Shavethewhales

I'm not sure how switching from one REIT to another will help things. Maybe this one is a little more experienced and wiser, but all REITs tend to be stingy since they are looking for the maximum yield. I doubt we will ever see something like the RMC that was proposed while the park is owned by an REIT. They'd rather go with something like a disko coaster and hype it up like it's a massive thrill coaster. Can't be much worse than CNL though... I hope.

LOL, you think the little kids care? There's no need to innovate with these kiddie coasters. It's not like they even notice that it's the same ride as some other park. I do wish they were a bit smoother though - a kid can bash their head in on the back of the seat with how hard they stop the train sometimes.

It's been slow, but they've done a TON of infrastructure work. They built a substation, new roads, new water/sewer lines, and storm drainage. Now that the RV park is open I expect full steam ahead on the water park. Judging from the website, a lot of the retail/hotel/etc plots have already sold! That's huge news, and it means their real estate gamble is pulling off. I'm not sure if they'll ever get around to actually building the theme park, but a big water park, RV park, and racing park plus retail amenities is something.

^^^Interesting speculation about the pumpkin thing though I think you might be overthinking the "bible thumper" influence. I definitely see DW stepping up it's game continuously on these night time events in the near future as Carowinds' similar events pick up. The LR ordeal is just so disheartening. The FB threads for this announcement are about 90% pertaining to LR issues. It's such a huge PR issue for them now and it seems to STILL be out of control. Such a missed opportunity as well with how many first time visitors they have generated between that and the hotel.

Color me surprised that they made a big announcement this late, and that they managed to keep it under wraps so well. Solid additions to the park. The drop tower really helps round things out. What will DW Fans fixate on now with the drop tower idea finally taken care of?

Hmm, really pushing something big with the wording there... If this isn't a ride, then this is going to be another KD situation all over again...

If this involves a ride I will be very surprised. They haven't waited this long for an announcement since the 90's, IIRC. October/November announcements are almost exclusively about shows and festivals. I certainly wouldn't mind a drop tower in the timber tower spot just to put an end to that line of ceaseless speculation.

We've been wondering about that for years now. I feel like if they were interested in that, it would have been done by now. The tower has sat unused since what, 2009 at least? Adventure Mountain has come and gone and although they hinted at ziplines in a brief survey from long ago, it doesn't seem like it will come to fruition. With Fireman's Landing in the way now I don't think there's the space anymore anyway. It'll probably sit dormant like the tree house has until they need the space again.

I think it will be a large attraction, but not necessarily bigger than Wildfire by any metrics. The clearing being down in a valley makes the area seem both larger and smaller than it actually is depending on where you are standing. Some of it is probably for Echo Hollow upgrades as well. Plus I'm still assuming there will be some sort of element(s) to shield the hollow from at least some of the coaster noise. So all of this foundation work has sprung up over the course of a week pretty much... Are they just going to have long pauses between various phases of construction? Obviously they could get this thing open next summer if they wanted to, but unless there's going to be a surprise November announcement it looks like they are really going to unnecessarily drag this out.

^^It really is interesting how they approach coasters. I've always said that whoever pulls the strings on these things at SDC must be a coaster enthusiast because each one of them is a winner worthy of marathoning. I'm still really uncertain about the concept that seems to have been presented, but they've got such a track record it's hard to be negative about anything yet. They obviously know what they're doing. It's just hard to fundamentally picture doing anything too intense on the type of spinning coasters I've been on. Tony Hawk's is crazy enough for me with the spinning. That's why I've been wondering if the spinning will be more controlled than on other coasters. Then again, the concept could be a complete false flag. That would be a first for them, but it's totally possible.

