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40' drop off an 85' tall tower. Still world's tallest, but don't get your hopes up for that crazy! Seems like it's been forever since a park has built a major rapids ride, so I like this announcement.

With the amount of annual passholders and park hopper tickets sold, if they continued to allow 1 FP per park at a time without restrictions once MaxPass goes live, I imagine it would be impossible to get a fastpass for any of the E-ticket rides...

You shouldn't be surprised by anything AP's complain about....since they complain about everything. I kind of hope Disney will bring back the option to have one in DL and one in DCA...but for Hotel guests only. Make people pay a premium for it.

I mentioned this in the WDW thread that had ventured off topic to discussing Volcano Bay, but it's worth mentioning here again: People's brains are trained to wait in line. It's all they've ever known when it comes to rides. The psychology of that doesn't just magically change, so people are likely going to keep waiting around until Universal finds a way to build a standby system into this virtual queuing system. I agree with the sentiment that it is shocking and unacceptable they didn't account for this...

Excited to ride patriot and gold striker...been too long since I've visited CGA.

I can confirm the incommunicado drink is great.

I would think the main problem would be storage. Where would the average person keep an item like that? The average person isn't buying a boomerang car to begin with, so I doubt the winner is concerned... Back in the day, they sold the Soap Box Racer cars for $1 to employees.

They'd be hard pressed to find something better for the cost. I'm guessing buying new trains & changing out some mechanical systems to handle the new trains is fairly cheap compared to other capital investments.

Sea World recently announced a great deal on tickets and passes if you buy online. Plus, the return of their food and beer festival for the Spring!

It's spring break for various school districts, so I would imagine it will still be crowded.

She must not have payed very close attention to USH then if she's concerned about hiding show buildings....

The problem for universal is not that they are not being innovative with what they do---it's just that they keep innovating new ways to use screens. Forbidden Journey, Gringotts, and Spiderman/Transformers are incredible ride systems. But delivering content on screens gets repetitive, no matter how many unique ways they find to do it. Honestly, from a business perspective, I think that they played it perfectly. It gets people to buy a two-park ticket. I would agree with that. A full theme park with the detail the two lands they have so far would easily be a multi billion dollar undertaking. There's no doubt given the success of the lands in all the parks it would have still given them a return on their investment, but that is A LOT of money to put up front. For comparisons sake, Disney sold $1.1 billion worth of bonds to reboot DCA starting with the Mermaid ride through Carsland.

^However, they designed it with the conversion to Baseball already planned for.

Been awhile since I've updated this... So here's the moda center in Portland. While in Seattle, we made the 2hr drive up to Portland and stumbled upon great seats to a trailblazers game Obligatory concourse photo. View from our seats ...which happened to be in a suite. Suite was huge with a bar area and... More banners than the clippers! Doors to suites were all open and unlocked, as opposed to ticket entry you usually see...so here's nikes absurdly nice suite The arena also has the obligatory "box seat" area Postgame tv show studio on the concourse Can't be in Portland without a beer themed restaurant FYI: bill Walton is the best/worst commentator on tv Upper concourse has a kids play area. Nice to fit that in. Restroom in the suite. Great amenity!

Not a fan of how it looks, but if it improves the experience, I'm all for it. As I've said before, this tower was a half assed attempt to replicate the magic of Orlando's.

What's the over/under on how long it is before they just sell the project to the jets and giants to develop a much more scaled back "fan central" type of thing?

Windseeker was moved to Fiesta Village because people lost their minds over the thought of the skytower leaving.

They put the shed on GhostRider's drop to limit noise at the hotel.

Knott's already built a new coaster through an existing one (Jaguar), Wrapped Sierra Sidewinder around the Balloon Race, Built Pony Express over Bigfoot Rapids, put the annoying camp snoopy truck ride under Monte support, just built the new Calico Square stage to share backstage space with the Shutlz theater, once had flat rides inside the footprint of Windjammer, combined the parachute jump on their observation tower.... They planning team at KBF is very good at what they do. Grona Land is the extreme example. But any famous pier/boardwalk operates with the same general philosophy of plop rides wherever you can find space. Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk put a roller coaster on a buildings roof, the Santa Monica Pier squeezes the pirate ship ride in right next to the ferris wheel...

Yes we do. Outside of Ghost Town, where giant steel roller coasters are out of place, the skyline isn't a big deal....especially in an area themed to a boardwalk, where rides ARE generally plopped on top of each other....

I'm guessing sold to another park or scrapped---you can get a lot more bang for your buck now with smaller, cheaper, compact rides than re-locating a boomerang and dealing with continued maintenance costs.

I thought he was referring to being able to tap into a ride when it is walk up, even if you have another reservation. I hope you will at least be able to do that... I still do wonder how the fact queue lines are ingrained into human psyche will play into it. I think a lot of guests will have to be reminded to tap, as their natural reaction will be to see a line (or lack there of) and want to go right into it. This is the first park where you are not given the option of a queue line at all and that will require an adjustment for people. If it goes great and people can seamlessly go from ride to ride without huge gaps in between, I don't think it'll be much of a problem. But if they can't, I can just see the "why don't you just let me wait?!?!?" complaints piling up or team members consistently have to stop people to remind them to tap in. Ultimately, I only see this going one of two ways: it really does revolutionize Water Park queuing OR it is a complete failure. It is an interesting discussion.

You'd think, but who knows? That's a lot of extra programming that needs to be done. I think the idea is admirable, but I'm sure as hell not willing to let my vacation be a beta test for someone's tech. Isn't that already built into the Lo-Q systems? I mean, if Six Flags can separate the tiers of their flash passes by what % of the actual wait time you wait, it has to be built into the system already? I have no doubt that they will work out any kinks. However, I think the bigger issue will be selling the concept of no physical queue lines to anyone. It's the only thing we've all done our entire lives. Our brains are basically wired to know that physical queue lines are part of the theme park experience, so I do have sympathy for the team members who will likely never stop having to explain how the system works. Even if there is no wait and tapping into the ride gets them on the ride only minutes later, people will still struggle with the concept of not having a physical line to wait in... That, of course, is in addition to hoping there is enough to do for people to kill time between major rides...

It was the on ride photo sales place. Also, Magic Mountain vehicles are terrifying. Back when I worked there, the electricians van door was opened with pliers...

It's like Cartmanland!