Shavethewhales

I wonder if Chris' name is on some sort of trademark or proprietary tech that they are re-using? From what Robb has said, he isn't actively involved in it, so I think there's something else that people keep pointing to in order to say he's "involved". I think this section of the article should give us some hope though:

I think it's about time we institute a word filter for "'cuda falls". Is anyone planning to make it out to the park soon? I'd love to see an updated PTR

If you follow their Facebook page, you can see that they are slowly chugging forward. They keep saying that they are working on the donator perks but don't really have a timeline. They've just got a lot on their plate with setting up the new rides for summer, managing what already exists of the new 'park', and of course the fact that Robby still has to work his other job to pay his personal bills (unless this has changed since then). There just isn't a lot of manpower behind this. The good news is that there is some progress. The Tilt-a-whirl is almost done if not done already (haven't been by in a few months), and they just started putting up the kiddie coaster. They've also made a lot of progress on several other rides getting basic refurbishment done. I think there are some mechanical issues that have been slowing them down, judging by the looks of the Tilt-a-whirl last I saw it.

I don't remember anything new on WF from my last visit in November, but I'm terrible with remembering details. Hmm, hope they figure something out to move people through OR quicker soon. It's an amazing ride, but I can't justify waiting much more than an hour for anything. I don't pay that much and drive that far to stand in line all day. Can't wait for the next big coaster addition just to take the spotlight off of OR, though I know it will always be a popular ride. I've been so busy I didn't notice this: it sounds like there's a different show in the saloon this year: "The Return of Carrie Nation". Sounds like a good one. If you haven't been to a Saloon show yet, I highly suggest it. You really haven't seen SDC till you've been to the Saloon, and SDC's shows are typically far better than your standard theme park entertainment (like everything else at SDC).

This is a reasonable analysis of the situation. The thing is, this can happen to anyone - no matter how careful or attentive you are, you'll most likely find yourself getting hurt in an accident someday. It's not so much that we have a "sue happy" culture, rather we have a culture that has for some reason allowed the healthcare/insurance industry to become such a monster that it leaves a lot of people with no choice. If you end up with $150k in debt over a stupid trip and fall, what are you supposed to do? It's hard to brush it off as a stupid accident when you now have to spend the next decade or more paying it off out of pocket (depending on the type or existence of insurance coverage). It sucks for everyone and no one should have to deal with it like this. In the end only the lawyers and insurance companies are allowed to win.

I couldn't tell from that article where they transitioned from talking about the PC version to talking about the mobile version. Really confusing, I agree. A lot of this is strange and poorly handled. I'm trying to take a wait and see approach, at least until the screenshots come out for the PC version. Atari is making that kind of difficult when nothing they say seems trustworthy or well thought out.

It'll get better with time. Hopefully by this summer. Everyone's still just freaked out after the NTAG incident and HFEC was already on edge after the DL accident. When the lines start getting too long during the summer they'll find ways to speed it up.

The big rides will happen. They are certainly already planning for them. Lake Monster isn't a rumor, it was an actual pitch, which shows that they have given heavy consideration to it. I expect them to go for it for 2015, but it seems CNL has a fair bit of control over that still. If the rumors are true about HFEC grooming DL to buy, it'll happen sooner rather than later. I think it will be awhile before you see something like a new B&M show up at DL, but if they can get Lake Monster built and get a good response to it, who knows where the park will go. It's in a decent location for growth.

Something wooden would make sense if it is going to be large-scale because that is the most cost-effective route. We know the wooden hybrid technology is out there and ready for a launch tie-in, but is that really something that would make Robb so excited? Not sure... I'm really having trouble thinking up something that would live up to this level of excitement from such a small park. I'm guessing it's heavily innovative, but what don't we already have? The inverted woodie concept just doesn't get me excited.

All I know is that when I rode it the other day, there was very little actual airtime. I rode in the second to last seat, and it just seemed like it was running more sluggishly than it was originally intended. Granted, this was a fairly early ride in the day, early in the season. I wish I had time to give it another ride later in the day. It's still a reasonably fun ride, just not anything insane.

Wow, that's a lot of progress in just a few days! I'm wondering if the stuff from the surveys is supposed to be in addition to, rather than a rebuild of GG. The foam fortress needs some refurb, but it is still incredibly popular for the kids. I'd love to see them just tuck the new rides and stuff back into this area. That way it's doesn't impact the general park ambiance of lake silver anymore either, not that GG hasn't kind of ruined that already. Anyone have a pic of the new game near TGS?

