hyyyper

Well, I guess I'm out for this year. I really wanted to go on one of the europe trips, but that would collide with my exam week and the end of the year. I was really hoping to get on to another trip, as the East Coast and West Coast Tour in 2008 and 2009 are one of the best things that happened to me. That said, any plans for 2011?

Name: Bas Houben Age: 20 What is your roller coaster count? 200 What is your home park? Toverland What is the nearest big city? Eindhoven, Netherlands What is your occupation? Mechanical Engineering student, parttime ride operater at Toverland About how many times a year do you visit a park (including your home park)? 10 About how many times a year do you travel to a park that is not your home park? 8 When you travel do you go primarily to amusement parks or do you also try and hit other sites? Very little. What is the farthest you’ve traveled to go to an amusement park? 5600 miles Does roller coaster time get in the way of family time? (Do you choose to miss your children’s or family’s sporting events, holidays, birthdays, etc…) No Do you have any other major hobbies? No Do you get feelings of sadness in the offseason? Do you even have an offseason? Do you travel during the offseason? Not really, my home park is open 365 days a year. Do you consider yourself friends with someone you met who works at an amusement park? (Or reverse it, if you work or worked and an amusement park have you made friends with enthusiasts?) Yes Would it bother you to go to an amusement park by yourself? No, except from my home park. Have you gone to an amusement park by yourself? If so have you ever ran into another enthusiast and tagged along with them? Yes and yes Do you find it easy to make friends with other enthusiasts? Yes How do you get your coaster news? Online boards How many different forum sites do you regularly post on? 3, Themeparkreview, Coastercrazy and Themepark (dutch) If there was a poll that asked a large pool of enthusiasts what their favorite roller coaster is, what do you think would be the top 3 responses be for wood? And for steel? Bizarro, Exp. Geforce, Nemesis El Toro, Voyage, Boulder Dash Same scenario but for amusement parks, what would be the top 3? Magic Kingdom, Magic Mountain, Cedar Point Have you ever “stole a kid” to get a credit on a kiddie coaster? No Do you cut other categories out of your budget to make trips to parks? (Entertainment, fast food, holidays, tobacco or alcohol, etc…) Yes Before you visit a new park do you research the park finding the best way to navigate the park, get the best deals, or what days to go? Yes Do you feel the roller coaster enthusiast community is a warm and accepting community, or a negative and discouraging community? Not sure, while some are very accepting, others are completey alienating. Do you like to talk about your hobby with people who are not roller coaster enthusiasts? Yes, although they might get annoying if I go into overdrive

Cables do indeed snap. But if the parks keep up with the checks every day, they should be able to spot signs of an about-to-snap-cable.

definatly planes. I'm no marine biologist, but how hard could it be?

I'm curious why they don't spot a deteriorating cable during daily checks? Surely the cables show signs of wear and tear before snapping.

Hydra was 13 million dollars , right now that's 8.85 million euros and could fit in the budget.

I would like to know if there is *any* chance of one of the europe trips starting in july instead of june?

It is possible to build a B&M for €10 million. However, you would get something like Hydra/Daemonen. Toverland said they are building rideS, so at least more than one, and with water. My guess is that they'll stick to the plan and get a ride big B&M 3 or 4 after the 3rd hall, so that would be around 2015-2017 somewhere.

