CoasterG

Great updates! Any idea if tomorrow and Friday are general public admission days with the reduced admission price?

Congrats!!! Kristen is a cutie! Lucky she takes after her mom! Good to hear she's eating like Robb and that she is doing well. George - just a month and 5 days late...

And that would be because you ARE their Number 1 Fan. Remembers when Elissa was picked up by Chip (or was it Dale) at Disneyland...

Sign me up! More Frequent Fear Pass abuse. George

Know of any discounts for SFMM in October? Heading out there for Knott's Scary Farm, a day at Disneyland and then the pure torture of SFMM (since a friend hasn't been) and I'd like to reduce the impact on the wallet. Also, any other suggestions on sightseeing or smaller parks - I know about Adventure City and Scandia from before. BTW, its Thursday, October 6th thru Sunday, October 9th if y'all want to join us. George

Things I have faith in about Holiday World and The Voyage: - maintence, this coaster won't suffer the issues that many steel structured woodies have because it'll get the tender loving care of Jeff; - it'll kick butt, I would say ass but its in Indiana and I think butt is pushing it; - May 6 needs to get here soon... george

Knoebel's is one of the best classic parks around. Phoenix is a great coaster, especially at night - offers some nice airtime and its not rough. Twister is good, I've never gotten a top notch ride on it, others have raved about great rides so your experience may vary. Food is awesome at Knoebel's - Pirogi's, Caesari's Pizza, White Birch Beer - its all good. And its cheap. Try everything, don't think you'd regret it. Knoebel's ride operations are fast, lightning fast - Phoenix and Twister have the fastest loading times I've ever seen on a coaster, people get out and the new people board, get restrained and checked in a matter of seconds. I'd recommend staying as late as possible for better Phoenix rides, to get the coaster option wristband if its available and to eat and have fun - not too many of these type of parks around and Knoebel's is one of the best.

Its all about bundling. A water park with the Sea World tag would be popular and can be bundled with Discovery Cove and Sea World tickets for an upcharge. Plus there's more than 50 acres over there if its the spot I'm thinking about - Busch acquired a LOT of land around that area when they bought Sea World, it was part of the package. So a starter 50 acre water park with nice room to expand would work well for them. If you noticed there are a ton of No Trespassing signs on several vacant areas across the street from the park that are labelled with Busch as the owner. That was of several months ago, don't know if the signs are still there, but I know they've been there for several years.

I've been hearing the sell-off rumors as well. If they decide to expand the park, I doubt they'd get another coaster - Kraken just isn't that popular and the park is in the position of either: a) continue developing more thrilling rides in order to build a clientele but you compete with BGT; or b) discontinue developing thrilling rides, stick to their main focus of animals and build rides compatible with that focus - for example, a raft ride, other water-related rides or kid rides. Thrilling water rides work too. I see b as more of a real business decision than a, I could also see a Sea World waterpark as a potential build, but the market has a LOT of waterparks - we also have a lot of really hot summers so it works...

Don't let it kill your skipping! As a Florida native, Hurricanes are very hit and miss. Looks like we're entering a more active cycle, similar to the early 1900s. I doubt it'd affect your Orlando/Tampa vacation plans, hopefully we won't have a repeat of last year and storms tend to hit coastal areas more than the inland Central Florida corridor. George - who's getting ready for hurricane season anyways, like I've done every other year...

Going to hit all of the above - figure SFMW and maybe PGA or SCBB on Wednesday and Bonafonte and PGA on Thursday, then my friends fly in and we're at SBC park on Friday and Saturday evenings with touristy San Francisco stuff during the day. Was looking at rates and found a place mentioned in a TR on RRC called the Ocean View motel in San Francisco, close the Golden Gate park at $95/night and right next to a streetcar line and BART station.

Ok, I'm getting some details done for my August 10-14th trip to N. California and my last part is booking hotels. I could definitely use some advice because most of the San Fran area hotels I'm looking at are $150+ per night and for such a long trip thats a bit much. I'm looking for a good hotel that is close to SBC park or you can take public transport to SBC park for Friday-Sunday and I fly into San Jose on Wednesday and wouldn't mind getting a decent hotel in that area to base myself out of for 2 days alone. Thanks for the help! George

It was great meeting everyone and hanging out with old friends, we need to do that more often! A great evening, a sampling of Epcot dark rides - who could ever forget that the future is sparkly and sponsor-free and the your imagination is hosted by poor Eric Idle. Love Eric Idle, cynical about Journey into Imagination with Figment. Poor Figment for that matter! Dragon abuse by Disney? I could skip the trip back home though, it poured with gale force winds - took about 1:45 for my usual 1 hr trip back to Melbourne. Cool effects from the wind and rain flowing sideways off of the bridges and signage though.

