Samuel

If you're referring to Phobia, it was made by Premier. If you're referring to something else or I'm missing something, what trains/attraction are you talking about?

Haha, I don't mind Mean Streak, either. I always thought it fit under "most under-performing coaster" rather than most violent. But that's nothing! I once rode Steel Phantom 300 times in a row, and I got my ears pierced before I went on because that "no earrings" policy is for losers!

* While a little shimmy here and there doesn't bother me too much, I am glad that the old notion of "enduring" a coaster is going out the window. Intensity can be done well (SkyRush, Toro), but too often it's cited in an attempt to camouflage a simply inexcusable coaster. Around 2000, I can't tell you how often Six Flags framed its crappier rides as challenges, trials, and dares that riders would have to overcome. "This Boomerang is awful, so try to survive! Will you dare!? Also, Corn Nutz." I'm glad we're seeing RMC, GCI rehabs, and lots of different train modifications to revitalize ride experiences. Enduring pain = not fun! * Some people like to grow an ego within hobby communities -- this should be news to no one. Surely our opinions vary, but we've all seen those people who play characters: I've met the "everything is flawed!" scrutinizer, the "you just don't know how to ride" defender, and the "universally-praised coasters are for babies" tough guy at different events over the years. Establishing a rogue identity by way of constant complaining about good rides or false praise for bad rides are two ways it's done. Hopefully, we can see that egoism for what it is, and not take it as a truthful appraisal of a coaster. * From first-hand experience, I've ridden Magnum and thought that it was truly the best coaster at Cedar Point during some trips, and at other times it's aggressively unpleasant and in the "once was enough" category. So right there I have two real, yet conflicting experiences on it. It's been the same story for me with GG woodies -- top-ten rides or brace yourself. * We also have a community tendency to magnify the nuances between coasters, and also the nuances of a given ride in a particular seat, before/after rehab work, during a certain time of the day, etc. It can and often does get into nitpicking, but it's not unusual for people steeped in a hobby to develop - and debate - their refined palettes. So long as it's civil, I do enjoy "talking coasters." * People vary by size and ride preference! Like the old RCT ratings, we have the full gamete of intensity and nausea preferences, plus so many different body types and sizes. Just my knees smacking around the inside of an old Arrow mine train car is enough to taint the experience for me, but others might feel that they are smooth and have aged gracefully. In short, it's complicated!

^ I was in the process of posting the same thing! Fasten your long line seat belts today. I love Cedar Point - and good for the park - but today looks like it might be one of those "Iron Dragon overflow" kind of days. FL+ will be more coveted this weekend than golden tickets were to Wonka's factory.

Great to see the park coming back to life! It almost looks like an ERT session going on over at Millennium Force -- a fair number of people queuing for it. In general, the park seems to be somewhat open, with plenty of guests walking around & riding. Does anyone know if there is some kind of preview going on this weekend, or is this just a management/employees sort of thing?

Related to the hotel locations (Breakers being "right there" vs. the walk back to Sandcastle/Cabins), the outside-the-park path that snakes between Magnum and the beach is one of my favorite little nooks in any park - Cedar Point or otherwise! After a long day, I love that serene walk. At night, it's beautiful and usually very quiet. In the morning, it's invigorating to walk the contour of Magnum and see the park coming to life, all while taking in the water and enjoying the cool breeze off of the lake. The path is charmingly beachy, and I'm glad that it hasn't been touched in years. I've known a few people who lament the distance from the back properties to the Magnum gate, but they (1) just walked the uneventful Soak City lot, (2) completely missed the aforementioned path that I described above, (3) didn't consider the shuttles, and (4) generally don't like to walk further than need-be. So, I really like those cabins and strolling along the beach to enter the park via the Magnum entrance, but others might consider it a chore. I will say, however, that Breakers is best if you have young children (or anyone) who need to take breaks or swap outfits throughout the day, and it's a great all-around property.

I heard that the customization options are so deep that we can splice a B&M hyper train with TOGO's stand-up bike seats, and then host coaster events where enthusiasts can leave the lap bars up for serious .

