oriolat

Wait, what was that metal thing on the first drop? I hope it's not a small trim, because Colossos, if running smoothly, was easily one of the best wooden coasters in Europe. If those were not trims, why would they place sensors there?

Glad to read that they have removed the VR from this coaster. As if flyers were not slow enough to load to need one of these headsets. And this will allow for guests to ride at least something else, since the park's operating schedule is limited to like 2 hours a day, which I guess is the estimated queue time Galactica normally had.

I wouldn't be mad if that's forgotten. I see what you did there. It's in the Netherlands after all. You know, pot is legal over there... Jokes aside, I don't really like the graffiti on the façade. The owl I can understand, but the random graffity around the windows and walls... just no. I am really craving some pictures of Untamed; we know so little about this project that I need to how construction is progressing...

Plus, a well-operated B&M Flying coaster is a capacity monster, just like Cedar Point likes them. Phantasialand is going to build a flying coaster prototype by Vekoma that could potentially start a comeback of said model? Personally, I really like these rides, and GPs always love the idea of flying (just look how freaked out they are at the station when the seats tilt backwards into flying position). I think given the good relationship that Cedar Fair has with B&M, and given CP's coaster portfolio, a nice intense B&M Flying coaster could be the icing on the cake on Cedar Point's coaster line-up.

Basically this. If you are going to a Halloween event and don't want to get scared, just don't go. You can't fix stupid... These No Boo laces sound a bit over the top, if you ask me. I would just roll on the floor if parks made you sign a waiver before getting into their houses, just to avoid this litigious situations... People must be really desperate to be looking for this kind of money, and it's because of those people that we can't have nice things (well, not me, I live in Europe ).

Am I the only one who was excited to see the first dueling Raptors? Oh well, a new-gen slc is not bad taking into account Vekoma's recent projects but RMC is RMC after all... Oriol "They can always RMC Cú Chulainn!" Monroig

Just send the damn SuperLoop to a crappy SF park that already has one and slap a "World's First Dueling Loop coaster" and call it a day... I can't wait to see what RMC has in store for GAdv!

I get what you mean by calling it Maverick but I think this one will be tamer yet tons of fun. I love Mack coasters and this will be an amazing addition to Carowinds! Cedar Fair just crapped all over all Six Flags' 2019 additions. Well done!

Launched 4D free fly. Heard it here first. If they don't run them like the Japanese version, not interested. I have always wondered why the massive Chinese S&S launchers didn't catch in the States? I mean, they are big, fast, have forceful launches and a decent capacity...

QFT. Don't you think that the general public will see this as "a slightly taller version of Skyrush with different trains"? I know that Skyrush is probably too intense for most people's taste and this new B&M would complement it but offride, both rides will probably be perceived similarly. I am all for a good B&M hyper but having Skyrush, which is also my #1, seems kind of pointless, needless to say a little redundant. Then you see what CF is doing building hyper/giga combos and it doesn't seem so out of place, I guess...

Seeing KI's announcement, how cool would it be for Cedar Point to actually get back their Vintage Cars ride that they took out for Valravn? Taking Witches' Wheel spot and extending them into Gemini's structure would be a nice way to troll enthusiasts.

Hollywood Dream The Ride at US Japan.

