Swimace

I always think it's the "wtf?" rides that turn out to be fun for all of the wrong reasons. This past weekend I went to Universal where there are plenty of awesome rides that I've done a million times, but for some reason one of the highlights of the day was taking a spin on Jimmy Neutron, I mean how many rides simulate the funky chicken? I'm not sad that I didn't get to do the dark ride because it looked awesome, I'm sad that I didn't get to do the dark ride because it looked confusing and random. Well at least you were able to capture most of the ride in your update, it's much appreciated as always.

I visited the site earlier today on a whim wondering if/when this was going on this year, it's really odd that the ballots were posted just a matter of hours later. I love filling out this ballot every year, and I have plenty of new additions to add to my list this time around!

As long as the preshow has enough advertisements in it I'd approve... I had a trip planned for late October and I'm pretty disappointed that I probably won't get to take a spin on the dark ride now.

Those trains aren't very impressive in my opinion. They may be an improvement on the original two bench cars, but if these are supposed to compete with millennium flyers then they really fell short. If they made these trailered and put in more padding then they would probably work better on twisted layouts. Well, I guess we'll find out for sure if/when they make it on a coaster...

^They have a couple of handlers that walk around with them, it's sort of Sea World's version of having characters walk around the park. ^^ Yeah, it's almost like they were going to run two trains on it and there was going to be a brake run before that turn. I don't know if that's the case, but there's that straight segment before the turn that looks like it was meant for brakes and the turn isn't banked at all. Aside from that part the rest of the ride was enjoyable.

Friday, 9/19/08- Part 3: Magic Kingdom + Toy Story Mania This part of the day sort of just happened on a whim. We were pretty much leaving Cypress Gardens and then thought it would be fun to go hang out at Disney for a little bit. There's not really much to it, so here are some photos.... Hollywood Studios gave me the chance to practice my night shot skills in preparation for HHN. No more parks today, thanks for reading! Bye Pixar! Thank you for being awesome! The ride was really cool, I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. It's actually pretty addicting, I want to go back and play again! Aha! I found him! Now give me my 50 Bzillion dollars! I thought this sign was cool The queue was pretty much empty compared to the zoo we saw earlier in the day, but we still had to wait about 15 minutes The queue had looked really awesome, the toy theming was pulled off really well We managed to hop in line for Toy Story Mania right before the park closed With the magic of Disney we were back at Hollywood Studios with next to no crowds Another attempt at a monorail shot to please the PMW party... We left the park because Mickey's Not-So-Scary was starting, so we went back to Hollywood Studios to hop on Toy Story Mania before the park closed I got dominated on Buzz Lightyear, turns out I'm really bad at this ride... Taking a ride on the People Mover makes you realize how much of an epic fail the High in the Sky Trolley at IOA is. If Disney insists on having a low capacity attraction up here, I think they should install Knoebel's flyers to create the most awesomely frightening death trap ever. The line was unusually short so we took a "spin" on the Astro-Orbiter. I haven't done this ride in ages... Fun fact: Space Mountain is still awesome I demand Indy! This ride is dead to me. For some reason I had never taken the time to do Philharmagic. It turned out to be a really fun attraction! The wait was really long though I really liked the renovated Haunted Mansion, the new scenes were pretty cool and so were the updated special effects Any day that I can ride both Journey to Atlantis and Splash Mountain is a good day for me. The wait wasn't very long and we got to see the million dollar bunny today! I've been out of Florida for the past two years, so I'm in need of a spin on my favorite ride on property. The park was all decked out for Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween. (and yes I know this photo is crooked) Scott, I don't know if this counts as monorail porn, but I'm doing my best here... This is what a nerd looks like when you pass a construction site.... Now this is more like it! After a short bus ride from the studios we hopped on the monorail and headed to The Magic Kingdom. I hadn't done Toy Story Mania yet, but upon seeing an 85 minute wait sign we just decided to leave Hollywood Studios all together in favor of a hopefully less crowded Disney park. We decided to go to Hollywood Studios, which must have been the only crowded park in Orlando that day. Luckily we came into the park right as the parade was going on, so it was next to impossible to navigate to the back of the park Hmm... Lets just randomly go to Disney!