I had a great time today at SFOT. It was my first visit to a true Six Flags park since I was a little kid (I say "true" SF park because Frontier City was never really treated as a proper SF park). I just went by myself since I had a free day and have been wanting to hit this park up for over a decade. The park was fairly busy, but I managed to get every credit besides the kiddie coasters, with re-rides on Titan, Shockwave, Judge, Batman, Mr. Freeze, and Pandemonium. I don't bother with classic trip reports anymore, but here are my notes/thoughts on my experiences today: The Good: SFOT has a fantastic and perhaps underrated collection of coasters. Titan surprised me with its interesting layout and forcefulness, definitely a new favorite. I was also surprised by the Runaway-Mine-Train. I knew it was essentially the granddaddy of them all, but it feels so different from any other mine train I've been on. I really loved the finale. Mr. Freeze and Batman were both solid rides as I knew they would be Shockwave and Judge Roy Scream both really appealed to me as a lover of nostalgia and the classics La Vibora is incredibly fun. I so wish we could bring back the bobsled genre, but with higher capacity vehicles. NTAG was decent, but honestly after hearing it hyped up so much back in 2011 and having ridden Outlaw Run, I was a little let down. It's certainly fun and fulfilling, but it doesn't feel nearly as crazy as it looks. I think OR might have just spoiled it for me since that's what I had in mind when I rode it. I also enjoyed the general atmosphere of the park itself more than I thought I would. There's definitely a lot of character in parts, particularly some of the older parts that relate to the original Six Flags theme concept. Unfortunately this has been somewhat cannibalized by the ludicrous number of game stands and in-park advertising. The staff were very good. Everyone was very friendly and did their jobs well. You could just tell that everyone had been through training and knew what they were doing. There was a set process behind every little thing, which looks like it would be really frustrating, but they managed to handle it while still being friendly and appearing to have fun with the guests. The Bad: I'm not used to SF parks, but I was a little shocked by the inefficiency I saw around the park. Just getting into the park was an hour long ordeal between the slow ticket salespeople and ineffective and poorly coordinated security checks. I don't understand why they wouldn't have a better entrance and more resources diverted to this area as it gives everyone a bad start to their day and it's literally where they make most of their money. Ride operations were painfully slow as well. Not just because of their stringent safety checks, but because the ride ops were just plain slow and there weren't enough of them to move the trains at a proper pace. It doesn't seem like there is a priority for the park to operate rides efficiently since it just drives more sales of Flashpasses. They sure had plenty of people to man the flashpass system and all of the lame carnival games, but couldn't spare a couple extra for the major coasters to double put-through. La Vibora has an especially slow queue line. For some reason I though the carriages were either 6 or 8 seaters, but when I got up there I was surprised to see that there are only three seats with a tandem option for small kids. Each carriage only held 2 or 3 people for most runs. They were loading two cars at a time, but one was essentially reserved for the flash pass queue line. I waited for 2 hours to ride the first time in the painfully slow moving main queue before I realized that this ride has a single rider queue! Not only that, but since there are a lot of groups of two, as a single rider you are essentially a walk on every time! I could have ridden dozens of times in the time it took me to get that first ride. I felt pretty stupid after that - I should have known better as a seasoned enthusiast. Oh well, it was good for my head to take a break from riding anyway. I know I'm probably late to the party on all of those observations, but I thought I would share since it's my first reaction to a major SF park. I did enjoy it quite a bit, but I'm not sure I'll hurry back because it is so expensive and the operations were frustrating.

So I just tried to buy a ticket through SF's website since it says you can save $15... Turns out there's an $8.99 "processing fee" and a $4 tax, so that comes out to about $63 when admission at the gate is $65. I guess I might as well just buy a season pass at the park since it's only a $5 difference and take a road trip down to Dallas again in the Fall.

It's very possible that SDC will get a family coaster in the old Geyser Gulch area next year. We know the park sent out a group of surveys with some very specific pitches related to retheming and revamping the area last year, and from various interviews it sounded like they want to push forward with something in 2015. Some of the pitches indicated that they might play off of some of the existing rides/themes in the park. SDC has done this a lot in the past - if you look closely you'll see callouts to Rube Dugin, Tom & Huck, and various other characters all over the park. They used to have quite the cast. The Wildfire logo might just be a teaser for a new video or something though.

I think I'm going to head down to SFOT tomorrow for the first time. It's my last spring break ever, so I decided I needed to get out and do something for once. Any major tips/things I should know? Are NTAG and shockwave open?

