Arthur_Seaton

West Coast Racers, Apocalypse, Slingshot, and Dive Devil were all closed? Wow, they might as well just shut down that whole corner of the park at this point! X2 and Lux Luthor were down when I was there a couple of days ago. I figure they're doing maintenance or something before the weekend hits.

A couple of quick pics of the new coaster. It looks about 3/4 finished. Although Ninja was running a bit bumpy today, you can see how close it gets to the new ride’s track. Although it’s probably going to be a fairly tame ride, it looks like it’ll be a ton of fun and it’ll really have a strong visual impact. For what it’s worth, the park was fairly busy today, but lines were moving fast. Single-train ops on Viper meant it had the first line I’ve seen for it in years. X2 and Drop of Doom were both down. The first half of the ride is complete. The white track’s inversion looks more like a switchback. Bits of the spaghetti bowl are still scattered around the park.

^ Aren't some of those initial animations done with a kind of souped-up version of No Limits? If so, it's impressive how accurate No Limits can be an industry tool of design beyond simply drafting ideas.

Great reports, Condor! And yes, that rare credit does indeed look fantastic. The layout looks kind of like a mashup of a number of their coasters.

There's no appropriate response to that. Again, I'd just reiterate KBrylczyk's warning to anyone who clicks the Daily Star link posted above that it does show people being injured as well as the usual stuff you'll see on that website.

The track looks bizarre in that image!

Thanks for the reports, Bert. I've always been fascinated by The Boss' layout, even though I've heard it's super rough from pretty much everyone who's ridden it. I'd give Xclaibur a go, but it looks seriously pukey!

^ I have noticed some odd shaking here and there, but I also noticed soon after the ride opened too. I suspect it's just simply part of the way the motor works? I'd assume that if there was a serious issue, it'd be shut down by now.

Yes, clearly you're elated so you can make your "third world" claim again. For anyone else, do be warned that video that was posted above does indeed seem to show people coming out of the ride and the vehicle being smashed up. As was true with the last incident, it's very sad to hear about such tragedies — no matter where they occur.

Thanks for the report! It really does seem like a bizarre ride in terms of concept and design. From the sounds of it, the ride experience itself is just as odd.

Thanks! I'm not quite sure how successful the theming was in this case, but it's such a great rollercoaster that it doesn't really matter that much. Operations on this (and pretty much every other ride in the park) are exceptional.