So, I had the idea of organsing a trip to Japan for quite some time and last year I found the courage, time and resources to put it all together. And boy was I in for a trip! I decided my trip would be a mix of culture and parks because it’s not every day that you get to experience Japan, its sights and its quirky yet fascinating culture. The first leg of the trip was basically Tokyo, which has some city parks worth checking out for a couple of hours each. I figured it would be much more natural to just cover the different parts of the city and include those parks in the sight-seeing process, so I visited Joypolis, Hanyashiki, LaQua, Tobu Zoo and Yokohama Cosmoworld on different days. First of all, I want to apologise for the quality of some of the pictures but my phone camera has a small crack so depending on the camera angle, there might be a glare in some of the photos. The first park that I visited was Joypolis. Quoting the happiest cruise that ever sailed “it’s a small world”, I bumped into another fellow Spanish coaster enthusiast (Borja) just as I was exiting the Tokyo Tower and we decided to tackle Odaiba together and have some fun at Joypolis. The train ride to Joypolis was just stunning, with some amazing views of the bay and the eclectic Odaiba and Minato area. Once we got off, Joypolis was just some minutes away on foot. The park is inside a shopping centre and it looked like crowds were manageable: we decided we would just hop on Gekion and check out the halfpipe ride, which to us looked like a borderline credit. Since we are not that into gaming and the rest was just a huge array of games and simulators, we opted not to ride anything else and we paid for both rides separately. Now, onto Gekion, this looked like an interesting Gerstlauer concept that lots of other small-ish parks should adopt. The layout is short but the fact that the first half is a sort of interactive dark ride makes it appear longer than it actually is. To be honest, I was expecting it to be a +1 but it was SO much fun being able to challenge other riders on your car to tap to the rhythm of the music to score points before the actual coaster portion that I actually forgot how weak the launch was. All in all, very compact model but great fun. Funny story is that since I had been up for like 30 hours straight the day we went, I couldn’t wear my contact lenses and I had my prescription glasses on. As I am rather short-sighted yet I didn’t want to risk going on the coaster with my glasses on, I had to leave them in the locker. So, the dark ride portion was just a blur of flashes, beams and lights LOL (now I know what an acid trip looks like!). I guess I didn’t do that bad because I ended up being the 2nd best on my car, yay! Halfpipe was a contraption bigger than I expected it to be. I have no idea who manufactures these models but they are so much fun and seeing all four pods going up and down the half pipe was quite a sight. The park did quite a good job at making sure operations allowed the queue to move as steadily as possible but we ended up queueing a good 30 minutes for it. We didn’t know it was interactive until we were given the instructions once we boarded the “skates” (which looked like a stand-up coaster seat). Turns out riders have to step on their skates at one specific point at the same time so that the skate actually spins as it would do on a real halfpipe. We ended up getting multiple 720º spins and the experience itself was less nauseous than it would appear by the looks of the ride. Great ride that I would love to see at other parks! The second day ended up being much more tiring than I would have expected it to be. I basically walked along the entire Akihabara section ending up at Ueno park, before visiting the National Museum, ending up in Asakusa, where the Hanayashiki park was. I expected this to be a small-sized park with some charm but to be honest it looked like the place had seen better days and the rides, whilst well maintained, it looked a bit outdated and uninteresting. I ended up having a solo lap on the park’s Roller Coaster. I didn’t have high hopes for this ride and I am glad I didn't because it was rather weak in terms of intensity but I can appreciate a coaster by its history, so I ended enjoying its surroundings and the fact that it was shoe-horned between buildings and the perimeter of the park. What struck me as odd was the park being almost empty although the Asakusa shrine is really close.You can almost see the park’s S&S Space Shot from the shrine area... Yay for 12-hour flights! Add this to a 2-hour flight from Barcelona to London... I checked the shrine around the Tokyo Tower and found this really bizarre and disturbing site with figurines dedicated to unborn children... Although not as tall as the Eiffel Tower, it sure looks like it! The view at the top were amazing! Tokyo is just huge. The visit to the observation deck was very interesting. It even featured a couple of preshows, one of them even had the tower's attendants interacting with the portrait of the tower architect. The views from Odaiba are unmatched On our way out we found this ENORMOUS Gundam, just because Tokyo. (photo by Borja) Flashy entrance to Joypolis (photo by Borja) The instructions to score points on Halfpipe. (photo by Borja) The queue even featured a camera that placed filters on people. It was entertaining (photo by Borja) The second day I found myself strolling along the main Akihabara streets, full of Sega gaming stations, pachinkos, multiple stores and a bit of an 'otaku' atmosphere. Ueno is one of Tokyo's huge parks. I just find fascinating how such a big city can still have such big parks. The entrance to Hanayashiki was a bit tucked away from the main streets of Asakusa. The park's ローラーコースター (Japanese transliteration of 'roller coaster') As you can see, the ride, the train screams old-school. Although some areas looked like they could use a bit of TLC, there were some charming spots like this. As you can see, the park was bursting with people riding the park's signature coaster. Next to the park was Asakusa's Sensoji temple, which was rammed with tourists. As was Nakamise-dori. Since I started from the back of the temple, I ended up exiting the area at the main entrance Kaminarimon with its huge Japanese paper lantern. Before taking the metro back to the hostel, I had a glimpse at Tokyo Skytree (current second tallest building in the world), Asahi's headquarters (middle, ressembling a beer glass) and the Asahi Flame (also known by Japanese as 金のうんこ, literally 'the Golden Turd').

