coneyislandchris

^ Aw man, Canobie, you were in town yesterday? Shame I missed you, would have loved to meet up. The kiddo and I rode Cyborg yesterday once the sun went down, and honestly, the light package on it is what makes the ride. During the daytime, it's meh, but once it gets dark and those lights kick in, it's completely disorienting. We ended up riding two in a row and yeah that was a mistake. A fun mistake, but a mistake to be sure. I know I've been doing this for the past few years now but it never fails to amaze me just how well Batman runs in cold weather. That ride consistently kicks my ass and with the freezing air whipping my face it's even better. Looking forward to heading back on New Year's Day and getting in the annual Nitro marathon. The kiddo's looking forward to joining for his first time this year as well.

I haven't been to this particular Great Wolf, but all the others I've visited (Poconos, Williamsburg, Concord), the only body slides they've had have been as part of the Fort McKenzie kiddie play structure. They're usually pretty basic though and never particularly fast.

Boo! I mean, I'm sure there's SOME legal reason why, but as a resident of NY... yeah, boo. But otherwise, for everything they announced, cool upgrades and I'm sure it's definitely going to make a QOL impact around the park. It's not really driving me to get back out there, but tbh, I'd be getting back out there anyway so I'm not exactly the target for this.

Outlaw Run in the dark is a life changing experience. I used that same exact phrase to describe last ride of the night on Lightning Rod, in the front row, with an otherwise empty train. Life changing. But my actual last coaster I rode, to get this back on topic... uh... was Grover's Alpine Express at BGW Christmas Town on Friday night. (And technically the only coaster we rode during that visit! Go figure.)

Same. I've ridden it every time I've been to Dollywood over the past three years and this last time was significantly the worst experience we've had on it. Previously the layout was more than enough to overlook the mild amount of rattling you'd get from a woodie with character like that, but this time, it was just shaky to the point of unenjoyability. I'm not saying I hope they RMC it -- that's my kid who's an unabashed RMC fanboy -- but I definitely think they need to work on it and maybe replace some wheels on the trains, because it felt like we were riding on octagons.

^^^ ^ I rode Thunderhead with my son twice last weekend, and no... it's pretty damn rough and tough to enjoy. Very rattly, very shaky, very headache inducing. Not just my opinion, either. My kid wants nothing to do with the ride at all anymore. He was telling anyone who'd listen that he wants it to be torn down or RMCed.

Fresh news out of IAAPA, it sounds as if there will be a SECOND new coaster coming to Coney Island for 2020! Well, technically, coming to Deno's. Even more technically, a kiddie coaster. Even more specifically, a Visa Micro Coaster. Not sure if this is planning on replacing their current kiddie coaster or simply an addition to their existing rides.

Not to be that guy that bumps a thread after over a year of inactivity, but it appears that some progress is being made on this project. Their website just recently got updated with a lot more detail about what to expect on site, and they've released a walkthrough tour video of the property. They haven't yet officially announced an opening date, but they are beginning to accept bookings for the middle of June of next year. Prices are listed at $289 per night for your basic room and $489 for a deluxe themed suite. I know they gotta make money after sinking a ton into the construction of this place, but those prices for that area seems a little too optimistic to me.

Great photos and updates! Thanks for posting and looking forward to more! One quick note: Nebulaz already opened at Luna Park during the summertime, and they gave it the name "Clockworkz" for this installation. I'm all in on the hamster wheel car for the SBF spinners, but I'm kinda thinking that it's only an eventuality that they're going to make a variant that spins both horizontally and vertically in the future. And I for one can't wait for that glorious vomit-coercer.

Holiday in the Park at Great Adventure this weekend. Then next weekend we're heading a little upstate to check out a new indoor waterpark & resort called The Kartrite.

I believe they stopped offering that altogether either this season or the previous season.

The camera policy to which he was referring was the fact that several years ago, the park was banning people from even bringing in any sort of standalone DSLR camera. And depending upon the day and the security guard, you could get any sort of reasoning for it, such as "no professional photography allowed", to "no interchangeable lenses", to "no lenses longer than three inches". This has no bearing whatsoever on phones with cameras, and of course doesn't change the fact that it's still against park policy to ride with phones out. Also, even though I've seen those shots posted elsewhere on the net over the past few weeks (they really get spread around on the socials, no?), they are still some breathtaking photos. I still don't understand how those Toro hills lined up that perfectly.

