Swimace

Blue Body Slide seriously owned every single ride at SFKK. However, you forgot to mention on key part of our full part ERT at Beech Bend.... The exclusive ride we got on Beech Bend's dark ride with the lights ON!!!

^Yeah.

Here's a new one, enjoy:

Wow, those photos are awesome. That first one you posted of The Haunted Mansion was by far my favorite, the sky just looks so crazy in the background.

^^Celebration City.

Awesome TR Scott! Going to the Georgia Aquarium was always on my to-do list, but I could never find the time or the money. Maybe the next time there is something amazing going on at the Tabernacle I'll make a day out of it and check this out.

Awesome update, I was looking forward to seeing some pictures from this park! I love the Cedar Fair names for everything! Dive machine doesn't look like an exact copy of SheiKra from the pictures though, the segment between the immelmann and the mid course seems different to me (although I could be wrong, but the rest of the ride looks the same). Thanks for the update!

I actually had a team and we applied for the one in Tampa this year, but we didn't make the cut. I had some friends who applied to fly in three Flugtags before they finally made it into the competition with their fourth attempt, so it's pretty competitive to make it in. I went to the Flugtag in Austin, Texas and it was a really fun time, if you have the chance to go then I would definitely suggest doing it. Here a few pics I took to give you a better idea of what the event actually looks like in person... Downtown Austin from where I was standing. There were over 85,000 people in attendance, it was pretty much like one giant party. There were also a good number of celebrities that were there to judge the event. This was the platform that all of the crafts were launched off of, each team did a skit on here before they attempted to fly.

^^ I thought this looked more like a mini Beast. Voyage is all about airtime, whereas this looks to be more about a ground-hugging out of control sensation. Hopefully the pacing on this thing is as good as it looks, because this is really the first GCI that I have been excited about since Kentucky Rumbler.

I was recently updating my track record, and I realized that I have a rich tradition of having pure excellence for my milestone coasters. #50- Goudurix #100- Son of Beast #150- Grizzly at King's Dominion

Haha, the Buckeyes. With such a rich tradition of being #2, I guess it would be fitting for you to support them if you plan on losing to McCain or Obama. A winning politician would steer clear though.

True, but it's still a tire propelled launch. I don't see where I was saying that it wasn't tire propelled, I was just responding to your previous post when you said "Moto Coaster's launch was pretty lame. Intamin really needs to stick to hydrolics.". I was simply pointing out that Motocoaster is indeed hydraulic, and I think that a tire propelled launch fits pretty comfortably under my assertion that the launch is "done differently" than the accelerators.

^Motocoaster's launch is hydraulic, it's just done differently than the Intamin accelerator coasters. I don't think that Motocoaster has a weak launch because Intamin used a different launch system, I think that it has a weak launch because it's a family coaster and they didn't want it to be intense. The rumors have been pointing to this Aquatrax being more of a family type attraction, so it would make sense that Intamin give it a milder launch similar to Motocoaster.

Awesome thread Erik, I keep hearing so many good things about this trip, it's great that everybody had such a good time. I've been away from a steady connection to the internet for the past couple of weeks, so it's good to catch up on what you thought since I did many of the same parks. I was actually there that night with a couple other forum members. It was raining pretty heavily, so we opted out of Natasha in favor of night rides on Superman at SFNE. We were all pretty disappointed that we missed the show, haha

My favorite SFA memory was of Mind Eraser's crew. The ride was being stacked for such long periods that someone actually came into the station so overheated from sitting on the brake run that they had to call a medical crew to take the guest away. It just baffles me that I keep hearing so many bad things about this park when all of the other SF parks have gotten so much better. Six Flags has made so much progress in bringing their parks up to quality standards, they really either need to sell the park off or pour some major funds into it to make a noticeable difference.

The last concert I was SUPPOSED to attend was Natasha Bedingfield, but those plans unfortunately did not work out. So instead, my last concert was Coheed and Cambria... You can never get enough Claudio Sanchez hair shots, you barely saw his face during the show. If that's not rocker hair, I don't know what is. The show was at Freebird Live on Jacksonville Beach, FL. It was all sorts of awesome. Claudio Sanchez was incredible live, he'll rock your face off with his music

*Sigh* I'm pretty embarrassed for ESPN that they would make such a big deal over this "Titletown" thing and then end up with Valdosta. When I think of Valdosta the only thing that comes to mind is Wild Adventures, and that's not a good thing. Well, UF just got named the #1 party school in the nation by the Princeton Review, so at least Gainesville won something...

Wait, isn't that the only real choice on the list? Of course Gainesville is Titletown USA.

IOA as a theme park, but I LOVE Epcot as a place to just chill. IOA has a great lineup of rides, so I think it's more of a "total package" than Epcot, but both of those parks are seriously awesome.

I miss the real south. Lake Winnie is such a cool little park, and that last "P.M.W." photo was epic (you guys chose to represent the "P" in a pretty interesting manner, haha). O-Zone was pretty much the death of me on my last visit, I really hate drop towers and I think we rode it like 5 times. ...and Dollywood is great, but I don't really need to elaborate on that statement since everybody already knows that.

LTJ had a merch tent set up at Warped Tour and I was sort of confused since they weren't playing, but they're certainly in my top 3 bands that I haven't seen live yet. When we were waiting for Say Anything to play on the right stage, people started booing Matisyahu since his set ran over time. That's awful that you had to be in the same area as Simple Plan though, they should have ended their set early so that LTJ could have played a longer one, haha. Yeah, I made a point to avoid The Academy Is set, which wasn't that hard since there were plenty of good bands playing. Cobra Starship isn't really the type of band I would go out of my way to see, but they did put on a really fun set. Hey! You got to meet Nate from The Format, so there will be no complaining from you!

