texcoaster

Surprised that Steve Martindale wasn't in his usual cowboy hat for the ribbon... err, ice cutting. He seems to be a genuinely nice guy. He's kinda like the Pat Koch of SFOT, I haven't had a visit there in ages that I didn't see him out in the park talking to people and welcoming them and such.

I hate poorly designed station queues. Namely, when the main queue feeds into the station right at the front or back seat queue. Those seats naturally back up the line, blocking the rest of the queue from getting past and filling in the empty seats. Worse, sometimes the ride ops don't notice it's happening and dispatch the train with multiple empty seats while a long queue still exists.

Turbine was/is my favorite shuttle... and the only one to beat out Greezed Lightnin. Everything after GL was substantially farther down on the list. Now with BOTH these coasters reopening in 2013, I sometimes have a difficult time believing it's not all just a dream.

I think that B&M are focussing more on what the park wants, rather than what hardcore enthusiasts want. While I agree totally that most of the B&Ms of late have been engineered to death and don't provide much thrill, what they DO offer is a coaster that is fun, comfortable, graceful, and hugely popular with the GP - who, after all, are the ones buying the tickets and spending money in the park. They also tend to have rather high throughputs, so the lines keep moving, another big plus. That same lack of OMFG thrill also serves to have patrons feel a sense of accomplishment when they step off the "big, scary" coaster and say, "wow, I totally did that and loved it!" That might graduate them to bigger thrills. In the case of X-flight, I think the focus here is on the sensation of flight more than balls-to-the-wall intensity. Look no farther than that slow burn rollover at the top of the lift to see that speed wasn't the prime focus... instead, you get anticipation and a nice transition from hanging-by-your-harness to weightlessness to positive G's all in one element. Nice. Also, with the big focus on tight clearances and theming, you don't want the train to go so fast that nobody even notices how close they're getting to the supports. So YES, I agree that B&Ms fail to wow with their lack of forces and such, but I don't think that's what the park wanted with X-flight. Job well done, IMHO.

re: all the talk about what will happen to SDC if the shows dry up on the strip.... Wasn't SDC there a whole bunch of years before Branson was a thing? It's the only park for people in that area and I'm pretty sure it's been there a lot longer than the strip shows (awkward wording intentional).

You may have missed my point. I'm not saying that they COULDN'T replace the flywheel launch with a new system, I'm saying they SHOULDN'T. I think they should keep the original, classic ride experience if at all possible and as fun as a mag launch might be, it's just not a Schwarzkopf flywheel feel.

No way. While LIM/LSM launches are fun, they just don't compare to the kick-start of GL's flywheel launch. Even though the acceleration was slower than the LIM/LSM coasters, it FELT faster. Really. GL was by far the best of the Schwarzkopf shuttles in the US (I'd vote Turbine just slightly higher because of the indoor/outdoor setting) and unlike other versions, they didn't slow down the train at all on the reverse trip. The back spike was the best part of the ride! I've not been to Cliff's (that 800+ mile drive is a killer) but this will make it an absolute must-do park for me. This can't happen soon enough!

I had a good time at the video shoot, although there were about 3 silly teenage girls for every real person there. They seemed to have invited a LOT more people than they needed, including a bunch from some Facebook contest. Whatever. Since I'm far from being a teenager, I and the other old guys were sent in on the last group as "dads." That actually worked out, since even though the rest of the groups got their rides in before us, we got three consecutive rides without getting off, since there wasn't another group waiting to go. The ride: the reverse launch was smooth on the first ride, then kicked substantially on the two that followed. None of them were uncomfortable, nor did I fear that my head would fly forward and connect wih the headrest in front of me. I rode the back seat all three times and the sensation of reversing up the spike on the LIMs is wicked. It's really nice not to be blinded by the sun as you go up the spike, giving you a good opportunity to glance around and see the sights... assuming you can take your eyes off the spectacle of the GROUND, that is. The return trip is a bit slower through the top hat and you notice some ridiculously close supports that I never noticed before. Oddly enough, they look closer from the left side of the train, even though they are on the right. The right side seats show that there's plenty of room, but they're still close. Is it a winner? Hell yeah. Would I ride it again, even if I went on a non-ERT day? Absolutely. Would I suggest changing your travel plans to make sure you get to ride it? Not really, unless this is going to be a one-season-only thing. If they're planning to leave it reversed, it can wait until the next time you're at the park.

