Satans Hockey

Golden State Warriors(NBA) just announced they are playing their game vs the Nets behind closed doors. Seattle Sounders(MLS) and Mariners(MLB) just postponed games and the XFL Seattle team is playing behind closed doors. Seems like just a matter of time before more teams do this as well. Starting to wonder if theme parks will be the next thing to end up closing for a bit.

Six Flags just sent out this email... A note to our guests about the Coronavirus from CEO Mike Spanos Dear Valued Guests, The top priority at Six Flags is the safety and the well-being of our guests and team members. Regardless of the environment, this is our top priority every day. We also recognize and understand that you all have concerns about the coronavirus; therefore, I personally want to update you on everything that we are doing to provide a safe environment for you, your family, and our team members. First, we are closely monitoring the latest developments and following the guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Additionally, we have hired a highly regarded infectious disease specialist with more than 30 years of experience as an advisor for this situation. Second, we are taking several actions to help you feel confident about your health and safety while you are in our parks. We have significantly enhanced our cleaning and sanitation efforts on all guest and employee touch points; additionally, we are providing an abundance of anti-bacterial soap in all hand-washing stations, and have placed dozens of alcohol-based hand sanitizers throughout all areas of the parks. Finally, we are frequently cleaning and disinfecting all ride vehicles, queue lines, restrooms, food locations, and employee break areas. In addition to these actions, we have increased hygiene signage throughout our parks and are strongly encouraging guests and employees to practice good hygiene with frequent and rigorous hand washing. We are asking employees who are sick to stay home. If anyone has a fever or becomes sick while at work, we will immediately release them to see their medical provider. We hope that these measures give you confidence that we are taking the necessary precautions in this evolving situation. We remain committed to providing you and your family with friendly, clean, fast, and safe service. For additional information about COVID-19, please read the latest report from the Centers for Disease Control at www.cdc.gov, or your local health department website. On behalf of everyone at Six Flags, thank you for your trust in us. I look forward to seeing you out in our parks. Best regards, Mike Spanos President & CEO Six Flags Entertainment Corporation

I fail to see how this is different from their standard operating procedure... Haha...I'm curious to see how the rest of the sports leagues handle all this. There's been some major concerts and festivals that have been canceled yet there are plenty of sports and concerts still happening, Broadway shows as well. I know we had a lot of media coverage over past things like Sars, swine flu, etc but I really don't remember people ever freaking out this much before.

The San Jose Sharks commented about it, looks like they will end up playing their games without any home fans or end up playing them outside of the Santa Clara area...

I would ride this if it was in a water park or if we could take our shoes off at least lol

Those prices are exactly why I never find the need to go to Coney Island and would much rather head to Great Adventure. Broadway show wise there are plenty of ways to get discounted tickets to many of the shows currently running, even more so if you're a local and can either rush a show or enter numerous lottos.

One of the jungle ride boats took on some water, of course the news is gonna over blow it with the word "sinks" lol, there are some pictures on here... https://heavy.com/news/2020/02/disney-world-jungle-cruise-boat-sinks/ "happened on the Jungle Cruise around 12:30 p.m. local time in Orlando, Florida, which forced the ride to shut down until around 2 p.m. Soon afterward, Twitter user Matthew Vince, who was reported on the ride the filled with water and cause the boat to sink, shared photos of the incident online. Thus far, there have no reports of any passengers being injured."

Great report! Couldn't agree more about how amazing and happy the staff are there. Not that it ruins Orlando or California by an means but after visiting it really does make me wish they were both more like Tokyo, especially the guests who attend the parks lol

I saw people saying this is gonna take 2-3 years, I'm really curious to see what they come up with since that's a lot of time and how much they change. Parts of it definitely feel dated, especially those on board video screens so I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

I'm also waiting until the prices become more reasonable and the rides are all open. I wish they had a pay per ride option just so I could check out the coasters. It's just hard to justify paying $60-70 for me when my season pass that includes free parking and access to every six flags is the same price/cheaper than this place. For now I'll just go to great adventure to get my coaster fix instead.

I liked Knotts a lot but I really think it's a 1 park day. The $15 maxpass is 100% worth it at Disney.

Just empty cars while everyone was running, just was cool to hear and see them go by especially when they didn't have to do it but it would have been awesome taking a quick ride on anything during the race, I would have totally done that lol I know a lot of people for the Disney full marathon make it a challenge to get to animal kingdom quick enough so they can go on expedition everest during the race lol

Same lol Gravedigger is an extremely popular monster truck and monster jam packs out NFL stadiums and smaller arenas all over the country. Monster trucks go pretty fast and have a ton of horse power and can jump things, do flips and wheelies so it's not like the theme is really that far fetched. Kids will love it too.

