MonkeyPants

Hey Rick! Hey Gwendolynne! Lori & I had an absolute blast hanging with you guys at Holiwood Nights! Unbelievable laughs! It was a pleasure to meet both of you! I marvel that you knew Chang would suck, yet you just had to get that credit! Well, now you know! And knowing if half the battle! Hope to meet up with you guys at some future nerd event. You don't happen to be going to CoasterMania, are you?

I'm going to disagree. All accidents are not the same. This one is much easier to swallow than the recent one in Japan. I'm going to disagree. True, this accident isn't a tragedy, but the fact remains that the block system failed. I believe that's what the person who said "It doesn't matter how fast or slow, it failed" meant. And it's true. The block system is meant to keep all trains safe from collisions. In this case it happened in a slow collision, but there are situations where a block failure would cause much more damage/pain.

Well, there's a twist... Dislikes HW, but likes SFKK. Well, as others have said, you're welcome to your opinion. Personally, I love HW. I love almost every aspect of it, and can't wait for Holiwood nights this weekend! Oh, and welcome to the forum!

"Mom, can we please please please go to Plagiarism Land?!"

It would be very difficult to make one entirely from scratch. NoLimits imports the single cartexture file, and applies bits of it to various parts of the coaster cars. So, one little part goes to give the wheels, texture, another part goes to the brake fins, etc. It would basically be impossible to guess where in the one image file these separations are. So, just open the original one, and change just the parts you want to change, which is usually the logo portion, though some people change wheel textures, etc. Remember to save as a different filename, so as to retain your original one. The file must be saved as .png format.

How adorable. KidTums is very cute.... Robb, you sure you're the daddy? 2 ride credits at 6 weeks.... Impressive. Most impressive!

The design of the wheel assemblies on those coasters you list have the side wheels at a set position, and the track is a little wider to allow for the assembly to rotate during turns. This leeway lets the cars 'jiggle' a little bit, which can translate into heads bashing against OTSR. In contrast, B&Ms, and new Intamins have a different design, which in part includes using rubber 'springs' to always press the side wheels on the track. Therefore the cars don't 'jiggle' as they move along the track. Also, the track is generally heartlined, with smoother transitions and they use manufacturing processes that weren't possible in the 70s and 80s when alot of Arrows were built. They design the rides so that there are very little lateral forces, which means the track is banked accurately in transitions, which Arrows etc are not. Wood coasters get rough over time from the trains bouncing on the steel track, which deforms it slightly, and the builds over time... If you've ever driven on a dirt road with a washboard surface, it's a similar concept.

Congratulations! She's cute (takes after Elissa?) GrandMILF? You are one sick dude, Rob.

In the mid '80's, my father's company had an outing there. We loaded up on one of the Boblo Boats in Detroit and froze our butts off during the ride to the island because it was cold, windy, and drizzling. After quite a long ride (I recall it being about 1.25 hours) we arrived at the Island to find that the power had gone out and they weren't open. The power had been out for a while, and they didn't anticipate getting it back on, so we froze our butts off for the return trip as well, without even stepping off the boat. The next weekend, we drove a Amherstberg and took the brief ferry ride across. This time, the sun was out and we had a lot of fun. My sister an I did laps on the Sky Streak. I was surprised that it was actually fun. The Vekoma corkscrew was, of course, lame. We also did laps on the funky ferris wheel that had these carts that you could flip upside down by spinning a wheel in your cabin. We had a blast on that! I was surprised at how fun it was. It's a shame it closed. Btw - Does anyone remember Edgewater Park in Detroit? They had a coaster with the all-time best name of "Soul Train." http://www.rcdb.com/ig2185.htm?picture=3 http://www.rcdb.com/ig2185.htm?picture=2

I personally didn't find either of them particularly scary, but they were fun to try. However, I probably would be scared to try this.

How sweet would that be for kids? I thought the 6 ft slide was awesome... That would have blown my mind!

Well, I haven't heard any recent reports on working there, but I will say that even when I was there, it wasn't all laughs! I did, for sure! I actually caught up with a couple folks through the CP website... They have a spot for alumni to post contact info, and I found a couple old friends... That was really quite cool. I know exactly what you mean! I loved the old station, putting all their weight on the handle. The station used to have this cool vibe, which sadly, is now a sterile boring station. Oh, well. What can you do? It's still a fun ride! Yep 70-75 hours a week was the norm. And for really low pay. Plus, there was some payroll loophole so they weren't required to pay overtime, so they really milked the employees. Even though it had a lot of fun moments, it was still a drag working that many hours, knowing they were taking advantage of you. Most Saturdays were 12+ hours shifts, my longest being 17.5 hours. BTW - here's a hint. Don't go to Cedar Point on a Saturday!

