teacherkim

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.

Got a chance to ride AFO last Sunday. I didn't mind the hard stop on the brake run but holy hell that thing has some extreme ejector air, particularly on the bunny hills at the end, but all in all I thought it was great. Note, I usually really like rmc's and the restraints do not hurt my shins like others report. I will say I only rode it in the front, my son rode once in the back and he was almost speechless about how wild it was and after a back seat ride followed immediately by a front seat ride he needed a break. Which I think is a first for him. So, for those that haven't ridden it keep that in mind! The whole vibe kind of reminded me of Thunderbird in the sense that there just shouldn't be a B&M launched wing coaster in a corn field but.....there it is. That RMC just shouldn't be there at a fun spot on the side of the road, like a carnival ride, but there it is

FYI - at the CoasterCon banquet Pete Owens and Eugene Naughton confirmed that they are looking at ways to improve the reliability of LR including the possibility of changing the lift hill mechanics. When asked if they were committed to keeping it a launch the answer was a clear and emphatic "no". I also talked to someone who did a VIP tour that included lunch with Pete Owens and according to that individual he discussed that they were looking at switching it over to a fast chain lift. While the extreme enthusiasts groaned a bit at this news (which in my opinion irritated the higher ups a bit but they were clearly expecting it) they did explain, and I clearly understand their perspective, that they just could not continue to have a $20+ million attraction that was only operational 65% of the time; which is probably a bout the percentage it was open during our 3 and a half days there. We personally witnessed 2 rollbacks, heard about a few more, saw them waffle back and forth with 1 train versus 2 train ops, etc.

I cannot predict the future BUT I can report that on Sat 6/24 they apparently had the busiest day they've had in 5 years. This was according to the team member that hosted a behind the scenes walkback of GASM and the storage area for the track of the new coaster. There was a post con add on day but with maybe a hundred or so ACE'ers they were not a huge impact and in fact it didn't even officially start until about 3 pm. We didn't get there until 3:30 since we'd been before and had to drive in from Charlotte but some others at the event that got there at open reported that it took 1 and a half to 2 hours to get through the parking lot toll booths, parked and into the park. Yikes. It was packed and hotter than hell and I did see one team member pass out and a couple other people getting sick from the heat. Stay hydrated out there people! I will give the park credit where due. Mindbender, ironically the only credit we didn't have, was down when we got there. I have no idea if it was simply mechanical or possibly related to the accident at Gronalund and doing extra inspections (we didn't find out about that until later) or what but they ended up opening it the last hour or so of operations. That was nice with the crowds and the fact that we wanted the ride and was a nice surprise that they kept the ride crew around and opened it up so late in the day. Also, since the event included ert on Goliath and TC from 9-9:45 they closed both lines early so they were cleared out for the ACE event, otherwise there would not have been any real ert. They were on top of if too because I saw two women unhook the chain across the entrance to Goliath after they closed it to get in line and they got booted right back out. There was a TON of security all over the park. The VIP DE lounge is awesome and had the best air conditioning in the park and actually had ice at the drink stations. We got some burgers at Johnny Rockets and took it in there to eat which was amazing and they were showing the Braves game on the smaller TV's and the Karate Kid on the central TV (I'm guessing they maybe rotate some classic movies or something?) If you need/want all the credits.................I would advise fastpass. If you are content to chill and just experience what you can then I would just prioritize your rides.

I'm short, 5' 1", and I have a bigger problem with my shoulders than my head on Mystery Mine, because there is so much space between the top of my shoulders and the restraints. Actually had restraint shaped bruises on the tops of my shoulders from getting jammed up into them. If she is taller, and most people are , then there might be more of a head issue. My son is a good 9 inches taller than me and very thin and it's more of a head banger for him. We almost never think the same rides are uncomfortable so body size/shape/height is definitely and issue with the experience. For instance I never have the shin discomfort that so many people complain about with rmc restraints, so I guess that's one win for those of us that are "fun sized"

I'm guessing they're only offering it during one of the ert sessions out of fear that if they tried to do more and it crapped out there would be disappointment, but boy is it going to be swamped on that one ert session. Maybe they will try to sneak in another round if it is behaving, you know better to under promise and over deliver.

You didn't mention the dates for your Dollywood/Carowinds trip (and you probably have it all planned out already) but do keep in mind that CoasterCon will be at Dollywood 6/18-6/21 and Carowinds 6/22-6/23 with a post days at SFOG the evening of 6/24 and Fun Spot Atl the morning of 6/25. I wouldn't try to change if your dates coincide at this point but just be aware that will be going on.