Friday, 9/19/2008- Part 2: Cypress Gardens As a Floridian, Cypress Gardens has always been a place that I have been curious about for some time. As a kid I remember seeing signs for the park before it went out of business and was strictly a garden attraction with some shows. Ever since Cypress Gardens reopened as an amusement park I've been wanting to go check it out, but I honestly never thought the price of admission was paying to go whore out a park. That problem was solved this past September when the park ran a "$5 Friday" promotion for every Friday of the month. That's all! See ya later Cypress Gardens. Magic Kingdom + Toy Story Mania coming up later... We made our way back to the front of the park through the garden section which was pretty nice. The flying island wasn't running which was kind of a bummer as it's one the park's old attractions. Now we were stuck at the back of the park with all of our credits done. Do you think this is the exit? We actually got some pretty intense spinning on this thing! I'm not sure if I'm taking a picture of the spinning mouse or of this awkward empty concrete spot, but lets just say that I was taking a picture of the last coaster we had to conquer. Bryan went and did their drop tower. I didn't because I hate drop towers with a passion. These things look so cool, it's a shame they will scar so many children at such a young age... Cypress Gardens is nice enough to give you two laps with each ride! Hooray for double the pain! The Jr. Hang n' Bang is the the coaster that's farthest in the back. I always assumed this sign was at the front of the park, but it turns out it's actually at the back. Curious placement Cypress Gardens... Hell yeah we are! We paid our five dollars and we want our credits! *Sigh* Are we really going to be that dirty? The coaster sort of roams around with a series of little hills and wide turns Knoebels fans take note: straight up buzzbar with no seat divider or seat belt. The next ride we did was The Triple Hurricane, which was definitely the most unique coaster in the park. It's a family sized wooden coaster that was really fun. In my opinion it's the best Vekoma junior coaster in Florida, although it obviously lacks the theming that the other ones have. A lift hill shot for those of you dirty tire fanatics... Individual lapbars on a roller skater? The next ride you come up on is the park's roller skater After we conquered The Starliner, we made our way down the path towards the rest of the coasters. The turnaround was kind of awkward, but as a whole I think the ride was pretty solid. It certainly is different from the other wood coasters in Florida. It's a fun coaster that has some decent pops of airtime, but at the same time it's pretty much your standard old wooden coaster. The first ride you come up on is The Starliner which is Cypress Garden's biggest coaster. We headed to the section of the park that had all of the coasters, it was pretty much a long path that stretched all the way back to the water park. Life goal: make it rain at a theme park by paying for admission with $1 bills. (check) Inside the dome are the ticket counters. Even though they were offering admission for $5 there weren't many people around! Here's the park entrance, it's a sprawling brick plaza with a big awkward white dome at the end. After a while of driving to the middle of nowhere we arrived at our destination. So our trip to Cypress Gardens started in the parking lot of Bryan's dorm. The lucky bastard can see Dueling Dragons and Dr. Doom from his campus!

I've been popping up here and there in other people's TR's recently, so I finally decided to stop being lazy and do some of my own. As some of you know, I moved from Clemson, South Carolina to Florida last May and I will be going to The University of Florida starting in January, so this means I now live less than two hours from Orlando! I've been going to quite a few parks since summer ended and the crowds are pretty manageable, but I'm just going to post some random segments so I don't bore you with the repetition of seeing me go to Universal over and over again. Anyways, I hope you enjoy! Friday, 9/19/2008- Part One: Sea World Orlando Today Bryan (Not For Sale) and I decided to hit up $5 Friday at Cypress Gardens so we could whore some credits for cheap! The plan was that I was going to go meet up with Bryan in Orlando and then we were going to drive over to Cypress Gardens together. However, Bryan lives on a gated campus and he accidentally gave me his MOM'S phone number so that I could call him to get through the front gates. So I was kind of driving around outside of Bryan's campus without a way to (1) get in or (2) reach him, so I just ended up just going to Sea World and hanging out until I could figure out a way to break into the UCF Rosen College fortress. ...and so part one begins! So long story short I finally got a hold of Bryan and the UCF Rosen security decided to lift their ban on me. Screw Sea World, now we can actually go to a good park!!! $5 Friday at Cypress Gardens coming up soon! OMG!!! You saw it here first folks, aerial construction picks of the new Contemporary wing! I see you Journey... A good portion of Kraken is built in tunnels and trenches towards the end of the ride. Kraken navigating its cobra roll... Kraken's first half from the air... After Journey I decided to take a solo ride on the observation tower. ...awkward. I also want to give Journey to Atlantis a nomination for having the coolest exit area of any coaster I've been on. They have an aquarium in the floor!! I decided to take a spin on Journey to Atlantis. I have to admit that along with being a coaster enthusiast, I also have a thing for themed flumes, so Journey is like heaven for me! The dolphin area here gets mad crowded during the day, but it was pretty calm this early in the morning. When PETA takes over the park this better be the first thing to go! These things look viscous, better stay back! "Most badass animal ever" I'm not going to name names, but the next few photos go out to any manatee fanatics that may be on the boards... Oh, so Sea World has some marine life and stuff, who knew? Hey Disney, how's this for a living character initiative? I always saw pictures of these "Kraken eggs", but before I visited the park I didn't realize that they actually have live eels inside of them! Pretty creepy.... I love how Sea World landscaped the back half of the ride, it really just makes the finale that much better. This ride is all kinds of awesome, it makes me eager to see how Manta will turn out! Yeah, I had to throw in a "through the trees" shot... This is an acceptable amount of Kraken queue! What else is a coaster enthusiast to do when he's hanging out at Sea World by himself? I guess if I have to wait on somebody I can think of a few worse places to do it... In case you didn't read any of the text above, I'm hanging out at Sea World until I can figure out a way to get into Bryan's gated fortress!