Great TR Robb, much better than some of the gamer sites I tried to browse to get E3 info. They were uniformly crappy, too much PR/media hype and spin and no info. As soon as you posted the Batz-maru game photo it screamed Elissa must buy this. See anything interesting for the PSP? Picked one up and its pretty great, love being able to xfer movies from DVD/PC to my PSP so I can watch em while travelling. So if those booth babes are coming to the BBQ I may just have to fly out there...

On your coaster or noncoaster trips? One of my favorites: Mr. Weenie was found in Peru, Indiana on the drive between Indiana Beach and Cedar Point following some Mapquest directions. We stopped in Peru to get gas and found Mr. Weenie - he's classic. Didn't try the hot dogs though, maybe next trip... More to come as I keep going thru photos. George

Hey Robb, put me down for Dinner only, should be there sometime in the afternoon, probably after 2 or 3pm. Anyone know if they have single rider for Soarin' or Mission: Space?

The entrance is in Stanleyville, directly across from the Log Flume entrance. BTW, Sheikra is a variation on the name of the African bird so they can copyright/trademark it - not the actual name. On opening day, it had 4-5 hour lines. Not many people in the park on weekdays currently so if you want to get a few rides that's your best bet. The middle row "fat boy" seats actually deliver good airtime at all of the spots as well and a intense second of positive Gs at the exit of the immelman.

Check on both points, its smaller and its very smooth. I'd say Mummy is very similar to Dinosaur and Indy in the dark ride department, and Dinosaur is much darker at times. No big drops here - its launched and none of the drops are very big at all. Dinosaur is darker at points, overall its not really that dark at all - even the coaster sequence isn't really all that dark. You just have to ride it Elissa's Mom! You are going to like it.

Well I was lucky enough to attend the first Sheikra media day yesterday at Busch Gardens Tampa. Starting out at 4am in the morning just sucked! But the riding was well worth it... After a 4am arrival at the employee lot, we were given T-shirts and Lanyards and herded over to Sheikra for the morning news tapings/live shots. Whoa. Sheikra is one relatively compact and impressive coaster, its a maze of track surrounding the station with a short run out towards the boundary of the park. My first thought was how steep the lift hill is, later I found out its a 45 degree angle and when you ride you are pushed back into the comfy B&M recliner seating (more on those later). We were escorted through the construction area, Busch is way behind on getting the theming, que, landscaping and even some basic construction done on the site. They were installing walls in the que area, no actual que railings yet, prepping walkways for cement, the roof on the station house isn't complete, neither is the interior work, especially the ops station, and the stairs leading into the station and exiting are still being installed. Landscaping is barely existant, with some temporary landscaping brought in that morning to give the unfinished theming some polish. The tunnel and other ride oriented theming is mostly done, just some final touches and clean up work. The tunnel looks cool and the splashdown area is very nicely done. The station itself is like an aerie - you go up a set of stairs (we used the emergency stairway), into a holding area and then 6 seperate ques, one for each row, cross a open area and onto the loading platform. Yes, Sheikra has a double loading station, so throughput should be nice. After a briefing, I was lucky enough to be on the first train out, middle row of the 3 row train setup, dead center. The seats are a version of the B&M speed coaster seats, they are heavily reclined back with a V shaped headrest and the standard B&M shoulder harnesses with 2 "fat boy" seats in the middle row, center, of each train. Each train has 3 cars of 1 row each. After some camera adjustments we were off, making the right turn to the steep lift. The 45 degree lift takes a few seconds and you are definitely pressed back into your seat. When you reach the top you roll slowly around the tight curve and engage on another short chain. You move forward, getting a great bird's eye view of Tampa and vacinity - later in the day you could see the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Then you are hung over the approx 200' vertical drop. When I say hung over, I mean hung over - its much more forward than Oblivion's hang point. All the riders get a great view of the still unlandscaped bottom of the drop, and then, after a varying short interval your dropped. Nice airtime across the train, with the back getting a ton, you then pull up into a short rising curve into the immelman. A short pop of airtime leading into the immelman becomes floater air extending through the immelman and then a nice crush of positive Gs push you back into the seat. The midcourse brake run evac ladder does a great headchopper to most of the train. You then head into the midcourse brake, the brake is on fairly heavily - I understand why. The second, 158' drop, is very steep, I don't think its another 90 degree drop, but its very close. The 2nd drop has the great headchopper tunnel and the train picks up some speed as it pulls out of the drop in a fairly deep trench. A short rising, overbanked curve leads into the splashdown effect - the backseat riders on the ends get a bit misty as the car kicks up a HUGE plume of car behind it. Its very cool. The train then heads up a rising overbanked curve into the magnetic station breaks with a bit of airtime on the beginning of the rise out of the splashdown pool. Sheikra is a classic B&M, smooth with some forces - we're not talking "old time" B&M forces but some solid negative and 1 or 2 spots of positive Gs. Its definitely not a "forceless B&M" design. One thing, the back row, right end seat was in high demand since it was very intense in that seat. George

