Alpenguy

How can you not enjoy Small World Holiday? I guess I'm a bit biased. Nice pics and such dude.

I rode it last week in the pitch dark for the CM Halloween thing and definitely prefer the stars too, it was pretty strangely disorienting and didn't have the same sense of speed. It was still fun 6 times in a row though.

Nice to finally get word on a new coaster... I have mixed feelings though. Another GCI an hour away and yet another 100 footer in a park full of short coasters really pales to some of the possibilities the park has turned down over the years. I think a Maverick type or anything with length and airtime would be much more exciting after such a long wait.

That looks really nice. It makes me wonder what is inside the rubbery part of both those and B&M flyer restraints, but I think I'd actually willingly ride an SLC with that seat.

I've found Team Fortress 2 with a solid set of players on a server to be far more fun than my battlegrounds (Rank 11 back in the day) addiction ever was. And no levels or gear to worry about! I'm part of the "I quit after I realized TBC wasn't an amazing expansion on life" crew. 70 troll mage on Cenarion Circle up until then though.

Having spent far too many summer days at PGA growing up, and as a former Top Gun operator, I have but one thing to say: Weak. Aside from Psycho Mouse, that'll make it an even 10 years since PGA got a real coaster that's still there. 10 years. 2009 better be time to match the new addition in Canada I say.

After Rockin', pretty much everyone has already seen it rather clearly. That's a cool video and pretty nice bonus for the college program folks, I didn't know they did that.

A bunch of friends & I were playing the classic "...in bed!" fortune cookie game after a big Chinese meal together, and most were pretty good. I went last. 'You will receive good advice from a child."

Forget parks looking into their names, they probably fail to grasp that serious employers and background checks, heck, even potential girlfriends and online stalkers will now clearly pick up their names for doing stupid stuff with a simple Googling.

All you need to do is turn off user access control and run RCT3 as an administrator, at least I haven't had any troubles with it that way. The Bioshock demo is getting pretty annoying though, and is totally failing to work properly. Good thing I didn't buy the full game yet, until it's patched to not require reinstalling every single driver and bit of support I'll hold onto my $50. Shame since it seems like an awesome game.

The only games I've had issues with on Vista have been because of stupid copy protection crap on the discs. GTA San Andreas refuses to even show up as a valid DVD consistently.

Travis Barker, Eva Longoria, Weird Al Yankovic and Andre Agassi all impressed me as very nice, genuine, reasonable people when I've run across them at rides. Plenty of other celebs are either not so fondly remembered, or not recognized. (Hell, I had no idea who Longoria or Agassi were until someone told me, and Barker was a lucky guess based on tattooage.)

As a ride op I've come across various guests (often former ops themselves, or the rare asshat passholder who read about a "trick" on some forum) who find it a fun game to mess with rides and claim ignorance. If the report is even remotely accurate I have no doubt this guy is one of those people. The most common one I've dealt with involves people purposefully getting stuck in airgates to see that yes, it does make an alarm noise (with an easy reset and solution, though it was an e-stop on a ride I used to work, at a park that didn't teach of allow ride ops to reset things). It's very common to catch loonies waiting in line for a certain flat ride that involves a boarding ticket of sorts, then just running out the exit with the ticket to put on their mantle at home or sell for $2 on eBay. If caught, it's a plea of ignorance of course. The 3 morons I've caught jumping out of dark ride vehicles to steal props all claimed they had no idea why the ride stopped or what could be going on until they had some time to sit with park security. Considering the great design of B&M restraints, plus their very open mechanisms, there's no way that coincidence could be the case for this guy. The claim of ignorance and exaggeration (OMG MY LEGS WERE PURPLE!!!!1) on the part of this Sassone goofball just cement the deal. No way.

I remember you dude! And yeah, that site sure went downhill. I miss the heyday of when it had the D logo with the little coaster around it, maybe 2001 or so, right before the pointless FluxD thing that spelled eventual doom. If you go to RCTBitch.com now it's pretty hilarious, and pretty arousing if you enjoy large oiled buttocks. JamminJ I remember too. There are a few of us, mostly from the 2002ish era who are still in close touch. This name and my experience with messageboards both originated at Danimation in '99, posting from the middle school library. I messed around on ACN a bit ("How to Get Laid" topic was mine) but that was mostly just trolling with a few Dnet pals like TheDwarf and GoliathRocks.

I work on Small World quite commonly, and it's preferable to a lot of ride environments. Three bad 80's songs looped forever was a lot more painful than one simple melody that's really easy to completely tune out. Nice shade too. I'm excited to see the gaucho penguins.

