Samuel

In a good way, looking down as I head north of 150 ft on larger Skycoaster models. Something about the slow Skycoaster ascent always makes me reflectively giggle as I ponder why I'm drawn to such predicaments as a hobby. In a bad way, X/X2. Great concept, rough edges. The ride just pummels me. I've given it plenty of chances, but it's always been a back-thwacking, jostling, headbanging, vibrating, & disorienting car crash of an experience. The arms can even shimmy like someone is kicking the seats while the train is at a standstill in the station. Whenever someone says, "Let's go ride X -- it's the craziest!", the crud is scared out of me.

According to the plans shown in this thread, it looks like Sky Rocket will be getting the VR treatment next year. I'll laugh hard if it turns out to be a Turnpike theme. I don't mind the VR concept, but I hope capacity doesn't take a big hit.

B&M really makes some beautiful coasters -- just awesome hills on the skyline. As always, trims TBD. I hope it turns out to be a lot of fun.

Skull Island: Reign of Donkey Kong 2019? Bullet Bill Astro Orbiter 2020? In earnest, I think it's a pretty cool idea, and Universal tends to handle attractions and themes with care. There's certainly an infectious & energetic kind of fun to Nintendo, and there are lots of ways of bringing that to a park. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in Universal/Miyamoto creative meetings!

Although I remember a few years ago Vekoma did proposed a solution that the seats tilt back as it approaches the incline of the lift. The "tilting seats on the lift" concept was around at least as early as 2000/01 during X-Flight's announcement at SFWoA, and it's just one of those things that never seemed to see the light of day. I haven't experienced the funky Stingray, but I'm curious about how much better (more comfortable!) a flying coaster could be with today's tech & design advances. It looks like these innovations could help a bit with lagging load times and overall rider comfort. Vekoma has made big improvements in recent years, but I've never been a fan of flyers across any of the manufacturers. They always felt clunky to me, and can get uncomfortable in a hurry with train stacking of any significance. It also seems like the market for flyers has cooled, but I appreciate that Vekoma is sticking with it.

Gorgeous shots and a gorgeous park, top-to-bottom! Halloween season gets tons of attention, but when parks (especially already-beautiful European parks) pile on the holiday lights and crank up the festive fall/winter atmospheres, I think those are some of the best in-park environments you can find anywhere!

Well, this certainly takes the water cup challenge to a new level.

What are your thoughts on Taron, iSpeed, Blue Fire, &/or the newer S&S thrust air coasters? I'm sure it's been talked about dozens of times on TPR, but "Dragster + more stuff, please" seems realistically prohibitive for so many practical reasons. It's awesome to see such a concept in NL2, but I don't know what park has the money, space, and experimental patience to bite on such a coaster. I don't disagree with you, I just think we'll both be dreaming long into the future! I will cast my vote for the lift hill, love nutty launches as I do. I think there's a societal expectation of what a roller coaster experience should be, and the clackety-clack of slowly heading up the "big hill" is a major part of the recipe.

It has that orchestral Jaws vibe.

Looks good to me! The channel is well-organized, the videos are well-presented, the content is socially responsive and updated regularly, and the whole channel captures the compelling thrills and fun to be had at Cedar Point. I loved the recent series where kids reacted to watching the Great Pumpkin, as well as the newer 360° videos. If you were referring in any way to the campy Mean Streak video that I posted, it was from a 1991 reel that an individual put together and posted to YouTube, and its production value fit the times.

They say you can't put lipstick on a pig, but AC/DC got me retroactively hyped enough in this video to almost shed a tear for Old Yeller. Whatever Cedar Point announces, I hope the park is able to reuse Thunderstruck in a feel-good "heading to the park/interviews/ride footage" montage. #DroppingHintsForMrClark #Thunderstruck #ButNotThunderhawk

I've always enjoyed the old school sounds and overall ambiance of Kennywood's Thunderbolt. The classic lift, clicking anti-rollbacks on the crests of the hills, and cantankerous-sounding NAD trains ripping through the bowl section are memorable parts of the Kennywood sensory experience. In 1996, pre-trim Mantis sounded like the most intimidating coaster on the planet. I didn't know much of Kumba then, but I remember being in awe of the powerful presence Mantis commanded through its deafening whoosh. The aura of each train disengaging the lift, teasing a low hum on the turnaround as though the whole ride is waking up, and then just ripping its signature bellow at the bottom of the drop left me speechless at a time when there wasn't much like it. Sticking with Cedar Point, I love heading up the first hill on Millennium Force and hearing the "da-dum-da-dum-da-dum-da-dum" as the train speeds up in the middle of the ascent. That sound and the extra oomph do a great job at building suspense, and I usually see at least one apprehensive/first-time rider per visit who wishes they could squirm back to the station when it happens! Fun!

Hopefully the negotiation proceedings prove to be smoother than they are in the video game world..

^ I'm glad you had a good time! I love to read reactions from a member's first time at iconic parks like Cedar Point! Looks like you had a blast.

