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For those of you attending the Knott's day, they have announced on their twitter page that there will be "BIG NEWS." I assume this will be haunt related, so that's something else to look forward for the Haunt fans out there...

If you are getting there earlier, you might want to consider the VIP tour or "privately guided tour". The VIP tour is expensive, but includes the 2hr long tour where you actually get to get out and walk around various areas of the backlot, includes a really good buffet lunch, and a guide that walks you around everywhere. The "privately guided tour" is just the backlot portion of the VIP tour, and also less costly.

The coffee house and amusement park industries are much more an example of "monopolistic competition" than anything else. There are market powers that can exert their power as a monopoly would to gain a short term advantage, but it is not going to stop existing competitors from matching their tactics, or new entrants in the long run. Using the coffee example, that is why you have Seattle's Best @ Border Stores, lots of Coffee Bean & Tea (at least in So Cal), Peet's, Tully's, McCafe @ McDonalds, and tons of independent shops. Using the amusement industry example, that is why good ticket promotions get copied everywhere (all you can eat passes, buy a day/get the year free, front of the line passes, etc.), parks building their own on-site resorts, indoor waterparks popping up next to established theme parks, new major attractions being built, and so on. ...And that's the end of my economics lesson... But as Larry said, it's all speculation, so it's pointless to discuss at this time.

^I don't think you understand what exactly a monopoly is. You can't have a monopoly when there are 5,000,000,000 other ways people can easily spend their disposable income. Don't like Six Flags+Cedar Fair jacking up the price on a season pass? Save up for a trip to Orlando. Or visit the already existing competitors parks in the same region. Or family fun centers. Or sporting events. Or a concert. And so on and so forth.

^The lower lot closes 1/2 hour before the park is closed, and the rides down there remain open until 15 minutes prior to park closing. Special FX stages will probably have its last show at 5:00, and Backdraft's last show will be 5:30. I'd say you don't want to miss those since they will be closing whenever Transformers construction starts! WaterWorld's last show will most likely be at 4:00, and T2's not until 5 or 5:30. The Tour will close @ 4:15. If you can actually make it by 2:00 (which you should, barring any major accidents), with the front of the line pass you'll be fine.

I would recommend the front of the line pass. It's discounted after 2PM as it is, plus some schools are already on spring break. Combine that with the nice weather and all the deals floating around (buy a day, get the year free w/ no blackout dates for locals and free admission for California school employees until the end of the month), and it makes for a busier than normal weekday!

^Exactly. Unitholders need to get rid of this management team. They are clearly not operating in the best interests of shareholders by trying everything in their power to push this deal through.

This attitude=FAIL. Obviously safety is important, but if they are holding back opening the ride because this guy is demanding even more...that's just too much. It's just like Cedar Point being terrified of rain after the Magnum accident. They need to either demolish the ride, or be happy with the job engineers have done refurbishing as much as their budget allowed and reopen the ride.

Anyone who has been on Winja's can tell you how affective unexpected track movement can be. People's minds are not programmed to think something like that is possible on a roller coaster.

^Neither of us have enough information to really know if that was the best decision. We're not privy to any inside information such as guest complaints from downtime, the cost of operating and maintaining the ride, the % of people who visited the park that actually rode the ride, and so on. King's Dominion appears to be the exception, not the rule, when it comes to not charging for Halloween events in the Cedar Fair chain.

^No offense, but I really don't understand why you are so obsessed with Cedar Fair "improving" Six Flags. Cedar Fair can't even get their own sh*t together. Fright Fest (a free event included with admission) and Cedar Fair's haunts (hard ticket events) are two entirely different things to begin with.

There's not going to be any major backlash.

It has the competitive advantage of being the only hotel with a waterpark directly on-site.

Both myself and Dan had a blast riding the one @ CGA. You get some pretty decent airtime.

^...Or perhaps Six Flags has realized that their plan of "giving away the gate" was a bad idea and they are looking to correct that by pricing the pass at a point where its still a good value to the consumer and not dirt cheap.

