Physical

Does anybody know when Cedar Point opens up applications for 2018 ride ops? I want to get back into working in the industry (and out of the 9-5 I have currently) but there's no listing on the cedar fair job site for any ride-related jobs (yet)

It was great seeing you man! I feel like we always run into each other at parks. I only work at GADV a few times a month so I guess it was good timing! (P.S. The boost we used on our ride was the last boost for the 2017 season, we ran out of boosts for the day after that one lol) That's awesome to hear, I'll add it to the list of "lasts" I've experienced. The only other "last" I have, is the last ever ride on the Screamin' Swing at Dorney Park.

First for me was Carolina Cyclone at Carowinds. It was a horrible, head-banging trainwreck of a coaster.

You rode the El through Kensington. Imagine that at night. As someone who lives in Kensington, I'm offended (but seriously, fuck Kensington, I woke up to find my car like this recently. This neighborhood sucks and there's zero reason to come here if you don't live here.)

Made a trip out to the park with my sister on Sunday, absolute perfect conditions for a trip! Cold, but not bad as long as you were moving around and not sitting in one area. The only ride that wasn't operating for most of the day was Kingda Ka, we managed to hit everything except Ka and Zumi in about 1.5 hours, nothing more than station waits for anything, practically had the park to ourselves. Ka did end up opening around 4 if I remember correctly, so we hit that and Zumi before heading over for a ride on El Diablo and one last-for-the-season ride on Toro. The operator on El Diablo was absolutely fantastic, gave some fantastic cycles, was very personable, handled guest interaction so well, I'd have thought we were at a Disney park. Cannot say enough great things about him! We ended up closing the night out on El Toro, around 5:30, it was dark already, I was pretty pleased to get one last night ride on The Bull, and even more pleased to see Ryan was on loading attendant! We met a fellow enthusiast (that also happens to live in Philly!) while waiting for our first lap, had a quick chat with Ryan then headed around for #4 of the day. Ryan joined us for our last ride of the night, and much to our pleasure, Ryan used his insider influence to get us a "boosted" lap (For those that don't know, that's when the lift doesn't slow down at the top, completely batshit crazy airtime down that first drop) Huge thanks to Ryan for another year of awesome operations on Toro, and the boosted lap! Huge thanks to Sean on El Diablo for being hilarious while putting huge amounts of people through the ride, while giving everyone a cycle they won't forget. I'll be out for Holiday in the Park for sure, hope to see some of you guys there!

Had a /fantastic/ time today, as always. PPP (and Knoebels in general) is always a great time. Props to the flyers ops for letting us get away with murder! They were only slowing it down if you were in danger of colliding your tubs.

:: shudders:: -- I'll stick to the Wawa... They just put in a new wawa on Cedar Crest, literally within earshot of the park. If that one is too busy there's one on Hamilton Boulevard about 2 miles away.

Even if you're not a fan of drop towers, Demon Drop is awesome. Don't let the size fool you. Edit: oh, I misread and thought you haven't been here before. Still... Demon Drop is awesome I'm totally biased, but after over 300 rides on Demon Drop, it's still my favorite drop tower. It's the only tower I've ridden that gives a true sensation of freefall. Just leave some room in your harness, the more the better! (Not to mention the view from the top is incredible)

I can actually offer a bit of insight as to why the holding brake has been disabled this season! So, despite no longer working at the park, I have a few friends that still work there. After visiting earlier this season, I ran into a higher-up buddy of mine, I asked him about it, and here's what he had to say: "Possessed has always put a power strain on the grid here, especially during the summer months when everyone in the area is running their A/C. The past few season, the ride has been getting stuck just outside of the station, when you'd occasionally get a "false launch." When the train would launch, for about 10 feet, then slam to a stop just outside of the station. Those are caused by power grid issues, where the ride detects a large dip in current, causing it to enter an E-Stop condition. (Aside: This is also why the ride programming has a timer, you cannot dispatch the ride without first waiting 75 seconds. Both to allow cooling on the LIM's, and for the capacitors to build up power) After disabling the holding brake, we've had a /lot/ less issues than we've had in previous seasons." So there you have it folks, Allentown doesn't provide enough power to run the holding brake!