Awesome report! It seems like everybody digests SkyRush at their own rate, and you never know what a person's reaction to it is going to be. Usually, people eventually warm up to the coaster and conclude that the nuttiness is good, but I know several people who've ridden it in multiple visits and can't get past a "I just don't know how to process that" sense of bewilderment. Like a rare steak, not everyone enjoys attempted murder by way of airtime. I maintain that the bruises are Intamin's way of saying "I love you." Also, I've felt for years that Great Bear has the best B&M zero-g-roll in the business, with a great whipping effect. Bear acts as if it has to hurry home after the corkscrew, but the first couple of elements flow really well and are generally underrated.

Well said. I think that the paranoia of everything becoming RMC or getting replaced in the future is overblown. I think we'll see more original RMCs in the future standing next to more "classic" woodies. The Summers/Dinn & RCCA coasters in particular needed to be addressed one way or another, but something like Racer is a fine, intermediate-level coaster.

I agree with your expectations of records, but to drag your sentence into the corner with my own self-interest, I'm actually hoping for a more traditional, airtime-filled layout that doesn't lean so heavily on inversions. Even without them, I expect plenty of wall-riding turns and zany misdirections. Inversions are already the steak on the plate with the park's B&Ms, and Maverick does a sprinkling of inversions in a free-form layout quite well. Personally, I don't want the new Mean Streak to be thought of as an inversion coaster first. I'd simply prefer a long, aggressive layout with plenty of airtime, with no more than an inline twist or single stall thrown in. I'd like New Texas Giant with even more meat on the bones.

Great report, Chuck! Looks like a fun evening. Thanks for taking the extra time to get shots of the outsides of the haunts and skeleton key rooms - I always like to check out the in-park atmosphere. It's interesting to see KD's blending of haunt concepts borrowed from Scary Farm, Cedar Point, and Cedar Fair's past. I'd love to see more original haunts at each Cedar Fair park that does a Halloween event, but at least the skeleton key rooms and newer concepts like Trick or Treat are making appearances.

Yeah, it was certainly not the "mean hostage simulator" which I find that stuff also not fun and only for "shock value" which is IMO sort of dumb. This was (for me) not "scary" but I also am very desensitized to most haunt events. I can see where it may make other people nervous. It scores high on the "weird" factor, which I personally find far more interesting than jump scares because to be really "weird" you actually need talent. Anyone can bang a wrench against a wall and try to startle you. Well said, Robb. "Shock" and "startle," as well as "gross" for that matter, are thematic descriptions of houses that can totally dodge having actual interesting and memorable qualities. To your bang a wrench against the wall point, a fire drill at work recently startled me far greater than any gag at the recent haunts I've attended, and I wouldn't pay admission for a fire alarm to surprise me! Catharsis looks interesting, and the site does a good job of keeping an aura of mystique to it. People really seem to be eating up these boutique interactive/elaborate haunts.

♫ MY GUILTY PLEASURE IS A LOG FLUME, my guilty pleasure is a log flume, MY GUILTY PLEASURE IS A LOG FLUME.... ♫

In most cases, I prefer the old ones, but I do wonder if that's partially because I simply prefer most of the older B&Ms. I thought that the seating row on Afterburn at Carowinds seemed comparatively tight after riding a few newer vest B&Ms. I was conscious of how elbow-to-elbow I was with my riding neighbors when compared with the more spacious, newer arrangement. On the other hand, the vests are tight in their own right on individual bodies. They're basically the upper-portion of the flying coaster restraint, yes? That's way too constricting, especially if my body weight isn't going to be reliant on them like it would be in the flying position. The restraints feel comfy when I first sit down, but then I quickly think they're too snug and too much for any non-flyer.

In general, was anyone else surprised by the park's decision to put both proposals out there? We've long seen guest surveys that solicit preferences and reactions about possible new attractions, but has there ever been such an overt reveal of choices? I can't see Energylandia doing this in good faith without permission from Vekoma and Intamin. It's fun to crowdsource opinions and get the public involved (ex. submitting & choosing new flavors of potato chips), but it seems ethically crummy to the manufacturers if Energylandia took closed-door proposals and put them out there for social dissection. The requests for proposals that I've worked with in a few different industries spell out specific confidentiality disclosures and clauses. As much as we imagine it'd be cool to weigh in on planning decisions at parks, we already do have a voice -- to the extent that parks choose to check out sites like TPR and value our sentiment. I'd bet the majority of them already do this. I've certainly paid a lot more attention to Energylandia than I ever had in the past, and fortunately both proposals look great, but I also think it'd be in bad judgment for a park to assume that the GP knows what it wants. If Energylandia blindly trusts Facebook advice, are we really going to see great rides not come to fruition because 14-year-olds flood commentary with sentiment like, "Nope dat sucks sry lol," or something along those lines? If the comparison was put out there simply to stimulate social media, and the park really knows which way it's leaning, then why become the park that dangled a manufacturer's rejected proposal to the public? To me, RFPs shouldn't be handled like a reality show.

For sheer scale, Sonny. For pain, Manhattan. For goofiness, pick off the menu of silly Chinese knock-offs. The late Raging Wolf Bobs, pre-rehab, was the most laughably bad coaster experience I've personally had.

Marilyn Manson is actually looking better with age!

^^ awesome photo of Mean Streak. I'm sure it will be a much better coaster post-op, but it was always a beautiful monument of treated lumber in its original form. Does anyone know when Cedar Fair started adding those two vertical boards in the middle of the tracks on its wooden coasters? Is it just to make the track easier for maintenance to walk, or is there another reason?