teacherkim

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.

I wasn't sure since the only other time we were there it was for Con and didn't need QQ due to ert so thought I would post it just in case people didn't know.

We were at the park last Saturday. We actually didn't get there until about 3 (you can read about why on the BGW thread if you care) and they were only open until 8, but since we had been there before and didn't need to get on every little thing and had FL+ we were able to do everything we wanted. It was not as busy as I would have thought it to be for a Saturday but it did close kind of early and it was a pretty chilly, breezy day. I thought the jungle retheme where Tumbili is was fairly nice looking, my son kind of thought it "eh". He rode Tumbili, it's too much flipping for me. He did say that it flipped way more than any other free spin he had been on. Racer only had the blue train going anytime we were near it, Dominator was dead most of the time we were there and of course water rides weren't open for the season yet. We got in line for I305 about 7:50 and got a ride on what would have been the second to last train of the night but as we approached the station after the brake run the ops got a no go light on the other train which was in the station; so, they kicked off those riders and sent them out which kind of sucks cuz it was after 8 by then so they couldn't get on anything else but of course that's the chance you take. Anyway now the ride is down, one train stuck in the station and one train with us in the front row and two other people in the back row stuck out on the track outside the station. After 15-20 minutes of messing with it they finally put the first train in some sort of maintenance mode to get it slowly pulled part way up the lift hill so they could get us into the station. There were about a dozen higher ups and maintenance people by the time the 4 of us were able to get off. I have to say even though we have done many many events and left parks very late I think that was the most deserted theme park I have every walked through on our way out. The jungle theme is much more intense when it is dark and the jungle drum music is blaring and there is no one else around, lol!

So we were at the park last Friday and Saturday. Short trip report: Friday was kind of a rough day Pantheon was down all day, one of the trains spent most of the day stuck on the first launch and only starting some testing about an hour or so before the park closed. Griffon of course wasn't supposed to open but was testing and training all day Friday. Skyride was closed and at one point in the early afternoon in addition to no Pantheon, Griffon, and Skyride; Apollo, Tempesto, and a couple of flats including the drop tower were all down. And of course none of the water rides were open for the season yet. So much so that we actually went back to the hotel for a break and ate dinner outside the park which is most unlike us. Came back for the last couple hours and caught a few night rides including all 3 "stories" on Verbolten. We were planning on going to KD the next day but delayed it and went first back to BGW hoping to catch a ride on Pantheon and Griffon. Got there at open, neither running despite it being the day Griffon was to debut for the season. Did a few things and had a bite to eat and we were just about to give up when we saw that Pantheon had riders, rushed over, apparently it had JUST opened and got a front seat ride with about a 30 min wait which was up to 60 when we got off. Definitely an awesome coaster and backwards air time is super fun. Who knew, lol. Since we had purchased the higher level QQ that included a one time Pantheon ride for Friday but couldn't use it since it was down all day the park did give us 2 one time skip the line passes which we used next to get a second ride. Finished there about 1:30, did one more quick check on Griffon but it was still closed, testing but closed and the whole path to the station was blocked by benches. I have no idea if it ever opened Saturday or not. Skyride was working on Saturday. At this point we took off for KD so we could at least catch the second half of the day there. And while this is probably of little interest to most of the thoosies on here, the lorikeets were never out which was an extra bummer for me. However the park had all it's spring flowers going and looked awesome as usual. One thing we ran into and I have no idea if this is the norm or not; they had rows dedicated to QQ only so if you do get QQ you will most likely get assigned a row. It was row 2 on Apollo, row 5 on Invadr etc etc. Which means if there were no QQ people that row just went empty. Dunno doesn't seem the best way to do that to me but whatever, I was just posting for anyone contemplating buying them so they are in the know.

Invented and written about by men, hmmmmm

Terrible news. The young man was from St. Louis so the story was on our local 5 pm news. According to that story he was 365 lbs and 6'5", down there for a spring break trip as most of our area school were off this week.

But on the other hand I've always planned stuff out. The internet just makes it easier. I mean when I was 10 we took a big road trip and I actually wrote letters to the Chambers of Commerce in all the towns and cities we were driving through to ask about things to see and do. Got a crap ton of brochures mailed back to me. It was fabulous. Sometimes the anticipation of planning is half the fun.