Ready for a trip back in time? You might want to grab a pair of sunglasses to shield yourself from the bright yellow uniforms we had to wear in the traffic control dept! Sadly, I've learned that Chris has passed away. He was a bigger coaster nut than almost anybody I've known. Here he is operating Blue Streak old-school-style. This Trip-Report is dedicated to his memory. My second year at Cedar Point was the year the first Batman:TR opened. Me and my old roommate, Chris, took the trip to Illinois and had a blast! Those are Chris's feet. And he wins the pie eating contest! Doug E. Fresh proving he was made to eat! The traffic crew at Big Bash! These peeps were playing balloon toss at the annual Big Bash party for employees. We thought we were so cool slapping Magnum track... Boy were we wrong! Who was just getting off work and joined us for some Demon Droppin'. We stopped by and said hi to Angie... There's my brother having a great time! Plus Magnum was nuts! I love how Linda's holding her head, peering out from behind her hands! Mean Streak was somewhat worth riding back then. I was just going on my split so I joined them for some rides. So one day, swinging my orange-gloved hand in the general direction of some parking spaces, I hear a shout from a car "Nice gloves, champ!" It was my brother & some college friends on a surprise visit! Course after riding so much, I started getting bored so I started doing inadvisable things like looking backwards and such. Don't try this at home! Magnum was the Shiznit in '91! More Magnum girls. This was right after the first Gulf War... Notice the rider's "America Kicks Ass" T-shirt. I was dating a girl on Magnum, so I went and rode it all the time. I remember riding until close so I could walk her to her dorm. A rough guess (I wasn't keeping count) would be about 200 Magnum rides that summer. Here's the crew at one of the local establishments that catered to underage drinkers. At one place (not this one), the bouncer actually advised me on how to drink discreetly so he wouldn't have to bust me. So kind! Some of the girls had dorm rooms in Hotel Breakers. Man those rooms were tiny. And of course, the big perk is riding rides on your time off. Here were are going down the first hill on Blue Streak. So, me and these 2 girls got promoted to Blue Tag. We were a little peeved that we didn't get a pay raise, but at least we didn't have to direct traffic anymore. That post was near the Planning & Design building, and they had old stuff laying around, so one day I went exploring and found this old Iron Dragon car on blocks. Somebody stole the wheels, aparently. So, one of the posts we had was to 'guard' an opening in the fence near Gemini and check employee IDs if they came through. It was way boring, so one day I built a scale model of Stonehenge for chuckles. Can you say "Sexual Harrassment Lawsuit?" Had a lot of laughs... Here Sean (codename Squiggy) yucks it up on the back of the traffic truck. This guy (I forget his name) was hilarious! Needless to say, we grew to dread that line of cars creeping towards us day after day. This was a roommate of mine... Very cool guy named Doug. Everyone called him Doug-E-Fresh. I worked on the traffic control crew. We got to wear awesome clothes! My folks dropping me off at Cedar Point. I arrived about a week before the season began. Mean Streak was just finishing up. I actually was able to see it's first run!

^ Yea, I thought maybe I was being a little harsh on it, but it's the Discovery Channel. It's theoretically educational. You'd think they'd at least get a basic physics concept like Earth's gravity right.

Dood, that ain't gravity that's doing the pushing. Gravity, at least in our general usage of the word, applies to the attraction of objects towards the earth. The reason you feel pushed into your seat is because of the inertia of the train, and the resulting centripetal force exerted by the shape of the track.

Ok, so everyone's been joking with the answers, but the real answer is "yes." It was me and my 8 alter-egos! Yeeeess!

SFMM is holy ground for thrillseekers? Somebody in the writing department doesnt' read message boards! Discovery Channel's doing a top-notch job teaching the kiddies. “In a conventional loop, gravity pushes riders into their seats.” Ummm, gravity pushes people up, into their seats? How does a channel that is all about learning say something this innaccurate? It seems like every show about coasters has some glaring inaccuracy... Makes you wonder what they get wrong with important info. I agree with others about the phony drama the announcer used. Sooooo annoying. "(Under the pressure) Danny's brother Nic even has a nightmare!" Nooooooo! Not a nightmare! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! How bout this; "“The spray paint used to mark locations contain deadly toxins… One wrong whiff could send these iron workers to the morgue!” Or, "The crew had lunch at Taco Bell. If they didn't fart, the workers risk grastrointestinal pain, and they may even explode!" They should've just had the operations guy and the ironworkers do the talking... They were much more interesting. They actually said relevent things instead of hype with no substance. Seeing the actual problems to overcome, and the planning sure was neato. How surprising that they built a footer in the way of the track... Plus that semi on the hillside was cool. Never seen that before.

66 - The number of The Beast

Thank you Ted! I was looking at the official ballot, determined to do it, and about halfway through the instructions I said "Screw this noise!" I was toying with the idea of contacting Mitch to see if he'd like me to build an interface for the poll, but you beat me to it. And using your sites wonderfully clean & functional system. I did my ballot in about 5 minutes, which otherwise would have never been done! I wonder... Maybe you could add a button so folks who have ride lists already on CFanatics could use their list to create their ballot... They already have listed all the rides they've been on, and how they ranked them.... It's practically already done!

My first trip to Legoland. I was terrified, but my nephew went no-hands! That's my mom & brother in the 2nd row.

Saw this over on the Holiday World site... The Official Voyage "Through-the-Trees" shot! http://holidayworld.com/wallpapers/wallpapers.html Thought TPRers might get a kick out of a park website posting pics... Through the Trees!

Is that button still there? There's a spam post, but I can't find the "report post" button...

Nice trip report, especially for a first one! Nice job! That park looks beautiful! If I'm ever in Spain, I must go there!

Here's a photo of Top Thrill Grannie conquering Magnum! Magnum is small potatoes for Top Thrill Grannie!

It is wallpaper material! When I have that shot full screen, it looks really amazing. The shadows kinda make a weird visual effect. And thank you!