David H

I'm still amazed that even something this complex and well-themed will take 2.5 years to build. And longer for Hollywood. I mean, we're talking theme park attractions, not the new World Trade Center! I'll be interested to see how far along they are when I go in October. Assuming that I can see anything, of course!

I'm gonna throw out a random guess and say it will be for the new Happy Valley opening in China next year.

I'm not sure if people are being serious or joking, but very little of the shrimp served in the US is fresh. That's because most of it comes from Thailand or Indonesia or elsewhere in southeast Asia. And seafood can't generally stay fresh long enough to transport around the world. The main exception to this would be down south where you'll find some Gulf shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico, but since the oil spill, fewer restaurants are carrying that, despite claims that it's safe. (Although you might think that a place called Bubba Gump's would be more likely to sell fresh Gulf Shrimp!) I work for a restaurant that makes a really big deal out of only serving the freshest fish. We even fly Wild Salmon in fresh from Alaska and Dover Sole in fresh from Holland. But even we serve frozen shrimp. In fact, it's just about the only seafood we sell that's frozen, besides calamari, which is similarly almost always frozen in the US. If you're eating at a nicer upscale seafood restaurant, I'd generally suggest choosing something other than shrimp or calamari. It's not that it's not good, it's just not going to be that much better than you can get at a cheaper restaurant, whereas the other fresh fish should be a lot better. Save the shrimp for the cheaper restaurants.

Isn't it all too common in this hobby that the parks with the best coasters have the worst operations? I can think of a whole lot of examples, unfortunately. The problem is that Fuji-Q has the best collection of coasters in Japan. So, thrill-seekers are going to go there, no matter what they do. Of the 16 Japanese steel coasters to make it to the top 150 on Mitch's steel poll, three of them are at Fuji-Q. It seems likely that their newest would join their ranks, too. That would give them nearly a quarter of the best steel coasters in Japan, which makes it a must-visit for both locals and traveling enthusiasts. As much as Robb and Elissa (and most of TPR) hate the place, could you imagine them taking a TPR trip to Japan without going there? People would be pissed. And you know that more than half of the people on the trip would end up trying to get there on their own anyways! When I was thinking about adding a stopover in Japan on my way to the TPR China trip, my first thought was to go to Fuji-Q, even though I know it will be a day of frustration! (Hopefully, I won't spend more than an hour stuck on a lift hill this time!) But you know a place is run badly when all I'm hoping to be able to get in is rides on each of the 4 signature coasters and the haunted hospital -- in ELEVEN hours!

Well, Merlin owns all of them, so it makes a lot of sense to move it there. Also, the current location has competition right down and across the street. As you walk to the Dungeon, scare actors try to talk you into going to their haunted attraction instead. And they offer you a discounted price as incentive. But if they raise the price and then offer everyone walking by a discount, is it really a discount? But it's current location is a bit off the beaten path, and not that close to the Eye. Now, all of their non-amusement park attractions (including the new Sea Life Aquarium) will be at the same site, other than Madame Tussauds, which I don't see moving any time soon. it should help boost their multi-venue ticket sales quite a bit. This will make it even easier for coaster enthusiasts to hit the site. If you buy the Merlin pass for all of their UK parks, it's good for Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Legoland Windsor, Chessington, and all four of the attractions above. If you buy the pass early enough online, or you can find a good coupon (try e-Bay -- the coupon I found there cost me maybe $5-8 with overseas shipping and saved me something like 60 pounds!), you can get a lot of attractions at a very reasonable price. And you get to jump the lines at all of the attractions, too, except for the Eye, which you have to pay extra to line jump. And all of the non-park attractions in London can be done in a day or two at most. Honestly, I probably wouldn't have done any of these attractions other than the Eye. But with the pass, it was really worth it. And I actually enjoyed them all a lot more than I expected to! As for the new 5D shooting ride, I could easily see them deciding not to move it. Due to the crowds they get, they can only keep it on a fairly short movie program. And even then it really backed up the lines inside.

