Shavethewhales

Thought some people might be interested to know that Google Maps has updated their imagery for Wild Adventures. Big improvement from the old grainy imagery - you can clearly see the new slides that were added this year, as well as the old CC rides the park received in 2010. Also note the additional foliage and the spruced up walk ways. Here's the link: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Wild+Adventures%4030.720735,-83.321879&ll=30.721064,-83.32701&spn=0.000538,0.001832&t=h&z=20&vpsrc=6 I notice they've got a lot more slide pieces sitting in the backlot behind the water park, even though the new slides have already been completed. Might be further leftovers from the other Georgia water park that HFEC scrapped a few years ago. Maybe they'll have another new water park addition for 2012. In the main park backlot I noticed what looks like a number of rides being scrapped. I know they took out some of the old rides when they bought the place, so there's probably several of the old "carny" rides the park used to have there. Looks like old track from Cheetah was being crunched up. I couldn't make much out, but I thought I saw some trough pieces as well. Some of the WA backlot Close up of what I'm assuming is old Cheetah track.

With all the bad publicity the park has gotten this year, will Herschend get booted at the end of the year? I mean, it honestly sounds like most of their problems are coming from bad management, which is something I never expected out of the company. Even aside from the ROS issues, from what I've heard it sounds like their staff needs a lot of work, and the park in general could be in a lot better shape. I don't know how much of this is the fault of CNL versus HFEC, but something needs to change on this property. Hopefully they can get it sorted out for next year.

Part two of my photos. I have a few more still on SDCFans if anyone's interested. SDC - http://www.sdcfans.com/photos/feat/19 CC - http://www.sdcfans.com/photos/feat/20 Wildfire at Dusk I know there are some lift hill enthusiasts around here. Powderkeg lighting up the night. Night rides on this thing make a huge difference somehow, especially if there's a huge thunderstorm not far off in the distance. Can't forget about the Disko Time for some food porn. SDC still does have a whole lot of good food. Definitely stop by the bakeries. No trip to SDC is complete without a skillet shot. The famous cinnamon bread. Finally here's some shots of CC. Looking south. Panning to the north end. The *complete* thunderbolt. Trains still on the track and everything. OzCat still looks OK. The trains are long-gone. One's at Wild Adventures and the other at Dollywood. This was another under-appreciated HFEC ride. It was one of the first of the new generation GCII's. There's still some small hope for it, but the economy will really have to improve, I would think.