Powder Keg started with one train operation, then bumped up to three, then it shutdown for a couple hours then reopend about 2 hours before the park closed. Every year I hope that they'll finally figure out the kinks with PK and get it running reliably, but it never happens. I'm guessing that's why S&S hasn't sold any more of them despite the excellent ride experience. Lots of good updates to the park this off-season as well. I won't go myself until May, but I'm hearing about a lot of general sprucing up around the park since they didn't add any new major additions. If anyone gets any photos of new thematics/signage/etc I for one would be appreciative.

I read through some of the proposal. Once again it is very amateurish in nature... It's a decent concept for sure, but as usual there's no power or money behind it so it's not even worth really discussing at this point. Almost looks like a really dedicated older enthusiast put it together. I kind of doubt 'The Paidia Company' is actually a real company and not just someone trying to break into the amusement business by posting proposals whenever the opportunity arises. Sorry, but it takes a bit more than that.

I'm not that old, but I still remember the days when most projects didn't have so much publicity, and enthusiasts had to be content with getting little snippets that popped up in the general news media. These days we expect full concept artwork, a detailed list of what rides will be included, and constant contact with the developers through social media. Give em' a break. There's so little left to this project that we don't already know, and progress seems to be advancing well.

Expect to pay between $12 and $15 per meal if you want to enjoy yourself. You can go as low as $8 getting smaller meals and water, or $5-$6 if you just get snacks like cinnamon bread.

Steam is an interesting phenomenon to deal with in the gaming industry. On one hand, I'm sure it's a huge help to developers like Pantera who don't have a lot of good options to ship products out to thousands of customers at once (the server costs are higher than you think for this level of service). On the other hand though, we're putting ourselves at the mercy of a third party company, who forces us to use a side-application to access content that we've bought and paid for. I'm a little perturbed that it's become so natural to have to download ads in order to access MY content. If the steam client is unable to download the latest "update" (read: newest ads) from the server, sometimes I have trouble being able to play games I've paid good money for. Meh, all in all, it seems like the best route forward for Pantera to handle it through Steam. What I'm really bracing for is the hoards of complaints when "early edition" is launched and those who haven't been paying attention get upset about the unfinished state of the game. I'm going to try to not even bother playing until March/April when the finished product is actually ready.

I've seen this rumor keep coming around again and again, I wish I knew who kept spreading it and why. They've pretty much already come out and told us what the plans are for 2015. Adding a B&M on top of that would be silly. Even doing it in 2016 would be odd for them. SDC isn't really hurting for big thrill coasters at the moment, it's not supposed to be a Six Flags. Their bread and butter is family experiences, and I really would like to see them develop more of that without resorting to plain turn-key ride installations. The family package coming in 2015 will be nice though. The earliest I expect a major new coaster to show up at SDC is 2018, unless they are looking at "copying" Dollywood's new family coaster, which could be a strong possibility for 2016/2017.

It's interesting how careful they've had to been with handling the PR behind this minor incident. You can tell how much they've had to emphasize that there was no damage to the coaster itself and that the park will still open tomorrow. You just wouldn't believe the rumors that tried to flourish last night about this. It takes so little to set them off, and it's so hard to get them to die, even with official statements. Even now it amazes me how many people keep posting on their FB to ask if the park is still going to open tomorrow, in response to posts from the park that say it will...

I think we've all agreed that at some point MS will get an RMC makeover. Given their options for the ride, it seems like the obvious choice. It just comes down to when. Will it be marketed as their next big coaster? Very possibly, I think. At this point the only thing it's worth is standing as a backdrop in pictures and adding to the coaster count.

Found that posted on the FB page, sounds official. They are really trying to stress to people that the coaster itself was not involved. You know the GP - some of them already think it burned to the ground because it is a wood coaster after all Sounds like it was pretty small and was contained quickly. A bit of damage to the station, but it doesn't sound like anything they can fix within a few weeks. Certainly by the time the off-season is over, we won't be able to tell anything happened. This isn't the first fire on SDC property that they've bounced back from. Just last year the operator tower on the American Plunge log flume was struck by lightning and burned down - that's why they close the rides during storms!

The Southern Stone County Fire Protection District is reporting that they just responded to a fire in Silver Dollar City at Outlaw Run. They've updated to say that only the 'entrance' was involved and not the ride itself. No idea of what the extent of the damage is yet. It's a pity, they really did a good job with this station. Here's hoping they get it restored as good as new for next season.