Don't hate on Gainesville just because we dominate in everything! Although lets not forget that according to ESPN Wild Adventures is in Titletown USA, whereas here in Gainesville we are inferior in athletics.

Hooray! Your final DD picture is also a really bad picture of me! I will live on for eternity! haha I think it's sad that the Dragons are getting taken out, the new entrance better be really awesome!

^Der Stuka is the name of the tall slide on the right side of the tower that is pretty standard, whereas Bombay is the slide on the left where you load into a capsule and the floor drops out from underneath you. They're the same slide with the exception of floor drop on Bombay. Awesome TR Erik! HHN was so awesome, I definitely had a few good scares that night!

^That might be problematic seeing as Isaac Hayes is dead, they can't just keep throwing in old sound bytes like they did on his last episode.

I'm sad we never went and picked up our pictures from the photo shoot we had before the park opened on our first day. GADV really needs to up its game and let you check your photos online, because the card the lady gave us definitely didn't give us that option... haha, awesome report.

1. Kraken 2. SheiKra 3. Dominator 4. Hydra 5. Medusa (East) 6. Batman- SFNE

^^It's at Suzhou Giant Wheel Park in China. Does anybody else think this thing might be a capacity nightmare? Only eight people can be on the ride at one time!

Since I became a coaster enthusiast I would say probably somewhere between 10 months to a year. Fortunately that stopped when I graduated high school and gained more flexibility and independence in my schedule.

Space Mountain @ MK yesterday around 6pm

Awesome photos, you got some really good ones of Splash Mountain. Haha, I don't remember it going quite like that, but I guess I'll just take your word for it.

You obviously can't recognize talent when you hear it. If anything I thought you would have developed some better musical taste after listening to radio for the entire trip. Shame on you. You forgot Nitro, although I assume Steel Dragon 2000 would top both for the tallest and fastest mine train.

Woah! Sorry for the late response but I completely missed that you put the Sea World/credit whoring portion up! I was walking a fine line between being relieved and sad that the Star Flyer was down, I'm sure I'll be freaking out on that thing eventually... I don't know if it's related or not, but I believe the on-ride photo area was closed when we went.

Steve Spurrier is a traitor, anyone who aligns himself with The University of South Carolina is dead to me. Praise Urban and be merry. It's almost like they should put a sign next to the lever to tell people not to pull it in the station. p.s., I still love that photo of Storm Runner with the storm clouds. That's gangster.

Saturday night I went to the Real Big Deal music festival in Gainesville, FL. I'm not going to put up a lot of my pictures because the festival was mostly regional and local bands. The headlining band was Motion City Soundtrack who played an hour long set on the main stage towards the end of the first day. This was the second time this year I saw them and I have to say that they're a pretty "meh" band live. Their music is a lot of fun, but their lead singer doesn't really deliver great vocals live. Motion City Soundtrack is a pretty entertaining band to see, even if they don't deliver an excellent show. Here's the main stage which gives you an idea of how ghetto this whole production was. It's a local music festival, so what do you expect?

I was always worried that this ride would get torn out and get replaced with some crappy Scooby Doo ride, so I think this is an excellent sign from the Six Flags management. It's awesome to see that they are going to commit money to such a unique attraction instead of just letting it go.

I hope when they redesign the trains they also take away the maximum height limit. I assume that they put the maximum height limit in after the 2004 accident, but I really don't think it's necessary with all of the other safety upgrades they've made to the ride over the years.

^We were really kicking ourselves over not wearing Gator shirts to Kings Island just to snub all the Ohio State fans. ^^It was sort of like me on Deja Vu, except for a second there I actually did think I was going to die. No. Hey Scott, how about I drive up to Alabama and kill you in your sleep? I'm still mourning, sometimes I cry at night. Awesome updates dude, they really make me want to go back to that trip. That Kennywood/Waldameer day was just all sorts of awesome.