Absimilliard

Great pictures! Regarding Crush Coaster, the long line is normal and even on a dead week day in winter, the line is 60 minutes. The only way you can avoid that is by showing up at the park 60-45 minutes early on a weekend day and as soon as they allow you in the park, go to the ride, as they allow people to line up outside the ride. We did that and when they opened, we were on the 4th and 5th turtle.

Europa Park is owned by Mack and is used as a "showroom" for their various rides. The only times they'll call an outside company is because Mack can't build the ride, like Silver Star (B&M), Fjord Rafting (Intamin) and the Zierer Wave Swinger. They also got cool prototypes, like the double elevator wild mouse and Euro Mir. Its the Vienna Prater that is filled with rides ran by independant companies. That's why their crazy Boomerang now has a lapbar train!

9/10! Its because I go on a lot of french coaster forums and the european parks are the ones brought up and discussed.

Great TR! I was in Paris too recently and I went to both Walt Disney Studios and Disneyland Paris on 01/26/07. It was cold at night, but it was a lot of fun. Only sad thing is that Big Thunder Mountain ran so slowly cause of the cold! There was no airtime even on the picture drop and at the end, the train would have rolled back without the 4th lift.

According to RCDB, The Dark Knight will be this model, seen here at "Nigloland" in France. http://www.rcdb.com/ig3703.htm The main difference with the previous Wild Mouse is that this one uses magnetic braking! http://www.rcdb.com/ig3703.htm?picture=3 Sadly... the critics for the "Schlitt' Express" are not very good. Its too tame, so maybe it is a good thing, as it will allow the riders to look at the theming!

I just read the 2 articles and this could be bad for both parks! Proslide did some good stuff at the Valcartier park in Quebec City... but this is all over now. Is the market large enough to support 3 water parks?

My belly is still bruised and hurting from the attack I received from the Atlantis Adventure ride op! See, even through I was the tallest in the group (6'3) and they didn't allow a few people on, they still let me in on Atlantis Adventure. But... I should have tried that test seat first! Those seats, lap bars and seatbelts just weren't right for my 6'3, 240 lbs frame! I'm missing an inch for the seatbelt, so everyone tell me to suck my belly in... Doesn't work. So the operator (who didn't speak english I think!) grabbed both end of the belt, jabs me pretty hard in the stomach then buckles it in while I'm in pain! The ride was pretty cool... but ouch, it was painful!

Valcartier, which already operates "Canada's largest water park" in Quebec City announced today they were building a 30 millions, 450 acres themed water park near Ottawa. It will be next to the highway that goes from Montreal to Quebec City and they're promising theming, water slides, a huge wave pool and kid activities. "Sunnyland" should open in 2009. Valcartier is extremely good at theming, so it should be promising. One question through... With Proslide talking about building another water park near Ottawa, how will the relation between Proslide and Valcartier go? Would be hard to buy slides from your potential rival park...

I got Rollercoasters in the Raw and Coaster Expedition Vol. 7 for christmas and finally got around to watching both. Rollercoasters in the Raw is awesome! Interesting selection of rides, showing all kind of rides and the quality is great. One regret, you can't really hear the song on Hollywood Dream: The Ride... Coaster Expedition shows a lot of interesting places. The little japanese parks, The Dells, the Ozark Wildcat, etc. The Tokyo Disneyland segment was good and seeing the Hong Kong Space Mountain footage with lights on a big screen was great! Felt like I was riding it!

Looks amazing! I can't believe I'll be riding that thing in april! Did they start the station construction yet?

Wild Wedgie at Great Escape will be a custom Proslide Cannonbowl. Supposedly, Six Flags ordered it with a smaller bowl so you get more rotations in it, so it should be great fun! At least Six Flags is remembering they got a water park there... Took them 9 years to build a new slide!

Some people on other websites don't seem to appreciate that TPR is allowing more people to try oversea rides. Even if T Express somehow comes in at number 1 next year, they'll discount it as "only 20 people rode it" and "if TPR said its the best, they'll vote for it, just cause of that!". I feel they haven't gotten over both Pyrenees and Balder placing very high after TPR trips...

I also did a bit of promotion of french coaster boards and it seems like a vast majority of those fans went to Toverland, loved Troy, then voted and ranked it their number one. Could that also explain it? Those were people that didn't vote before.

I must be the luckiest guy in the world when it comes to Fuji Q! Went 2 weeks after you went and the park was like this: EVERY rides except Dodonpa and Eejanaika were walk on or 5-10 minutes waits.. Yes, even Fujiyama! Unfortunately, the Hamster coaster and Haunted hospital walkthrough never opened that day. It was cloudy all day, so I didn't see Mt. Fuji. Agree about everything about Eejanaika. Horribly slow line (but hey, I only waited an hour!) and the most violent ride I have been on. Dodonpa on the other hand... I liked it! When I got out of the ride, the ride was a 2 hours and a half wait and it never went down after that. The launch is insane and the airtime ridiculous... It was a 45-60 minutes wait all day, except for a 3 hours breakdown, where we were forced to wait 45 minutes for all the "exit passes" to get through the ride. The credit card thing was weird! I wanted to buy my on ride photo and a T-shirt from Dodonpa... but, no credit card and I never found an ATM that accepted my credit or debit card in the park.

