hyyyper

So, here's a little update Trackwork is getting little tweeks here and there 3ds are at 80%, supports at 35% Terrain and enviroment are 95% I might make a cartexture, but Im not sure if I really want to. Anyways, here's a little preview

Title Fairy, I would like my title to be: Defines the Way of Life Thank you

Part II ...wow, this might be one of my best pics on the trip. (Larry, if you want this full-size, it can be arranged) See that, those are happy people. You want to know why? Because of the awesome Goliath ERT! As we walked back, Tatsu was looking gorgeous. Thank you operators! Thank you X2 for keeping everybody away from Goliath And this is what the train looked like for a long time And then it was time for Bonus ERT on Goliath Superman Riddler's skyline at night Is it a bird, is it a pla....oh nevermind You can only ride superman if you're with 3 guys and a girl. As soon as we got back to the hotel, we threw the suitcases in the room, and went to SFMM, thanks to this guy! Bus-drive-onride-sunset-picture? But, more importantly: Flight Deck It seems we are at a CF-park.

Bas does TPR West Coast Tour 2009 Day 3 California’s Great America, driving downstate and Six Flags Magic Mountain “Wow, I can’t believe were only at day 3, so much has already happened on the trip and happened to me. I can’t grasp the fact that this trip is actually 10 days.” Today we visited California’s Great America. The park was very close to the hotel, if you tripped over the sidewalk, you would fall against the park’s gates. Ok, I might have exaggerated, but it was real close. Our day started with ERT sessions on the parks B&Ms, Top-After-Flight-Burn-Deck-Gun and Vortex. On the days before the trip, I did look up some of the coasters, and for some reason Flight Deck seemed the ugly duck of the B&M inverts. It was really short and only had 3 inversions. But o boy was I wrong. This was a perfect example of “size doesn’t matter”. The ride was simply incredible. From drop to brakes you get exactly *one* moment to catch a breath, the rest of the ride is either pushing you in your seat, or it’s pushing you even harder in your seat. It’s like an avalanche of element falling down on you, in the best way possible. After some amazing rides on Flight Deck, we all headed over to Vortex. And while most of the group got the credit and left with a headache, I really liked the ride. People complained about headbanging, while I got none after my first run, simply by ‘hugging’ the elements, just like you would ‘hug’ a turn while you ride a motorcycle. Vortex was my first stand-up and the feeling of riding a B&M while standing up didn’t fail to amaze me. To my opinion, when you are seated, you are more relaxed experience the coaster to a lesser extend. So after the ERT we had a lot of time to kill before lunch and apart from Grizzly and Demon opening later (but not even close to the displayed time), we had no trouble getting all the credits in. Some people actually borrowed the kid from a TPR-member that joined us for the day (I forgot your name dude, but you ROCK). Alright, a quick overview of the coasters. The medium-inverted-boomerang was the first of its kind that I rode and I really like the concept of being able to see each other while riding. As just like on Vortex, everybody but me was headbanging and hated the ride, while I got none and thought the ride was fun. Demon was a fun coaster, until the first corkscrew. I don’t know who designed that lead-in, but I think he was taking LSD, weed and 5 pounds of Prozac in a valium cocktail. The ride was fine, really, but going from the drop into the corkscrew was painful as hell. Grizzly was pretty rough, yet very slow at some points. The ride’s pretty bad, but KD’s Grizzly is