teacherkim

As stated those lands are the most popular, by far, of all the areas of both parks and at the risk of stirring up intense debate, which I really don't want to do. Truly. Let's just say that I think most people can (or perhaps choose to is the better word) separate the artist from the art. In other words J.K.'s opinions and however you feel about them and I strongly suggest we not get into that here, just not the right forum, don't change the quality of her work and the world she created before those views were known. Besides, right or wrong, a lot of people just don't care about her personal views. Just being honest. With the new Max reboot series in the works I don't see the popularity dying out.

Uhhhh, ouch, I named my son Joel. Anyway, your opinion which was my whole point, lol. I'm willing to do some speculation but just as willing to assume nothing and wait to see how it plays out.

Well as a dear teaching colleague once said "you can't fix stupid"..................but seriously, how terrible that his stupidity cost him and all those involved so dearly.

Whoa there. Let's not get crazy, I'm 56 years old but only about 60" and a half (maybe 61" with my shoes on) I don't want to cut it too close

Oh man I hope that doesn't happen but I get your point. Hopefully, Universal will have clear signage and warnings that it is scary and combined with the fact that Universal tends to be somewhat less little kid oriented than the mouse down the street, that prevents the issue. Fingers crossed.

So pointless and so unavoidable. I feel very bad for his family and also for the other riders and staff that had to deal with it. Why oh why don't people realize that sometimes rules are there to protect them. Arrggghhh!

To quote Billy Joel "you may be wrong for all I know but you may be right"................while I realize everyone is going to speculate and have an opinion; I'm going to do my best to just give it a fair chance and wait and see how it works out. I'm not sure we will fully realize the impact until at least a few years have gone by. I also think just lumping one chain bad and one chain good is a bit of an oversimplification. Both chains have their pros/cons and both chains have their stand out parks and their regional nobodies. I do hope they offer some sort of all encompassing pass.

I'm glad to see they've been continuing with updates on FB. Not only the new ride but food and drink offerings as well as Trivia Tuesdays. I know I have kind of harped on this but I really think it is so important for the park to engage the community. Despite whatever gripes we might have as individuals, we certainly all want the park to be successful.

I notice it. Didn't get triggered, lol, but noticed it.

Well PETA is going after them anyway. Not so much the park itself but the company that provides the animals and, I think, the staff for the petting/animal areas. Demanding an investigation and that the state do extra inspections, etc, etc. And then apparently goats got loose a few days later.

Ok, good to know. I've never had insurance through the airline, I have a yearly, very inexpensive, policy through an insurance company. It doesn't cover cancel for any reason but does cover things like health related delays or airline delay/cancellations. You might want to look into that for the future.

So apparently the merger will be finalized by July 1st. Interested to see what sort of announcements/changes (if any) we get after that.

Was your insurance through the airline or through a private company? Just curious. Joel and I are flying United to Europe for the ACE trip in July. We'll see how it goes. I much prefer Delta but they just couldn't match the price/schedule for this particular itinerary.

Video played just fine for me. Someone's getting a chewing out and/or potentially fired after that. That's all they would have needed was for someone else to get injured at the park. Plus is one of the camels had gotten hurt PETA would be all up their ass.

No line skip program but like Mikey said lines will be manageable once the water park opens. Even if your kids can't do the bigger slides, the water park is very good and the bigger slides have a single rider queue so if your kids are old enough to wait for you at the exit it will be fairly quick. I would suggest doing KK first and just staying in Louisville and making HW a day trip from in there. KK is eastern time zone and HW is central time zone and about an hours drive. So you will basically arrive at the same time that you leave and then it's not so bad just driving back to crash in a hotel in or near Louisville. There is truly nothing else to do around HW unless you want to rent one of the cabins and look at the small lake. I mean there really aren't even any restaurants. A subway and maybe a pizza place. There is a very good restaurant about halfway between Louisville and HW called the The Overlook Restaurant (theoverlook.com) with good food and fabulous views of the OH river. If the timing works out its a great place to stop. Fyi, it is eastern time so it will be an hour later than the park.