Original article from Dagblad De Limburger (Daily local newspaper) Inverstering 10 miljoen Toverland Sevenum - Toverland-eigenaar Jean Gelissen gaat komend jaar tien miljoen euro inversteren in nieuwe attracties. De ondernemer heeft bovendien ambitieuze plannen voor een overdekt leisurepark in het Oostenrijkse Salzburgerland. Gelissen bouwt de nieuwe Toverland-attracties in de buitenlucht in de buurt van de houten achtbaan Troy. Om welke attracties het gaat wil hij nog niet kwijt. Wel dat het om zaken gaat waarbij water een grote rol speelt. Met de uitbereiding van Toverland is werkgelegenheid gemoeid voor een tiental mensen. Gelissen moet nog met de banken praten over financiering, maar verwacht dat dat geen probleem vormt. De bouw van de reeds aangekondigde derde indoorhal bij Toverland zal nog twee tot drie jaar op zicht laten wachten, zegt Gelissen. Translation: Sevenum - Toverland-owner Jean Gelissen will be investing €10 million ($14,6) in new attractions. He also has ambitious plans for an indoor-leisurepark in the Austrain Salzburgerland. Gelissen will build the new Toverland-rides outside, near the wooden rollercoaster Troy. What the rides are, he would not say. He did hint that water will play a great role. The expansion should open about ten job positions. Gelissen has yet to talk to the banks over the financing, but doesn't expect any problems. The construction of the announced 3rd indoor hall at Toverland will have to wait another 2 or 3 years, Gelissen explains. Sounds pretty good to me, it's a bummer the 3rd hall is pushed back, but I'm looking forward to the Troy-area expansion

As for Knott's itself, the only things the park had to offer were Silver Bullet and Xcelerator. The operations on Bullet weren't too bad, but I guess that's because it's a B&M, the rest of the (coaster)operators operated like they were in a coma. So after the ERT on Bullet and Xcelerator I was simply done with the park and wanted to leave. Thank god that I could kill the time taking some pictures

Bas does TPR West Coast Tour 2009 Day 10 Disney Resort “So there it was, the final day of the trip…sigh…I guess it’s true when they say all super-cool-awesome things come to an end” And this day was hell. That is, it was hell if you had to do Disney in one day. It was crowded as hell. Because it was a Sunday, there were more crowds than the rest of the week, and the premiere for the new Fantasmic show lured a lot of Disney-gee … eh, Disney-enthusiasts out to the park. Thankfully, we already did 2 evenings and a full day worth of Disney. Every ride that we wanted ride, we had ridden it. So what did we do the entire day? Well, we did a picture scavenger hunt. Basically, you get a list of things (or cryptic descriptions of things) you need to take a photo of. There were easy things, such as Japanese tour guides, and hard things that would even puzzle the dedicated Disney-gee … enthusiast. For some reason, two teams got their hands on former Disney-employees and then came in 1st and 2nd naturally, and since we got 3rd price, that makes us Winner of the non-cheating teams! During the day, we didn’t ride a lot of stuff, we were simply outnumbered by the crowds. Eventually it was time for dinner. I forgot the name of the place, but I remember I didn’t like the food. What I do know is that for some reason, I was the first person to ever fill out an Elissa Bingo Card, but more on that later. During Fantasmic, the rest of the park cleared out and we managed to do some stuff before the park closed and we all went to bed for the last time… Now this doesn't look like much, but you'll know what I'm talking about if you check the full resolution: http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/3350/disneysquare2.jpg Goodbye Mansion! And beer Farewell Dinner Ok, I rest my case It's a small world, strollers and GUESTS! Can this picture get any worse? LOL ....IT WAS! Trust me on that one And while it doesn't look so crowded... Ever wondered how the inside of club 33 looked like? Hello tiny castle! Hello trainstation! I love these benches, they are soo subtle

Wow, thanks Robb, that indeed is a surprise. J man and Imhotep, congrats to you.

^Just make sure you get the actual "Bruce Wayne Mix/Edit", as that is the version that is played in the station area

"If you've ever wondered what the underside of a carosel looks like, well, here you go." Caption stealer! And don't worry Josh, you are not alone in liking Hurricane, I though the ride was pretty neat. I'm looking forward to CGA!