IoA has a surprising amount of space available for expansion - they just need to get a greenlight. Here's a brief list of expansion areas: Marvel - waterfront, the area between Cpt America cafe and the store, behind the Marvel Comics "sculpture" - room for a flat ride or similar attraction; - backstage, between Storm Force and Doom - the temp warehouse building is there that is used during HHN and for other special events; Toon Lagoon - backstage, between Dudley and the food court, hard to access though Toon Lagoon/Jurassic Park - between Dudley and Thunder Falls Terrace, huge area for a major attraction, precleared, used for ride part storage; - Triceritops Encounter, medium sized area for a themed attraction - don't think they'd build something tall here since the Visitor's Center is thematically supposed to be the center of attention on the lake; - between Jurassic Park RA and Lost Continent, another huge area of land that can be developed - some park services buildings behind Pizza Predoria if I remember correctly Lost Continent - previously mentioned area between JP and LC - pretty full back here - it borders on the studio section so I suppose anything is possible but a lot of offices, cafeteria, etc back here Suess - waterfront area occupied by Sneech track - Sneech ride refurb/removal, decent amount of space to play with for a new attraction - area between 1 Fish, 2 Fish and CitH, larger area, big enough for a major attraction My favorite and more probably rumors are the Jeep Attraction, and the B&M flyer. If they are willing to spend the $, the Jeep Adventure had a lot of planning done but it'd be a big ticket item. B&M flyer is cheaper, be a first in the area and I wouldn't be surprised if Universal had a 3 coaster deal with B&M in the first place. "Welcome to Hadrisaur Cove..."

I've gotten 2 visits this year so far and noticed that their parking lot gets packed but the park seems relatively uncrowded. I think its the way the park is spread out - the only crowded area I've seen is the food area by Triple Hurricane, it can get fairly crowded on a good day. The park is doing great, anyone know the progress on their new additions? Any sign of the mouse?

Yea! Quake is dead, long live Quake! (In some parks graveyard!) What a misbegotten ride, they should've sprang for a real Top Spin.

Tell me how you really feel about DMB? I totally forgot about Bonafonte! Have to pencil it in there - unfortunately I have to credit whore since this is the first time I've been up in the area so I have to do PGA and SFMW . Hmm, can I do PGA/Bontafonte and Santa Cruz on the same day and wedge in SFMW when I fly in? Noticed that SFMW is N of San Fran while those 3 are S? I think - not a California geography expert.

I'm planning on heading up to the San Francisco area for 2 Dave Matthews Band shows - August 10-14. Flying into San Jose on SW at about noon on the 10th, have the 11th free, the 12th thru the 14th are booked since the shows are late in the afternoon on the 12th and 13th and I fly out at noon on the 14th. Right now I'm thinking: PGA and the Santa Cruz Boardwalk on the 10th - get about 6 hrs in the park and then 2-3 hrs at Santa Cruz SFMW on the 11th and San Francisco sightseeing - basically hit the coasters and see the park at SFMW. Are there any other good smaller parks in the areas with coasters of note? Not your typical Cali kiddie coaster - something like the Scandia Screamer or Treetops Racers is cool though. Thanks!

Gold Qbot = Qbot you want when going to ride Kingda Ka or any other new coaster at a Six Flags park. Great TR btw and some good photos.