That helix picture looks amazing. I'd love to ride a flume with more slightly inclined fast turns and such.

I haven't been to the park, but judging from pictures it seems like the base of the drop and loop are pretty close to a walkway and park areas, or at least closer than Top Gun's which is way back behind two fences and quite far from guest areas. Anyone who's been there able to describe just how hard it would've been to get to this area?

In the (I think out of print) book Rollercoasters, Flumes, and Flying Saucers there's a very extensive chapter on it, straight from Ed Morgan and Karl Bacon. It was entirely Arrow engineered, and worked with unpowered cars pretty much just like a giant air hockey table. The intricate part is that the table had 50,000+ valves that worked in a balanced plenum situation (phrase from the book) so that the air pressure inside was just enough to hold the valves closed, but a saucer above put enough pressure down that it forced the valves under it open. That way the table didn't take too much power and wasn't outrageously loud. Apparently if you got a saucer up to speed, the valves behind it could be seen closing in a little trail a few feet back. The air reservoir was about 6' high under the table so maintenance could walk through it, and the table itself was located where Honey I Shrunk the Audience is now. It had two main areas and a really cool loading boom system. Basically each of the two main areas was shaped like a half-circle, and there was exactly enough space for a cycle of saucers to park in a little area on the flat bottom of the circle, but split in half. A big moving arm pivoted from the middle of the half circle and swept around from each outside end. One set of saucers would be loading with the boom holding them in the small loading area, while the other set was in the main ride area having fun. Then the boom swept across to shove all the riding saucers into the loading area, while simultaneously letting the newly-loaded saucers into the main ride area. There were two of these semi-circles, each with two sets of saucers, so overall there were 4 sets, 1 always running on each side. If this isn't clear I'll draw a diagram tomorrow. Apparently the thing was a maintenance hog, with not only the pumps and compressors under extreme stress constantly, but the valves were so numerous that minor damage started to build up very quickly to causing problems with the pressure balance. It also had horrible capacity in ticket-book times: with 16 saucers in each set, figure 800 an hour with perfect cycles of only 2 minutes including boom movement time, which was at least 30 seconds going each way. That's not much time, so figure 3 minutes including boom movement time, and it's already down to less than 600 an hour... 1/5 that of Pirates, and just barely ahead of Peter Pan. I think it would be outrageously awesome if a smaller park with some guts and money (Knobels, cough, easier than Flying Turns I'm sure) resurrected this ride concept, but it wouldn't work too well back in Disneyland. I know I'd travel a long ways to try REAL hovercraft bumper cars.

Nice TR! How's Fujiyama holding up? I'm curious since everyone says it's so smooth and fun compared to the POS Togo's in the US...

I'd say SFMM and Disneyland, or Knott's if you want another day of simple coasters. While DL is similar to Magic Kingdom (obviously...) the Matterhorn, Space Mountain, INDY, and if you spring for a few extra $'s, the big rides of DCA are damn great. That'd cost at least twice as much as Knott's though. If you've been to Universal in Orlando, there's no reason to bother with Hollywood IMO. The only thing that's really unique to USH is the tram tour.

Looks like an awesome day. I really really liked Alton when we visited, and the ride crews were definitely fast then too. So sad to think of Tatsu's undeniably crappy operations after seeing AIR constantly clearing the station and running at absolute full capacity with a train often stopping on the lift...

I wouldn't mind a lack of padding, but that bar is so narrow that any pressure against it isn't going to be distributed at all, and will be sharp bruising pain rather than firm pressure. Everything looping lapbars should be B&M clamshell restrains IMO.

Definitely a lift stop right at the crest point. Very stupid and unsafe actions on behalf of the evacuation crew there... though they probably just mindlessly followed policy. For everyone in the train it should've been fine, but that's incredibly dangerous for anyone in the process of getting out, or helping people out. I imagine a LOT of policies will be changed at the park, and all operations people involved will be finding other jobs. At least, I sure hope so.

Fantastic time to visit. Disneyland is in holiday mode but without the extreme crowds of winter break, the weather is generally really nice with a small chance of light rain, and this year there shouldn't be any major attractions in refurbishment. Just make sure you go before December 15th or so. The two weeks before Christmas up through a bit after New Year are the busiest, most insane days of the year for Disney. 70k days are not exactly a relaxing vacation. As for hotels, a lot of folks seem to like the Howard Johnson on Harbor Blvd. I don't really know anything about that stuff firsthand though.

This makes me really want to go to Knott's on a day off during the week. How long was the queue for Ghostrider when you were riding?