So I have a bit of a long trip report that I don't know if anyone's actually interested in but I was down there to run Running Universal's first 5k and 10k epic character races over this past weekend. Overall the races were a great success even if they have some things to work out which I expected since it was their first time in Orlando doing it at this scale. They have had 2 race weekends in Hollywood so I'm sure they learned some things from that. The 5k was on Saturday and had more people than the 10k. The weather was rough for this day since it rained a good portion of the early morning while everyone was waiting for the races to start at 6:15am. Which is obviously not something Universal controls but it made the course tough to get through since people were trying to avoid some of the puddles that formed and it made some of the areas very slippery. The nice thing was the rain stopped before our corral got let out so we didn't have to run much in the rain itself at least. Since this was only a 5k I wasn't running for time and we stopped at a bunch of character stops and they had so many characters out, we didn't do them all but we got a handful. The character lines moved slowly for the more popular characters but I'm not really sure what you could do about that to move it faster. At the end of the 5k after you received your medal they had two lines with the running universal backdrop that you could take pictures with a minion and Alex the lion from Madagascar. On Sunday the 10k had no rain but I wasn't expecting it to be so cold while waiting for the race to start lol there was some really strong winds but once the race got going the weather was my ideal weather to run in. We decided to stop for only the short lines for characters for this one because I wanted to get a good run in for this one. I preferred the 10k course to the 5k because the first mile for both were mainly outside the parks so that made up almost 1/3rd of the 5k but it was only a small portion of the 10k which was almost entirely inside the parks. It was so much fun running through basically empty sections of the parks and seeing the sun rise while running through them. At the end of the finish line for this race after getting your medal they had setup Blue and his trainer to take a picture with which was an unexpected surprise to me and also two minions with the running universal backdrop. Another awesome aspect that I really enjoyed is that they had some of the rides working while we were running through which is something they absolutely didn't need to do but it was such a cool idea. The hulk, dudley do rights and rip ride rockit were some of the rides that they were cycling for us. Overall we had either taken a picture with or ran by the... Simpsons, puss and boots, transformers, Shrek & donkey, Betty boop, Popeye and olive oil, hashtag the panda, Scooby-Doo and his gang, the whos from whoville, Mardi gras characters, Woody and Winnie woodpecker, the blues Brothers, earl and the night bus conducter and they even had the talking fountain for the 10k. Some people actually complained that there weren't enough characters but we saw so many out that I don't know how anyone could complain about lack of characters. Also at the end of the finish lines for both days they had huge amounts of bottled water and bananas for everyone plus snack boxes that had a granola bar, trail mix, pretzels and some sort of apple sauce packet thing. It was all great. I can't say nice enough things about the Universal staff. We ran behind some of the backstage areas where the staff were and their offices were and so many of them came out to cheer everyone on. All the staff that were working the event were doing the same thing and it was really nice to see. They also had music going throughout the parks and several areas with some djs playing some music and cheering people on and pointing out the cool costumes that some people created to run in. Parking was also a breeze, you just pulled in and parked and then followed everyone to the volcano bay garage section where they had a security checkpoint all setup and that took seconds to get through as well. My only major complaint was the start and the corrals. The way they had it setup was the start of the race was basically directly after a set of the parking booths so it was a bit of a squeeze to get through that. For the 5k there were 3 larger corrals and all were quite full, the elites(a small group), A, B and C. Apparently A was the only corral assigned and B and C were based on when you showed up so we were in B. They really just needed to sort the corrals out better by your estimated time or proof of time because they released each corral completely at once instead of waves so it was hard to get around the people who were just walking or slower. I'm hoping they learn from that and release the corrals in waves next time to give people more separation but it really ended up separating everyone after the first mile anyway. The 10k had a lot less people so it was a lot easier to separate from everyone after that. Based on the results there were 3,235 people for the 5k and 1,976 for the 10k. I think turnouts were pretty great since I don't think they really promoted these events as much as they could and it also helps them learn how to improve them going forward. Since Hollywood has another race day in April with a Trolls theme I definitely see Orlando doing this again and I would absolutely run in them again. I haven't had a chance to run in a Disney race yet and I saw a lot of people comparing the two but I really throught Universal did a fantastic job for their first go at this on this scale. Time for some pictures... Map of the 5k course Map of the 10k course They made the signs very easy to follow to pick up the race packets which included the race bibs, drawstring bag and an event t-shirt Hard to get a great picture since it was dark lol 1st mile marker 2nd mile marker Not the best quality but was cool to see Hogsmeade so empty I probably should have stopped and taken a better picture but I was trying to multi-task and run and take it at the same time lol 3rd mile marker 4th mile marker and the sun was really starting to come up now I did stop to take a shot of the dragon, it was cool to run through doors of diagon alley that are normally closed and to see it basically empty. 5th mile marker, the clock starts when the first runner crosses the starting line so this isn't my time. Was awesome seeing that final 6th mile marker knowing the finish line was coming up quick now The 5k shirt The 10k shirt They had staff handing out the medals just a little bit past the finish line and I thought they did a great job on them, the back portion of them spin too. The drawstring bag behind them was very nice as well. I really can't recommend the races enough if anyone is interested in trying them. There were people running them of all ages. I can't compare them to Disney but I know the large crowds they get so if you are interested in starting to run or just want to run the parks in general these are some great races to try out first since the crowds are much smaller. I do plan on eventually running some Disney races it's just hard to do so because I normally don't plan my trips out that far in advance and some of the Disney races sell out rather quick. On Sunday we tried to get to Hagrids after the race but the line was insane and down to the lost continent and ranged from 2.5-3 hours so we skipped that and decided to take pictures with the characters we missed and some that we hadn't seen during the race and it was really fun interacting with them since they all saw the medals we were wearing and were acknowledging it. Also caught the Mardi Gras parade which I had never been there during before and it was really cool, the floats and characters looked incredible. I'd love to know how much and many beads Universal buys every year because I ended up catching 29 beads since the people on the floats were just chucking them everywhere lol we sat on the curb and they just basically end up in your lap/face with how many are being thrown lol I don't know if Universal has had different training lately or what but I know I mentioned this in my last report down there but the staff has been absolutely awesome lately. So very friendly and everyone was wishing us congratulations and asking how the races went and wanted to look at the medals. I really just don't remember the staff being this great in the past. I had commented on my last report in December that I thought it was silly that the butterbeer stands and individual stands wouldn't honor the annual pass discount but apparently it's a new addition for this year and they are now honoring it so that was very nice to see that universal listens because I had mentioned it in a few surveys I received from them. Just need them to give the discount on booze next! Lol Regular park wise we finally got on Hagrids on Monday afternoon when we decided that we were just gonna wait no matter at this point. The wait time said 90 mins but we were on in 60 with a 10 min stoppage for whatever issue they had. I always loved Dueling Dragons and was very sad to see it go but at the same time as a casual Potter fan I still very much enjoyed this ride. It's just plain fun. Could aspects have been better? Absolutely, I don't think anyone could deny that but we still very much enjoyed it. I did expect more of it to be inside but I had been avoiding reading any reviews about it. Tried the hot butterbeer for the first time as well, it was very good but the frozen butterbeer is still the best to me. If I had to rank them I like frozen / ice cream / hot / regular. I just find that the regular is just too sweet for me. Also finally got on the Hulk for the first time since they re-did it and that ride is just as awesome as I remember it being. I asked very nicely if there was any chance we could wait for the front row and they had a seperate small line past the grouper that she directed me to and then directed us to the front row a cycle after that which was awesome. The updated themeing to the whole ride was awesome. Tried the Fallon ride for the first time as well and I actually enjoyed it more than I ever expected to but maybe that's because my expectations were so low since I really don't care much for Fallon, it's definitely better than fast and the furious which isn't saying much lol All in all another awesome visit to universal and I really hope I can make it down there for their next race weekend.