worse. Psycho Mouse was pretty weak for a mouse and Survivor the ride (great name! (NOT)) was making me a bit dizzy with all the spinning and spine-crushing. During our lunch (which also wasn’t that bad a people will tell you) it was decided to leave the park early so we could make good time when heading back downstate and get some sleep for the next day at Six Flags Magic Mountain. Thankfully, I could get some rides on Flight Deck before leaving the park was we got on our way back down to Valencia. Our in-drive entertainment thing time was Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, and once again, I was too busy viewing the movie, instead of taking pictures of it. So there are no pictures of it. At all. Anywhere in this PTR. Ok, now for something really cool. As we were approaching our hotel for the night, it was only 8:30 and Robb asked us if we would like to get into Six Flags Magic Mountain for just one hour. So as the bus went crazy Robb explained that he called with SFMM and actually got us in that night, and while a few really wanted to sleep, the majority went up to Magic Mountain. As we were about to enter the park, Neil, the awesome dude who was going to let us in, made a simple accouchement that, and I quote “just make sure you are at Goliath when the park closes”. How awesome! Nearly everybody went up to X2 straight away, but it seemed that because of the long queue line, we wouldn’t make it to Goliath until 15/20 minutes after closing. I had heard that X2 was super at night, but Matt and me played it safe and got out of the queue to ride something else and be on time for the ERT on Goliath. Besides, we had morning ERT on X2 the next day. That ‘something else’ ended up being Superman: The Escape. Because it’s a launched Intamin, it breaks down a lot, so if we could get it out of the way, it wouldn’t hurt us if it broke down the next day. Superman proved as much as fun as I remembered from the Australian Tower of Terror. The launch and the insane amount of zero-gravity is simply amazing. After Superman it was decided to try to hit Déjà vu, but as we got it line it was clear that the line was too long, operations terrible and Matt and I were seriously outnumbered by line jumpers. Instead, we took an easy walk up to Goliath. When we got to Goliath, it ran a few times with guests before closing. All the guests cleared out and all the TPR-members…..were still at X2! Seriously, Matt and I had Goliath for ourselves for 10 minutes or something. After that, other members slowly joined us. Goliath is (now) my favorite coaster in the park. The drop is insane, the tunnel awesome, the helix extremely intense (and that’s the way I like it) and the speed amazing. After 45 minutes on the awesome coaster, it was time to head out and make a futile attempt to get some sleep. Apparently, instead of only dropping us off and heading back to the hotel, our bus driver Larry joined the event and so the bus was still parked and Larry drove us back to the hotel. Which should give you a pretty good indication of awesome this Larry-person is. So I hereby want to thank the people at California’s Great America for the awesome morning ERT and stay at their park, and I want to thank Robb, Neil and Larry for getting us to, into and back from Magic Mountain that night. Thanks guys. This one is for you 'predrop' enthousiasts Vortex (trough the bushes) FlightDeck going to hyperspeed Zero-G-roll More loopage Train coming out of the first helix Ah, more FlightDeck The inverted boomerang, which broke down the next day The Grizzly But I guess some people liked it Psycho Mouse was your average mouse Next up was Vortex Heh, there's me again Welcomebackguyshowwasyourrideonflightdeck? ERT started with the awesome Flight Deck

