shepp

I suppose that's one way of looking at it. Another way would be "Disney throws it in for free." I'll grant you that Disney has much higher SP prices, and though SFMM's non-discounted gate price is only $10 less than DLR's, I bet almost no one actually pays that much. I also understand that the free FastPass option is probably much more profitable for Disney than it would be for SF, since DLR visitors probably drop a lot more cash on food and merch when they're not waiting in queues than SFMM's. Still, if memory serves, doesn't a Gold QBot with one X2 add-on actually cost more than an entire retail one-day admission to DLR? Which is to say that - disregarding the functional differences between the two systems - when you figure in the cost of admission, a day of top-of-the-line QBotting at Magic Mountain actually costs more, maybe considerably more, than a day of FastPassing at DLR, which is hardly a sign of generosity on Six Flags' part. (And that's disregarding the fact that there are E-tickets at DLR, like Pirates and the HM, that don't, even on busy days without FastPass, require the excruciating non-premium-queue waits for all the good stuff at SFMM, and that Disney ops are experts at moving crowds whereas Tatsu ops are.....)

I work at a local rock venue, and and so last week ended up seeing and, to my surprise, thoroughly enjoying Lily Allen. She can be my fag hag anytime! Next up (sorry, Slipknot fans): Leonard Cohen.

And since you're from Orlando, you doubt know this, but when you go to DLR, figure out your strategy for using FastPass before you hit the park, and follow it as best you can. A little foresight can save you hours of waiting in queues.

I'd revise that to say "If you go to a park for one coaster, understand the risks." One Friday coupla years ago, on an East Coast trip, we drove hundreds of miles to SFNE for That One Coaster. It was, without warning, down, and despite frequent rosy predictions, was down all day (during which time we rode everything else in the park). But because we had the time and the foresight, we'd already planned on a day of Saturday sightseeing in the area, followed by an optional Sunday at SFNE, just in case. Keeping fingers crossed, we went back Sunday and were able to ride S:ROS 13 times. That's a somewhat extreme case, maybe, and I usually don't plan that well. But I don't think, much as I love El Toro and Nitro, I'd embark on a seven hour round trip to SFGAdv if the weather were even a bit iffy.

Absolutely. Sounds to me like SFGAdv made a justifiable business decision, but that it would also have been good business to refund your parking, or even offer you a bit more. You might as well have stopped by Guest Services and complained - you never can tell. Soon after the V2 reprofiling, I went to SFMW just to ride that ride. Though it hadn't been listed as closed on the ticket booth signs, it was down all day. Guest Services was utterly unsympathetic: no, I didn't expect a refund, but a free "come back next week" ticket would have been nice. Flash forward a few years, to when Roar was running only one train all day, even when waits were around an hour - something that had been happening every time I visited. I left a note at Guest Services suggesting that adding a train might be nice, and to my surprise soon got 4 free tickets in the mail. (Not that big a deal, since by then I was an SP holder.) Same park, very different reactions.[/i]

^^ True, and perhaps I was unfair with that figure....though it might also be worth noting that our hemispheric whipping boy, Cuba, has a lower rate than we do. Certainly, the fate of American workers is nowhere near as awful as the indentured servitude of workers in Dubai. But the US does, like Dubai, have great disparities of wealth and poverty - if memory serves, just about the biggest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world, and the gap has been growing. (It's even more strikiing if you look only at financial wealth.) The two situations are not equivalent. But we DO have a super-rich class being serviced by the rest of us, and the last couple of years have pointed out how precarious the well-being of many of us is. That's all I was trying to say.

I remember saying this here a long time ago, and being taken to task by someone who lived there: Dubai is Not A Nice Place. On the t'other hand, let's remember that in the USA, a third of the wealth is held by the top one percent, another half by the next 19%, and the bottom 80% own just one-sixth of the nation's wealth. Our infant mortality rate is higher than most industrialized countries', over twice Japan's and about the same as Croatia's and Lithuania's, and it's estimated that one out of six American kids lives in poverty. The man behind the curtain, indeed.

