teacherkim

To those that have posted appreciate the updates and trip reports! We will be making our first ever visit pre-CoasterCon on June 16 & 17 and really looking forward to it. So bummed that we won't sync up with Duran Duran......

I believe there have been some supply chain issues getting parts, same things affecting many other parks, nothing specific to SFTSL. And as already stated but worth repeating there was never a fire.

Seriously everyone as a teacher and a Mom I am disappointed in the behaviors, Play nice!

Not that you apparently are really interested but since you asked, they have a very nice horseracing museum there and there are various tours you can take. The basic one being very reasonably priced and it lets you walk under the famous grandstand that the race participants take and go into the paddock area. It is a very unique and famous venue. For what it's worth you did kind of ask for reasons to visit the area besides just the park and when a couple people gave you some ideas you crapped all over them, even though you've experienced none of them. A polite thank you or better yet "if you have nothing nice to say just say nothing policy" would have been appropriate. Not everything suggested is my cup of tea either but no reason to be mean when people have offered suggestions that you asked for. And if you won't visit CP without TTD you might be waiting a very long time. And comparing Mystic Timbers to Prowler is ridiculous and how would you know if you haven't ridden the former?

You are both more than intelligent enough to know that the KI carousel was much better maintained, did not need the TOTAL "down to the studs" refurb as the SFSTL carousel, and that the situations are no where near the same thing. Joking or not, stop stirring the pot.

If you want to keep it simple you can stay at the Royal Pacific and get the 3 day tickets for about $2800 which will include the express passes and it's an easy 7 min walk on a beautiful path to city walk. No passes necessary. RP is the cheapest of the "deluxe" hotels, you don't have to do Portofino Bay which is the most expensive.

As someone who has to battle motion sickness issues anyway I can only ride FJ when I full on have a scopolamine patch on, a Dramamine and/or wristbands are not enough. For me it's the same for multiple inversions, any sort of invert, and anything that thinks about spinning. So unfair since I love the actual rides

Andy Gibb, lol, doesn't strike me as the rowdiest fans since it was mostly 13 year old girls. Course they can be deceptively dangerous! All this discussion of theme park theaters and all I can think of is the scene in Spinal Tap when they get booked at the amusement park and almost no one is there........I think that was filmed at SFMM?...

Zach, we will just have to agree to disagree, no hard feelings! I realize there are occasionally practical situations where something is better than nothing but I just cannot agree to a half ass it refurbishment being better than taking the time to do it correctly. I'm willing to have patience and wait. I realize you might have a fair argument is saying that's fine for me since I no longer have a young child but when my son was the same age as your daughter they still had the extremely crappy old blacktop kid's area over by the log flume. He doesn't remember a thing about it, by the time he was 3 or 4 and old enough to have some real memories the new Bugs land was opened and it will be the same for your daughter. By the time she's old enough to remember, the carousel will be open. I will say I think Knoebels is not a totally fair comparison. They had to fix a VERY well maintained but damaged carousel, not do a complete refurb on one that had been mostly neglected for decades. Also, the Knoebel's family has a lot of money to throw at just one park. The reason no one else had taken on building a ride like Flying Turns is that it is a maintenance nightmare that actually makes them no money. They just have it because Dick K wanted it and doesn't care that there is no profit from it. Not sure it will survive long after he is no longer with us. That is from a direct conversation with the head maintenance guy there who actually trained his own son specifically to take care of the ride, saw on a bts tour what they have to go through to just warm that sucker up for daily operations and it is super labor intensive. I am glad you will be able to enjoy park time with your daughter, one of the things I treasure most from having summers off most of my life is all the memories at various parks with my son. *Ironically in my son's lifetime he went from loving to ride things in Bugs to running rides in Bugs and hating it, partially due to the annoying theme music stuck forever in his head, lol. And more seriously being the brunt of several Karen like parents screaming at him about stuff completely out of his control.

In 2016 the head PR person at the park told me that part of the problem was that the bands people were able/willing to pay to see had such high performance prices that it wasn't financially feasible anymore and bands with lower costs just didn't sell enough tickets (or tickets at a high enough price) to cover the cost. So essentially the park would lose money on most performances. The days of the park providing a "free" show are also no longer cost effective for them. She also indicated that the bands the park could afford to pay brought in a crowd that created a lot of security issues. So in other words higher costs for musicians coupled with worsening crowd behavior pretty much made all performances untenable. At that time other than the cheer and band performances, they were still having the Christian music festivals, although I cannot remember if those were free with park entrance or an extra cost.......I'm sure someone on here remembers. Too bad. I can remember seeing Chuck Berry play there around 1974 or 1975, when I was 6 or 7 years old. My Dad insisted on getting there super early to get good seats and it was so hot my Grandmother's cheap hair dye started to melt and run down her face, lol. I can also remember, like a lot of you I'm sure, seeing some great bands in the 70's and 80's there. It bums me out but if there is no way to resolve that, and it doesn't appear that there is, then I say use the space for something new. It's just a waste and kind of sad to see it sitting there empty plus makes the park junky looking when there is no reason to maintain it.

Lawsuit news was all over the local news here today. I was a little behind as I had jury duty all day and didn't see much news but when I got out of the wifi black hole that is the St Louis County Courthouse my phoned started pinging like mad with texts people had sent me asking about the situation since they know we "do amusement parks and stuff".....