The T in the airport is from T-Expresses sponsor

No more Micky the Sorcerer, it's the Fantasmic Four from now ! Official entry #1

, that is so true. I'm glad you took a step up and rode your first looping coaster. Did you try any of the park's other coasters?

Part III Boardwalk Panorama, large version: http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/512/santacruzsmall.jpg Giant Dipper The log flume As did the pendulum-thing The shot tower also has a lot of swoosh-ness The old swimming and diving pool was coverted into a pirate's themed minigolf area. Hey..it's me (god I look terrible) Swoosh Santa Cruz knew Robbie was coming and painted his face on the wall, just for him In the area, you could get some awesome shot of the Dipper

Part II But almost as important, we went backstage to Giant Dipper We got some real interesting stories about the history of the Boardwalk Giant Dipper flying by Our awesome guide, I forgot his name, but he was awesome! Everybody was crammed into the little maintenance area. Ever wondered what a carousel looked from the underside? Then you can stop wondering now. On our way to the beach pavillion The end of the boardwalk was very pretty More Hurricane A kiddie pretending to be Mantis Hi Mike

Bas does TPR West Coast Tour 2009 Day 2 Gilroy Gardens and Santa Cruz Boardwalk Beach So, after a night of grieving over my busted camera, it was time to head out to the next park. Gilroy Gardens is a beautifully landscaped park and EVERYTHING in the park is either a vegetable, or pretending to be one. As soon as we got to the park, we were walked back to Quicksilver Express, a very odd, but very awesome mine train. Hidden in a valley and surrounded by lots and lots of trees the ride is awesome as you fly down the track. Everybody got plenty of rides in thanks to ERT. After ERT, it was time to leave the park. At least, it was time for me to leave. I had called a cab to take me to the Best Buy at the other side of the city to buy a new camera. It took me about an hour, but finally I got back at the park with a brand new camera! I met back up with my group and we did some of the random stuff that the park had the offer. Stuff like a monorail with lap bars, a banana-shaped-pirate-ship, a rattlesnake-kiddie-coaster and a mushroom-wave-swinger. After the group lunch we took part in the hilarious Rock Maze takeover and soon it was time to depart and head for the Beach! Later that afternoon, we arrived at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk Beach. It was really crowded at the place, yet the lines for the rides weren’t all that long. The park was about half a mile long and was directly at the beach. As soon as we arrived, we hit the Hurricane. The Hurricane was a very intense ride and really surprised me for being so small and so cool. Almost right next to the Hurricane was the Giant Dipper, a pretty old woodie, but a pretty good one too. The ride was pretty smooth, even in the back seat. The entire ride was the opposite from what I expected it to be. The coaster still had good airtime, survivable laterals and a lot of speed. When we got to the third credit of the park, it seemed that the line at the kiddie coasters would take us too long, so we decided to skip it and have some food first. For some reason, TPR was given a beach pavilion, right next to the park and almost IN the ocean. After the food, something very disturbing called TPR-volleyball took place. I don’t have pics of it, as I was an participants, but I’m sure photo’s or footage of that crazy game will show up eventually. Following the volleyball, we got a backstage tour to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and although the our guide worked at marketing, he was actually very cool. He showed us the area underneath the (ancient) carousel/merry-go-round and the ride area of Giant Dipper. After the backstage tour, the sun was down and the night was slowly setting in. For the remainder of the day I bounced from group to group, riding some coasters and other random rides. I also walked to the sea, which provided an awesome view of the illuminated Boardwalk. This brings me to the point where I want to thank everybody at Gilroy Gardens and Santa Cruz for having us over and letting us have a kick-ass time at the parks. I also want to thank the Gilroy Taxi company and the Best Buy Gilroy just for being there, thank you! Giant dipper closeup As crowed as it looks on the picture...well, that's about how crowded it really was. Lift hill chain enthousianst, this one is for you, I know you are out there! And without any notification, we are in the Hurricane queue at Santa Cruz Little of the quicksilver express is visible. The monorail took us trough some of the parks gardens, including it's greenhouse Aparantly, there are Ents at Gilroy More lost people in the maze Since I had no camera on the first half of the day, here's the rock maze! New camera! The safness from the previous day was converting into nothing but positive energy when I got this baby up and running! (photo taken by Ben)

well, yea...when it's done

lol, Jason, you can only image the things that come out of conversations with Mike. The day at SCBB was pretty neat, and the backstage tour and TPR-volleyball was, well, as TPR as you can get.

Part III And here we are, the last picture taken with my good old camera. After this picture, I got on the ride, only to find out my camera was busted when I got off.....to be continued V 1 1/3 V 3..2..1..launch More V 1.999 Tony Hawk can give you a lot of spinage (spinage not spinach) More V 1.4159 V 1.56833678 'Better than the other 'roar', ROAR' They should make this a valentine's card Artsy zero-G shot Time for coasters, here's some Medusa-porn for ya

Part II Gnaarlggh...Me Eat Qbots! Icebat vs. SharkHat SharkHat! Paul look out! It's mega shark! Hi Tyler! Me&M&Ms Upside-down-ish-ness Chris, stop that death stare, you're spending too much time with Mike Austin ...whores More happy (disturbed) riders Happy (and some disturbed) riders Enough with the animal and animal people, time for some cool coasters 3 other pretty important animal people and a quarter of John's head Our host: EDGAR, thank you dude!