I feel like that's the cop-out for every low-capacity concept. I still just don't get what they're trying to accomplish here, regardless of the size of the park. This ride is neither thrilling, nor really appropriate for younger riders, and the low capacity and probability of mechanical issues due to each car being self propelled just make this whole thing seem like a waste of time. Then again, like always it might be something you have to experience for yourself to understand. I think they're really stretching the concept by trying to double it as a "people-mover" though. As a dueling attraction with a better layout/scenery, it could find a use at a couple of parks, but it's still a limited concept.

Can we get this same type of expansion in Tulsa please?

I'm sorry, what? How on earth is Magic Springs anything at all like Dollywood? I guess they are both technically parks with roller coasters, but that's about where the similarities end... Like others have said, set your expectations low and be prepared to make your own fun out of the experience. I actually really enjoyed my visit to Hot Springs/MS awhile back. The coasters feel like they don't actually have a maintenance staff at the park, and the ride operators are scant and barely seem to care about actually putting people through the ride. It took several minutes to dispatch on Big Bad John, for example. BUT, X-Coaster is a pretty crazy experience, and if you are a wooden coaster masochistic like myself then Arkansas Twister is a unique thrill. I still hope they don't gut the rides section anymore. It is what it is for now, but with a little work it could be OK. They just need a LOT more misters, more focus on water park and water attractions, and focus on quality for the rides they keep/add.

Great photos, thanks for sharing! That Washington Forge stand is crazy! They brought in an entire log cabin for the festival! I love everything that comes out of Washington, MO though - great town and really fun to visit around Christmas time.

I had a great time at CP this past Tuesday and Wednesday. It was kind of a last minute trip after a crazy summer where I got laid off and didn't get to do nearly as much coaster adventuring as I had hoped. Fortunately I found a new job and was able to squeeze this trip in before starting. Getting in and out of CLE was surprisingly easy. I'm a fan of that airport and the nearby area. For anyone doing the same trip, I highly recommend staying at the nearby candlewood suites and eating at Fatheads brewery. Breakers Express was really nice, and the package deal with free parking, discounted tickets, and early access. Also highly recommend. It had been 8 years since my last visit. A lot has changed, and everything seems to be much improved across the park. I miss Disaster Transport, but the new B&M's were nice, and the park really seemed refreshed all around. You'd think a random overcast Tuesday would be the perfect day to go to Cedar Point, but it was pretty busy, largely due to Lebron James treating his foundation to a day at the park. I didn't have too much trouble with the crowds though, since they tend to focus on the big-ticket rides while I enjoyed the arrow classics and some of the flats. The bigger problem was the rain. Even just a slight mist earlier in the day shut the park down for awhile, which was annoying. When it actually started to rain I decided to check out the Saloon Show, which was nice but has nothing on SDC's version. Finally the skies cleared up and that evening was a blast with lower crowds. Only major comment I had was that I can't believe how much trouble they seem to be having with Valraven? It broke down multiple times during those two days, including once when I was on it. Being stuck on the lift hill under those claustrophobic restraints wasn't as fun as you might imagine. I wouldn't have minded on most any other coaster, but that's not a good angle to be stuck in under that heavy vest thing. Fortunately they gave us exit passes, and the front row ride on TTD afterwards made up for it. Seems odd for a brand new B&M to be breaking down a lot, but then again CP runs their rides a lot harder than most any other park.

This is close to me, but I never considered it to be anything really like a theme park. The Christmas event is the only time it's open to the public anymore, IIRC. The vast majority of the time it's just a church camp with a train. I do remember when it was briefly operated more like a park, and I went as a kid. It was a lot of fun, but I never got a chance to go back. Tickets to the Christmas train sell out instantly, and it will be even harder to get them this year. I hope someone with some vision buys it out. Tulsa is dying for a good theme park. Frontier City is OK, and SDC is beyond wonderful, but Tulsa can support something nice and small on it's own.