We're not huge fans of Disney, so we only go once every few years or so. Today, though, we went to check out the new section / ride, and we hadn't been since before the Guardians of the Galaxy drop reboot ride either. Not being familiar with either the Star Wars (beyond the original three, that is) or the Guardians of the Galaxy films made both a little baffling in terms of narrative, but the rides were still enjoyable all the same. There's a lot of detail in the new Star Wars section of the park, but we found it to be considerably more impressive at night than during the day. The sound design and the entryways into the main area were especially notable (entering from the Splash Mountain area was particularly effective). I'd also watched a ride-through of the new simulator, so I knew what to expect. To be honest, my expectations were low; I was just thinking it'd be a Star Tours-type simulator), but everyone in our group thought the ride was great overall. There's a lot happening in those little pods, and so it's easy to get distracted from the screen by trying to figure out which button to push or which lever to pull. Although we all tried both pilot and gunner roles, two of us preferred gunner as you can really just sit back and let the ride do its thing while mashing random buttons. The ride's more violent than expected, but it was never uncomfortable. You really 'feel' the hits and walls that your spaceship slams into. It's a pretty confounding system once you're inside the ride and it's hard to tell exactly where you'll end up. On our first ride, we did indeed exit into an elevator. The pod doesn't seem to actually rotate in this case as you see people both enter and exit from the same place. We also entered the pod through a slightly different path towards the rear of the final holding room (the one where you form your groups). Exiting via the elevator put us in a series of seriously-long hallways (like, three of them). When we rode it the second time, we entered the ride from a different position in the grouping room and exited through a significantly shorter corridor. Both rides were about the same for us in terms of intensity, but I swear the non-ADA pod was less aggressive and also seemed to have issues returning to its stationary state (the animatronic character from the ride's entry showed up on a screen and kept talking for a few minutes. There was also a weird sense of rotation that matched a rotation taking place on the screen that I don't think we saw on our first ride (affirming that the ADA pod doesn't seem to move). One thing that did catch our interest was the slightly-disorienting jet bridge section midway through the queue. None of us could figure out what was going on, but we all agreed that something was happening in that corridor to make it feel disconcerting. My assumption is that it's a combo of ambient noise and a slightly-angled floor with some slightly squishy metal underneath. It really does feel like you're on a platform that's shifting a bit. I was skeptical of the Guardians of the Galaxy reboot from Tower of Terror (in part because the original was just fine, and it's a bit of a stretch to turn a specifically-architectural hotel into a space ship (or whatever it's supposed to be). However, it looked great overall. The ride seems less about suspense now and more about volume, quick scene changes, and much quicker movement (it launches up the tower and starts dropping almost immediately). It seems like the new version was designed with a more teen audience in mind, and it worked well. For this particular demographic, it makes more sense than the Twilight Zone — which, I'm guessing, doesn't carry nearly as much cultural purchase today as raccoons, robots, and pew-pew-pew effects. (NB: for me, the original Twilight Zone was more effective; better suspense and a more coherent plot. The teen-appeal of this version, it seems, is that it feels like watching a bunch of Michael Bay movies in which the narrative is "many things explode + robots.") The reboot of California Screamin' was a bit baffling. Again, not knowing the film at the center of the reboot might be to blame (a babies theme?) It's still a great coaster though, which I'm guessing is what most people are there for. Fun day overall. The park felt busy, and we didn't get to ride a few favorites due to super-long waits (the Cars Land ride for example), but we'd ridden everything on past visits, so skipping rides wasn't a big deal. Space Mountain, I'm convinced, is still one of the best coasters in CA. It had a Star Wars theme to it this time around, too (Star Wars is enjoying a major theme park revival, it seems!) While impressive during the day, the lighting at night adds much more contrast to the various spaceships to set them off from the landscape (which is otherwise kind of similar in color). The rock design isn't quite as sublime as the Cars Land rock design, but it seems to be going for a different effect. There's some good forced perspective in the spikier bits and a particularly enthusiastic group we chatted with later in the night pointed out a number of hidden details about the place (such as two rocks that appear to be kissing when viewed from a particular angle — the top right of this image.) Some kind of BBQ machine thing, it seems. A lot of the details were a bit lost on our group, but I suspect that some passing familiarity with the various films would help guests make sense of such things. For non-Star Wars fans, there's still a lot to take in and appreciate. The first indoor queue section of the ride. The longest we waited was 45 minutes, and the time flies by as there's plenty to look at. The ride was very-well developed in terms of moving people through as steadily as possible. One of the various spaceships scattered around. Star Wars fans will probably understand the nature of the environment more, but it kind of looked like a combination of a junkyard and a medina. The sound design was striking, with lots of panoramic effects throughout.

There was nothing edible at all in the park when I visited a couple of years ago, and the area seemed to be predominantly fast food / gas station food. I'd plan alternatives well in advance if possible.

Dropped by the park for a couple of hours today. It was mobbed with most rides running 60-odd minute waits. Ghost Rider was showing 110 minutes on the usual queue apps, but I can’t imagine it was actually that long. Operations have been really solid on it lately with a ton of staff in the station. They also seem to have fixed that final brake run issue (meaning they’ve turned half the brakes off) and the train is flying through the course these days. It’s hitting the mid-course turnaround as fast as ever and yet none of the roughness has returned. Anyhow, the single rider line was open for a few hours today and nobody was in it. I got straight on five times in a row for a sweet little marathon. Returned at 5pm for more rides, but single rider had shut down. Xcelerator had a gnarly-looking line, as did Hang Time. Silver Bullet was closed, so I rode Supreme Scream a few times then bailed. (Supreme Scream is a bit like a Windseeker to me — more relaxing than scary). Also, a quick hats-off to ride ops and industry workers everywhere as I swear it must take Herculean effort to put up with some of the GP’s antics during the summertime!