Honestly, I'll be surprised if they get everything up and running in time for next weekend... see my response to Canobie below. This is what the crowd looked like from the top of Shredder at 3:15 PM yesterday: Yup. Crowded. A lot of the pathways between rides were just slammed and crammed. One of the ride supervisors had mentioned that they weren't expecting this much in the way of crowds yesterday so everyone was kind of caught off guard. It sounds like it was the largest test of their infrastructure that they've had to date. So, when we drove in, they had completely unmanned toll booths with the gates raised, and cones placed in the parking structure to block anybody from going above the first level of parking. There was still a ton of empty spaces on that first level (the structure is massive, after all), but if I were to speculate, I wouldn't be surprised if paid parking makes its reappearance in the future once more stuff starts opening and the mall starts drawing even more of a crowd. Sandy's Bucking Bronco was completely blocked off and had tarps over it. They did have the lights turned on for it, so it was drawing a number of people in its direction, all of whom were disappointed to find it unopened. Timmy's Halfpipe Havoc was testing intermittently throughout the day, but every time I saw it cycling, it was only shooting the vehicle back and forth through the circuit. None of the seats were rotating while it was in motion. Slime Streak was definitely open during opening weekend, but when I had spoken with the folks at the ticket booth inquiring about the possibility of some of the rides reopening during the day, they had mentioned that Slime Streak had been down for the entire week and there wasn't a likelihood of it reopening on Saturday. Sure enough, at no point throughout the day did we see anybody working on it or any trains being cycled. That was pretty disappointing for my daughter, as it was going to be the only coaster she would have had a chance at riding all day -- she came up just a sliver shy of the stick at Shredder, even though she had measured up at 44" at Great Adventure one week prior. Invader Zim had all the bumper cars parked in the corner all day with no testing and no movement at any point. Dora's Sky Railway ended up getting stuck in the middle of the track for a few hours. They were eventually able to reopen it much later in the evening. Legends of the Hidden Temple had the kids' course closed due to, from what I understand, the one attendant who was running it having a personal emergency and having to leave, and them not being able to find someone to take over to keep it open. The larger part of the course ended up being closed off early around 7:30 PM, a good two and a half hours before the park was scheduled to close. A few more random thoughts from the park, now that we've had a night's sleep: Kraang Prime Pandemonium is easily the best cycle out of any of these Midi Discoveries that I've ever been on. It ran for what felt like a good three minutes, with tons of flips, a lot of speed, and three genuine upside-down hangtime moments. It was a strong contender for best flat ride in there, tied with... Jimmy Neutron's Atom Smasher. This was the first one of these Chance Unicoaster models that we've been on, and it feels like a worthy successor to the old Looper flats like Knoebels has. A lot easier to get flips on, for sure, as it's all controlled by a joystick. We had a ton of fun on this one, and had the wait not been nearly as long as it was, it'd be one of those ones we'd rush around to get rerides on. Aang's Air Gliders is a pretty good Air Race, marred by kind of poor operations -- they were running one cycle every ten to fifteen minutes. No wonder this had a line spilling out the queue. When we finally got on, one of the ride ops asked me, no joke, five times if I was sure I wanted to keep my glasses (with strap) on. Even after showing him the strap. Even after explaining that they weren't going anywhere. Maybe just focus on checking everyone's restraints? *sigh* Once the sun went down, it got really, REALLY dark inside the park. This isn't too terrible when you're dealing with rides that have awesome light packages (shout out Shellraiser!), but for the kid's Paw Patrol playground area? There were no lights whatsoever inside this fenced off area and from what my wife tells me, it was pretty disgusting in that spot with lots of trash splashed all over and an overwhelming smell of stinky kid feet. Sounds like they should probably try to retrofit it with some additional lights if they plan on keeping it open after dark. In fact, the trash problem was something that we had noticed elsewhere in the park, too. Towards the end of the night, when we were getting our last ride of the day on Shellraiser, the platform up at the top was filled with piles of trash from people eating and drinking while waiting in line. With no trash can up at the top, I'm not surprised that they just left them sitting out, but it was pretty unclean and even caused my son to exclaim "WHO'S BEEN LITTERING?!?!". I don't want to come off sounding like we had a horrible time at the park. We didn't. We went in with low expectations knowing that it was still part of the preview weekend and that there were going to be issues. The crowds were unexpected but manageable. I'm not rooting for this park to fail, and I don't think it will. But I think they definitely have a long way to go to get this up to speed because at the current moment, the experience they are offering is not worth the price they're charging, especially not when the prices are about to go up. I'm hoping that they can make some improvements in the areas where they're needed, from ride reliability to general cleanliness and order, and I'm hoping when we make a return trip that a lot of these issues are addressed. As far as making a return trip, we definitely will be coming back, because at the end of the night, we went over to guest services. I came out and admitted that I had made a mistake when purchasing the tickets for my family, as we had bought an "All-Access" ticket for my daughter, and she ended up not being tall enough to ride Shredder, which would have been the only All-Access ride she would have been able to get on. The customer service rep immediately offered us a set of coupons good for 50% off any future ticket purchases, good for any date through one year from today. This was more than we were expecting to receive from them, and we thankfully gave them some appreciation and were on our way back to the car. However, I took a look at the coupons, and the expiry date printed on them said "11/08/2019"... after going back and pointing this out, the same CSR told us to hold on, came back, and gave us a fresh set of coupons with expiry dates of 10/27/2020. Except, they were 100% off coupons. This was definitely not necessary but it was a nice step to see them go above and beyond to try and ensure that we left the park happy, and we'll be looking forward to visiting again in the future, hopefully once more of American Dream is open. The Dreamworks Waterpark looks amazing from what we've seen through the windows, and they're also advertising an Angry Birds Mini Golf course coming soon that should be pretty entertaining. A few more random photos from throughout the day (tbh, taking photos was kind of the last thing on my mind, sorry!); While we were waiting in line for Shredder, my wife won this Nickelodeon slime button for correctly answering a bit of 90's Nick trivia. The question was "Which group performed the original theme song to the show, All That?". Do you know? The illuminated Nickelodeon blimp shining like a beacon in the darkness. The shiny, red, CANDYLIKE button. What more needs to be said? It's all an impressive mess of track, to be sure. Good night, Nick Universe!