Catching up with this thread, I'm not sure what's more annoying: those who take rumors too seriously, or those who fill pages of threads with inane chatter about how lame rumors are. Rumors come and go for every park. I've been here for over ten years now, and I can't tell you how many times people talked about CP building a dive machine for years until it finally happened. I think the B&M wing rider rumors from earlier came from the same place: people make speculation based on what seems obvious or likely and run with it. You aren't supposed to take it seriously until you see an announcement or hint from the park. What we know right now is that SDC is almost certainly going to go with this Mack Spinning Coaster concept based on how they've presented it through the surveys. This is how they've done it for years now, most recently with Fireman's Landing and Riverblast. There's usually a leading survey that presents several different options, and then a later survey where they present one concept with different themes. Who knows what happened to the other concepts on the earlier survey, maybe they'll come to fruition someday. I'm surprised more people aren't talking about the potential of an extreme ride with y-axis spinning. There aren't many frontiers left in the coaster business, but for better or worse this is one of them. Blue Fire is the first to do it, but this will be the first fully-fleshed out concept from the ground-up, right? Not the most appealing concept initially, but as it has been with some of the other new innovations it could be a lot funner than it initially sounds.

Ugh, I took a gamble and setup a trip for next week. I'll be there tuesday and wednesday. After a couple weeks of looking like the forecast would be clear, now it's looking like there will be a big thunderstorm all day on tuesday... I'm guessing they have the same storm policy as everyone else, where everything shuts down when lightning is in the area for at least 30mins? Hopefully the forecast shifts again...

So it's been consistently open for about a week now, right? I'm scared to say too much in case I jinx it again, lol. I ended up with some down time the last couple of weeks and I would have scheduled a trip to head over there if I knew it would be open, but maybe I'll figure something out next summer. I think operations will be slow for the remainder of this season. I'll bet they are going to be very cautious with it, plus it's not like the staff has been able to get very broken in on normal operations. As long as it's actually running I'm happy. Not surprised this would have an edge on OR for most enthusiasts. This thing was built for airtime bliss while OR is kind of a demonstration of the crazy elements they can pull off with this tech.

Got a few photos from the last couple of days. Not good photos, but photos nonetheless. I need to get a new camera someday. I think everything's pretty much already been covered, but to recap: lots of clearing behind Echo Hollow, new bathrooms being put in on the East side of EH, and the markings are still there. Also, I checked out the new mountain coaster and it's a lot of fun. I thought it was pretty pricey at ~$16 for the first ride and ~$10 for each ride after, but then I found out how expensive most of the zipline places are. Some of them cost more than a SDC season pass for a few hours to do a handful of ziplines.

Yeah I think it all comes down to expectations. I wasn't expecting much more than the waterpark and a few mediocre coasters, and that's what they've got. I was just pleased to see it all spruced up. I should also mention the Mexican restaurant on park is actually pretty decent. It looks like they partnered with a local restaurant?