The Rock n Roller Coaster was rebuilt at Great Escape, but after years of rusting in that field, Arrow or Morgan had to come in to replace some track sections. You can easily see where the old/new track stops, because the new one is all round, like Phantom's Revenge. Even on the ride, there is a difference, because the train shuffles like crazy when its on old track and the ride is not that bad on the new one. On this picture, you can see the difference: http://www.rcdb.com/ig2214.htm?picture=23

Would love to join you again Elissa! I'm going back to South Korea in april/may and I'm looking for someplace to go in september... Did you figure the dates for Korea yet?

What's the ride they're adding next to Rolling X Train? According to the drawings on the construction walls, it looks like a Top Scan... should be interesting!

Parc Asterix doesn't care. They're still full most of the summer, even with very minimal investments. Since 2001 (the year they added a 12 million dollars Mack Bobsled!), they added a cheap dark ride in 2003, replaced a great show with a lame one and they're building a "Mad House" this winter. That's it. There was a very serious project to replace Goudurix with a B&M looper or Inverted, but the park never received the budgets for it! Instead, they just got barely enough to upgrade Goudurix to keep it running. The main problem with Parc Asterix is that its now owned by "la Compagnie des Alpes". Compagnies des Alpes is an almost public company that owns a lot of amusement parks (which they invest PENNIES in them!) and skiing places (need a new chairlift? Here's 20 millions!). Compagnie des Alpes is runned under the mentality "we're not here to make a profit", so they only invest when its really needed. Seeing that Parc Asterix is still getting 1.6 million visitors...

I don't think Parc Asterix would buy anything from Vekoma directly. They like to "update" their rides in-house and given the recent work done on Goudurix, new trains are out of the question. Last year, they changed the ride computer, rewired the whole ride, modified the trains to have an electric restraint release AND added little lights to the headrests that tell if they're locked.

Wow... I hit Fuji-Q 2 weeks after the japan trip and amazingly, the park was dead! Well, dead in their case mean a 45 minutes wait for Dodonpa, 2 hours and a half line for Eejanaika and a 15 minutes wait for Fujiyama. The mouse was a 5 minutes wait and the rest was all walk on. The Hamster coaster never opened and I never found the hospital walkthrough! The only ride I liked was Dodonpa. Fujiyama was running really bad and Eejanaika was horrible.

In Canada, you got 2 indoor parks... Galeries de la Capitales in Quebec City that has one credit and kiddie rides and the West Edmonton Mall, but that would require a pretty long flight!

Haven't been on Hypersonic, but I rode Dodonpa twice earlier this month... I LOVED it! I sat in the 3rd row each time and didn't notice any roughness in the huge turn... The launch is ridiculous, just too strong and the airtime was insane. Waits for it weren't that bad. When I got to the park around 10, the wait was 45 minutes, so I waited it out. They were running 2 trains without any stacking. It broke down most of the afternoon and when it came back up, I ran to it and waited 30 minutes that time. Eejanaika on the other hand was a 60 minutes wait at 11:30. When I got out of the ride, the line was already up to 2 hours and a half!

Space Mountain layout is actually pretty simple... You get launched, now from the bottom of the cannon (before Mission 2, you launched from the middle and due to that, the ride could run 5 trains) and at the top, dive to the left, do a complete circle of the mountain before diving to the ground and doing a powerful sidewinder. A right hand 3/4 helix brings you in the block brake. It takes off a little speed, turn to the right and the train does little up and down hills before diving under the waiting line into the corkscrew. What follow is the ride's roughest turn, which is an elevated right turn into the B lift. You drop from the B lift to the right, powerful turn to the right. A little hill (looks like it could give airtime, but alas... none) brings you into the "Tongue", which is like this: http://www.rcdb.com/ig112.htm?picture=4 . The train then dives to the right in a trench, do a full circle of the bottom of the building and then rise up into the final brakes. When it was Space Mountain: De la Terre a la Lune, it had the most awesome music ever! The new one doesn't fit at all... As for the ride itself, we lost a ton of scenery and effects for not much. Before, you went through a "moon sweeper" after the sidewinder and there was a lot of asteroids... Now, beside some lighted disco balls, some neons around the entrance of the trench and some revived effects from the first version, there's nothing much to look at during the ride.

The reason why teenagers behave at Grad Nite is that they're on a very tight leash! I worked Guest Relations one time during one at the Magic Kingdom and we were told: if you see a teen breaking ANY rules, the cops are there to haul them out and they can kiss their prom goodbye! I did it once actually, when a group of them litterally stumbled in, being drunk.

Costco in Enfield, CT (near SFNE) has 25$ Lake Compounce tickets for sale if you're a member. Burger King around Hartford has discount coupons.