Bas does TPR West Coast Tour 2009 Day 9 Disney Resort The last two days of the trip were at the Disney Resort. The hotel was very close to the parks, basically, if you would trip over a bum sleeping in front of the hotel lobby, you would fall into the park. Because of the two nights we already went to Disney, there were very little rides left to ride. A welcome addition to that was the Extra-Morning-Hour, which provided us (and some other people, mostly from the Disney hotels) to get into Disneyland an hour before park opening. We first rode both sides of Matterhorn, as they usually got pretty long lines during the day. The rest of the morning, we did random rides at Disneyland. Because everybody got the credits and favorite rides in at Disneyland, there was no pressure and actually quite relaxing, if it weren’t for the strollers. At some point in the afternoon, we skipped to California’s Adventure and rode Mulholland Madness, the last credit at DCA. It was a standard and weak mouse coaster, with theming that makes you think that the imagineers took a week off while the ride was designed. After the ride it was time for the group dinner at Tortilla Joe’s in Downtown Disney. The dinner sucked to me. First of all, I didn’t like the food, but that’s just who I am, a fastfood junk. But the service was really slow and if there was food I liked, there was way too little for everybody. After dinner and riding even more random stuff in DCA, it eventually closed and we hopped back to Disneyland, where we did even more rides. As closing act for today, I lined up for Space Mountain, and after queuing and being line-jumped for half an hour, I got credit #200 in! Space Mountain was an awesome ride, I think I prefer it over the Orlando version, and Paris’s Mountain is not worth to mention. Which concludes another day...one more to go... I'm sorry, I really am. There is it, awaiting me, credit #200 AAahh..where did all these people come from and why do they want to exit all at the same time!? Behind the layers of artistic freedom, it is actually a ferris wheel Because he had never ridden a swing-car-ferris-wheel, John had all the reason to be terrified. Or so he says. I can't believe they still haven't fixed those letters. the O and W didn't for our entire stay. Ah...now that's why they call it Sunset Blvd. They should name it "The Best Drop Sequence Hotel" Tower..again? I believe there hasn't been a single day we didn't ride it. Cool Bear Rock The Indiana Jones ride. Seriously I love this ride. And not just because it has fire. Jungle Cruise, where dark humour spits you in the face! A ship sailing with it's sail up? How magical can you get? Splash Mountain: Now with guests blocking the foreground! 'cool' Mansion We also visited Jeff Johnson's family How cute Another rip-off of my avatar Hi C3PO! ...we head over to Matterhorn! And while the Castle anxiously awaits our arrival... There was nobody here! I love Extra Magic/Morning Hours

Lol, look at Elissa's face BTW, I voted for Mr.Freeze

So, after lots of track and 3ds-building, the ride is finally done. The aim of the ride was to take a step back from the huge inverts out there like Montu and Katun, and make a little one, along Black Mamba. The ride is set in an egypt temple complex, as the egyptian theme is my favorite for coaster and other rides. The zip file contains four folders (cartextures, environments, objects, tracks). These correspondend with the folders in the NoLimits folder, so you simply copy-n-paste them. I hope you guys like the ride, I sure love it. The textures are mosty from http://www.simonoc.com and the 3ds palms are from http://artist-3d.com/ Tomb Raider.zip

I like SF and CP, if it weren't for those stupid CEO's, there wouldn't have been a roller coaster race and we'd be stuck with crappy vekoma's. And one more reaction to the topicstarter: If you read "SROS is #1", than that either means, it's #1 for other people. Now I could tell you that McD's burgers are the best, a hunderd people could tell you that McD's got the best, but if you prefer Burger King, SO BE IT.

^Do you guys mean a manual car with 'stick' ?

GP should not be allowed into parks. They always think they are smarter than safety regulations.

A 40-inversion B&M? Now where did I left those immigration papers...?

Filled it all in, and I secretly hope that one of the europe trip will start after July 2nd.

When I rode S:ROS last year, I really was dissapointed. When I got off the ride I was truly thinking: "So 'this' is #1?". I should have known that it's personal taste that makes a coaster good or bad. To me, it's not airtime that means much to me. Montu is still my favorite coaster, closely followed by Goliath (SFMM) and Talon. I guess democraty put S:ROS #1, There are more people who like airtime on their rides, I guess.

^Well, to me it looked the same. It had all the scenes the others had, the burning village, the skeleton pirate and stuff. As for the ToT letters, that was a joke.

Hey Natalie, I am intrigued how you managed to take so many pictures with a broken camera ( ) Btw, here's a (left side) shot of the spacecraft, not sure if it's any good to you.