Hey FLIPDUDE, to fill my compliment quota for the day, you have some very well-stated posts. I really liked the initial idea of the path design, but now I can see that it might give a wonky impression of laid-down cylindrical piping in large doses. A merge path feature to widen paved areas into plazas would make things visually realistic, and truly, managing crowd flow and preventing bottle-necked peeps is an enjoyable side-dish to the challenge of building a park. I really like the attention paid to the authenticity of sounds. We always talk about importing content, but custom music is as far as things usually go with audio importing. I'd love to have a good variety of coaster sounds, or even to have some available to download/import. Even with the newer B&Ms being more quiet, having the option of including sounds like the classic B&M roar would still make me g-e-e-k out. I much prefer variety and nuance to one clickety-clack chain lift and one whooshing sound for all coasters.

Here's a new video with narration by the producer. It doesn't get into coasters, but the basic mechanics seem to be solid. I like the local grid overlaying on top of the map to assist in local construction. To give RCTW some slack, these two games aren't all that dissimilar. We all assume that the coaster editor will be competent with Planet Coaster, but I'm still eager to see the specifics of construction and overall breath of details/options. Update: Okay, plenty of videos are now popping up on YouTube. Some of the POV work looks pretty good, and the detail on the Arrow track is excellent!

To give the thread a bump, Flash/Lightning was testing many months ago in 2015, and now no one has posted anything in 2016 about this coaster. I haven't seen any coverage, reviews, or new videos, either. According to RCDB, it's been operating since January 1. This is one of the biggest coasters that's ever seemed to slip our community surveillance. I know it's in China, but since there's no shortage of coverage for knock-offs, I'm surprised that this giant Mack creation remains largely in the dark.

I'd love to job shadow the PR employees at SeaWorld, my goodness, their jobs are tougher than a two-dollar steak. Evolving cultural expectations have turned up the pressure, and I think SeaWorld tried to hold its position as long as it could. Meanwhile, there will continue to be voices out there citing betrayal on the premise that what SeaWorld is doing isn't enough. If you have a good time at the parks, I hope you don't turn your back on them to spite the difficult position in which they unwittingly found themselves.

The times they are a changin (for elephants, too!) Well, I had a great time at SeaWorld during my visit this year, and I imagine that I'll be going to many SeaWorlds for years to come. Clean parks, friendly staff, lots of great things to see, many fun facts to be learned, etc, etc....but I'm on the fence a bit with the orcas. The education and rehabilitation aspects of SeaWorld are great, but the orca shows reminded me of the circus or a fireworks show -- spectacle for its own sake. The human-centric/dominion tricks just don't sit well with me. I love and support education blended with rehabilitation, and SeaWorld delivers plenty of it, but I never liked the spectacle attractions. I also don't care for the argument, "But where will I go to satisfy my curiosities for performing sea creatures!?" That's about as unnatural as it gets. When I see a turtle in a large display case, I think to myself, "Okay, that turtle is totally tricked and seems completely unimpeded to live contently here. It has no clue that SeaWorld isn't the Amazon riverbank." On the flip-side, if a mammal like an orca is experiencing day-to-day frustration and a lower overall life expectancy than those found in the wild, I don't think it's outrageous to question captivity. I know that there is plenty of PR muck that SeaWorld is also taking into account, and a lot of it is unfair (I'm not a Blackfish fan), but I just want what's best for the orcas. If that's captivity, okay. If that's stopping the current policies as they're doing, I'm okay with that, too.

Starry Sky Ripper and OzIris were two B&Ms that really started to demonstrate more freelancing than what was shown in the past, and now there's the custom family invert, too. It's nice to have some more variety in the designs, and I'm always intrigued to see how a manufacturer evolves its engineering and design approaches (ex. MF's lift support structure vs. i305's). In particular, I like the sprinkling of low speed hills that have been introduced by B&M in recent years. The coaster designs have "improved" with the times and shown more nuance, but many people still prefer the ride experience of older B&Ms.

I really like the look of the Mega Disk'O around 1:15:30, and the person talking at that time makes me feel assured about the care for authenticity in the game. Looking good!

