Capitalize

Performing outside its limits? I think a lot of it has to do with the bare minimum amount of work it has been receiving maintenance-wise over the years. I said that I can understand from a financial standpoint why they would want to trim the ride, however from my perspective as someone who simply wants to visit the park and enjoy the ride, I don't like it. Decisions can be made for the park's interests, and guests can find fault in those if they feel it results in a worse experience at the park. Of course no one had the bright idea of deliberately making the ride worse just to annoy people, the bright idea was save X amount of dollars by needing to replace Y amount of materials over the season. The unfortunate result is a worse ride, which does annoy guests.

Good point on La Ronde, but I think that was more a result of the ride being available to go somewhere and they figured the investment to rebuild would be best suited there. I can't imagine they would have bought a brand new SLC for La Ronde; but who knows, crazy stuff happens.

Which Cedar Fair and Busch parks/rides have the lockers? I know BGT used to have them for all coasters a few years back, but during my last visit that was no longer the policy.

^ My complaint with Grizzly is predominately that nearly all the woods in the interior of the ride by the turnarounds are now gone this season. It has performed on par with past seasons, thankfully.

It operated for nearly two decades now under old management with no trims. All Cedar Fair has done with the woodies at KD is make them worse. It may cost them less money this way, but to me the fact of the matter is all of the rides are worse now and in the end that is all that matters from a guest's standpoint.

Given that the old management brought in little more than mandatory lockers and hideous ads plastered all over the parks I find it hard to imagine this could be a bad move...

Ah ok, I didn't realize it opened back in the early 90's. In the past I had always seen the ferris wheel grouped in with the items from the master plan that were actually completed. I love how everyone complains for nearly a decade, "we need something! ANYTHING!" Then rumors start/continue for a spinning coaster and people are going to start to have gripes with it. I would be entirely happy with a Tony Hawk Big Spin coaster at SFA; why? Its what I figured they would eventually receive, if Six Flags continued to operate the park at least. There are no other spinning coasters at the other regional parks close by. Its a relatively small expense and appeals to a large audience. And finally, the park hasn't received anything at all for a freaking decade so take what you can get. A. This would be a coaster, a moderate sized one but still a coaster. B. Why would a park that already owns an inverted coaster receive a second inverted coaster? Let alone a multi-million dollar design that already exists at most of the other area parks (BTR @ SFGAdv, Alpie @ BGW, and Great Bear @ HP)?

Same here, I also got on the kiddie coaster by Nitro at SFGAdv last summer... I felt pretty stupid and all the parent's were looking at me like I was: a. a jerk for riding the ride and making a kid wait longer and... b. dumb for wasting my time riding the ride. But oh well, I got everything else done with re-rides and had plenty of time to kill. And adding to my Zamperla credit whore ways, I recently got on Woodstock Express at Dorney. My fiancee took the front while I rode in the back as only one adult is allowed per car

The ferris wheel was Around the World... now something "new" in Thomas Town. I have no idea what its actual height is, but that is the ferris wheel mentioned.

Cedar Fair is ruining our woodies. No backwards Rebel Yell, removing what little forest was left around Grizzly, trimming Hurler making what was a rough ride that at least had a couple moments of decent airtime into a rough airtime-less piece of junk. Oh well... I305 is awesome so it balances out.

The "Master Plan" should be referred to as the "Master Pipe Dream". I remember hearing rumors about that standup (which people said would be themed to either Mr. Freeze or the Penguin, I forget which), and then once Batwing came in people started to eat their words. I'm sure they'll expand at some point. Just going off of Google Maps, it looks like they have a crap load of land to build on (if they own it), so it shouldn't be a problem, it's just a matter of if/when they do it. The master plan being referred to was a document proposed to the local government that has been widely circulated around the internet for years now. As said it was highly deviated from and at this point practically a decade out of date and completely irrelevant. It was a legit document, though, and at some point a general guide to what the park would be doing.

Nice pictures; I'm going to finally get up to Dorney this June for the first time - very excited.

But if they built a new show stage/stadium there the dreadful noise from Jokers Jinx would drown out the sounds of the show remember?!

I would pay $120 for a pass to ALL Six Flags parks if it was a year I was planning a big trip; but that price would be ridiculous for ONE park unless it included perks like free parking and loads of discounts, I thought in the first place the idea was $120 for a season pass period.

SFA offers season passes and premium season passes - the only difference between them is premium has added benefits and discounts. Other larger parks offer different passes that allow you a few visits over the year rather than unlimited visits, though. EDIT: Just checked out the "play pass" offered at SFGAdv, it has unlimited visits to all parks as well. The "season pass" includes free tickets for friends and other perks.