Somehow, considering the park in question, I'm not looking for an all-out white knuckle envelope-pushing ride.... but I hope I'm wrong. As for lines, Powder Keg <> wood coaster. PK's launch system slows down the throughput quite a bit, what with the transfer track and all. Lines stack up because there are more people entering the line each hour than the ride can handle. I think that as long as the ride ops are on their toes, it should move the line as well as Thunderhead, at least.

Rattler, opening season. It was so good, it generated lawsuits. Seriously, no wooden drop has ever made me spew profanities like that one did. The Freeze Frame booth was hysterical... pic after pic of a trainload of riders at the bottom of that drop, and almost nobody had managed to keep their hands up. In fact, most were white-knuckling the bar, hunched over, head looking at the floor.

Yes, it's a shame that the Timberliners aren't on track yet, but I'm still geeked enough about the new track work and reprofiling to extend my trip to Indy for DCI finals an extra day so I can head down there and get some rides. The video looked great! I wonder if there's going to be some extra airtime in the turnaround section now?

They could've changed Sky Screamer's name to something else. I like SkyScreamer name. The General public is stupid, I heard people say they just rode Mr. Freeze at Fiesta Texas. SkyScreamer was the name of the first gen drop tower at Astroworld. Since most park-loving Houstonians head to SFFT now, that should make the confusion even worse. SFFT: come ride the new SkyScreamer! GP from Houston: Hooray! I wondered what happened to it! Wait... that's not the SkyScreamer, that's the Gunslinger on a stick! Anyway, the Astroworld version had a story to go with the name: The SkyScreamer is a bat-like winged creature that swoops down from the sky and picks up unsuspecting people, takes them high into the air, and then with a siren-like WHOOP WHOOP, he drops them. The SkyScreamer drop tower had a whoop-whoop siren that sounded before the cars dropped. On opening day, they sold foam visors that said SkyScreamer across the bill. There were eyes that stuck out above the bill and bat-like black wings that stuck out from the sides.

For sure: Six Flags Over Texas, Six Flags Fiesta Texas, Galveston Historic Pleasure Pier, Kemah Boardwalk, Europa Park, Wiener Prater, the two badass Alpine coasters near Innsbruck, Holiday World. Maybe: That little park in Calgary, the PNE, Dollywood, Silver Dollar City

Keep in mind that the vast majority of the folks in Tx (and Mo as well) haven't been to SFMM and certainly not since Superman was reversed. There's just nothing else anywhere near here that comes close to the experience of a vertical plunge from 200+ feet. Greezed Lightnin' at SFAW had a tasty back spike on it, easily the best part of the ride (they didn't brake the train on the reverse trip) and that wasn't vertical and was only about 70ft tall or so. A vertical 200+ fall is going to go over BIG down here. I foresee long, long queues.

I honestly think you haven't ridden it yet the other way. You can say, "but I like it just fine facing forward" but you can't determine which is better without trying them both. I'm pretty stoked on the reversal. My only complaint with Freeze was that going up the spike, I was often looking directly into the sun and was blinded enough that I never got a sense of how high up I was. This should fix that. Maybe when they run two trains, they could do one forward and one backward, giving folks an option.

I rode the Cyclone last year and found it to be re-ridable up to a point. I think I took about 6 trips on it that day. I rode it previously around 2005 or so and there was some sort of NYPD event going on at Coney and for most of my rides that day, I was the only person on the train not in a police uniform. Having learned on early rides not to sit over the wheels, I was in the next-to-last seat on a ride when a guy cop in the back seat told a lady cop next to him, "I'm surprised you'd ride wit me back here." She said, "why wouldn't I?" He replied, "There's only two types of person what rides in the back seat of the Cyclone: masochists and those dat don't know no bettah."

