coneyislandchris

I've heard nothing but good things about the Raptors so far. I narrowly missed out on Wonder Woman when I was down in Texas so I haven't yet tried any of them out. I will be hitting up CGA in mid-April and hopefully be able to get a chance to try out Railblazer beforehand, but regardless, I am very excited about this! Can't wait to get rides on it. Here's hoping it's up and running by June, fingers crossed.

So, I ended up splurging a little bit, since I'm fully expecting this west coast trip my son and I are taking to be a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing, and we are staying at the Grand Californian for four nights. I know that since we're staying on property, we get the Magic Morning benefit where we get one hour early entry to the parks. I also know that the hotel has its own dedicated gate into DCA. What I'm not sure on so far is how this affects us trying to get a boarding group in the mornings. We're gonna be shooting for it every single day we're there. If we are scanned in at DCA through the hotel gate, will we be able to use the app to get a boarding group while we're actually IN DCA, or will we have to backtrack and get scanned into DL instead before the app allows us to try and reserve a group?

I might be the only enthusiast who actually preferred Hoosier Hurricane over Cornball Express. To be honest, it was a solid out-and-back coaster, but that setting -- traversing over the water, especially that big first drop where it looks like it's gonna plunk you right in the lake! -- elevated it to sublime for me. But just rewatching Robb's video yesterday with the kids brought back a lot of good memories from our time there. That being said, it made my oldest sad that those rides are going away, and my youngest sad that she'll never get a chance to try them out, having been all of 2 years old when the big kiddo and I visited. I really hope that someone will swoop in to save either the park itself or the coasters, but I'm not holding my breath. After all, picking the bones for meat is just what these investment groups are known to do...

Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed to hear this news as well. This was one of the stops on the ten-day amusement park road trip my son and I took back in 2017, and we really enjoyed our time there. But looking back on it, even then, the park was already in a state of disrepair and customers were few and far between. On the day we visited, I would estimate that there were maybe 20 to 25 paying customers through the front gate. In the middle of summer. Not great and I'm not surprised they aren't continuing to operate with that kind of attendance. I was kind of hoping we would get a chance to revisit them this year, as for Christmas, we had purchased season passes to Sahara Sam's, an indoor waterpark in mid-Jersey also owned by Apex. Admission to the Apex amusement parks was also included with that. Here's hoping someone swoops in to save the place. It definitely had Knoebels-lite potential for being out in the middle of Indiana.

Not sure why they bothered to remove the flat rides from their Fast Lane. IIRC they all had their own dedicated entrances so I'm not sure what purpose this serves.

Any guesstimates as to when this might open to the public? I'm probably thinking a little too wishfully for it to open mid-April, aren't I?

Big smile on my face reading that entire report and seeing the photos. Dollywood at the holidays might honestly be my favorite place on Earth, even more so than Knoebels in autumn. Fantastic park with a fantastic set of rides. Lightning Rod might not be my number one, but I agree that night rides on it are breathtaking. The kiddo and I got a front row ride at closing the last time we visited with only one other person on the train at the time, and it was a life-changing experience, being hauled like a bat out of hell through those backwoods and feeling completely out of control. I love it so much. <3

^ I don't know what you guys are complaining about. That's hilarious and over the top and I love it. I sincerely hope it happens.

Yeah, that's the tradeoff we had to make. I've already pulled him out of school once for an extended Christmas vacation already, so I'm pretty much limited to the spring break days he has off, which in NY is from April 9th through the 17th. We're gonna be hitting up as many parks and attractions as we can while we're out there because this is most likely going to be a once-in-a-lifetime thing for us.

Yeah, it's definitely a nice change of pace compared to the acts we get at Six Flags Great Adventure, where it's pretty much, uh... reggaeton, Christian, reggaeton again, some teen Instagram influencer that's trying to kickstart a recording career, and a random wrestling show. Maybe a country act if we're "lucky". :/ Also, Luis Fonsi is most well known for "Despacito" thanks to it being a crossover radio hit throughout the states (gee, thanks Bieber), but the man is legitimately talented with a 20+ year career and ten full-length albums. If Latin pop isn't your thing then yeah, steer clear, but it's definitely going to draw the folks who love and appreciate the music. I'm a pretty big fan of EDM, not a big fan of Marshmello, but there's no denying he's a huge name that's going to draw an absolute ton of kids out when he plays. But yeah. From everything I've heard he's an utter jerk IRL.

For what it's worth, it appears they will be running Fantasmic on that Monday and Tuesday, as you are able to reserve the dinner packages for them on those dates. I'm hoping that's the case when I visit two weeks later on the 13th-15th of April; they haven't yet released those dates or reservations. (Yeah, I ended up springing for the three day tickets after all. It ended up actually being cheaper for my son's ticket for 3 days instead of 2 by like a couple of bucks.)

They played Busch Gardens Williamsburg a few years back, when they were still doing the free summer concert series. Was definitely a nice bonus even though we were mainly focused on the rides!