Well, I had to donate to a friend from ACE who's doing it at Cedar Point (although she's not on any team), so I matched the donation to a member of Team TPR at CP. Fair, right? And it brings Team TPR a little closer to Team GOCC, which is mostly one person, who's admittedly doing a tremendous job! But this does bring up an interesting point. Most of the Team TPR people out here are relying on other TPR members for their donations. With so many Team TPR members doing the coaster-thon, that really spreads out the donations. If we want to really hit big numbers, it's important to get people in your regular (non-TPR) life to make donations too! Now if only we had a Cedar Fair park in New England!

But carnival doesn't have anything even nearly as awesome as Aska. Seriously, if Nara Dreamland was still open, I'd happily go back just to ride Aska over and over again! Then again, it probably wouldn't be nearly as good with nearly empty trains, which is what I'm sure the park had all the time, except for when our coaster group was there. With full trains, it was amazing! But I don't think that there was even a train's worth of people in the park, besides our group!

Well, I'm not sure if anyone beat me to it, but I just gave $25 (+fees), so Team TPR is now officially at $10,000!

You know what I find absolutely hilarious? People complaining that it's not fair if other people get to ride more roller coasters than they do because those people have more money. I mean, seriously? You're complaining about classism in a LUXURY hobby like this one? There is absolutely nothing fair about this hobby. And there never has been. The vast, vast majority of people in the world will NEVER attend any amusement park. And some of you are complaining because some people might get a few more rides than you? I'd love to see you find some poor, starving, sick kid and ask him to get upset that an amusement park is actually letting some people pay to get more rides than you do. Many people in the world don't have food to eat. Or homes. Or jobs. Or medical care. That's capitalism for you. The same capitalism that allows big companies to spend tens of millions of dollars to build roller coasters, while people go to bed hungry. And it's the same capitalism that allows YOU to visit amusement parks in the first place and enjoy this hobby. It's great when YOU are getting the benefits of that capitalism. But it sucks when someone else does, and you don't. Welcome to the world.

I'm really sorry to see Rampage getting closed. At night, that thing really sped up, especially if you were there for a late night event, like Rip Roaring Rampage. In fact, I've never been to the park when there wasn't an event there! It ranks on my woodie list as #5, just behind El Toro. And if you take out Aska, which will never run again, then it was #4. I'll always remember the hours of amazing rides we had on Rampage during the RRR events. If you've never been, you really missed out on something special! I'm not the only one who thought it was that great either. While it dropped to #23 in the ranking on Mitch's poll this year, and #32 in the Golden Tickets, it had previously ranked much higher. In fact, only twice has Rampage not been in the top 20 woodies on Mitch's poll. It debuted at #4 and remained in the top 10 for 6 years and in the top 15 for all but the last three years. I believe that this would actually be the highest ranking wooden coaster to be endangered in quite some time, other than Aska and Ozark Wildcat, neither of which has operated in years, unfortunately. Hopefully, someone will buy it. I'm not holding my breath. And the fact that it was built to a specific terrain would make it hard to move and rebuild. But if it's only $300,000, it might make a good investment for someone to buy and hire Gravity Group or GCI to rebuild for much less than the cost of a new coaster. Hell the trains and lift hill and mechanism for a new coaster would cost more than that!

^ Maybe I should switch my TPR China/Asia trip schedule around and go to Disney at the beginning of the trip, so that after all of that power walking through the Indy single rider line, I'll be nice and trim to fit on all of those tight Asian coasters!

I can't wait to get back to Tokey Disney. Which rides have single rider lines? I don't recall if we noticed any of them when I was there! Also, I wonder why they only let you park hop on the third day and onward. Probably to entice you to splurge on extra days?