My list shuffles around a lot each year. While some folks will leave a poorly-performing ride at a higher rank based on rides in years past ("It ran like crap this year, but it's a really good ride"), I have a system of ranking when I do the poll that weighs heavily on how well it ran the last time I rode it. Basically, I take each coaster and start it at the bottom of the list (I use the drag-n-drop helper) and think to myself, "if this coaster and the next one on the list were side-by-side and I could only ride one of them, which would I rather ride?" I keep moving up the list and asking that question until it reaches a point where the next coaster on the list is the favored one, then I stop and go to the next coaster and do the same thing. That tends to help me get past the problem of trying to compare wildly different kinds of coasters and deciding which is "better" - a white-knuckle twister like Boardwalk Bullet vs a classic, nostalgia-laden out&back like Screechin' Eagle for instance - I just imagine them both and pick which one I'd rather ride. That tends to give a lot of weight to how well the coaster was running the last time I rode it, which is OK. This explains why Legend broke my top 10 this year. One of these days I may go back and see how different my list would be if I were to base it on my "best ever ride" on each coaster. I can easily do the top five in my head: [1] Texas Giant during a November Texas Giant Fest with ERT on frozen, icy tracks. ZOMG (early 90s) [2] Voyage during nighttime ERT at CoasterCon [3] 1978 Texas Cyclone (first year I was tall enough to ride in the back seat) [4] Opening night on Boardwalk Bullet - the infamous "rain rides" at the very end of the night after being closed due to weather for about an hour [5] Screechin' Eagle by myself in pouring rain with several inches of water in the floor of the car

Lots of shakeups in my list this year due to some new additions (EL TORO and PROWLER OMFG), some coasters that were running much better this time around than on previous rides (Legend), and a few other factors such as my tastes in what I like in a wood coaster changing a bit as I've gotten older. 1. The Voyage 2. El Toro 3. Fave Steel (Expedition GeForce) 4. Mega Zeph 5. Screechin' Eagle 6. Boulder Dash 7. Prowler 8. Boardwalk Bullet 9. Legend 10. Shivering Timbers 11. Raven 12. Thunderhead 13. Tonnerre de Zeus 14. Phoenix 15. Montaña Rusa ........................ 107. Predator 108. Grizzly (Grt America) 109. Son of Beast

OK, I'm doing a trip from Paris to Vienna next July and plan to hit Disney, Europa, Wiener Prater, and at least one Alpine Coaster. It looks like I could easily do the Mieders single rail coaster in that viral video OR I could do the world's longest Alpine Coaster in Imst: Assuming I can't do both (I'm going to try, of course!) which one is the "must-do"?

Putting theming between the loops sounds good until you remember that riders' feet were a mere 18 inches apart. Putting a structure there would drastically reduce the maximum height requirement. Also, putting a structure between them on the first duel would be pretty sketchy (and ugly). The corkscrew duels probably wouldn't need anything. They aren't that close.

YES, you are the only one not happy that they decided to preserve a piece of history (and a damn fine coaster at that!) over building another gimmicky spinning coaster. I freakin' LOVED Turbine when I rode it many years ago. I'll have to try to get back over there.

WOF on Saturday. Park was dead, probably due to impending rain. Patriot was much better than expected (top-of-lift view is gasp-worthy) and Prowler... ZOMG. Top 10. I did not expect that.

A fire would mean rebuilding the station and/or re-tracking the damaged portions. The support structure is steel. Yes, I know that a catastrophic fire enveloping the entire ride and hot enough to damage the steel could bring it down.

From a news article I just read:

I have to put in for my 2012 vaca by Oct 2011. Is there any chance that the dates will be announced before Oct?