The MaxPass was such a wonderful option I didn't even feel like I had to have a specific plan of attack since I just kept getting another fast pass as soon as I used the one I had. I think it helps that neither park really feels very big and it's easy to get around them. We also really liked the Guardians of the galaxy tower of terror ride. Haven't seen the new star wars stuff yet so can't comment on that. The main thing I had read before going was to avoid grad nights but with it being April it's probably too early for that yet anyway.

So many great new additions next year, it's wild to see that every SeaWorld and Busch park is getting a new coaster next year. Jersey Devil Coaster, Iron Gwazi and Mickey and Minnie's runaway railway are the ones I'm looking forward to the most for parks I'll be visiting. I'll probably avoid trying to see most pictures from it but really looking forward to Nintendo Land in Japan as well but I don't see myself making it over there next year to see it.

It was pretty crowded today but the crowds didn't file in until later on. We got there right after 1pm and knocked out almost everything with no waits. Around 4 it was certainly more packed but Batman didn't have much of a wait so rode that a few times. Towards the end of the night we didn't bother with much because of the lines and just enjoyed the lights and hot chocolate. Justice League was out the door and through a bunch of the switch backs so it was definitely over an hour wait. Overall a great time at the park.

The fast and the furious ride is at 130 mins lol I wonder if those people have any idea what the ride is actually like because there shouldn't be anyone who knows what the ride is that would wait that long for it.