Glad to hear you had a great time! Sounds like you got super lucky with your Shellraiser rides. I've gotten the good trains twice, and the not-so-good ones twice, and the not-so-good ones are definitely instant headache-inducers. I'm still waiting for the waterpark next door to open up before I make a return visit, since that place just looks insane. Shame they're missing the cold season right now, I'm sure they'd be getting some crazy business otherwise.

^ That's what you'd think, but specifically at Great Adventure and at Nitro, that's not necessarily the case. The first time we visited last year, my son had just hit the 54" mark and we had done almost every other 54" ride in the park, including Kingda Ka, Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, and Bizarro. Measured up at the beginning of the queue. No problem. At the gate, guy comes around with the stick and is like "he's too short". He measures up right at the gate there along one of those height measurement sticks they have posted and he makes it just fine there, but the guy still goes "no, that height guide doesn't matter, he's not touching my stick, so he's too short". The stick was about a half an inch higher than their posted height. They told him to go get measured up at the ride information center on Main Street and get a wristband. Thankfully on the other side of the station, they had another stick at that entrance which he did measure up on and got the thumbs-up. We did end up making a complaint about the height discrepancy on that one stick to guest services that day, but from the sounds of it, it doesn't sound like anything has changed. So that's one thing. The other thing is what I mentioned in my previous post, where even once you get the kid the wristband, they still ask to measure him, even going so far to say "the wristband doesn't mean anything, I need to physically measure him". Okay, no problem, you have a job to do and you gotta do it, I get that. At this most recent visit for us, it had been like five months since the last time we rode Nitro, and he had grown even more, so I felt confident he's not going to get bounced. And sure enough he measured up without any problems. So then why does a second person come by to re-measure him after the first person gives him the thumbs-up? At that point, it just gets ridiculous. And I'm not surprised to hear that there were other parents having the same problems. And it's always only for Nitro. I'm just glad that by the time the parks open up again this season, he's tall enough that he hopefully won't have to deal with this crap again going forward. (But now I get to go through it all over again with my shortie-pie of a daughter, who's turning 5 soon and is currently hitting 44" rides.)

I mean, it's hard to get really excited from that promo video because you know that's not at all what the experience is going to be like. Catchy song, though.

Looks like an amazing time! Great photos and writeup! And yes, Senor Coconut is the bomb.

Are there currently any other single-time-only reservations on the Gold or Platinum flash passes? The last time I visited, X2, Full Throttle, Superman, and Twisted Colossus all were at the 1x reservations.

I'm a petty, petty man.

I've stopped in the Lola Star boutique exactly once, and that was to pick up some sunscreen on a bright sunny day. That small tube of sunscreen, probably no more than 3 ounces, was $13.50. I'm not saying that a rent increase of that size is okay at all, but if they're gone from the boardwalk, I'm not going to shed tears over it.

Jesus Christ, well, that explains why the Nitro team was being super anal about height checks yesterday. My kiddo already had been measured at the beginning of the day and had a green 54" wristband on, and the person at the gate made him take off his winter hat and hoods to measure up again... then after they gave him the thumbs up and we were about to board, someone ELSE walked up and said they needed to do the same thing. I get the safety requirements but at that point it was a little overkill. Yeah it was a good day overall for us too. We started off the day with a four-ride mini Batman marathon (the kiddo sure does love his inverts), then over to Nitro just in time to miss Bill & Boldy. Got some lunch at Garden State Grill which has been honestly pretty reliable all season. Nothing mindblowing but decent enough. Hit up a number of flats like Houdini, the Teacups (with extra bonus Trans-Siberian Orchestra soundtrack!), the carousel, and Twister. One ride apiece on Superman and Green Lantern. (Glad to hear you had a good ride, mine was like getting trapped in a car wreck. But the kiddo loves it so what can I do...) Then back over to Nitro for a mini-marathon where we briefly caught up with Bill and Boldy for a minute before heading back out because damn it got bitter cold once that sun went down. Great way to end the season and ring in the New Year! Roll on 2020 and here's hoping Jersey Devil goes up quickly in the off-season.

Disneyland - 2001 Walt Disney World- 1985 Tokyo Disneyland - Not yet Hong Kong Disneyland- Not yet ️ Shanghai Disneyland - Not yet ️ Disneyland Paris - Not yet

Hasbro owns the rights to that old fantasy trading card game, Magic: The Gathering. Wonder if they'll leverage that for any theming, or if that's a little too obscure for the average park-goer.

My son and I are going to be heading out to the west coast during the week and a half he has off from school in April, and we're probably going to make it his first visit to a Disney park. I'm thinking two days mid-week, one per park, and getting the MaxPass both days to minimize downtime. Obviously we'll be a little bit too early for the new Marvel stuff, but that's okay. Any recommendations on how to best plan out our time here? Must dos for us will be the coasters, the Haunted Mansion, and the Star Wars stuff. Oh, and side note, will any SoCal waterparks aside from Great Wolf Lodge be open at that point in the year, or are we out of luck there?

It appears that sometime over the past week or so, what was left of the park was bulldozed and demolished. For those of you into park destruction porn, you can click through to this page on patch.com which has an embedded video of the demo going on. Does anyone know if their Crossbow coaster ever found another home?

Goddamn, that is a beautiful facade.