Shavethewhales

Every time someone mentions "updating" FiTH/Blazing Fury my eyes nearly roll all the way back in my head. There's no way these rides can be "updated" enough that those calling for the "updates" would be impressed. You'd simply have to bulldoze and start over with something bigger, which I'm sure the parks have been looking into given the trends in how the parks are run these days. If they put down the investment for an update such as new animatronics, then it becomes necessary to update the track system to make it worthwhile, and then the whole building needs to be updated to protect those investments... and so on. I say these rides are perfectly fine the way they are. There are small things that can be improved such as audio, and refurbishments are always welcome to make the experience smoother, but they have always been and always will be very fun and creative rides from an age where parks weren't so cookie-cutter. I have yet to be impressed by any of the newer dark rides I've ridden at standard regional parks. I really miss the days of the old Bill Tracy rides and similar that were so memorable and unique.

Wow, fixed before the end of April. I was prepared for this to go into summer. Really wasn't a big deal at all. I just wish they could have moved the media day. The launch looks really good!

I remember when I was 10 years younger and dreaming of building roller coasters one day. Watching this stuff get built is a big part of why I chose to be a civil engineer. It didn't take me long to ditch the coaster building dreams once I hit university though. I don't know if there's an official number out there for how many dedicated engineers are working in this specific industry, but it's got to be <100 for civils. As most have pointed out, it's a tiny niche industry that you have to work your way into, and there's tons of people competing for the half dozen or so internships/entry-level positions that are based in the US - and that's after you assume that you are OK with moving to one of the few locations where these companies have permanent offices. By the time you make it through your sophomore year, you just want a job - period. Adulthood catches up and you just want to support yourself comfortably. No matter what you do, it all becomes just a job, but at least with a practical engineering job you can easily support plenty of park trips throughout the year. For those slugging through maths, I'll give you a little light at the end of the tunnel: a lot of engineering is less about performing complex calculus by hand, and more about thinking things through and neatly working through established design processes. I never believed people when they told me that, but after a couple years of professional experience I wish I had taken this mindset earlier. I didn't do any calculus in high school, which a surprising number of people think would have eliminated me from getting into an engineering school. I did have to take a couple of absolutely pointless "remedial" classes that I should have tried to get out of, but otherwise it didn't really affect me at all. Calculus can be a pain, but with diligence you will get through it. Diligence is really the most important lesson I learned from doing calculus, because after two years of working as a structural engineer I haven't used it since. There are different jobs within the field that will use more high-level math, but it really isn't as difficult as they make it in school. P.S. The word "design" is thrown around a lot and can take on different meanings in the engineering/construction world. You can "design" something by making a quick napkin sketch, and then hand it off to someone to do proper "design" work. In other words it can mean basic conceptualization or it can mean planning out how a given idea will work based on codes, efficiency, cost, etc. This is an important distinction because the vast majority of engineers to my knowledge never actually get to "design" something by thinking it up or sketching it out on paper/CAD. Most often we are paid to take a proposed design/idea and produce a final design that meets the given codes or requirements. So even if you do make it into the industry as an engineer, maybe you should expect less roller coaster tycooning and a lot more general analysis like you would do in any engineering job.

^I don't know about Bigfoot, but they have been working steadily on the mountain coaster. They had most of the track delivered and were working on clearing as of a week or two ago.

Wha... just... how? I just don't get it. How are these creditors letting them off again? I thought the lazy river was a total loss? Without it there is no water park, just a couple old crappy slides. The only way forward for this park is to pursue new business opportunities that make sense such as vacation rentals, festivals, summer camps, and retreats. There are ways that this can be pulled off, so it's frustrating to see them keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

I've also been hyped about 76 and the rest of the projects, but I'm also a bit pessimistic about how much it will actually transform Branson. The walkways will help, and the visual improvements are great, but what it's really supposed to impart is a change in the way people visit Branson. In other words, they're hoping people will park and walk more so urban design can be promoted instead of each little thing having it's own giant parking lot cutting it off from everything else. Still a lot of resistance to that from the older crowd, which is what keeps Branson floating. What will really improve things is when they start attracting higher tier attractions that embrace the strip instead of the random little piecemeal things that are being thrown together now. Really need some updates from the new Ferris wheel and Intamin tower going in on the strip. I'll be there in about a month, but hopefully one of you guys is going to be there sooner?

I don't think there's a whole lot of info out on it just yet, but it should come soon. Basically it sounds like they want to have a quick "credit run" ERT session that Friday evening, before everyone heads up to KC for schlitterbahn. Maybe they've added more to it though, since SDC would probably want something a little more substantial than a bunch of enthusiasts barging in at the end of the day for ERT. schlitterbahn is really going above and beyond on saturday though, as they always do, and Coaster Con starts on monday, so it's tough to fit it all in.