BUT people that don't care will come to the park anyway, you might complain about it not being open but you will still come to the park and bring your daughter AND as I said I happen to know some people that will come just for that. People that will spend money and buy carousel merch if they choose to sell some. Plus the park saves something of historical significance. I think there is great value in showcasing one of the earliest types of rides, one that has a particular history to a much beloved company in PTC, and true craftmanship. It's a kind of community service to renovate something so beautiful. Improvements like this one make the park a much classier, more beautiful place which does affect how people view their experience even if they don't pinpoint the exact reason why. Part of the reason people love HW so much is the overall atmosphere, also why Indiana Beach was considered so poor......I mean the place is kind of a shithole, although hopefully making steady improvements. Beautification matter IMHO.

Also, I can report without doubt that Thunder River is now operational. Although at the moment the water "blasters" controlled by the ride ops in the two towers along the route are currently not operational and I have no details on why or when that might get resolved.

If it's any consolation, and it probably won't be, they are doing a deep and complete renovation of each and every horse plus the chariots which they knew all along would take a long time but preserve the carousel much longer. When we were there for an event in September 2020 and were given the presentation on how they do the refub they showed how they stripped each and every piece down to the wood, did any necessary repairs (legs get broken off a lot because people use them to "mount up" instead of the stirrups), applied primer, applied a base coat, then had an artist do all the final design and painting that made each horse unique. The artist at the time said they hoped to have it done in two years but they could not pinpoint a date due to not knowing the extent of damage to each piece yet. Plus we all know there might have been supply chain issues and clearly there are a limited number of artists talented enough and able/willing to work on it. So......I totally get that it's frustrating, particularly with a toddler that can't do a lot of other things yet and is missing some prime riding years BUT the length of the refurbishment is within the range that they had always planned. Good news is it should be AMAZING when it's finished. So much so that several of my friends from my equestrian competition days have expressed a desire to have a group outing to go ride it when finished, lol. P.S. on the cars. I'm not terribly bummed that they took them out because frankly they were so short and such a shadow of their former selves that I thought they kind of sucked. Would be kind of fun if they ever had the funds and inclination though to see a whole new course put in with fun updated but retro theming. There's a whole lot of empty space where there used to be a stupid paintball course, just saying.

We will be flying in early on June 16th to do a day and a half (or maybe a day and 2/3rds depending on how fast we get through customs) as a warm up, so to speak, to CoasterCon which is at CedarPoint and having a pre-con day at Waldameer. Fully vaxxed and boosted so no worries flying in and glad to see that we don't need to test coming in. Hopefully it stays that way. I have no objection to getting tested, just a hassle. There is now a direct flight from STL to Toronto although it is on a little 48 seat CRJ, which I think will be the smallest plane I've ever been on! We are then driving a rental car across the border to Waldameer, and then on to Cedarpoint and Kennywood for Con, and flying home from Pittsburgh which also means we don't have to test to re enter the US because we are doing a land crossing instead of a flight. Not sure of the reasoning behind that other than we aren't spending time in crowded airports and planes but whatever, I'll take it. Looking forward to the visit, we've wanted to get to up to the park for a long time now.

Ha, ha if you go to Katz's deli in NYC where they filmed this they have a sign hanging over the seat Meg Ryan sat in. It is a Very good deli, certainly capable of giving you a foodgasm.

Ohhhh. I see. You might want to clarify that next time, lol. I mean you DO look happy in the picture.......!

Bert glad you had such an awesome day! But showing us your orgasm face may be too much information................!!! We may have to make it back down next year to do the event again, especially since Dr. D's will be open. Totally jealous of all your 30th anniversary stuff, we didn't get near that much for our 50th, although to be fair it was much earlier in the Pandemic.

I know there was an issue with a needed part for Freeze that they were waiting on, and having trouble getting in............truly I don't know any details beyond that. Also, there was some parts issue with TR, plus it's been pretty chilly for that anyway, but they have not been able to complete training yet for the ride ops nor have they filled up the reservoir, which takes a very long time to do.

I do understand that! I also do not do well on spinny flats even when I take something

Funeral for the young man is happening today in St. Louis, it's been a major story on the local news. They are having the service at St. Louis University which is run by the Jesuits. I'm kind of assuming this was arranged as a donation through catholic charities, I know Cardinal Ritter, an elite private catholic high school here, was courting him for a possible football scholarship. He was from East St. Louis which is one of the poorest/roughest neighborhoods in the St. Louis area and his success at football would have been his way out.

Glad you enjoyed your day, it's so interesting to me how everyone's tastes run (which is a good thing or we would all line up for the same ride, lol) I've ridden about a dozen RMC's loved IR and WW (the one at GAdv is way more rattly in my opinion) but floorless coasters, including Superman are often just eh, one and done for me. Agree with Bert you should have definitely hit Pirates of the Deep Sea and they have a good log flume too.

I'm one that often just buys it ahead of time figuring I will get my use out of it. BUT it was not bad at all last weekend and I definitely think you can wait until you get to the park and decide then, they won't sell out. The only thing that had any sort of line more than 15 min was Tumbili and you can't use FL+ on that anyway, plus the water rides are not yet open for the season.

We must have just missed you by maybe an hour, lol. DANG IT on Griffon, I suspected it would open later but we just couldn't wait any longer, I love that coaster too.

I don't know if it will be as bad as a weekend but be aware that most schools are off on Good Friday now so probably worse than a regular Friday. I don't think Griffon was ever down just that it was supposed to open on April 2 and didn't quite make that deadline.