I know I said I wasn't planning on coming out here until the waterpark opened, but what can I say. We were in the area and we decided to check it out. It was crowded AF in the afternoon with most everything having a line spilling out the entrance of the queue. At one point, they managed the quintfecta of having every single roller coaster down simultaneously. Two of them, Shredder and Shellraiser, came back up eventually while the other three never ran at all. Other rides down for extended periods of time or the whole day included Invader Zim, Legends of the Hidden Temple, and Dora's Sky Train. Shredder is pretty amazing as far as spinning coasters go. Shellraiser, we got four rides in total. Two of them were incredible and breathtaking. Two of them were headache inducing. I don't know what it is, but train #5 is rattly beyond the point of tolerance (and I'm honestly pretty tolerant of bad rides). Hope they can get it fixed soon.

Last year, my Sesame Place platinum passes did, but this may have changed this year. It's kind of hard to keep track of the exclusions and restrictions from park to park. It would be great if there was one single platinum pass/membership that granted the same benefits no matter what your home park was.

Here's the thing, though. American Dream has been advertising the prices during the current soft opening as a "preview period". Maybe if they came out at the beginning and said "hey our normal prices will be $60 on weekdays and $80 on weekends, but during this first month, we're giving all our early visitors a discount", it would be received differently... but pretty much all I hear from the media reporting on it is "they're RAISING prices already!!!!11". Either way, I certainly hope that they have all their certs sorted out by the date they're expecting to start charging $80 per ticket, else they're going to get rightfully hammered.

The Laff Trakk merge point is at the entrance to the funhouse portion of the queue, which if it's full, could be 15-20 minutes before you get to ride. It's not that great of a steal (and not that great of a merge point, but that's par for the course for most of these merges here).

Nice report Bill. I apparently missed you guys by just a day as I was there on Saturday with the family, it was also only our second visit of the season. My daughter hit her 44" height requirement so she's now the newest inductee into the Cult of Skull Mountain. She's only 4 but she's been hardcore into Halloween and spooky stuff since the end of August, so we promised her one more weekend of "bonus Halloween". We bit the bullet and tried out the mazes. Yeah, they were pretty much uniformly terrible, some more so than others. I think the only one we actually really enjoyed was Reflections of the Dead, but that's mainly because we enjoy the mirror mazes. That being said, this was still only the second worst haunt we did all season. Kudos to Bayville Scream Park in Long Island for being the suckiest of the sucks. Favorites were probably a tie between Dorney and the Elysburg Haunted House out near Knoebels (we didn't end up making it out to Kings Island this year, unfortunately). Now that that's over and done with... bring on the hot chocolate! Let's get our Holiday in the Park on!

I'm just speculating on this at this point with absolutely nothing concrete to go off of, but if the Christmas lights are up in Bugs Bunny National Park (hinting that that kiddie area will be open this year), I'm hoping that they expand it just a few steps further, open up the Runaway Mine Train, and open both stations on the Skyway so that it's a one-way journey instead of round-trip. Considering how popular it's gotten every year (I swear it has the longest lines out of any attraction open during HITP), that might help capacity somewhat.

Six Flags Great Adventure this weekend, and maybe once more once Holiday in the Park starts. Then the next big trip is back down to Dollywood immediately after Thanksgiving, probably with stops at Kings Dominion and Busch Gardens on the way down and back.

^ Says someone whose screen name is literally "DoinItForTheFame". Can't help but be reminded of this comic...

Yes, not sure why it isn't listed on the website, but it's called "Invader Zim's Flip & Spin... of DOOM!!", and it's basically your average Spin Zone style bumpers but with the aforementioned gyros. You can see footage of it in action on Youtube. I'm really intrigued about that TBH.

^ I really, sincerely hope that everyone that takes to Facebook to bitch about these $99 Gold Passes "ruining" the park follows through on their threat to cancel their passes. I mean, I know they won't, but it's nice to think about.

I'm taking the Saturday plunge. (And yes I mean that literally, as apparently for some unknown reason they haven't drained the log flume yet; besides, I've always wanted to ride a flume in November.) Since for the majority of Americans spooky season immediately ends at 11:59 PM on October 31st, and then it's Black Friday doomsday prepping time / Hallmark Channel Christmas, I'm hoping that translates into low crowds at the park. But as Bill says, ya never know. Wish me luck.

Well, that's one of three down.