I wouldn't call that a kiddie coaster... it reminds me of the miller coaster that was at Celebration City and now Wild Adventures, which is plenty insane despite the small track and car size.

Frontier City hosted the American Coaster Enthusiasts for a great event dubbed 'Oklacoaster!'. The park really bent over backwards to cater to us with a bunch of ERT on all the coasters, free meals, behind the scenes tours all over the park, and some great prizes and give-aways. I was really blown away by the star treatment, but it probably helps that the director of operations is a dedicated coaster enthusiast himself! The new ride, a Zamperla Power Surge dubbed 'Gunslinger', isn't ready yet, so the day started out with us taking a couple ERT laps on the Wildcat - complete with free shirts from the park celebrating the 25th anniversary of the ride at FC. We split up for awhile until the afternoon, when it was time for a trivia game and a Q&A session with the GM Stephen Ball and several maintenance people. Mr. Ball confirmed that the old nightmare mine building is being fixed up, and the seasonal scarehouse inside is being expanded (eventually it will be two stories!). I can't recall anything terribly interesting that we don't know about, but we did talk about how much effort the park has been putting into things like paint and maintenance and how they've taken advantage of some hail storm claims to do things like improve the lighting on the ferris wheel and put a roof over the old train car. Speaking of the old train car, Mr. Ball actually opened that up to us exclusively after the Q&A session, which was amazing. If I can recall correctly, it was the personal car of the owner of the Frisco Railway, and ended up at the park when it was built in the current location back in 1958. After all that we took a close up tour of the Gunslinger under construction (they seriously let us walk right onto the ride pad), and then we went over to the infield of the Wildcat coaster to get some exclusive photos and see the remnants of the ErUPtion ride. Finally we took a tour of the boneyard, which once housed ride remnants from across the entire six flags chain. It still has a TON of old stuff, including a number of coaster trains and most of the old Nightmare Mine coaster. The park itself is looking amazing. I've raved before about what a good job Premier has done with the place, but it had actually been over a year since my last visit and the place is even better. They've seriously painted and fixed up every surface in the park. There's hardly anything left to be improved. As they keep updating their rides with new attractions, this place is seriously going to turn into a bit of a destination for enthusiasts. This was the only ACE event I've been to other than one Coaster Christmas event a couple of years ago at SDC, so I wasn't sure what to expect, but now I'm convinced that these events are far and away the best way to experience a park. Everyone was super friendly and welcoming, and it was great meeting a bunch of other people crazy enough to travel around the country just to ride coasters. Did you know frontier city has one of the oldest operating scramber attractions? It's literally run by a motor and a break. Since we were on the last ride of the night, the operator opened it up to full tilt, which was amazing.

Damn. This really is just a bigger, better Outlaw Run. It feels bad to say, but I sure wish they went with something like this for Lighting Rod. The 135-degree roll on OR is really fantastic. This version with the completed inversion is going to be insane.

Supposedly they are elongating the other festivals next year - but Brad Thomas is being very secretive on what is replacing it. Told the citizens it'll be August before he announces I'd be very happy if they made BBQ & Bluegrass two months long. Of course they still need to get some more outside BBQ vendors to take part.

Very interesting. They've got a respectable complex there, and this is a big expansion to their dry side. I'm curious to see how far they'll take it. The location doesn't seem to be ideal at all, but I could see taking a road trip out there someday to see that part of the Ozarks. Didn't know Route 66 Carousel Park had closed. I was always hoping that one would grow into something more as well.

^^Right, as I've pointed out before none of us know exactly what is wrong with the launch system. It could work well enough in the basic sense, but fail to pass some sort of safety check or some other issue. Perhaps additional brakes are all it needs. Perhaps they will still have to rip it out after they try whatever it is they are trying now. You guys can speculate at what they're doing all you want, but at the end of the day it doesn't make sense to say anything with any remote authority about what is wrong and how this will get fixed. All I know is that I'm glad the activity has picked back up. Based on that note I will speculate that they know how to fix it and are hauling ass to get it done soon.

^That's actually pretty much a perfect description. I agree that it's a must-see, especially when stuff like this is getting cut out due to ADA issues and the like.

^You wouldn't believe how many of those frivolous suits they get. Every now and then the news points one out, but they seem to be pretty constant. Always someone "slipping" on a piece of pavement or tripping over a rock or whatever they can come up with. From the whispers I hear around the industry it sounds like there's been a major uptick over the last year.

