teacherkim

I truly think it's 50/50 whether it opens this year or not at this point. On the one hand, as you say, kind of weird to open it with 27 operating days left (as of this writing); on the other hand FF is by far the highest attendance and biggest money maker of the whole calendar year. And they will be shutting down some of the water rides after Labor Day so could move those ops, if they have enough with most teachers and college kids no longer available, to the new ride. On the other, other hand left hand management has no idea what right hand management is doing on any given day so...........

In addition to the good advice already given; do NOT miss the cave. It is included in your ticket, you line up for the entrance just like a ride in the hospitality house that you will walk through to enter the park. It is incredible and the whole reason the park exists in the first place. As far as food, there are decent bbq options at Rivertown Smokehouse by the raft ride, a buffet of mostly home cooking type food near the entrance called Molly's Mill and a skillet stand (or maybe two) that is unique to the park.

It's been "on the table" for a while but I have no idea what the priority of it is at this point. Like I said above there are some management issues going on. When I can I will fill you in on how badly the park is shooting itself in the foot as far as employees go. Sorry. Not trying to be cryptic just not able to tell the whole story yet as said employee is still involved with the park. The annual ACE event at the park is Sept 9, there will be a behind the scenes on RR. I won't be there but someone that live in my house will be and will get the scoop on whether or not they will make any attempt to open it this year or not. Management did tell ACE that there have been ongoing "supply chain issues", whether that's genuine or an excuse I have no idea.

Just got all caught up on this hot, so hot, afternoon here in the Lou. The look on that kids face on the little ladybug coaster is hilarious. He is totally trying to figure out why he is surrounded by a bunch of adult American men, lol.

And having done both.................give me summer everytime. Every. Single. Time.

I know for a fact that this was brought up at an event at least 5 years ago, maybe more, so I think it would be well received if the park decided to do it. Having said that, there are some definite management issues going on at the park right now, so this sort of thing is probably low on the radar. I'm guessing trying to share a park president with SFGA is a factor in this. I'll fill you all in when I feel free to do so.

It is, and always has been, their biggest money maker by a very wide margin.

Dang. I wish I would have known some of this BEFORE I went. Seems that both the park and the event planners fell down a bit on the job by not explaining all this in a little more detail. I totally would have bought the cupcakes. There is no plan needed as far as crowd levels, lol. According to the locals I talked to they seldom have more than 300-500 people in the park at any one time. Which at least makes it one of the most spontaneous park visits you can have. Since they are open until 9:30 on Saturday I would definitely try to be there after dark, they have amazing lighting packages.

Hmmmm, they gave us the dictionary and suggested we do a treasure hunt on the app but there just wasn't a lot of instruction on how it all works and frankly I cannot see enough people spending that much time trying to learn all the attributes of the app to actually do that. I mean I was there for a special event and had no idea about the cupcakes. I think they may be assuming people will figure all this out and therefore not explaining how it works well enough. It's a cool concept and I want to like it but I also don't want to spend half the day squinting at an app and trying to figure it out. The app just didn't seem that user friendly to me and I know several people that were started out trying to do the treasure hunt just gave up because using the app was confusing and cumbersome. Agree 100% that there should be a shuttle between the water park and theme park.

Awaiting rescue on a Wacky Worm, lol

Went to an ACE event here last Sat. To echo what everyone said, yes it is amazingly themed and well laid out. We were laughing that we finally got to ride Matugani because we were actually at Liseberg when it was Kanonen but my son was only 9 then and too short to ride. It's a fun whippy little thing and the launch right out of the station is for sure a crowd pleaser. The dark ride is great and we got a bts lights on walk through. No way was I gonna beat myself up on the SLC and all my son said was, "well it's purple all right", lol. The wacky worm actually valleyed, it trimmed so hard that it couldn't make the turn The park bent over backwards to cater to us and show us a good time. Their characters and the lore they have created, including a whole language is pretty amazing. There are lots of interactive elements around the park; things you can touch and spin to make other things happen and then if more than one person works as a team even better things happen. The food is fairly good with a few unique items and very reasonably priced for a theme park. In a few years the landscaping will look amazing. Will they make it? I just don't know. I mean if the 88 acers hadn't been there, there maybe would have been about a hundred or so cars in the parking lot; on a Saturday. Is it a destination park, no. Is it worth a stop if you are driving from point A to point B, yes. Is it worth a day trip if close enough, yes. There is a casino across the street for any non park going adult family members. Spoke to a few locals who stated that people just don't know about it, as there is almost no advertising going on. As in literally people who have gone to the water park just down the road, did not know about the park when it opened. I'm not sure how that is possible but he swore that to be the truth. I feel like the next couple years will be a tipping point for them. Either the word will get out, more people will start to come and they will be able to keep investing or they won't be able to maintain salaries and basic payments and will fold.