Lol, some gp on FB actually complained about it going up too fast and she's worried it won't be safe. She wants them to slow down! Was talking about how when rides go up too fast there are dead bodies

So, we decided on a bit of a whim to spend the day at the park yesterday. About a 3 hr 15 min drive for us each way, so we just did a day trip. We did not go to the water park this time since it had just opened and I suspected they wouldn't have everything going yet (that turned out to be accurate) and I also assumed the water would be fairly cold especially after the storms and hail of the night before (not sure if that was correct but based on the frigid temps of the log flume, probably) Although from observations there did look to be plenty of people that gave it a go. Good Gravy is a very basic layout, as expected with a Vekoma family boomerang, but the theming and the queue are absolutely fabulous. Grandma's house is still decorated in all of it 60's mid century kitsch, including dark brown cabinets and orange countertops in the kitchen. If you're old enough you know what I'm talking about, lol. Even if you don't want to ride it, go through the queue. Ops were still brushing the rust off. Really slow at Voyage but we saw a whole group being trained so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they just need to get a little more practice in. Although the Legend crew was rocking it. All major rides going, no downtimes that I am aware of. In fact the only rides I saw not open were some of the slides in the water park as mentioned. Crowds were manageable. It was a good day. Already had a couple shows running, the high dive show and a magic show that seemed to be geared toward kids. Thanks to HW for having the EV chargers! Nice to get some free juice along with the parking, drinks, and sunscreen.

Aren't all the Scandinavian cities just so immaculate and orderly? I think when you were at the Skywheel you were right down by the fish market and where you can catch the ferries out to some of the islands in the bay. Suemolinna island is absolutely lovely if you are ever in Helsinki again. The market has huge amazing produce, particularly strawberries the size of small tomatoes and a wide variety of handmade/local crafts. I still have some amber earrings I bought there about 12 years ago when we were there. The wheel wasn't built until after we were there but it looks like the same area.

So, if you watch Theme Park Worldwide review of it they had some info about this. Apparently, two of the trains did not yet have a stabilizer element installed on them, safe to operate but not fun for the rider. If you get one of those two trains, terrible ride. Any of the other trains and it's fine. Theory is that the park decided to go ahead and run those two for capacity. How long it will be until that is corrected (if that is 100% accurate) no one seems to know. I do hope they get it fixed before we are there in July. That one in is probably pushing the boundaries for me on motion sickness issues and I want to ride but really really don't want to get stuck with a "bad train"

Hopefully, they will keep up steady progress on it. I honestly don't think most people will be that upset if it opens late summer or even in time for FF as long as they see that something is happening and it doesn't stall at some point.

Lol, seriously?

Whoops, ok Boomer.

I will be excited to see the carousel after getting the demo of how the refurbishment works back in Sept 2020, not to mention the historical importance of it and several of my friends from back when I owned horses and did equestrian competitions very much want to come and see the completed carousel. BUT...........overall I think it is super that they are FINALLY getting better about promoting things. One festival and a couple new shows may not seem like a big deal to most enthusiasts but for locals that seldom go to other parks it will be nice. Particularly, for non riding parents and grandparents that are hanging out with kids all day. Hopefully, they continue to promote things, so far even minor improvements have been met with mostly positive feedback on social media. People just like to know things are happening. It will be interesting to see how quickly they get Joker up and operating since they are promoting it as this summer. I mean, I can't ride it but it will be popular and that corner of the park will be looking pretty good now.

Dunno, but I talked to one of the FITH ride ops who was hanging around during ert, waiting for her boyfriend who was an OR ride op annnd she didn't know the exact nature of the issue (or she wasn't saying) but did say, and this is a verbatim quote "it's big time dead" So, let the speculation begin, lol!!

Oh yeah and we were given some samples from the new pretzel place. We got hot dogs wrapped in pretzel (like pigs in a blanket) and some little dollar brisket sandwiches, both were quite yummy.