I'm actually in line for Rod right now, it /appears/ to be open but I've only seen one cycle in 30 minutes.

Granny's is always packed. When we were there for opening weekend, we waited 10 minutes at Panda Express. Friend decided to go to Granny's and waited nearly an hour. That was a dead day too, 10 minute wait for everything (provided it didn't break down)

Overall it seems like a pretty good opening weekend. I was out at the park with SkyToro and another buddy of ours, light crowds most of the day, got to ride pretty much everything we wanted to, except Superman, but that's a story for later. Toro was running surprisingly well, but it was pretty warm yesterday. We ended up waiting in a 15 minute queue for Ka for just over an hour, due to multiple breakdowns. It seemed like they'd go down for 10 minutes, come back up, send one train, then go down for another 10 minutes. Really... strange maintenance procedure if you ask me. No test trains, just "It's up get on and go" After that we decided to hit up Superman, which was just reopening as we approached the queue. We get most of the way through the queue and boom, stopped on the lift. We're like "Ok can't take that long, and the queue is emptying out, this won't be too bad." queue another hour in the station. Seemed there were multiple problems, my favorate of which was a garbage can in the maintenance shed catching on fire somehow. The Six Flags Fire Department (because of course that's a thing) was there and everything. After waiting just over an hour we decided it wasn't worth it, walked down the stairs, and just our luck, ride goes back up as we exit through the flash pass queue. Other than early season teething problems, we had a pretty awesome day.

They had 2 cars during PPP, with the line spilling out into the midway, the single rider line turned an hour plus wait into a literal walk on.

Toro has actually been running extremely well this preseason, even in colder temperatures so hopefully we won't see any saddles this season (The first run of the season may or may not have occurred when it was 39 degrees out and the train may or may not have flown through the course haha I'll say that.) And yes it typically saddles on the last hill into the brake run. It's taller than the two small humps before it so it's the highest hill following the Rolling Thunder Hill. Intamin purposely made the last hill so tall so that the train would slow down naturally into the brakes. Can't wait to see everyone on Saturday! We'll be there on Sunday for our first visit, glad to hear you're still at Toro.

"Oh look, new posts in the Dorney thread" *closes thread*

Echoing this

They're probably not seeing any ROI on the relocated coasters yet, so why bother pumping more money into the park? Just a theory.

All my credits are in North America (More specifically, the USA, even more specifically, the east coast.) So... 19!

Toro's RT hill Any drop on the Phoenix Jack Rabbits double down in the back row.

Thunderhawk at Dorney bites pretty hard. I've learned to brace for it but if you're not prepared, you really get thrown forward.

The more niche the hobby, the weirder the people (generally) Coasters have widespread appeal, but I'd say 98% of the population only goes to their local park once or twice a year, and wouldn't be willing to travel halfway across the country, or even half way across the state, just to ride coasters.

Any idea how crowded SFNE gets during the summer on the weekends? I'm starting a new job and it's going to conflict with my favorite hobby (See: It's a real 9-5 mon-fri instead of some craptastic random hour kitchen job) I've already bought my season passes for the 2017 season so it looks like we're going to have to brave some crowds this summer.

There's absolutely nothing graceful about those rides. Everything is brutal and very industrial, even the appearance of the ride gets a reaction of "I'm not riding that death trap" from most people. I swear Intamin purposefully designed every aspect of that ride to terrify you.

It's the only one left in North America, and one of two left in the Americas. There's only 6 of them operating now if I remember correctly.

I don't close my eyes but the entry to the pretzel loops on Superman clones always makes me go "oh poop" And without fail every time the pretzel loop feels more forceful than I remember.