And those who've been there will know why! I mean, it's mainly because of Tokyo Disney that I'm even doing Japan this year. When I first started planning the trip for TPR China, and looking for flights on British Airways partners for award travel, I discovered that there were large fuel surcharges, but not if I took American Airlines, which would mean a Tokyo layover each way. And with the new way they calculate award travel, it was far more miles to book it as one journey on two airlines than to book it as separate legs. Which got me thinking. If I'm going to have to stop in Tokyo and allow time to get my bags and check back in, how could I sit there at the airport so close to Tokyo Disney and not go to the parks? Especially since they would be separate flights anyways, so I could make it a full stop with no penalties. (In fact, quite the opposite.) But that set the ball rolling for what is turning out to be 12 days in Japan both before and after the China trip! In fact, I'm going everywhere on this leg of the TPR Japan trip that Fivv has recounted here. And it's all because of Disney! I'm very much looking forward to going back. In fact, they will very likely be my last parks of the year. And I'll get to see the whole Halloween lighting and theming package this time, too! The irony, though, is that I ended up taking so long planning everything with all of the Japan extensions that the flights home on AA booked up for award travel, and I'm now taking Japan Airlines, with a nearly $300 fuel surcharge! At least it's a direct flight, though!

^ Cool. While I wasn't with you all, it will help refresh my memories of my trip, and help me look forward to making new ones, both at Tokyo DIsney and Fuji-Q and with you all in China! We were amazed at the whole loading procedure on Pyrenees during our trip. First, they'd wait until EVERYONE from the previous train was out of the station. Then they'd close the exit gates. Then they'd put all of the harnesses down. Then they'd wipe each of them down. Then they'd lift each of the harnesses back up. Then they'd wipe down each seat. Then, and only then, would they START letting people into the station, scanning each person's wristband or ticket and assigning them to rows. But even then, the station gates were still closed. Only after everyone was in the station and in their rows would they open the station gates. Then everyone put their stuff in the other side of the station and sat down and locked up the harnesses. Then they checked all the harnesses. And eventually, they sent us out. And they did this every time. There were several times where I made it all the way around, and they still hadn't let the people into the station, never mind onto the train! Luckily, it sounds like they've figured out a better system. You know, like how all of the other parks in the world, do it? On a side note, where's Divv moving to? I was actually wishing I was in Manchester this weekend at local DJ Gareth Emery's big music label party at Sankey's nightclub. I've actually managed to see him 5 times in the past year and half, in Boston, NYC and Ibiza.

On most overseas trips I've done there comes a day when the exhaustion (and sometimes the repetitiveness of a constant coaster trip) catches up with me, and I have a kind of miserable day that is not at all the park's fault. For my Japan trip, it was Nagashima Spaland. And it didn't help that their best coaster (SD2000) was down, since this was after the wheel falling off incident. (Like a year or more after it, but the Japanese don't tend to open rides quickly (if at all) after accidents.) And it didn't help that it was the hottest, most miserable day of the trip either. We were hot and miserable and pretty much done with the park once we got all the credits in and rode the awesome Bobkarts. Luckily, the park has a pretty decent water park attached, which a group of us decided to pay extra for, since we had plenty of time in the park and had managed to get all of the credits in pretty quickly. We had a great time at the water park. The funny thing is that two of the three things I remember most don't seem to be on the English park map that's on their website, so I'm not sure if they're still there, or if the map is really old. (This was in 2005.) They had one of the toilet bowl slides, which was still fairly new back then, so we were excited to get flushed! And they had a flow rider set up, which was also new back then. The neat thing is that they had some real experts there who would do all sorts of tricks for the crowd that gathered in the small stadium they had set up around it. And I remember lying in the lazy river and at one point looking right up at SD2000 and just knowing that that was the spot where the wheel fell off the coaster and hit someone in the river. We were all joking about watching out for falling wheels -- even though the coaster was sadly not running! A funny side note. One of the ladies in our group was commenting on how many of the people were looking at us, probably because they don't often get to see white skin in that part of Japan. I pointed out that they were actually staring at her ample chest, which they don't often get to see in Japan! I'm going to try to stop in quickly on this trip, mainly just to try to finally get to ride SD2000. It will probably be a quick stop, mainly to ride SD2000 one or two times, maybe a ride on the woodie, and one on the Bobkarts. And I'll have to remember to check out the dark ride, which I think we missed last time. If the park is dead, maybe another coaster ride or two, then back to Nagoya for a bit of daytime sightseeing. Then it's the bullet train to Tokyo, maybe with a couple of extra hours at Disney before spending two days there, if time allows. And it's good to hear that maybe our experience on Pyrenees at Parque Espana was the exception, rather than the norm. I'd really love to get a bunch of rides on one of my favorite coasters at what was otherwise a really great park. It's really the only park in Japan other than Disney that I'm going back to because of what they already had, rather than because they've added something new that I want to ride. But the loading on Pyrenees really was ridiculous that day. I'm not at all exaggerating when I say it was maybe one train every 15 minutes or so. Were they cleaning every seat between each train on your visits. as they were that day? They were very thorough about that when I was there!