This looks fantastic, especially the Spider-Man ride! Depending on when it exactly opens I'll probably just be missing it.

That's really not too bad then if that's the case. We watched the Xmas version of the show as well when we went and it was basically the same show except some Xmas music was added in.

I'm glad we saw the show again a few weeks ago since I completely forgot they were doing this soon. I'm curious to see what exactly the Orca Encounter show is going to be.

I'm partial to the frozen butterbeer. I know they have a hot version right now but we didn't try that when we were down there. Absolutely agree about the fast and the furious ride, it's amazing how they screwed up something as simple that should have been 2 cars racing. That party scene at the club is beyond ridiculous and easily one of the worst things I've ever seen. I like pretty much every ride I've been on at Universal but there's no way I'd ever go on that one again. I enjoyed Kong too but I think my problem with it is that it could have been so much more and the start of the ride and end of it teases how much better the ride could have been with some more practical effects. Driving up to the giant entrance doors at night with the torches lit up around it is so damn cool.

Yeah I agree that's gotta be their thinking. I do think staggering closing times might get more people eating at Citywalk, I think they do stagger sometimes but I don't pay enough attention to their schedule attention to know. On the Saturday we were there both parks closed at 8 and we waited 50 minutes to get a table at big fire. I'm sure a lot of people skipped eating simply because they didn't want to wait after already spending a day at the parks. When we got out around 10pm it was really empty, voodoo donuts had a long line still though lol I know they are trying to get more of a Disney type bubble going but you would think they would extend the hours to warrant people choosing to stay there the entire time and for the prices they charge for admission. I think people would still fill up the restaurants with 10pm closings or a staggered close of 9/10. I just don't think expecting a 10pm close time, especially for a Saturday night is unreasonable. It's a huge part of the reason we just opted for a season pass this year. The value vs single day park to park tickets is crazy. We have family in Florida so doing a quick weekend trip down there is easier for us now.

Was our first time going down for Universal's holiday stuff and had a great time. This type of weather is perfect to me, sun was out but I wasn't sweating to death lol Really enjoyed the Macy's day parade which is something I'd never bother doing on Thanksgiving even though I could. We lined up maybe 40 minutes before and got a great spot. At Islands I got to ride Kong for the first time and I enjoyed it more than I expected to but I just wish the ride was more like the start and end of the ride. The opening of the giant doors is such a great start and then it's just screens and meh. Loved the ending though and it's 1000x better than the fast and the furious ride. I forgot how much Dudley do right gets you soaked lol still a fun ride though but not something I would do every time. We didn't do a ton of rides since we were checking out all the Xmas stuff in both parks but Hagrids was running all day for the most part at a 90 min wait. We just didn't bother since we are making a few trips to Florida this year. The Grinch show was great, especially the guy who plays the Grinch. Did the meet and greet later in the day and he was a lot of fun, told us to have a horrible day on the way out lol They also had a Xmas tree hunt that was free that we did, you picked up a free map/list and just get stamps at each store that has a themed tree. They were themed to the area, marvel tree, Betty boop, minions, men in black, etc, all of them were very nice. After you got all of them they gave you a free plastic minion tree ornament. I saw some people online complaining about it but it took us maybe 5 mins to do the entire thing because we were walking by the stores anyway. Was also our first time seeing the Potter projection screen on the castle and thought it was very well done. My only slight issues are that the stands for butterbeer that aren't inside and stuff like the taco truck in simpsons land don't honor the season pass discount. I knew that when I got the season pass but if SeaWorld can do it at their food booths there's no reason Universal can't set it up to work as well. Also just thought an 8pm closing for both parks on a Saturday night is odd. The parks definitely seem crowded enough to warrant keeping them open until 10pm but I'm sure they know better than me. Would be nice if they at least staggered the closing times, islands at 8pm and studios at 9pm or whatever just so both parks aren't sending everyone out to citywalk and the parking deck at the same time. Also have to add that I haven't been to universal in a few years but all the staff we encountered were way nicer than we ever remembered. They all seemed to be very happy to be there. Felt very Disney like in that manner which was nice to see. Ended up eating at big fire for dinner, burgers were pretty good and since there was a 25% discount promo going on for certain restaurants for pass holders it was really reasonable price wise. Not sure when we are gonna get back down there but we have been debating doing the 5k and 10k runs through the parks since this is the first year universal is officially running them. Here's a few photos of the parade...

Wow it was really that bad? That's disappointing because since the ads I saw and the concept looked interesting. A lot of the cirque shows I've seen are hit or miss. I did enjoy the Avatar one and the concept of this new Disney one looks great.