Swimace

What do you mean?!?! Florida has Dino!!! Hooray for more updates, this is such a cool spring break!

4+ hours for Spiderman right after IOA opened. The outside queue was filled up all the way, it was insane (but Spiderman was worth it back in the summer of 1999)

^Yeah I know I've see a video of an old Intamin one that used to drop through a shopping mall (but I think it has been relocated) Anyways... I just logged on to facebook and my News Feed showed that a friend of mine at UNC just created a photo album titled "Disney". ....the album contained pictures of IOA and Universal. Absolutely no Disney.

Conversation of the people in front of me on my first lap for the day on Goliath at SFOG: Person1: "This one goes upside down right?" Person2: "No, because we only have these lap bars" Person1: "Yeah, but the green one only has lap bars and it goes upside down" Person2: "That's true, yeah I think you do some flips after you do the big hill section" Apparently they thought that Goliath and the Georgia Scorcher were one continuous ride.

I'm heading to Carowinds for the first time this weekend. It's one of the only parks in the southeast that I haven't gotten yet, alongside Cypress Gardens and Alabama Adventures.

Saturday Superhouse- Biffy Clyro seeing them in Atlanta on Thursday with Say Anything!

^I doubt it will, the one at Atlantis flies through the shark tank and they're almost identical rides. Regardless, this park looks amazing

Here are some pictures of my guitar that is autographed by The Shins! Baller! James Mercer (Top Left, upside down), Martin Crandall (Top Right, also upside down), Jesse Sandoval (Middle, also upside down), Eric Johnson (Bottom middle, No not the ones on the site!) My guitar from farther away

^^I loved those sky buckets! The views from up there were just amazing! At least BGA still has their skyway intact for all of the Florida folk. I have a ton of old pamphlets laying around in Florida, maybe I'll post some of them in May or so.

^Ugh, so that's the final color of the bridge? I thought that it was just tarps or something to cover the track construction. I don't know, I guess it makes sense that those covers would be the final ones, but the blue fits into the ride rather awkwardly in my opinion. It still should be a killer ride though, I just have to have a picky enthusiast moment.

^^Yeah but there's also a lot more pedestrian traffic underneath Goliath and Ghostrider; taking a cell phone to the head at 70mph could cause some serious damage. I personally don't understand how those rides aren't liabilities, and I have to agree that I think it would make more sense for them to enclose the bridge even if it may slightly detract from the ride.

That's really interesting, I really want to know how this will turn out. Is it resistant to the point were 400 people can get sick at one time? Because that is a huge number! I would bet that the facility did something wrong with that many people getting sick at once, but I guess there's some argument to the contrary.

The links are a little too big for my taste, but that's just me. Also, moving the "Forum" button threw me off, but I guess I'll get used to clicking it in its new place.

They also could have been thinking of ROTM in Florida. In 2004 someone fell off of the station and died from head injuries.

These are great updates, I haven't been out to California in a few years and I want to go back so bad! I went to Texas this summer, but I was in Austin which is a couple hours away from SFOT Knott's Boomerang has to be in my top 3 worst steel coasters alongside Python and Goudurix. I rode GhostRider in a wheel seat and it was pretty much like taking a 2.5 minute ride on that Boomerang, so you missed a pretty brutal experience. Oh, and I also noticed the three different sets of clothing at SFMM, but I didn't want to be the first one to point it out for fear of looking like a total creeper. haha Thank God Knotts has Xcelerator.

1. What do you find most useful about the front page? The recent updates section 2. What do you find least useful about the front page? It's all pretty relevant, but Id have to say "special features" because it's updated the least 3. Is anything on the front page confusing? No 4. How far do you scroll down the front page looking for updates? I check the site quite often so not very far 5. How often do you look at the front page? At least once a day because I have it bookmarked instead of the forums 6. How often do you click on the "whatsnew" link? Almost never 7. What would you like to see added to the front page to make your visits to TPR better? There's really nothing I can think of 8. Anything else you would like to mention? Like any thing else you would like to see us add/change/leave alone/etc? I like how you have the column for "unofficial" updates from the forums alongside the official updates column from you guys

^^Yeah I've been to TONS of facilities as a competitive swimmer, and I've been to a couple of indoor water parks as well. I don't have any experience running an indoor pool or park though, I've only worked outside. When I see a lot of the indoor parks with so much stuff crammed into such a small place I would think that it would be a nightmare from a lifeguard's point of view, it would be really hard to keep an eye on all of that stuff. Hopefully we'll find out more about what caused this. If the lawsuits actually go forward I'm sure there will be a lot of scrutiny on the place.

^yeah, it would take a while to backwash/recirculate something that big ^^I think that's a good point about indoor facilities, those are a lot harder to maintain as far as chemical levels are concerned. The weird thing is that indoor facilities (in general) have higher Ph levels than outdoor facilities because of the reduced circulation and whatnot. As for the "nooks and crannys" I would imagine that they would have that worked out. I'm both Red Cross and Ellis certified as a lifeguard (although I run summer camps now) and I would guess that this facility is Ellis because water parks get big insurance breaks for being Ellis (I think like 99% of water parks are Ellis because of this). Ellis sends people undercover to the facilities it certifies on a regular basis to check for problems like places the lifeguards can't see and to surprise test the guards on their skills and scanning. If you worked at Magic Mountain as a guard you'd probably be familiar with being in-serviced. I think the lawsuit is stupid, but I would just like to know more about how so many people came into contact with this, even if it is a fairly mild illness.

I just have to play devil's advocate for a second, although I agree that the lawsuits are pretty stupid. I've worked the City of Gainesville's aquatic facilities for three years, and that include three pools, all of which have diving boards and two of which have water slides. If so many people contracted the virus then the Ph levels probably weren't high enough. At our pools we check the chemical levels in our pools every hour, and if they are outside of a certain level we have to close. If someone gets sick or deficates in the pool we have to close and do a "backwash" which (in a nutshell) involves draining the pumps, climbing down in them and cleaning all of the filters, and having all of the water circulate through the pumps before we can reopen (on newer pumps it's a lot easier, I would guess that they wouldn't have to manually backwash there, but instead just push some buttons). It's a pretty lengthy process which usually causes a pool to remain closed for a good portion of the day. I really can't believe that the Ph levels were where they were supposed to be OR someone might have gotten sick in the pool and nobody noticed and took the proper steps to keep it from spreading. As for the SFOG incident that happened a long time ago, if I recall correctly it involved someone pooping in a kids area. In that case it really was negligent that the proper steps weren't taken to keep it from spreading, but I was a kid at the time so I don't really remember the details.

Leave Before the Lights Come On- Arctic Monkeys

Well this isn't a comment from a member of the general public, but rather a comment by a ride op from the other day when I stopped at Wild Adventures on my way back from spring break in Florida. I was getting on Cheetah and some lady strolls into the station with a kid who was clearly too short to ride. The ride op copped an attitude and said "Unless they changed the metric system all of a sudden, that boy is not 48 inches" Inches = metric system?

I may be in the minority here, but I really don't think Freeze's paint job looks too bad. I mean sure it doesn't make sense from a theming sense, but aside from that I think it looks pretty solid. ...as for yellow Batman's I think they look better at some parks than at others. (My personal favorite Batman paint job was SFNO's black and yellow combo)

What a killer spring break! I'm looking forward to your updates! If the other boomerang you rode was out at Knotts then I really don't doubt that SFOT's is better. The one in California is horrible!

Not as crooked as the webcam still is! ...speaking of which it looks like the Norwegian loop is coming along nicely.

^I really love the way vertical lifts look, they just turn on my inner coaster nerd. Those pics are really good!