Magic Springs is a park I've been meaning to hit up for years. It's just a bit outside of my usual weekend trip travel range at over 4 hours of driving from Tulsa. Even with all the driving though, this park is in a beautiful little piece of the country and there are a lot of little interesting things along the way such as the Ouachita National Forest, little BBQ joints, rock shops and crystal mines, etc. Definitely worth the trip if you can drive in from the West. I was actually pretty impressed with Magic Springs. Just like Frontier City it seems that Premier management has gone through every surface of the park with a paint brush or trowel to make it look like a brand new place. Everything is fresh and bright and the flower gardens are in perfect order. The rides and slides look great as well, and there's been obvious work on things such as stations and restaurants to fix them up. The only thing they haven't worked on is the actual ride experience on the coasters. I mean DAMN. It's like the theme of this park is coasters that beat the absolute crap out of you. I couldn't believe they put all this work into fixing the place up and left some of the star attractions in such a sorry state. But perhaps they don't plan on keeping the coasters around much longer? I will say that I managed to enjoy the coasters even though they were all rough. Once you get in the groove of riding them and know how to sit right, they can be enjoyable in small doses. X-Coaster is actually pretty nice, but psychologically unnerving especially since it really has gotten stuck upside down before. Big Bad John is just bumpy, Gauntlet is a typical SLC, and Arkansas Twister is an old wooden coaster that's seemingly been run without any track maintenance at all for a few years. Arkansas Twister is really standout because of how crazy it felt. I have been on some big rough woodies before, but nothing like this. I actually got scared on my first ride because I thought the car was going to come off the rails. The jackhammering was so bad I think I actually bruised my balls because they were knocking together. On the other hand though, once I knew how to anticipate the bad sections and knew how to sit slightly up and out of the seat, it was a lot of fun. I rode it over and over again after the water park closed down. I really like this coaster, and it would be really nice if it got some track work. I feel like it's at the point where they will have to either put a lot of money into it or take it down completely... There are some persistent rumors that CNL will cannibalize the park for it's dry rides and transition it into almost entirely a water park. They've already been doing this, as at least three rides have been removed recently (two at the beginning of this season!) in order to give other parks in the CNL portfolio "new" rides. The dry side of the park certainly feels a little incomplete at this point without the two big thrill rides (a Zamperla power surge and a S&S shot tower) that they lost this year. I hope they don't loose any more, because there's not much more to take other than the kiddie rides and the Zamperla hawk. I understand why they are focusing on the water park though. It was hellishly hot and humid on this early August day. It was so hot in the early afternoon that I briefly considered giving up on my initial credit run and just diving into the pool in my clothes. Thankfully god sent a heat storm to cool things off. The whole park shut down a couple of times for an hour a piece due to the random little spurts of lightning, but it was worth it for the cool down. It simply gets too hot to enjoy the dry rides all day during the summer. I guess this is why there aren't more parks in the area of the South where they get true southern heat. I did end up spending a few hours in the water park as well, which was nice. It's a little awkward with how the new section is kind of separated from the old, and there's an even newer kids area thats down in the dry park which you have to change back into dry clothes in order to get to since they don't allow swim suits in the dry ride park. I guess they'll eventually merge all of this together somehow. The only real negative is that the lazy river doesn't have a good drainage system so there's tons of leaves and debris floating around in it. They also didn't have any of the former effects and waterfalls working. This is a park that seems to be in the middle of a metamorphosis, similar in some ways to the Hot Springs area in general. I guess only time will tell how it will work out. Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs. I somehow forgot to take more photos of Bath House Row. It's actually an incredibly interesting place. Magic Springs from the Mountain Tower. The upper part of Hot Springs One of the Crystal Mines. For $25 you can haul away whatever you want. A crystal deposit. Random Arkansas beauty inside the Ouachita National Forest

I could see it. At this point they've played this game about as long as they can get away with it. Like I said some time ago, their strategy here-to-fore has been to pretend it's been "openish" most of the time even though only a scant few people got to ride it this year. I think they might wait awhile longer to call it quits publicly though. Then they can pretend they made it until the end of the main season. Probably after Labor day sometime. IMO, it's time to bring everyone back, tear the problem areas apart, and start over. I'm so tired of hearing about it being in some sort of "rehearsal".

Hate to disrupt the glorious name speculation, but I have a quick question that's probably been answered a hundred times: what's the cheapest, best way to get from Cleveland airport to CP? As for Mean Streak, as happy as I am to see the inevitable transformation, this was also one I was kind of dreading since Mean Streak is one of the last of the wonderfully nasty monster woodies left. I grew up with the likes of Hercules, Rattler, Texas Giant and Mean Streak being some of the top destination coasters and I've watched them all slowly turn to crap and then be replaced one by one. End of an era for sure. I do think this will be a magnum opus for RMC though. Stakes are so high at this park...

That's depressing hearing all the hate for Lakemont park. I'm finally doing a Pennslyvania trip next year and Lakemont is supposed to be one of the highlights for me. Riding leap-the-dips is a bucket list item for me, and I LOVE classic woodies. Sure hope they have them open when I roll through.