Danrarbc

I know I literally just argued the park doesn't remove many rides just a few weeks ago. But they do remove rides even when they do have a choice. Rush Street Flyer didn't have to go for Fireball - they could have put it elsewhere. I doubt Aero Flyer repairs were expensive given the ubiquitous nature of the ride. They could have kept it and added Skyscreamer if they wanted to. Slingshot didn't have to go and they didn't even replace that with anything. They definitely don't like removing coasters though. Rockin' Roller is the last one to disappear. Jet Scream didn't have to go to make room for Ninja.

Wonderful. AT&T is late for their install. I could be at the park

I'd be there if I didn't have to be at home for fiber installation.

I wouldn't expect The Boss to make this weekend. Watch the temps because it'll have to be warm enough to do test runs. Then it'll need to run a full complement of tests and they probably have to configure the ride's computers to account for the change in length (even if they have a good idea of what the times will be they need testing to ensure it all works out).

Diamond is actually a better deal than I thought it would be. Being able to skip a line and park closer will come in handy on busy days and in Chicago. And with the discount I was able to get for Diamond memberships and double my dining memberships for $2 more than I was paying for five gold and one dining pass. Even if I had still gone the five memberships I would only be paying $10 more for that extra dining membership, while still getting the diamond benefits for all five passes. The dining membership used to be $17 a month.

Some of the work done on American Thunder and slide pieces. Tried to ride Batman before close but it was down that time. The frontwards/backwards split is where the cop car used to be.

It honestly doesn't look like much work is needed on the turn. You can see from Eagle that part of the helix remains in place. Wonder if they'll leave it there.

Quick shots. Still kinda want a continuous rotation Colossus video and a shot of slide parts in the parking lot. And the line split point for Batman. [youtu_be] [/youtu_be]

I'll take pics if I go tomorrow, but with the rain I might not if there isn't a dry window. I'd go Sunday though.

I don't think there will ever be any new development in that area beyond Tidal Wave. It seems like a lot of our additions are really geared toward replacements, which suits the park fine. Best case scenario, Tidal Wave will be replaced with a decent flat or a small family roller coaster. I don’t really feel like the trend is towards largely replacements. The previous 10 years saw two new rides in the waterpark, a coaster that didn’t replace a ride, a coaster that moved in to an area that previously moved (and that area moved in to an empty area itself) so it was new, Spinsanity that is new, Tsunami Soaker that replaced a SBNO of 8 years so I don’t fully consider that a replacement, Boomerang replaced the bumper cars so maybe a bit of a replacement here. Fireball, Justice League and Skyscreamer are the full replacements. Typhoon Twister is the first replacement ride to go in to the waterpark and it is replacing a slide tower that needed TLC or replacement. This seems to work out to about half new and half replacements on the main park additions. Pretty good ratio IMO. Way more than that. I haven't heard what it is in the past few years, but about 5 or 6 years ago, it was something like $2 per cycle. So if it runs an average of 30 cycles per hour, thats $60 just per hour. Times that by an average 10 hour day, thats $600 for one day. Remember, that was the price years ago, so its much higher now. But I do remember being told that Freeze usually racked up a bill of over $1,000 a day. Ahh, had a decimal in the wrong place.

So Freeze is using something like $100 of electricity every day?

I doubt we will ever see anything added to Freeze Island. Anything added to the island would make it more difficult to get equipment to Freeze, such as the two massive cranes need to replace the LIMs on the tower. I agree that I doubt we'd see it. But to me it looks like the cranes approach the spike between the launch tunnel and the track leading to the spike. That would leave much of the area in the space inside the overbank untouched.

Just eyeballing it maybe a Giant Discovery could maybe fit on Freeze Island too. I always wonder what the logistics of operating a second ride on there would be though. I suppose a second bridge is needed. It'd certainly be breathtaking there.

Yeah Riddler's line was insane last year when I went to SFOT. Didn't help I went to Fright Fest on a Saturday though. But even when Titan and New Texas Giant were near walk ons on Sunday Riddler still had a several cycle line. I couldn't pass up perfectly good walk ons for that - but then it reached 2 hour waits again in the evening so I ended up not riding.

A Giant Discovery costs at least 2 million dollars as far as I know. I can't imagine the repairs are going to cost that much. Wouldn't such a switch require more room than there currently is in that location too?

Have the recent retracks and reprofiles been overbuilt to be robust enough to support heavier trains?

Yes. It'd be open daily until at least that point. Not usually. Schools will start the week of August 13th around here and I'm pretty sure they go down to weekends only at that point (or shortly thereafter). I would certainly not count on daily after that week. You're right I had a brain fart. The park relies on high school students too much to stay daily.

No. It wouldn't be open daily at that point.

They close row one for backwards Batman? I don't remember that last time they did it in St Louis.

I don't see any reason to believe it wouldn't be ready for opening day. Despite the drastic change the actual work required isn't going to much different than other retracks and reprofiles the ride has had.

Man the matter of fact way the park just responded that yeh they removed a few hundred feet is funny to me. No big. Using more of the space between Eagle and Boss in that area could have offered up a different finale with similar length but I understand the full on delete of the helix. I'll pour one out for the helix. At least it wasn't Beast helix boring. Edit: Did the math. Over 8% of the length of The Boss is getting cut. Around 15 seconds off the duration.

4631 would officially drop The Boss out of the top ten longest woodies. Curious that they don't have a new duration. American Eagle would move to #10. I'm conflicted.

Ditto. Worlds of Fun is marketing Timber Wolf's helixechtomy, if SFSL was doing this to the Boss I'm sure they'd have said something.

I was wondering the same thing, lol. If I had to guess (this is purely speculation) the ride would at the most lose 100 ft. It might be a bit more than that but surely not much. Which would drop the length to 4,951 ft. Boss is currently the 7th longest woodie at 5,051ft. and the 8th longest is 4,817 ft. So I think Boss will still be sitting comfortably at number seven for at least a few more years. As to tweaking the profile to be more exciting, I'm not sure how well the trains would take something like an over bank turn or a hill in the middle of a turn. That just sounds like something else for those trains to ruin. A proper overbank shouldn't be too strenuous. I think these trains have already been used on in a hill in a turn too but I can't remember the layouts of the two other Gerstlauer-equipped rides I've been on well enough to cite it. Is this just a rumor? ...removing the dbl helix. Certainly. I even suggested this is just a ground up retrack.

I was wondering the same thing, lol. If I had to guess (this is purely speculation) the ride would at the most lose 100 ft. It might be a bit more than that but surely not much. Which would drop the length to 4,951 ft. Boss is currently the 7th longest woodie at 5,051ft. and the 8th longest is 4,817 ft. So I think Boss will still be sitting comfortably at number seven for at least a few more years. As to tweaking the profile to be more exciting, I'm not sure how well the trains would take something like an over bank turn or a hill in the middle of a turn. That just sounds like something else for those trains to ruin. A proper overbank shouldn't be too strenuous. I think these trains have already been used on in a hill in a turn too but I can't remember the layouts of the two other Gerstlauer-equipped rides I've been on well enough to cite it. Edit: It appears another woodie in Missouri is getting an iverbank in place of a helix this year already. http://coasterforce.com/forums/threads/worlds-of-fun-announces-2018-overbank-addition-for-timber-wolf.42167/