Nice report! It's an interesting little park for sure. When I visited, the weather was grim (scorching heat and hideous humidity), so the place was fairly empty. Lightning Run was running one train then as well so throughput was miserable. My visit was quick as I split the day between Kentucky Kingdon and Holiday World (I found that you can easily do both as long as you have the stamina and you're okay with rushing, and I managed to get a ton of rides on both parks' major coasters). I'm guessing you did the same? Speaking of rough, that triple/up down section of Storm Chaser you mentioned was such a bizarre design choice. I liked parts of the ride, but I'm not as big an RMC fan as others around here, and that section was a good example of what I don't like about their designs. When watching trains pass through, you could see riders slamming back and forth pretty violently. Overall I found it to be a thigh crusher kind of ride, but I still rode it a bunch since there was no line. Thunder Run was my favorite coaster there, and the Enterprise was still there when I visited so I rode that a bunch of times as well. T3 was my first SLC and, yup, it was bad. The ride itself wasn't as unpleasant as I expected, and I found it less of an endurance test than some of the park's other rides. But it was the seats and restraints were horrible; the ride's gs forced the lap bar down so tight that it cut off circulation. This was made much worse by the fact that the train sat on the brake run for over a minute. It was like the Skyrush effect, only worse. Looking forward to the next installment, and these little cheap-flight visits are great!

You find it mediocre? Why? What do you consider a good drop tower? Not trolling, genuinely curious. More of a technicality than a hard-line position to be honest. It's not like I spend the drop meditating on how it could be better, but, for a while, I couldn't figure out why the drop itself never did that much for me until some folks here explained it. S&S towers (like Supreme Scream) seem to have tame drops — which I prefer, as I'm not a fan of violent or overly-aggressive airtime. ARM / Larson drops seem to be the most intense, in part because there's no pre-drop warning. However, what also makes them more intense is that they hit maximum velocity almost immediately (weight of ride vehicle?) Drop of Doom picks up speed as it drops, so the initial release feels almost buffered. I think, for me, the ride's all intimidation — height, shaky tower, open restrains — and when the drop hits, there's always a feeling of "I was freaked out about that?"

I have a totally irrational fear of the Drop of Doom track peeling off the tower like something out of a Road Runner cartoon. I love S&S drop towers; I even find them relaxing. But Drop of Doom — despite being a mediocre drop — really taps into my anxiety. The openness of the restraints combined with the general wobbliness of the tower still freaks me out. It must be a nightmare task to get that thing out of there. They can't really Jenga it because of how much other stuff's close by, so I assume they'd have to dismantle it from top to bottom. They'd be better off slapping a ride onto it and using the construction as a way to develop some new kinds of reinforcement.

I'm not too up on the films or the narrative, but it seems like this is a dino vs dino battle of some kind? It might have been cool to have a couple of "losing" dinos where the old car-fall scene was — maybe the carcass of that shark from the aquarium scene suddenly surfaces or, better yet, a dino carcass falls from above and lands next to the boat as it passes (followed by a victory snarl). That'd make it a different kind of "dead zone" at least!

True. Might be a good time to visit. That last one was gnarly!

Well, I suppose that's possibly because their whole business is about putting things on screens. As silly as it sounds, that might factor into the logic of why so many of their attractions are overrun by screens. I'm not sure what to make of their obsession with squirting guests with water, though.

Really? Is that somewhat confirmed? (At least in terms of enthusiast confirmations?) Yes, from both several riders (myself included) and employees working the ride. Thanks! I've never noticed that and will have to keep an eye out for it. I've ridden it a ton of times now, generally sit facing the control booth, but the ride experience seems completely random and different each time. I haven't been paying attention it seems!

I love that, and I wish I'd have known on my last visit!

The part before the final drop? It looks like they added a couple of new dinosaurs in there. There's one that I recognize from the last version — the one with a hosepipe in it. Squirtysaurus.

Yikes, they really did a number on it. It looks like they also took the pre-lift scenes out and replaced them with . . . nothing? What a shame. They could have at least stuck a looping video of the old falling car prop as a kind of reminder of what the ride once was.

Well, aside from in their promo shots that is. Hands Up!