I mean, the cave is nice if you like caves, but I was actually going to give the opposite advice and say you should savor your time above ground and leave it for later. I assume you'll be wanting to do all the coasters, and since PK and OR are particularly good you'll want to get as many rides as possible. There's a ton to do, so I guess you can't really go wrong in any case. Thanks for the photo update ytterbiumanalyst!

You can have inaccuracies in advertisements without it being "false advertising". The delay in opening is unexpected, and not DW's fault. The ads can't easily be updated or pulled without a lot of unnecessary expense. It might lead to some disappointment for a few guests, but it's really not the end of the world. I think the problem with the discussions on here lately is that too many of you are trying to get on one side or the other when most of these issues aren't or shouldn't be binary. Most of this stuff you just have to reason through - it isn't all black and white.

I was really hoping they would come up with a game that is at least competitive with PC, if not quite as good. I've been pulling for them for months that this would go down as a story of a developer who rallied when given poor feedback and went back to the drawing board to come up with something decent, but instead it's a tale of a desperate company throwing stuff at the board to see if anything sticks. This will probably be the death of Atari (again). They had one shot with this huge cash cow of a franchise, and they blew it multiple times. Truly a case study in terrible management all around. I kinda want to try it out, but I doubt that Atari will be able to fix half of what's broken by the time they completely give up, and the community is already sold on Planet Coaster anyway. What really makes me wonder is what would have happened if Planet Coaster hadn't come around? Would they have even bothered with the delays and the new developers?

^^ & ^ It's impossible to know that. Maybe the DW staff is completely pissed off behind the scenes, or maybe they are completely understanding. We could only vaguely speculate based on what we know about them, which is nothing. That said, delays on major projects are part of the game in this country because we have high standards and regulations. If it were a huge issue, most companies wouldn't stick around very long. The only company I'd be worried about is the vendor who supplied the original launch equipment. This was their time to break into a new niche and they shot themselves in the foot.

This is the kind of proposal I fantasize about when I'm day dreaming about how to fix ailing parks. This is exactly what this property needs, and I hope it will be an example for others to follow. The only concern I have is what will happen to Flight Deck? From my brief survey of their overview graphic it looks like they want to use the space for an indoor facility? It's an older ride, so from the PTB standpoint I could understand why they think it would be something to replace, but it is certainly the park's best ride... It'll be a pity if they take that out and simply repaint Vortex.

Assuming GCI engineered the physics of the ride correctly, it should be pretty easy to attach a few new sensors and flip the power switch back on. Hopefully it won't run into any problems but testing shouldn't take that long compared to a new coaster. With this amount of rebuilding, I would assume the testing and re-certification process will be very similar to a completely new ride. I'd say it probably won't be ready until mid to late may depending on how fast they hoof it.

They said the system wasn't performing up to their standards, not that it specifically wasn't pushing the train fast enough. It probably works in the basic sense, but it failed some kind of redundancy/safety/maintainability test. Who knows at this point. This is why I haven't been so excited over getting the "first" of anything. I'll gladly take the second version that has had all the kinks worked out. I'll bet DW gets a discount on this though, so it'll all work out in the end for them. I'll bet they can have it done by Memorial Day.

Why would they add another chain lift coaster when they already have several? It's 2016, launches aren't a special gimmick anymore. If they build a wing coaster and it isn't launched, I'll actually be a tad disappointed. Thunderbird's launch works beautifully with that ride - just imagine how much duller it would be with a chain lift.

Huh? Why does that mean all the theming goes in the garbage? They could have put it right back, and placed new theming. Instead they left a bare metal roof. It's one of those things that isn't a huge deal, and of course most people won't notice, but after years of this happening all over the park it's looking more bare and generic. SDC used to absolutely blow people away with how detailed and immersive it's theming was - it was literally like stepping into a whole new world. Just a different attitude now. And if I haven't pointed it out yet, in this case they are obviously playing this ride out of the park. By essentially hiding the entrance, not replacing things, and only making the bare minimum repairs to keep it going they are allowing guest's perceptions of it to slowly fade so that they can justify ripping it out and replacing it with something else. That's another completely different attitude from the old days when a ride with so much detail and history would be considered sacred by the Herschend family.

They actually started checking bags at the end of last year. All Missouri parks and attractions are having to step up their game if they weren't already. The fry bread stand looks like it's in the same location as the old stand? Obviously hard to tell from a single photo, but I expected it to be farther back if they were really trying to improve the flow. Thanks for the photos! Keep em coming. I know there are quite a few more updates to the park, such as around ThuNderaTion and the riverfront playhouse.