^ I think the general consensus is that there are in fact better cameras out there, especially for the price, but hey, you can't drop them in a pail of water to wash the sand off. (The 6000 goes for almost $300, the 8000, which is more shockproof and is waterproof to 10 meters rather than 3 - important if you're going to take it snorkeling or on shallow scuba dives - is nearly 400.) If I get all critical, I can often see some image softness, especially compared to my other Olympus, and it's considerably better with brightly lit exteriors than low-light situations. (If you look at some of Electerik's Sea World interior shots, you'll see a good bit of noise.) That being said, it's still a damn fine camera for what it is, and if the choice is between ending up with a shot that's not-quite-perfect, or not being able to get that shot at all... Yes, it's a thrilling underwater shot of my hairy legs!

Well, I'm almost as old as your bf, and one thing to remember is this - the inner ear kinda loses functionality with age and doesn't deal with balance issues as well as it used to, so there's a bona fide reason why us old farts tend to get queasier on loops. These days, two back-to-back rides on Medusa or V2 and I've had enough for a while. Just as long as his other parts work...

I, too, have a 1030SW (the 8000's very similar predecessor), have had it a few months, and while the picture quality isn't as good as my older Olympus (C-7000), it's still quite acceptable for my needs. Actually, I totally like using it - though the newer top-of-the-line model has mechanical image stabilization, which would've been nice. It was unnerving to take it swimming in the pool the first time, but a week ago I carried it on a cross-country ski trip without a second thought. I like how Olympus makes a floating strap for it, a silicone case, etc. The biggest downside, I guess, is its needing a pricey Olympus-brand card to unlock some of its features. That and its limited user-accessible adjustments - but there are lots of decent "scene" presets. Honestly, when I go to Peru in the fall, I'll be bringing both cameras, and use the C-7000 when I want a really high-quality image. But I wish I'd had the 1030 when I went Zodiac whale watching in Cabo, for instance, or snorkeling in the Caribbean, and it'll be great to have something I can pocket on rides without worrying that it'll get bashed or wet. Really nice little camera so far. Last week in the mountains...untweaked

^ My honey and I have been together nearly as long - 35 years this fall - and he is a coaster fan. That's not to say we don't have our disagreements, though: he prefers Nitro, and I prefer S:ROS. Floating air vs. ejector air - can this marriage be saved?

Yeah, that's what I really needed today: Some kid whose voice is still changing lecturing me on God, sex, and human relationships. Hell, in the mood I'm in, it's almost enough to make me hate hets, religious people, and, oh, let's throw in Bill O'Reilly for good measure, shall we? Well, in all fairness to us troglodytes in Cali, it's prolly germane to note that a smaller proportion of Iowans support same-sex marriage than do Californians, which is to say that a Prop. 8-type measure would most likely pass there with a greater margin. It's really a matter of that particular court, not the state as a whole. Vermont, though, with its veto override, is really pretty swell. ADMIN EDIT: Please do not double post. If you wish to add information to a thread in which you were the last poster, please edit your previous post.

Just Six Flags, since I live in NoCal, am not crazy about California's Great America, and make it to KBF maybe once a year. (I'm thinking about going back to CP next year, in which case a Cedar Fair pass would make sense.) I usually do a water park pass to the local Waterworld, but dunno about this year. However, since I'm hitting DLR on my birthday and won a week at Universal Orlando during the Super Bowl giveaway, that's almost like passes. Almost.

Um, have you been to California lately? Come to think of it, do you read the news?

Not a driving tip, but a sightseeing one. Depending on how much time you've scheduled for LA, you might consider getting a Go Los Angeles Card. The 3-day cards and up include SFMM, KBF, and multi-day admission to USH. They're not cheap (though they're often on sale, like now), but if you use them well, they can be great, because they also include admission to LOTS of cool tourist stuff, like an excellent walking tour of Hollywood, really worthwhile studio tours at Warner's and Paramount, and a bus tour of stars' homes. I did a week-long card last summer and it more than paid for itself, but required careful scheduling and - yes! - loads of driving. Anyway, you might want to have a look.