I wonder what Disney is hoping for with this pass? I would guess that the majority of "Hardcore" Disney fans had no problem paying to visit the other resort before this pass was launched (especially with all the great ticket options like the no expiration days park-hopper), so I can only guess they are hoping this pass will convince people to increase their length of stay at the resorts. It will interesting to see how this plays out.

Although they stole the "psychological thrill ride" angle from Mummy's marketing, I think all of this is great marketing. It's clearly designed to be overkill and different from typical marketing campaigns. I love it.

^It's a 10-15 minute walk to the Harrah's monorail station from the Wynncore property. If location and not "ghetto" is all you want, stay at Mirage. Same thing for less money.

I actually think Caesar's is over priced for what it is. The "Classic" and "Roman Tower" rooms are outdated (tube TV, small, etc.), and while all the deluxe and above rooms are nice...they are still small by modern vegas standards. You're better off paying a little more for Wynn or Encore and getting WAY better service and a much bigger standard room.

^I actually think for once the Academy got it right. It was a very intense, character driven movie that just happened to be set in Iraq. I think the gross had a lot more to do with the distribution than the quality of the movie.

^Granted this was during the time everyone was going crazy for real estate (2007), but the last big land sale in Vegas was The Frontier. When Phil Ruffin (current owner of Treasure Island) sold it, it went for $33 million/acre.

Time for another update of this thread! Thanks to the economy, City Center has a chance of being the only new hotel rooms in Vegas for this decade. What you may have not known is that if the economy didn't tank, which meant people with no business getting loans could no longer buy ridiculously over priced hotel rooms marketed as "condos", there would have been another 10,000+ rooms on the strip! So for this update I included a construction photo of each (none of these are current), the concept art, and their current status. First up is the Cosmopolitan Las Vegas. Located right next to City Center, the plan was to be a 3,000 room hotel/condo property w/ all the vegas amenities...casino, shopping, convention space, night club, theater, and a rooftop "beach club." Here's a picture of the two towers under construction from March of last year. Currently the property is owned by Deutsche Bank, who inherited the property after the developer defaulted on the loan. The exterior has been completed, and work is slowly continuing on the interior. All reports suggest Deutsche Bank intends to open the property sometime this year, but that has not been confirmed. Next up we have a new tower at Ceasars Place. This one is to be called the Octavius Tower and feature 665 rooms+71 suites. Harrah's announced in 2009 that the project would not continue until demand for rooms in Vegas picked up. It's the smaller looking tower in this photo Here's a photo from March 2009 of the tower under construction. Currently the exterior shell is completed, and 4 high roller "villas" (imagine the suite from The Hangover) are in service. The rest of the interior remains unfinished. Moving across the street, we find the St. Regis Residences as part of the Venetian/Palazzo property. It was to be 50 stories tall and feature 398 condos. I don't believe it was ever announced that this would be a hotel/condo tower. Although this photo was taken in March of 2009, this is how it currently looks. Construction was frozen at the end of 2008, and has not resumed. No word on when construction will resume. Moving further down the strip, we have the development that was to replace The Stardust Hotel. Echelon Place was to feature four different hotels for a total for 5,300 rooms. Also to be included was 650,000sqft of convention space, 140,000sqft casino, two theaters (4,000 seats & 1,500 seats), and a 300,000sqft shopping center. Although taken in 2009, this is how the project currently looks. Boyd Gaming stopped construction in 2008, and currently has announced construction should resume sometime in the 2011-2013 range. You can check out the site @ http://www.echelonresorts.com/ And last but not least, Fountainebleau Las Vegas. A 3,889 hotel/condo tower, which was to include all the other Vegas stuff too. Construction stopped in June of 2009, as the owner declared bankruptcy. Carl Icahn bought the property for $150 million. It has been reported that the resort was approx. 70% complete. No future plans have been announced.

Well, the area is still a construction zone. Those set pieces probably just weren't ready for installation, but were brought out and placed in their eventual location for the photo shoot

From what is known so far, it looks to be some sort of 4D experience.

Both the Experience and Nemesis 360 are KMG rides. Nemesis 360 is actually the only one of its kind in the U.S. It's a KMG "Inversion." They took the base of a "Freak Out" (the smaller afterburner), the seats of the experience, and made it go all the way around. Seems like an awesome combination!