Parque Espana was probably my favorite park in Japan, outside of Disney. (I didn't really have much time at Universal to judge, and that was before they added the two latest coasters.) It's one on my main motivations for the stop I'll be doing this year in the Osaka/Mie/Nagoya area. Combined with Universal's Halloween Horror Nights, Parque Espana makes for a very worthy side trip. The park turned out to be quite a surprise, too. We all knew that Pyrenees would be great, but not HOW great it turned out to be. Some of the strongest G-forces on any steel coaster I've been on, especially with that amazing section in the middle with the cobra roll and helix, although the trim brake kind of kills the last third of the ride. But it was my #3 steel coaster, now displaced a notch by NTaG. A very old-school "B&M with balls"! But probably the biggest surprise was Gran Montserrat. We weren't expecting much from a mine train, but everyone on the trip loved it. I wanted more rides, but with minimal time and slow loading, and Pyrenees and the rest of the park calling, I didn't have time to get back. Perhaps it was a good thing, though, that the Bullfight coaster was down. The boat ride was amazing, unexpectedly long and well-themed. And who doesn't love the bizarre escalator "ride"? Are you guys aware what a perk the ERT was on Pyrenees, though? Trying to ride during the regular day was a huge frustrating chore, thanks to literally the single worst loading procedures I've EVER seen anywhere. There was maybe a two train wait, and it ended up being around 30 minutes each of the several times I rode, while they took forever to completely clear the station before even starting to very thoroughly clean the seats before even contemplating letting anyone even into the station, slowly checking each wristband and assigning seats and still not opening the station gates until everyone was in the station for that train -- never mind the actual loading and checking of the ride. I've never seen anything even remotely like it, even in Japan. If the ride wasn't so amazing, I'd never have put up with it. As such, I'm kind of dreading the day there, strangely. Unfortunately, I'm going on a national holiday (Health and Sports Day.) If Pyrenees was a 30 minute wait with hardly anyone in line, I'm afraid to find out what it will be like on a busy day! Maybe people will be too busy working out and playing and going to sports games. But I think it's going to be a frustrating day. Luckily, Pyrenees is worth it! Hopefully, with the whole day there, ll get more than 2 rides on it!

I'm looking forward to really having some time at USJ after TPR China. In fact, it's the only park of the entire Asia trip that I'm scheduling two different days at (with the possible exception of Tokyo DIsneyland.) I want to minimize the chances of getting rained out there. I'll actually only be there for a few hours on Saturday night, mainly to see the Halloween Horror Nights stuff. Then I'm spending all day on Sunday there. That's quite the switch from my last Japan trip, where a handful of us left the group at Expoland in the afternoon to try to squeeze in BOTH Kobe Portopialand (which was closing a few months later) and USJ. Thanks to a train line in Kobe that was down and running shuttle busses both ways, we managed to get to USJ a little more than an hour before they closed, which was enough time for the kiddie coaster (the only one at the park at the time), Jurassic Park (and even in Japan, I didn't get to go to Hadrosaur Cove!) and to run over to Spider-Man to discover they'd closed the queue early. So, this time, weather permitting, I'll have time to do a lot more. Although since I'll be there on a weekend during Halloween Horror Nights, I'll probably be making use of Universal Express! And I'll take the pictures of the injured pair from Mitsui Greenland as a warning to actually make use of the brakes when/if I ride the Alpine Slide there, before China. So, thanks for the heads up! Also, I've already chatted with Elissa about the hotels on your trip, and will probably be staying at several of the same ones. Luckily, they're looking cheaper than I was expecting when I'll be there -- for Japan at least!