I went to Warped Tour yesterday, and it was a really good time. This was my first Warped Tour, so I wasn't really sure what to expect other than big crowds and a ton of bands. I got there really early because the line to get in will get really long, and I was smart enough to bring a couple bottles of water along for the day. From the second you pull up to the place, you will literally have people trying to sell you things left and right. When waiting in line to get in, there are small bands pushing their albums on you and clothing vendors pushing their products. If you ever go to a Warped Tour, just get used to saying "No, thank you" often, because I had to say that a lot throughout the day. Aside from the people pushing their crap on you, the prices were really high for food and drinks, and most people working there seemed to be working for tips. So pretty much, Warped Tour was charging $4 for a bottle of water and then asking you to tip the person who takes your money. I was advised to go to Warped Tour with the attitude that I wasn't there to save money, and I think that it helped to just expect high prices and deal with it. One important thing about Wared Tour: go with the flow. It's simply not possible to see every single band you want to see in one show. With the way the crowds work, I decided that I would rather get really close to a few bands that I love rather than be far away from a lot of bands I like. I missed some bands that I really like, but that's just to be expected from something like Warped Tour. The tour itself was awesome though, but I'll let the photos do the talking. It was a pretty awesome day. The only band left on the stage after Say Anything was Angels and Airwaves, so I gave my spot to a couple of girls and headed back to Gainesville for work in the morning. I stopped by the back half of We The King's set on the way out, but I forgot to take any pictures since I was pretty far back in the crowd. oh btw, yes that is an autographed set list from Jack's Mannequin. Don't hate. Max Bemis is just all sorts of amazing. ...Is a Real Boy is one of my favorite albums of all time, and he ended up in a mental hospital while making it. I LOVE SAY ANYTHING. ...and that's pretty much all I have to say about that. I headed back to the main stage because one of my favorite bands of all time was going to play in about an hour. This is Relient K, and they were the band playing before the band I came to see, so when they finished their last song I charged into the crowd and managed to navigate myself back the same place I saw Jack's Mannequin from. (I don't play games, I REALLY wanted to be in front) I hung around the smaller stages for a while since I was pretty tired from being directly in the Florida heat for almost five hours at this point. This is Charlotte Sometimes playing on the Ernie Ball stage. I saw them in Columbia with We The Kings and they were really good, so I decided to check them out again as well as some other random bands that were playing the smaller stages. So after being at the front of one of the main stages for three hours I decided to take a break from the crowd and walk around a bit. I managed to see the Katy Perry hanging out at her merch tent. She's the reason that I was driving a van of 8 year old girls to Tampa a couple of days ago and all of them were screaming "I kissed a girl, and I liked it". So disturbing.... They put on a really fun performance, and their main guy came down to the crowd which was pretty sweet. I'm glad I stuck around for it, even though they're not really my style of music. The guy from The Academy Is... came out and did a song with them Cobra Starship was the next band on the Main Stage (Right), and I decided to stick around since I had such a good spot in the crowd. I let some fanatical girls in front of me since I didn't really care about being in the very front, but I was still really close to the stage. p.s., would it kill any of them to wear jeans that aren't made for girls, or is that not what the trendy kids do nowadays? I was really happy to see these guys so close up at such a big tour, I really did have the best spot for the entire stage. They were really into their performance, which was awesome. It was finally time for Jack's Mannequin! I love these guys, and apparently they have a new album coming out in September. The security guy between the crowd and the stage had a very... umm.... "interesting" tattoo You really couldn't get any closer than I was, because I'm just baller like that. I grabbed a front and center spot at the Main Stage (Right), because I really liked the second band playing on that stage. I had to suffer through a semi-decent performance from Street Dogs so that I wouldn't have to give up the best spot at the tour, but I was ok with that. The first thing to do when you get inside is go check out the board. I brought a notepad and a pen so that I could write down all the bands I wanted to see so that I wouldn't have to keep coming back to check times. I got there an hour and a half before gates opened, and this was the line already. It wasn't bad waiting as long as you had a good attitude about it, but it was kind of annoying having PETA trying to get you to sign a petition while some random band was trying to push their demo on you.

As far as Kuka arms are concerned, isn't it out of the question for anyone besides Universal anyways? When Universal got the rights to Harry Potter, they also scored a 10 year contract with Kuka for the exclusive use of Kuka's arms in a theme park setting for the next ten years. Of course there are already Kuka arms in place in theme park settings, but I don't believe we will be seeing any new arms show up at parks for another 9 years. Or was that Kuka contract just a rumor?

^Adding a boomerang as well as a hyper in the same year would make absolutely no sense from a marketing standpoint. How could they possibly market a "new" boomerang when they would be adding a brand new hyper? Now that the boomerang is confirmed, I would look to 2010 for the earliest a new custom ride could show up.

^So wait, did he buy the computer part or did you? When you say it's your computer, does that mean you have a real job that paid for it? You don't have your age posted, so it's hard to tell where you're coming from. I mean, if I was in your dad's position I would be kind of pissed if a kid were to mess around with a $1000+ piece of equipment behind my back just to prove a point. But if you're older than your post makes you sound, and you have a real job that paid for the computer and the part, then by all means put it in yourself.