Visited for the first time last Friday. This is a really beautiful park. I know many on here may not appreciate the flowers they had but I was amazed because the amount they had and condition they were in only happens with an incredible amount of work. Just gorgeous! Also, fresh baked cookies.......! Why hasn't anyone else thought of this? Anyway, the coaster lineup was fine, nothing spectacular, but it's a very cute regional little park and I was happy to support it. Underground is down for an extended time, sign out front said the trains are being refurbed and there is a wall across the entrance so I'm not sure that will open until next year. The new junior coaster is cute but nothing amazing. We didn't ride the flume as it really had zero theming other than it's interaction with the new coaster, so just wasn't worth getting wet for us. But, if you had younger kids I could totally see them wanting to do these two over and over. Half day park for us, but again, if you had younger kids you would probably find a lot more to do.

We were at the park from about 3-10 last Thursday, on our quick little 4 day road trip. We actually had not visited the park for about 7 years, so it was a good chance to remind ourselves how good Mamba really is. It did go down for a short time while we were in line but was back up about an hour later. Wait times were pretty low, it was one of those really brutal hot days which probably helped and why we mostly spent the morning driving from SDC and focused on the late afternoon/evening hours. Zambezi Zinger is a solid addition and quite fun, although I think that spiral lift is louder than an RMC lift hill.

We swung by last Wednesday to use free tickets we had from the mostly snowed out Coaster Christmas event. Since we really had no priorities and knew on such a hot day we would just stick to our favorites we took our sweet time driving from STL, stopped for lunch at Lamberts, swung by the hotel to dump our stuff, etc. We were at the park from about 3-10, and other than the raft ride we never waited more than 15 min. OR and WF were walk on. MRF had a posted wait time of 95 min at the hottest part of the day, actual wait was about an hour, which we did having never caught it open or been there when it was warm enough to be open. Nice covered, breezy queue line. It is a unique and fun ride, whomever is going backwards down the big hill will be the one to get really soaked but of course no way to control that. If I am going to risk getting super wet, I do prefer a ride that has something worth getting wet for, like this one with lots of drops and rapids in addition to the lift and hill. I actually enjoyed seeing the park lit up at night without the Christmas lights. I mean they are spectacular and all but I much prefer warm, summer night rides.

Great start to your trip Bert! Ha, ha 42, the answer to the meaning of life, I've told Joel to always keep a towel in the car with him You have to watch out for people on bikes all over Europe, they will not only mow you down but get quite annoyed if they have to swerve to avoid you. Did you try Cocio, the chocolate milk that is basically the national drink of Denmark with that hot dog? They love it and it is soooooooo sweet that even Joel as a kid couldn't quite finish it. My Mom almost fell right on her can at the Little Mermaid statue too Glad you enjoyed Rosenborg Castle, we got ver lucky there and saw a ceremonial changing of the guard! If you think that is over the top you will totally shit yourself if you ever go to St Petersburg Russia (unfortunately not likely for a very long time) and see the likes of Peterhof, the summer palace and winter palace (where the Hermitage is) OR the Vatican museums OR Versailles ............they all make Rosenborg look like a boring clapboard farmhouse. Happy to see you enjoying life with some good friends and can't wait to see the rest

And they are usually cheaper than most SF and CF fastpasses, so based on your past posts, I'm pretty sure you will find it totally worth it.

Story about the duck was on some FB page that randomly popped up in my stuff. There was discussion/confusion as to whether the duck was there from the start or somehow flew into that spot while the coaster was on its run. Curious if we will ever find out.

We agree which is why we were marathoning it til midnight. My husband doesn't get it, he would have gone back to the hotel several hours before for drink, a movie and bed

Trust me, I'm well aware. I taught middle school history for 28 years. Hence why I gave up before I really even started and just gave her a one word answer.

To be fair it wasn't a lot of people, just a dedicated few, but the higher ups were clearly expecting and dreading the question. There was also more than one discussion that I heard about whether or not the speed of the lift hill would have any impact on the rest of the ride or if it just needed to clear the top. On a funnier note, toward the end of the morning ert session when we were still in the station but the early entry gp had started to file in.............sure enough the train right before we're due to get on has a rollback. The Ace Con thoosies being what they are were all excited about the rollback and subsequent evac, taking pictures, one couple thanking the people that had let them go first, etc, etc, etc. The completely bewildered gp woman next to me in line said with incredulity "are they HAPPY that the ride broke and went back down the hill". I started to explain to her why that was the case but in the end just gave up, said yes and shrugged I would not be the slightest bit surprised at that timeline. They are going to want to make the change and do the required testing in time for next summer at the latest.

We talked to Shawn and Charlotte at Dollywood. My son was one of the ride ops on the log flume at SFSTL when they were there and they remembered him and kindly stopped and spoke to us for a few minutes when we spotted them coming away from Thunderhead/MM area as we were heading toward it.

Got a hummingbird tangled in my hair once when putting my feeder out. She was so anxious to get me to leave it and go away and was dive bombing my head, add a little wind blowing my hair a bit and she was temporarily caught like a fly in a spiders web. Eventually we were separate with no harm to either of us. True story.

Holy crap. On Fri 6/23 Fury was on morning and evening ert for Con and we were marathoning it until midnight and doing infield walks.

Yeah........I don't think this one is for you. Sorry.

The 10 pm close is just something they usually do for a couple weeks in July, special "late night" hours. If you look at the calendar it only lasts for two weeks. There is so much other stuff going on in Branson I don't think they really need the late hours all the time to draw in the crowds.