Had a great time at SDC this past weekend. It was dreadfully hot with periodic heavy thunderstorms. The park could do a lot to improve their bad weather operations, but overall everything was run fantastically. Got to Deer Run Hotel on Friday night so I could get up in the morning and catch the first shuttle of the day directly to the park. This may be one of the last times we stay at this hotel though. Nothing was too terrible about it, but for the price, it doesn't seem like the place is as up to snuff as it used to be. It was noisy, a bit dingy, and the rooms still look like they haven't been updated since the late seventies. It's not like being close to SDC helps that much anymore anyway since you can no longer really walk to the park from the hotel. Anyway, onto the park: Saturday started out fantastic. Waited around in the main square for the hour before opening and headed down to PK at the gate drop. Got in a few rides before the crowds got there, then headed over to FITH for a ride there. I noticed that the Fireman's Cemetery is open again, and the graves look like they've been repainted. One of the old theming pieces nearby, a stagecoach, has also obviously been fixed up. Noticed more new props in FITH, but they might have been from last year's renovations that I didn't catch. The ride looks better than ever, but it is definitely very bumpy still. Hope they can work on that next somehow. After that I wandered over to Half Dollar Holler to see it for the first time. Man, I'm impressed as usual. I know we all miss the quite hollow that used to be there, but you've got to admit the tree houses are really well done and fit the area cozily without making it too crowded. The architecture is playful, but not so much that it jars with the surrounding buildings and scenery like GG. I really appreciated the wood-shingle roofing. It's also a heck of a lot bigger than I expected. Looks like the kids really enjoy it. Headed over to the Grand Expo next. The place keeps looking better every year as the trees continue to grow out and make a new canopy. Rode TNT. Still ticked about them doing away with the backwards cars, and I'm also disappointed at how rough its gotten again. At this rate I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they took it out for the new GCII. It holds a ton of nostalgia value for me, but it's quickly becoming less "special" in the park's line up of rides. I noticed they gave it it's own theme song though. Spent a lot of time around the old homestead, watching the new log cabin craftsman, petting animals, and talking to the guy at the steam-powered lathe who told me all about how it worked. They had a really sweet old blood hound stationed there as well who just loved to be pet. The train ride has gotten better than ever IMO. Seems like they're putting more effort into the skit, and the new sound system sure works a lot better. Had great performances both times I rode. Don't have too many other notes that I can think of at the moment as far as specific rides are concerned. However, I do have a major bone to pick with the park concerning severe weather. The first storm of the day started at about 6pm when the clouds suddenly moved in and a massive storm developed out of nowhere with torrential rain and a short burst of hail. I rode it out in the second story of the lumbercamp eatery. My mother, however, was taking a bus back into the park at the time. The driver stopped at the entrance and everyone stayed on of course, as the hail was just getting started. He waited there a few minutes, then he simply started driving off again. My mom had to stand up and shout, "excuse me, but aren't you going to let us off?", apparently he was kind of rude and clueless and acted like he couldn't see why a bus load of people with little kids didn't want to step out in a hail storm. When it turned 7 and the shops started to close, there was apparently some confusion a bit of anger as shop-keepers had to boot hundreds of people out of the shops and into the rain. Luckily it tapered off pretty quick, but it took the park over an hour to open the rides and attractions back up. Once the sun dropped, people POURED into the park to ride rides. Wildfire's queue stretched all the way to the entrance of the American Plunge. I don't know how much of the station they had open, but either way, that's a heck of a queue for that ride. Somehow the other rides weren't near as bad though. I got in a couple rides on PK in the dark which were amazing, especially with the backdrop of a huge line of lightning and thunder that was rolling in. Some of the best rides I've ever had on it. About 9:45, the rides shut down again as a second line of storms moved in, this time much larger. This is where it really struck me how odd it is that SDC still has little more than dingy queue fences at the front tram-drop off and not much shelter at all. Hundreds of people had to stand there in line for the trams and buses in torrential rain and very close lightning strikes. I ended up waiting under the little employee awning with a few other guests - that's the only shelter in the entire area after you exit the marketplace! In 50 years, have they not thought to put in a little shelter at the main tram waiting areas? I would have hated to see what would have happened if it started hailing again right then, with all the little kids around. There was a whole lot of cursing directed toward the park that night... Sunday was a lot less crowded. Not much else to say about it. Both days were crazily hot though, probably my hottest visit to SDC. I was grateful for Tom and Huck's Riverblast, and once again sorely missed Splash Harbor. Finally, the food quality is definitely continuing to drop each year. I ordered spaghetti at the Springhouse. It was soggy, cheap and didn't come in a breadbowl as advertised, though there was a lot of it. I saw other people complaining about the pickles being too hard to bite into. The prices have risen again on everything too. It's still at "applebees" prices, and the food definitely isn't as bad as most other parks, but they're definitely loosing their edge. There's still good food if you know where to look though. Try the mine restaurant for a good full meal. As for Celebration City, there's not a whole lot left on the property. Ozark Wildcat remains, and is being taken care of to some extent (as is the rest of the park), but there's little hope that it will reopen again, and there's pretty much no chance it will be moved. Accelerator (S&S Double Shot), the Thunderbolt, and Roaring Falls (Mack Supersplash) also remain, along with the Revecheron (sp?) log flume and a couple of kiddie rides that remain up for sale. Oh yeah, I noticed someone in a TPR shirt on the train, but I didn't get a chance to introduce myself before I lost track of them. Anyone else at the park that day? Starting things off with what's new at the park, here's the new kid's play area. The area includes this refurbished carousel from the old kid's area. There's also this kiddie swing ride, rescued from Celebration City. The back side of the treehouses have these awesome net mazes. Too bad they're for little kids. The park has a tradition of these kids of play areas, but this one is designed specifically for ages 2-7 or so. This is a new craftsman display. It's log hewing. At this point it looks like he was making a small storage building, similar to a few others around the park. The steam powered lathe, complete with an awesome blood hound. One of the steam trains. From the train skit. They did a great job both times I rode. Seems like they're really putting effort into it this year. A lot of parks half-ass these kinds of things, but when they're done right they make the park 1000x more special. This is from a little skit on the main square. These actors did a terrific job as well. Glassblowing. SDC has tons of crafts to watch, but I didn't spend too much time watching on this trip. Onto the rides, the water rides were a sweet relief today. I'm usually not up for getting soaked, but I rode every one on this occasion. SDC's smallish rapids ride. The splash battle. I love these things, I just wish they had kept splash harbor as well. SDC's tree canopy really helps with the heat and sunburns. Most of the park looks like this. Trees everywhere. Looking up hill street, the park's "big" hill. It was so hot even the squirrels couldn't take it. Most of the animals were just lolling around. I've gotta say, these S&S swings never get old. Unfortunately a lot of the evening looked like this. It took them ages to open the rides up afterwards, because they were concerned over lightning in the area. Apparently if there's lightning within ten miles everything gets shut down - even the kids areas. When things did re-open, the lines swelled for the last night of the Moonlight Madness event. For some reason, everyone wanted to ride Wildfire. This is a crazy long line for it, if you've never been to the park. I stuck with Powderkeg and had some AMAZING night rides on it. I just love the scale of this ride. It's bigger than most people give it credit for, though it does have a short layout. I'll put the rest of my ride photos in a second post.