This is good timing on posting these enjoyable TR's. I've now booked my flights for the TPR China trip, plus a bunch of extended add-ons, including parts of Japan both before AND after the China part of the trip. The Hakata/Fukuoka area is the one area in Japan that I'm going to that I didn't do on my other trip there a few years back. And, honestly, the main reason I originally planned to get down there was just to more or less check off a bunch of coasters, including the only woodie in Japan I've missed. But this TR, along with some others, are getting me more excited about hitting this area. Unfortunately, I'm stuck with only two full days there, plus parts of the day before and after. And I want to try to get to Space World, Mitsui Greenland, and Kijima Kogen, which is going to be tough. Luckily, Kijima Kogen is open until 8 PM on Friday, so that will help somewhat, possibly allowing me to pair it up with one of the others. If one park will have to go, it will probably be Mitsui Greenland, though I'll probably try to squeeze them all in! But that part of the trip is bookended by work and meeting up with TPR on each end, so time is limited, and I'm also hitting South Korea then, which is more of a priority for me. Which is why I'm stuck with only two full days. I arrive in Fukuoka just after 5 PM, so I'll have a little time to explore and sightsee. And worst case scenario, I can push back the ferry to South Korea back a few hours to give me some extra time on my last day, if necessary, though that would cut into my time in Busan and Gyeongju. I've got lots of time to figure everything out, though, and can move things around a bit if necessary.

Seems like a no-brainer to me. The company gets to sort of get a new ride for little money. At least, it's a new experience. You've got to hand it to Six Flags for coming up with new ways to pretend they're getting new rides across the chain without spending much money in them. First, the Bizarros. Then Superman. Now this. It's kind of like when mom comes up with creative things to do with leftovers.

When I get to Universal Studios Singapore (hopefully in 2015), I'm totally getting a What the Frak t-shirt! Too bad that by then anyone who would have known what it means would have probabloy fogotten it, other than only the nerdiest of nerds!

That's pretty much what I was thinking when I read this. I'm sure it will be a fun ride, but nothing like the hype some people were giving it. Basically, it's two helices with a halfpipe ending. It looks like they're going for a quicker ending, though, with less back and forth before getting off.. I'll give them credit for some really creative theming, though. It LOOKS impressive. (Though I'm calling foul on that last picture, which is taken at such an angle to make the big drop look completely vertical, when it isn't nearly so.) I just wonder what happened with the Drop Pod. Sure, it's a gimmick, but it's a pretty cool one! There are supposed to be bunch of them opening this year. WIth the Texas park not making their bigger announcement about it yet, I wonder if they've been called off?

Great TR! I keep meaning to get down to Mexico City, and definitely will do so one of these days soon. I'll probably pair it up with a trip to the Ultra Music Festival in Miami to make a week to week and a half trip out of it. It's really hard to review woodies based on eon ride, because they can vary so much in different seats. Front can be very different from back, and wheel vs non-wheel seats can make a huge difference, especially if you're not very tolerant of roughness. And I always try to ride woodies as late as possible to give them the best chance to shine. That said, I've heard that the one at La Feria is excellent, while the one at Six Flags is mediocre. I still love that they use the usual Six Flags Medusa logo for it that shows the inversions of a steel coaster in her hair. Not exactly representative of a wooden coaster! And I'm dying for the chance to ride that Schwartzkopf again that used to be at Flamingoland. It was easily one of the coaster highlights of my first UK trip! I also will definitely take in some culture on the trip, particularly the nearby pyramids. A quick side note: gay marriage is only legal in Mexico City, not in all of Mexico. There have been some attempts to try and stop it by some people in the federal government. I believe that the marriages performed there are recognized by the federal government (for now, at least), unlike in the US.