Bas does TPR West Coast Tour 2009 Day 0, Day 1 Driving upstate and Six Flags Discovery Kingdom In order to get to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom and other parks in the bay area, we first had to get over there. So, we all hopped on a bus and started driving north. Unfortunately we only got 2 blocks before we bumped into the wonderful standstill that people call LA-traffic. Thankfully, there were lots of things to keep us occupied. While our ‘tour-bags-of-not-necessarily-crap’ were handed out, we experienced a Q&A with Robb. I won’t go into details, but after the session, everybody on the trip knew a lot more about Papier-mâché-volcanoes, lending out laptops and Jezus fixing coasters. As we passed by Six Flags Magic Mountain, Robb opted to play a game they usually play when driving alongside parks: How many coasters do you see operating? The results: X2: not operating Viper: not operating Tatsu: not operating Superman: not operating Déjà vu: not operating Riddler: not operating Batman: not operating Scream: not operating Goliath: not operating Colossus: not operating So, 30 minutes after opening all of the visible coasters weren’t running for a good 4 minutes we had SFMM in sight. Anyways, we tried not the think about it all that much and after more miles, snack time and other randomness we stopped to get some food. But after the food stop it was SHARK ATTACK 3 that kept us entertained for the rest of the drive. And believe me, entertaining it was. Eventually, we got to our awesome hotel. Why awesome? It has coaster-mosaic-murals, space invader room keys, an IHOP and a decent pool. As soon as everybody got themselves a bit settled, the pool area was invaded by snacks from almost every place on earth. And while eating all those snacks, I failed to take any pictures, sorry. The next day we went to the West Coast Bash at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, which was essentially a lot of people joining in on the West Coast Tour for a day. We started our day with EAT, exclusive animal time, where some animals were served, uh, brought for us. Soon after, we were put in the new tiger theater were a lot of people told lots of things about tigers. But onto the important stuff! Because after the tigers, it was time for Medusa ERT. The coaster was awesome, and my favorite in the park. The straight drop is just as awesome as the dives on other B&Ms, and the rest of the ride is just great. However, I do prefer the other Medusa/Bizzaro, and that’s basically because of the cobra-roll. The rest of the morning consisted of getting all the coasters in that weren’t open for ERT that evening, looking at animals, shopping for random souvenirs and defining the way of life. Cobra was just a regular kiddie, except that the snake in front was one of the coolest coaster trains I’ve ever seen. Boomerang wasn’t that bad for a boomerang, and Kong wasn’t that bad for it being an SLC. At lunch we got an Q&A session with a marketing guy and an operations guy. And while the marketing guy was acting like he was presenting for the home shopping channel, the dude from operations was able to tell us some cool things of how the park and coasters are run. After the lunch I joined the ‘bonus activity’, the jelly belly factory tour. Having never heard of jelly belly’s and no worries of getting all the credits, I figured I’d join up. The whole tour turned out to be a walkthrough-jelly-belly commercial and I discovered that I hate the candy and requested to visit an M&Ms factory next year. We got back in the park in the afternoon and did some of the flat rides. The topspin was the worst topspin I’ve ever been on. I don’t know why, but it ran only half a regular cycle (3 flips) and then broke down. We also got the remaining credits while everybody else was playing TPR-trivia. After the trivia was over, the ERT begun. With something special going on at the Tony Hawk Big Spin. The game was to fill a cup of water at the beginning of the ride, and trying not to spill water during the actual ride. Tony Hawk itself was a fun ride, and if you were lucky with the weight distribution, got could get an insane amount of spin. V2 (or V1.5) was not as fun as its full-size bothers, but it was different and during the sunset you could get a spectacular view of the park. Roar was a very decent ride, powerful but a little slow on the hills and high turns. One funny note about the Roar operations, though. Now, first of all, I am not a racist, and I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes, but it was too stereotypical to see 3 black female operators chatting loudly in the operator booth, while one white girl had to check almost all the restraints by herself. I rode Roar about 5 times in the back row and then went over to Tony Hawk to do the water challenge. I failed miserably at the game, but it was a lot of fun see to others fail as well. But when I got off the ride to take some more pictures my camera had decided to commit suicide and do nothing except for displaying ‘lens error’. So there I was, half a planet away from home with can $250 camera not functioning… Apart from the disaster with my camera, I really enjoyed the day. I’m sure that lots of people liked all the animals, but I was really positively surprised by the coasters in the park and the way the event was set up. Thanks to everybody who was even remotely part of it, Thank you. (And, managers, if you are reading this: Get that Topspin some decent programs!) Smack my tiger up! And tiger-training-people! Tiger! EAT with otters Good ROAR!, or should I say 'Not so bad ROAR' So, three days into the trip, we arrive at the FIRST (official) park of the trip Hi KerryB! And here is a bridge and prison island, you know the names. Hey look, it's San Fransisco. But then trough a bus window, miles away and shot with a cheap lens. Now, while I was enjoying watching the awesome motion picture that many know by the wonderfull name of SHARK ATTACK 3, I totally forgot to take pictures. So from SFMM, we suddenly are at the Avatar hotel with the mosaic murals! ...and Scream! Bummer and neither were Goliath, Superman, Colossus Hey look, there's Tatsu, and it's...not operating And this is what it looks like when to take the effort to stand up. This is what the bus looks like if you suspend yourself from a seat in the back.