I drove past Celebration City yesterday and the Thunderbolt was still there and completely in-tact, so it appears the rumors of pieces of it showing up at DL are false. However, maybe it will in the long-run, HFEC is really emptying out the park lately, and they'll want to do something with it if it doesn't sell.

Does anyone have confirmation that the Thunderbolt has started arriving onsite? Any photos?

Enchanted Forest looks freaking awesome. If I had a few million to blow making a theme park, that's more or less what I'd want it to look like. They've obviously gone to great effort to build an immersive environment full of great thematics and detail, which is what I really like to see in parks. It looks like they keep it clean too. A few more rides would make it a destination in my book.

Oh man, you've got to post some of that someday, I'd LOVE to see those.

The one that I'm most saddened about was the proposed CCI woodie for Bell's amusement park close to where I live. The park and locals fought over it for years and years, with Bell's proposing at one point to enclose something like 75% of the ride in a big shed, which would have been interesting. The ride would have kicked off a new era for the park, with a slight retheme of the park and a huge selection of new rides following it. The park actually did get approval to build a new wooden coaster in 2006, the year they closed. The ride would have been a much smaller, compact twister on the other side of Zingo on top of the old mini-golf course and part of the car ride. I think TGG was going to design it. The fact that the park was suddenly denied permission to renew their lease raised suspicions that someone (The Murphy's, owners of the adjacent fair and water park) didn't want Bell's to expand and grow popular again. The Murphy's, after all, where some of the biggest financial supporters of the politicians responsible for kicking Bell's out. NPN had a great article about it: http://newsplusnotes.blogspot.com/2010/03/blast-from-past-cci-at-bells-amusement.html

It's just a stock photo, don't spend too much time analyzing it. http://www.tineye.com/search/8c1a7f73d64e21343c008d759131d18fc475a5ca/

The source code has little more than a google analytics script. It's hard to call it similar to the other two, especially when the other two are so different themselves. I'm pretty sure one was put together with dreamweaver and the other may have been hand-coded or made originally with google sites. Not that any of that matters though. The only thing tying it to this campaign at this point is the nameservers, which are the same as the la marcus bros site. Trying to look through all of this campaign has given me a headache though. As interested as I am, I think I'll have to pass on any more analysis of these sites and just wait for the announcement

Holy crap! I had no idea Canobie lake looked so nice. It looks like it could be a Herschend park or something - there's attention to detail everywhere and a real effort to make the park look nice from all angles. If I'm ever in the area, I'll definitely be paying a visit. Thanks for the photos.