To clarify, I'm not critical of UCC itself, nor am I deaf to the notion that it could be one of the best features about the game. I agree with you. My criticism isn't what the developers are showing, it's what they continue to not demonstrate. UCC and a couple of non-clarifying screenshots are being promoted while the community continues to wait for reassurance after giving heaps of beta test feedback a long time ago. Four months later, and I still don't know whether or not we will be able to easily design straight lift hills. I know that negativity for its own sake is rampant on the Internet, so I'm careful to link my expressed dissatisfaction to how it can be resolved, and I don't think my requests are unreasonable. Responsiveness, not just quota-filling updates, is overdue from Nvizzio and Atari. Something as simple as, "Hey everyone, we've come a long way since the beta test weekends, and we're excited to show you some of the improvements that you've wanted to see...," would delight and reassure. When Atari became more quiet during December and January, I think it's fair to assume that they were off to address problems and restore community confidence. Now nearing spring, and we're hearing about UCC and social sharing, which might be great features, but they didn't cause, and don't lessen, lingering skepticism.

I've not played Cities, but you raise valid concerns. In addition, my concern with UCC seems to be a pitch that says, "We're giving you the tools to do what you want," to camouflage the truth that the revolving door of development collaborators, the poor beta reception, and the major walk-back on that initial "worse than RCT 3" trailer all suggest that they can't identify and deliver what it is we want. I like the idea of expanding above and beyond a great base game, but it seems like Atari is chucking UCC out there in the hope that we'll fill in the gaps for all that lacks in the final package. If that's the case, it proves that the wrong people were assigned to make this game in the first place. Again, if Atari didn't get such blowback, we would have ended up with that RCT 3.1 game, or a pretty, yet dysfunctional expansion of the beta test. I hope they whip this game into shape before it's all said and done, but UCC seems like a get out of jail free card -- don't like the game? Well, then you make it better.

I actually like the look of the drop sans-270 spiral. I know that the drops on Ka and TTD look insane and add one more valuable talking point to such short rides, but I also think that both drops feel somewhat busy. I've always been interested in how the sense of scale would change on the way down given a more direct, graceful drop with this kind of coaster. Time will tell! *Also, the track shape and tower gives the impression of the RCT Intamin rocket coasters that I would initially recreate with the LIM/Premier looper in the game. It's uncanny!

To support this ^ sentiment, are the stops at Florida parks your way of saying bon voyage to the area, cedarpointguru? If you've lived in Florida for years and only have a finite range of dates with which to park hop, why not first consider cuts to the familiar Florida parks? Haven't BGT and IOA been well-worn to you by now? If you have to sacrifice between new hotness coasters or good parks that would be new for you, why not just open up the itinerary by foregoing some of the Florida stuff (perhaps Mako aside)?

Le Scootness Manster -- 2017 Nessie remake with two trains pulled from Verbolten.

Maybe theoretically you don't need to know math to doodle a real nice napkin design, but good luck trying to maneuver into a math-free designer's role through any kind of practical process. These dream "designer jobs" are few and far between. You can hope to work for a manufacturer or an engineering firm like Ingenieurbero Stengel, or be in the inner circle of a park's management group, but there's no way to penetrate any of those on a platform of self-proclaimed imaginative ability. Since no one can regulate who's creative or imaginative, the words have been self-ascribed so redundantly that they're a hollow professional argument for employment. The world is competitive enough when you try and call your own obscure job as a personal goal, made worse if you further insist that you don't need to know all that you can to give yourself a realistic shot at making that goal real. It's a fantasy to think that you can enjoy your burger, work in the slaughterhouse, and somehow stay away from dead cows.

In reference to the T-Rex video, I'm not a big fan of the YOLO "stop'n'start" or the see-sawing snippets of launches to get over a hill. I don't mind it so much with the Sky Rocket II coasters because I think it's a clever and necessary way to make that layout work, but I think it's too much of a gimmick otherwise. Where others might see a build-up of suspense, I see a wrench thrown into the momentum. I'm not against a mid-course launch, but I'd prefer to stay in forward motion (Maverick).

Here is the only snippet that I've come across so far.

New teaser for Flying Aces -- I'm surprised there hasn't been more buzz lately for this doozy of a coaster that opens in just over a week! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_HeUZyQaJA

Maybe someone here does know all the specifics, but the surest way to get the right answers about specific policy questions is to ask the horse's mouth. If the customer service jobs get outsourced to the coaster community, where will our younger members aspire to work in the future?

S&S Sky Slings like Vertigo/Eruption/Thrill Shot have disappeared, although the concept lives on with many slingshot rides.