I'm still convinced it's a B&M and not a Vekoma Flying Dutchman. Keep up the good...er...just keep up the work!

You could always use this program: http://www.andreaplanet.com/andreamosaic/ for example, the disney castle, mosaic-ed with pictures from this trip http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/6495/tprwestcoast20091590moz.jpg

I went up to the front the desk and the guy told me the hotel made them theirselves. The little pixels are actually heads of avatar employees and random famous people.

You're balls were awesome, Natalie, good luck with the rest of TR (I know it'll come eventually!)

Ok, it's been a while since the first update, mainly because of the awesome West Coast Tour. But now Im back and building again: From top to bottom: 1 Ride entrance 2 Inside the entrance building 3 Queue tunnel with a view 4 Spikes!

Gilroy was a really nice park, the landscaping was amazing. Altough the park had no real high-thrill coasters, we had some good times in the most random collection of vegetable rides.

I still can't believe you paid a kid to ride And hurray for Sharkhat!

Part III They had some nice moons in California too Nerd shot Yup, we're still at Pacific Park Beautifull sunset over the pacific A rollercoaster....IN THE SHADOW! Overview of the little park from the ferris wheel Some TPR-peeps waiting for the scrambler Swing ship takeover "Yes, I do believe your photo turned out exactly like mine" It may not look like much, but it's a credit!

Part II Santa Monica Pier . . . from the Venice Beach pier! And mr. Walt not-so-hidden Mickey Re-election campaign? Hey look, it's me and 9 random letters on a mountain! Jamie Foxx getting filmed I first thought this was just billboard! Are we in Disney Studios? Yay, Hollywood Icebat in progress? Rodeo Drive Neighbourhood Sign Photo!

Bas does TPR West Coast Tour 2009 Day -2, Day -1 Outbound flight and sightseeing After waiting almost a year since the East Coast Tour, I was finally ready to head out to California to start the West Coast Tour 2009. I drove away from our little house at 3 in the morning and crossed to border into Germany. Once I got to Köln (Cologne) Airport, I got on the Germanwings flight Stansted in London. From Stansted I had to take to bus to Heathrow and from there NorthWestAir would take me to Minneapolis-St. Paul and eventually to Los Angeles. I arrived at the first hotel just before midnight, meaning I travelled 30 hours in total (!). Some of us hung out in the lobby for a while, but eventually went to bed. The morning after a lot of the trip-goers had signed up for the sightseeing day. For the majority of the day we ‘enjoyed’ getting stuck in LA traffic, but we occasionally stopped to see some random things. The first stop was at Rodeo Drive, where (we think) we saw Paris Hilton (we’re not sure), looked at a Beverly Hills sign and Mike ate a burger. After spending totally nothing in overpriced stores, we hopped back on the bus to visit Hollywood Boulevard. We saw the usual Walk of Fame, Celebrity footprints at Grauman’s Chinese theater and the Hollywood Sign (which I first thought was just a billboard on a building). But as we walked along the boulevard, it appeared that Jamie Foxx was being filmed for a movie. The third stop was Venice Beach, which was, as expected, a beach. There was very little going on and after we walked to the pier and back, we headed out for the bonus credit stop, Santa Monica Pier. The little park on the Santa Monica Pier, called Pacific Park, had just a single coaster, a few flats and a small ferris wheel. The roller coaster wasn’t all that spectacular. It has two helixes and some little bunnyhills, but it’s a credit! As the sun slowly sank to the horizon, more and more rides were taken over TPR-style. Eventually it was time to get back to the bus and make sure we got some sleep before the long drive up to the bay area the next day. LA! I made it! Some artsy "plane vs. boarding passenger vs. terminal window" Hmm...is this the prototype Delta outfitted with warp drive? "....To your left you can see the Atlantic Ocean....FOR THE NEXT 6 HOURS!..." Are we in the Matrix? Without any (major) traffic violations, I arrived at the aiport Attention people driving towards Köln Airport: Get out of the way, I've got a flight to catch!