^Yeah, I keep trying to piece together a list of complete rides that he still has, and I don't know that I can come up with anything other than a couple of kiddie rides, if that. It just sucks that there's pretty much zero chance Tulsa will see a proper amusement establishment for decades from now at least. I still haven't stopped by the storage facility for myself in all these years since the park closed. I'll probably try to stop by and get some photos myself in a few weeks when I'm going back through Tulsa again. I haven't been to the fairgrounds since the park closed.

Ugh. I'm still not sure how I feel about this, but I guess the time has long past to stop hoping for Bell's to make any sort of comeback. This is probably the only way we'll ever see part of the park come back to life again. It's my dream to see Zingo operate again at a new Bell's in the Tulsa area, but if nothing else it'd be great to see it rise again somewhere else. It was a pretty iconic ride, even if it wasn't high up on the enthusiast rankings. With some work, it would have been a fantastic ride. It could make a great backdrop to nearly any park. Maybe a few Tulsa entrepreneurs could snatch the ride up and make it a part of some sort of new development along the river. I know at one point the mayor was interested in getting a new small park together for the Tulsa area.

Yeah, it's basically dead. The thing is, it looks like they were surviving by "giving away the gate" for a measly $10 on Mondays. The only way to operate on a system like that is to pack the park with the wrong kind of people, so what happened was pretty much bound to happen without serious security presence. I know a LOT of families are going to stop buying season passes again, and many won't be back this season. Hope they survive... something like this tends to linger in the public's memory for a long time. Seeing that video just makes me rage though. Those kids... as soon as one person starts to act crazy they all think it's acceptable for them to be crazy too.

Hmmm, we know Intamin uses rare earth magnets on their towers, but does Moser? Did you see it crash all the way to the ground, or did it just hit something on the tower itself. I'm kind of imaging some sort of gear getting stuck in the wrong position and the car hitting that rather than the ground itself. If there's any truth to this rumor, it'll be hard to get me on a Moser tower from here on out.

They're still not expecting it to even open this year though, but if nothing else major happens it'll be 2012's new ride I guess. It kind of makes me wonder though, if it took this long just to get a train down the track, how long will it take them to smooth all the other factors out? The vid looks amazing though, it looks crazier than I had thought.

^^It looks like it was posted last weekend. People have asked for more information, but their facebook rep just keeps referring to the 'about' note.

Latest word from the park: via the about section on their facebook. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Knoebels-Amusement-Resort/207828210550 Sounds awesome. I've heard them say they really want this to be the year it opens, but in another response on their Facebook recently they said it probably wouldn't be. If they have reason to be encouraged though, I imagine they'll set back to work on the ride in earnest later this season after Black Diamond is out of the way. There's a very good chance 2012 could be the year.

Great to see how Kiddie Park is doing these days. Even though I've lived in Bartlesville for 20 years, I haven't been by there in forever. It looks pretty much the same as it did when I went there as a tyke with a couple of small additions. They've done a tremendous job keeping the place in good shape. The fact that a little park like this can get such huge crowds in a town like Bartlesville is proof that there is a real demand for quality community-sized parks like this. I keep saying more cities should get their own kiddie parks. By the way, the coaster has always been called the Little Dipper. That train is new and was custom built for free by a local collision repair company in town. I believe they're calling the train itself 'Little Fire Ball' and the coaster is still Little Dipper, from what I can tell.

Man, that's sure an ugly looking flume for such an extravagant set of man-made water falls. You'd have thought they'd spend a little more attention on the flume itself. Other than that though, all I can say is good lord...

Actually PK has tons of problems, that's the only reason why more haven't been built I'm sure. It's always about a 50/50 chance that it'll be open all day on any given visit, in a park that's known for never having a ride down. I find it absolutely astounding that parts are still flying off this thing when they're trying to run it... that's just unbelievable. S&S has always had a ton of potential, but if this keeps up any more that's going to slip away quick.

Man, it took months for them to prepare the site and get the station built, and then they put the ride up over a weekend? Must have really efficient connections. I can't get over how good the station looks - really a step up for Canobie.

Yup, satire. Nothing on Six Flags' press release site: http://www.sixflagsink.com/index.php?s=264

Can we find a better source? This doesn't look or sound reputable at all. It's just a crappy wordpress site, and you can tell the guy writing it is no professional.