I don't see why everyone here is so concerned about what a different club chooses to recognize as one of THEIR classics, unless you're a member of the club. They've very clearly laid out what the requirements are to run in a classic way. That was how classic coasters ran. They didn't have ratcheting lapbars and seat dividers and headrests and assigned seating. When a coaster is run in that way, then ACE awards it its "ACE Coaster Classic" status. When it's modified to longer run that way, it loses that status. That may or may not matter to you or to the parks. But those are the rules and they're pretty simple. On a side note, it's not specifically seat belts that disqualify a coaster from the Classic status. It's INDIVIDUAL seat belts, for the same reason that seat dividers also disqualify it. Because it doesn't "allow riders to slide from side-to-side". One thing should be clear though, and that's that no coaster HAS to be modified in such a way to lose its status. The parks CHOOSE to modify them that way. it is completely possible AND safe to run them in that manner. And that's exactly what the club is trying to highlight with that award. Some of those criteria I care more about than others. (I personally really don't care about headrests at all.) But they're trying to make the point that coaster can be run this way. And the fact that some coasters still ARE run this way safely and without incident proves that point. And back to the topic of this thread, I think that it's PRECISELY situations like this which are why they have this status. To let parks know when they are considering changes and modernization of older coasters that it IS possible for them to safely run in the "classic" style. This is a point that I really wanted to make in this thread, because I keep hearing here that GCI or Zamperla may "HAVE TO" make certain changes. And that's absolutely not true. They may CHOOSE to make certain changes for varying reasons, including to save money on maintenance or insurance. But they absolutely do NOT have to. That's not to say that any particular changes will necessarily be good or bad. Look no further than the New Texas Giant for something I didn't think I was going to be too happy about, which turned out to be a great improvement. ACE also understands that there are a lot of worthy coasters that aren't run in that fashion, including a bunch of noteworthy steel coasters. That's why they created the "ACE Coaster Landmark" status. That sounds like exactly what people are talking about when they say that the Cyclone deserves a "classic" status. Different terms for different criteria. Different awards for different purposes. And I'm sure that if the Cyclone were to lose the classic status due to changes to the trains, then it would likely get the landmark status. I don't think there's any doubt that the Cyclone is a coaster landmark, as well as an American landmark! And even if a coaster doesn't merit one or the other award, ACE still supports the coasters and parks. The Williams Grove Cyclone is a great example to use because far more importantly than any award or plaque, the group helped to raise a lot of money in donations and grants to help reopen the coaster and keep it running.

You've got to love class action suits like this. Yes, Palace Entertainment did violate the law. So, they should be fined. But the only people who really benefit are the lawyers who get hundreds of thousands of dollars for a couple of hours of filing papers (not a bad payday there, eh?) and the main claimant, who gets 15 grand for making a phone call and putting his name on the suit. Other than their payoff, the rest is actually a win for Palace. The tickets are only for the slowest months (June and September when the parks are the slowest (and often not even open!) So they ge some extra customers into the park to buy food and drinks and pay for parking and other stuff. And with the strong restrictions, few people (you know the actual class that were allegedly mistreated) are going to even get the tickets, since you have to give them the credit card number (well the last 4 digits) of the actual card you used (if you can remember) you used, the DATE you visited (do you remember which date you visited a park back in 2005?) and either the receipt or the credit card statement (who keeps these for moire than a month?) So the vast majority of the tickets will go to charity, which can then probably be used as a tax write off.

You know if I'd known that they had the fastpass system last year, or if they'd had this system them, I'd probably have tried to get out there on my UK stop before Sandinavia. Especially since I had the Merlin pass anyways. But time was tight, and there wasn't that much I wanted to do there, and they hadn't added any coasters, and the lines had been HUGE when I went in 2003, so I skipped it.