster train passes through any given point on the track at a speed unique to that car. So to isolate the effect of shaping - let's consider one particular car moving at some particular speed. Neglecting air resistance, a freely launched object will follow a path mapped by a curve called a parabola. Therefore, if you shape an airtime hill as a parabola, and if a car enters that parabolic section at precisely the right speed, there will precisely no force exerted to the track by the train, since it "wants" to follow this trajectory on its own. IE, it is the path that would be followed if no track existed there. This is the theoretically perfect, "floater" airtime. John Miller was the first to apply the concept to actual coaster construction when he began designing perfectly parabolic hills in the 1920s. Flattening the hill for a given entry speed means you won't reach that 0g force equilibrium; the train will still be 'pressing down" on the track and you won't feel as much floatiness. Steepening the crest with respect to entry speed has the effect of achieving negative-g, that is, the train is actually "pulling up" on the track. This transition, often quick, from positive to negative force (mathematically - a "jerk" - a changing acceleration) is often labeled "ejector" airtime. If we extend our scope outside perfectly shaped parabolic hills, ride designers can tweak the profile to achieve the exact acceleration and jerk profile they wish to. In modern times, this can involve increasing that "jerk" to the point of near discomfort.

In the first iteration of Mauch Chunk railway, the donkeys that carried the trains up the mountain would ride the train, loaded with coal, back down. This guy looks ready to ride (from RCDB):

That does seem to be the spirit of the law, but it's far from clear cut. Laws and court decisions work hand-in-hand: the former are often imprecise regarding particular situations until challenged. Then court decisions themselves formulate the precedents for the how the laws function in real life. Six Flags has a team of lawyers who pore over all the technicalities of ADA, so that they can formulate the details of a policy that has the best chance of standing up in court. So the answer to your question is currently not well defined. If they get challenged in court, we may find out.

You can add up to five additional users on a flash pass. There is an extra fee, I'm not sure what it is, but obviously well under the price of another FP. It's a great option if you're not concerned about riding together, although the waits even with flash pass may be significant.

I rode Thunderhawk front seat and middle of back car a couple weeks ago and didn't find the roughness to be the defining feature of either ride. It was actually a lot of fun. WHy does Hydra have these thru holes in its spine? 2/4. Someday... ^ these ones

It could be a fairly busy afternoon at the park.

This new program is current-wait-time-based. At least in proclamation. Was this also true of the previous program, or did it act as more of a skip-the-wait system? I wonder if, in the new system, you can go around and sign up at every ride? Or will they use a Q-bot or somehow otherwise ensure only one ride is booked at a time?

Not sure about Sunday but on Sat, probably not. Steel Force was consistently one of the longest lines, 15min in the afternoon and maybe close to 30 around 10pm. Only a couple maze haunts approached 1hr waits (Cornstalkers & Asylum seemed the worst).

Just back from the park. Finally got my Stinger credit. Great ride and shockingly smooth. Also caught two strangely wonderful rides on Thunderhawk, which had previously been basically unmemorable to me. Dorney has a rather poorly advertised policy of not allowing handstamp re-entry during haunt. I knew this, but thought the cutoff was 7pm (when the haunt event, ya know.... began). Unfortunately, when we went to go back to our car for sweaters/coats, and to exchange sunglasses for regular glasses, we were out of luck. The cutoff was actually at 6, and we were four minutes late. Couldn't cut us that break. Granted: my mistake. This did put a damper on the visit. We shivered through the first five haunts, found them (or at least what we could manage to see) pretty lackluster, and decided it was time for Waffle House. Haunt lines were 30-50 minutes and coasters were 5-20min at night.

Or, you could follow their entirely reasonable policy, and not abuse the pass. The park could not survive if it offered shared passes, so it does not. On what grounds should you be exempted?

Two other specific instances are covered—buying handicap seating tickets and the right to use a powered scooter—seemingly leaving all remaining cases in somewhat of a gray area. Here are the relevant excerpts: Nowhere (that I can find) does the law address the generalization of this principle to any other cases. A litigant could potentially contend that SF's AAP effectively constitutes a handicapped seating ticket. A stretch, perhaps, but stranger things have been successfully argued. Also relevant: one discussion point regarding the mobility device case does note, sans further citation, "the Department's longstanding, well-established policy of not allowing public accommodations or establishments to require proof of a mobility disability." It further explains, "There is no question that public accommodations have a legitimate interest in ferreting out fraudulent representations of mobility disabilities,... However, the privacy of individuals with mobility disabilities and respect for those individuals are also vitally important." Six Flags seems to preempt a suit on the grounds of this privacy intrusion with their policy: "The note must NOT describe or indicate the nature of the disability." Being really interested in how this may play out, I spoke informally on the topic with two lawyer acquaintances. One thought that, while the Six Flags policy runs counter to the spirit of the law, that they had implemented the necessary details to avoid a court decision against them. The other agreed with your assessment that Six Flags would lose the suit you proposed. I'd have to imagine someone will file suit, sooner or later. So perhaps we'll get to see. To me personally, the Six Flags policy is highly reasonable and appropriate.

Time Machine was actually designed and built in-house at Adventure Island's workshop -- an ambitious project and awesome accomplishment for a small, community park.

No special knowledge here but just going by the ticket sales site, it appears to be the former.