colinmom71

Here's their calendar for 2006 - http://wildadventures.net/calendar.asp And yeah, I think it's worth squeezing in an afternoon visit. I've been a couple of times and found it to be a nice little park. It's geared more towards general audience/family crowds, but there are some decent thrill rides to enjoy. The only thing I found objectionable about WA is the food service! The food there is just not at all good, except maybe the pre-made cotton candy (which is pretty hard to screw up). I'd advise you to hit exit 18 or 16 for a meal before heading out to the park.

Been on 4 break-downs, 3 of which happened on the same day. The first one was kinda embarassing - getting stuck on the middle of the lift hill at Wild Adventures' Vekoma roller skater. Eh, I have a thing for kiddie/family coasters but still, I don't wanna wind up on some local news report about a stuck kiddie coaster! But the best ones happened on an outing to SFoG. Within the time frame of about 1.5 hours, I got stuck on S:UF's brake run for about 15 minutes. (I've never heard so many men complain about their genitals in so short a time.) A little while later we headed over to the Gotham area and boarded Batman. Got stuck just on the beginning of the lift hill for about 10 minutes... SO, we head straight over to Mindbender, with the husband joking whether he should get on the ride with me. But surely it won't happen a third time... HA! We get mostly up the lift hill when, yet again, the train freezes in place. We were stuck about 15-20 mintues and had a fun time chatting with the folks in the seat behind us. My husband then declared he refused to ride anything else with me for the rest of the day claiming I was a jinx, but luckily it didn't happen again.

Yep, most were at Wild Adventures. I think it was a school day and the park was pretty dead. We got re-rides on most of the rides there, with Cheetah (back when it was a decent ride) and Hangman being the most often re-ridden. Heck, the ride ops were at one point in time actually asking us if we wanted a re-ride... And while it's not a coaster, the most hellish re-ride I ever had was on "Small World" at WDW - 8 times in a row. Moral of story - never take cute 3 yr olds on the wheelchair equipped boat when the park is (relatively for WDW) dead. Since we were the only party in line with a handicapped person, the ops just asked us if we wanted to re-ride. The 3 yr olds answered for us, repeatedly...

Sorry, but the only discount offers I've ever seen for Dollywood were from cabin rentals or hotels who bought tickets in bulk to sell at a discount to their customers. However, I did a trip there last year using their "After 3, next day free" offer. Essentially, you buy a ticket at full price at 3pm or later and you can return to the park the next day on that same admission ticket for free. I managed to get in a good almost 4 hours to explore the park that first day (and about a dozen rides on Thunderhead) in addition to the next full day's admission. Personally I thought it was worth the expense to get extra admission time on one ticket, but it's up to you to decide if that option is feasable for you and your friend. Hope this helps, and good luck.

Here's a picture that shows one of the standing cages... (warning- the pic is rather large!) http://sfog.playride.com/gaspbig.JPG

I'm assuming it means the station will be burrowed/sunken below ground level... As for other coasters with sunken stations, I suppose Nemesis at Alton Towers qualifies as having a sunken station. Heck, almost the entire coaster qualifies, if my interpretation is correct... Because of the elevation difference between a sunken station in the USA section to the tunnel at the end of the first drop, a 200 ft. lift hill (from ground level) will be able to have a 235+ drop... At least that's the claim...

I'm taking this with a grain of salt until more info comes out, but for what it's worth.... Well, on a board dedicated to all things SFOG, someone has posted a claim to have seen the model for the new coaster as well as the specs. They posted the following: B&M Hyper 235+ ft. drop, into a tunnel below road Blue, silver, red, white Sunken station in the USA section MCBR 10 drops... In a follow-up post, he says the lift hill will have an elevation of 200 ft., but a drop of over 235 ft. (I'm presuming he means the elevation from ground level since there's supposedly a sunken station). If true, this would technically then be B&M's biggest drop... I hope it's true! That's just what SFOG needs - a good speed coaster with great drops! It's going to be a long off-season here in ATL...

Wow! I don't think I've ever seen the park that crowded before!! The Gold Q-Bot was probably worth every cent for a crowded day like that... Thanks for sharing your great pics... And as for that old pic of Mindbender, after Hurricane Dennis's run through these past two days, I wouldn't be surprised if it looks like that yet again as I type this... I'm going to head off now to go clean the new pool in my backyard!

Sounds interesting... I love raspberries and I love Coke. Then again, I also liked Beverly. Go figure. I'm also thrilled with the new Diet Coke made with Splenda! A diet drink I can finally drink... Being allergic to aspartame (Nutrasweet - gives me horrid headaches!), there have been precious few diet sodas I could have. Now I have two - TAB, which I can never find, and Splenda Diet Coke!

I thought that "press release" from Holiday Park was rather amusing... http://www.rcdb.com/document169.htm

Thanks for the laugh! That was too funny... Along similar lines, here's the address for a web site that compiles lists of really bad baby names - http://www.notwithoutmyhandbag.com/babynames/ Best bad baby name listed here - Scatman

I have to go with the "It's A Small World" haters. It's a cute ride for your little ones ONCE... However, the very nice ride ops let us go through the darn ride *8* times in a row since it was slow and we were in the wheelchair accessible boat. Every time we returned to the station, the ride ops would cheerfully ask the 3 year olds if they wanted to go again... Care to guess what the answer was? By trip number 5, I was praying for someone else to show up needing the wheelchair boat. After that, my friend and I made the Daddys take the boys on IASW for the rest of the week... Moral of the story, never go to IASW with 3 yr. olds on a very slow day!

Yeah, I think Homey G's idea is likely the most "workable". I can see a 190-200' lift hill and station taking the place of the Batman Arena, and have the coaster skim around and behind Deja Vu, do a turn around (helix maybe?) beside Ninja on the lake, then head back... That should easily make the ride last over 2 minutes, maybe even closer to 3. And yes, ideally I'd like to see an Intamin like Expedition G-Force or a GCI like Thunderhead. It's time for a little something different down here. B&M's are nice and of great quality, but the park already has 3 of them. I'd also take out the go-carts to accomodate the new coaster as well as return the old back gate in that area. A little of the parking lot may have to be eaten up, but creating a traffic path between Gotham City and Lickskillet would be doubly justified if used as access for the queue line to the new coaster and for the extra gate. Then again I'll say anything to justify a walk path fron Gotham to Lickskillet. It's sooo not fun to schlep a heavily occupied stroller or wheelchair up and down that steep walkway into Gotham. Can we say shin splints? Ouch... I'm still willing to bet we won't see a new coaster next year at all though...

I think it's doable... I agree with Mrs. Alvey. WA is quite easily toured in a few hours, especially on a week day. My only advice would be to arrange your trip so that you aren't driving back into Atlanta until closer to 7pm. The worst of evening rush hour(s) here is between 5:30 - 6:30pm, and the southern suburbs of ATL are horribly overdeveloped (read as crappy traffic planning) so I-75 is pretty packed at that time. While northbound isn't as bad as southbound, if there's an accident (and there usually is), people here go insane "rubbernecking" to watch the action... Here's a web site with Georgia traffic info, including scheduled construction... http://www.georgianavigator.com/construction It doesn't look like there's anything planned to disrupt your trip plans, but double check the day before if possible to make sure... Best of luck, and hope you have a safe and fun trip!