I too made it to Kings Dominion on Saturday with my fiancee. We didn't take part in the Intimidation events; we just swung by in the morning and early afternoon for a few rides before heading further south to attend the NASCAR race at Richmond International Raceway that evening. It was kind of neat to see some familiar faces from the internet world of coaster enthusiasts, mostly from afar while in line for I305 and Volcano. We got to the park about 15 minutes after opening and went straight back to Volcano. Thankfully the line was still on the smaller side as only the last switchback of line before heading into the mountain was occupied. We waited in all about 30-40 minutes for the front, had a good time. Next we made our way over to Backlot for the first time this season. The line was reasonably short and we were on in the 3rd row after about 15 minutes. As usual this ride gave a nice ride. Next we hit up Anaconda for the first time this year in the middle of the train with only a one train wait. The ride was smooth enough, only real head banging was in the butterfly element. Finally we went to I305. The line was only taking up about half of the que. As we approached the station we noticed guests were allowed to choose their row, including the front and back seats. Since I had yet to get on in the front I figured why not, might as well wait it out now? It was a very long wait. Probably a good 25-30 trains or 45 or so extra minutes. The front was extreme, I could barely keep my eyes open due to the sustained high speeds. This time I learned from my first rides and kept my hands down and on the lap bars during the extreme turns which significantly helped with the snapping and getting thrown around. All in all a great time. I'm glad I waited for the front and got to experience it because I will likely opt for the shorter wait in the back from now on, the line would likely be only 30 or so minutes most the day for the other rows outside the front. After this we were starving and my fiancee was exhausted with the rides for the day so we headed out to Aunt Sarah's Pancake House a few exits North before heading back South to the track to watch the race. All in all a very full and exciting day.

Are you joking, insane or just not thinking? He could have just bought SFA, and not wasted millions on the whole chain to accomplish this. As far as the rest of the SFA fanboys asking how this will affect SFA. Hopefully new management understands that now is the time to raise Season Pass Prices chainwide to $120 or so (including at SFA) to increase profit through valued customers and keep out the riff raff. There is no chance I'm paying over $100 for season passes to any Six Flags park - let alone Six Flags America. Only thing that keeps me coming back to the park every year is the reasonable season passes. BGT offers season passes for the price of a days admission (or did the last time I was there at least) so I don't think that is the whole story, either.

Just to echo others' thoughts - awesome pictures! Really impressive.

^ That could work. I've always felt that doing both KD and SFA in one day was a bit much due to traffic between the two parks unless you didn't mind possibly missing a credit or two. I guess it would depend on how late Friday night you got started... If it was just in the later afternoon and you had a few hours it could work.

They don't need a larger capacity drop tower. Tower of Doom rarely has a line longer than a couple cycles with only two sides running - that's 8 people a cycle - the majority of the summer. When I was operating the ride we would have days where we would literally go 30 or more minutes without a single guest coming up to ride. Given the other issues in the park, a new drop tower is low on any list of things I would like to see. If anything I wouldn't be surprised if we see ToD taken out in the next few years and not replaced by a new drop tower at all. Its going "downhill every year" because the haunted house burned down. SFA doesn't seem to care because before it burned down they became committed to the idea of providing a "family friendly" Halloween event. I would like to see haunted houses and a more scary Fright Fest, but the park decided to go in a different direction. So when/if I want to go to a scary Halloween event in this region I will be going to KD. But I really don't care very much about Halloween events or haunted houses anyways.

I meant it wasn't much of a loss as far as being selfish and wanting to get through the line much faster than the regular line. There don't seem to be a great deal of groups in odd numbers where one guest doesn't have someone to ride with, so I'm not sure it made much of a difference all in all, even on opening weekend.

With these details coming out its hard for me to not react with disgust towards the general lack of responsibility towards upholding safe operating procedures by Disney. Standard operating procedures exist and are implemented for a reason. I understand its easy to take it for granted that things will be done right and safely because that's how its been night after night, month after month, year after year and its easy to allow yourself to let some rules or procedures slide sometimes. Something as simple as not taking the time to do the cross signal to the operator, for example. But in this kind of of work - dealing with massive machines traveling with great speed and force - all it takes is a millisecond, one small mistake or miscalculation for things to go terribly wrong. The mother certainly should be in for a good payday based on what has come out so far, it seems.

The single rider line was barely faster than the regular line during my visit, so it doesn't really seem to be too much of a loss there...

Nah... I think KI is better off with it being a giant lawn ornament personally...

Some parks have been selling "mall brand" clothes for years... I personally don't see what the big issue is or why it would come off as a bad idea to anyone. A nice air conditioned place to sit down for a while, maybe drink a bit of coffee, maybe shop a bit between the existing experience of standing outside in the sun all day waiting in lines. I just realized that with Q-Bot this an even better idea. You're waiting for your time to ride a certain ride? Why not kill some time in the nice air conditioned lounge where you can buy clothes and drinks from us?