Well, I've been on a 11-day Princess cruise to the Mexican Riviera, and just got back from two weeks in Alaska on Celebrity, so... Haven't been on Royal Carib, but my understanding is that, yes, it does skew younger and have more onboard activities than Princess. The ages of passengers really depends on the date and length of cruise, though. In any case, of the three liines I've sailed (including Holland America), Princess seemed the least formal and most laid back. And there's always the Love Boat Dream for dessert... In any case, Alaska is amazing (and I've spent time in the Sierras and the Andes). And if you do some research, there's plenty of really active independent travel you can do instead of the ship's excursions. Assuming you're fairly self-directed, you should be busy enough in port - and the scenery when your sailing should be fantastic enough - for you not to suffer too much. Which ports will you be hitting?

Since there aren't really all that many outstanding coasters in CA, especially NorCal, there seems to be a pretty broad consensus...which I'll join, more or less. Best steel: XCelerator, Tatsu, X2, with a shoutout to the drop and helix on Goliath. Oh, and the new Space Mountain is pretty splendid. Best wood: GR was down last week, and my memories of it are pretty rough. Roar at night, on the other hand, can be amazing. Worst steel: so many to choose from. Kong, I guess. Worst wood: why fight the world? Grizzly.

So, um, the mullets aren't intended to be ironic? Some kind of postmodern fashion statement? Guess achy-breaky not. Fun TR.

Another vote for BGE. It has Alpie and AC, both pretty much at the top of their classes, the one-of-a-kind set design of BBW, and now Griffon. Plus it's really beautiful, and has DarKastle, as well as a number of other non-coaster attractions and shows both you and your grandmother would probably enjoy. The World of Chocolate? Meh. But like someone else said, parkwise it's a win-win. And if you go to Hershey, maybe you could wheedle a side trip to Knoebel's... Edit: Just saw the above question. Actually, BGE tends to have a late entry policy, where portions of the park are kept closed until after the official opening time. Frustrating.

It was down a lot due to of slippage on the tire-driven lift. But honestly, all you had to do was stand at the exit and listen to the complaints about roughness to understand why, even when it was operating, it was usually empty. And yes, I actually sort of enjoyed it too. Sort of.

^ Actually, I went to KBF Guest Relations to express my amazement that I could ride with glasses on X2, but not Pony Express. Park policy.

^ When I was there, the park closed at 6. Oh well, better luck next visit.

Oh boy, I'm sold. Amsterdam #1. I can't wait to see all those pregnant 12-year-olds. That's not creepy at all. Um, actually, the USA has a teen pregnancy rate that's nine times higher than the Netherlands'. Oh, and I wasn't touting it as a selling point for the city. (I'm thoroughly opposed to the theory and practice of teenage-oriented "sex tourism.") Simply stating it as a matter of fact...and cultural difference. The age of consent in most of the USA, though, is as high or higher than in much of the industrialized world (Spain and Japan 13, Portugal and Germany 14, France, Denmark, Sweden 15), and that hasn't seemed to slow down the rate of American teen pregnancy or teen STDs. One may certainly argue that anything below, say, California's 18 is wrong, but not merely on the basis of "creepy."

While people can change their behavior (for instance, a straight woman can go have sex with another woman, and plenty of essentially gay guys are married to women), there's little evidence that people can change their actual orientation, and certainly not on the spur of the moment so they can be the cool kids in school. I mean, could you?

I rode X2 last Wednesday morning, and ended up liking it a whole lot, but not significantly more than I'd liked X. (Though it did in fact seem smoother to me.) Granted, the fire effect was down (I recall someone else saying it had been down when he rode, too) and there was, predictably, no fog. The music did add something, but, um...overhyped. I'm sure the flames would have helped, but it's pretty much the same ride, really, like "X - The Director's Cut." I kept wishing they'd added the rumored tunnels or water or something, like additional on-ride theming. The ad would have been more honest if it had crowed "X2 - now in new colors!" Still, fun.