Orlando's and Paris' are different versions of the same ride. While the American RNR is themed to a limusine heading for a concert, thus passing through the giant cut-outs as if you were rushing around LA, the European counterpart is themed to an experiment where you are part of a 'soundtracker' by which you are part of the music itself and the showlights just help create a different atmosphere to each soundtracker. Paris' RNR used to have 5 soundtrackers in rotation, each fitted with a different array of songs/light package, creating multiple experiences for the same ride. I don't know how the effects are holding up as it's been a long time since I last visited the resort.

The ride looks good but operations on this one are abysmal. During a 16-minute off-ride video I have watched the ride ran TWICE. Taking into account that this ride holds 40 people per cycle, that's about 8 cycles per hour, so 320 pph... Come one, SFNE, you could do better than that!

SF America says hi! Michigan's Adventure would probably like to have a word with SF GAdv as well

Last weekend there was a long weekend in Spain and a friend of mine and I decided to hit Mirabilandia since it’s a short flight away from Barcelona and it has a nice collection of coasters. What was meant to be a coaster/culture trip ended up being a 2-day of coaster riding, which is also good in my books. There’s always time to go back to Bologne to appreciate the area, plus we have both been to Italy many times before. Upon arriving at Bologne’s airport at 8.20 am, we were greeted by cloudy skies. When we went to the rental car company, they surprised us with an amazing upgrade free of charge: you can never say no to an automatic Volvo. And we were off: what was meant to be a 50-minute drive to hit the park turned into an almost 2-hour drive because of a huge traffic jam. Roads were blocked by cars trying to get to Mirabilandia. It looked like half Italy had decided to join us for the day. Nice xD All in all, we had two days ahead of us, we had planned to use Flash Pass, so queues inside the park were not something we were really worried about. After queueing for ages to get into the car park, we were more than eager to hit the rides, so we processed our tickets and FP and in we went. I am not going to review everything chronologically. I find it better to just break down everything into different categories, so if you feel like skipping a long read, go ahead and scroll down to the pictures. Coasters: DiVertical: I was really intrigued by this concept since I saw it land at Holiday World. Concept is really neat: you get a simple coaster layout, add some flume sections to it for added capacity, a special feature (elevator) and a splash. Boom: crowd pleaser! However, despite being huge and quite intimidating, it didn’t do much for me. Granted it was a ton of fun and it flies through the course but it lacked some character. The splash got everyone soaked no matter where you sat thanks to the design of the boat. Shame they were just running 2 boats for the entire two days we were there. 6/10 iSpeed: if Xcelerator and Maverick where to have a lovechild, iSpeed would be it. I was really looking forward to it since Maverick is my #3 (after Skyrush and Wicked Cyclone). Having been on many launch coasters I have to admit that I have become sort of numb to the thrill that a launch can provide. However, iSpeed had a good powerful launch despite being an LSM model. The top hat provided just the right amount of airtime and was the last chance to catch your breath for what was to come. After that, the ride had an amazing mix of positive and negative G forces with three inversions thrown into the mix, most notably the first corkscrew over the station building which caught me by surprise. I wonder why iSpeed could get away with their corkscrew and inline taken at some serious speeds (close to 60 mph if I were to guess) yet Maverick couldn’t keep its inline roll. Very solid ride despite a slight Intamin rattle. 9/10 Leprotto Express: the line for this was HUGE. And I mean over an hour-long. I guess being the only kids’ coaster in the park meant it was extremely popular among families. The coaster itself was nothing to write home about but I have to applaud the amazing ride op, whose name was Marina; she was doing the best she could to get the line moving while providing good customer service with a smile on her face the entire time. Master Thai: now this was an interesting concept. It’s a moebius coaster but since you get to go around the track twice, you ended up riding both sides of the coaster. This one had some nice bits of theming here and there and the track itself was interesting; a bit bumpy at times but it added to the fun, plus the dueling/racing element of it was perfectly achieved by running all trains and syncing them perfectly well at the station. Even though this had VR on, we opted not to use it because the line for it was really long and my friend and I are not too keen on VR anyway. 6/10 Katun: for me this was the park’s showstopper. I must confess I am a sucker for old-school B&M designs and Katun is a perfect example of this. Ever since Katun opened, and having Dragon Khan in my homepark, I was wondering if it would live up to its impressive and daunting looks, with that huge dark twist mess of track. Boy did it not disappoint one bit. From the superbly themed area/station to the gorgeous trains, it was eye-catching no matter where you looked. Heck, even the retractable floor was themed! Once you boarded the trains and went through one of those Stargate-looking rings, you knew you were in for a treat. The first drop was snappy and had some airtime to it thanks to being mostly straight and awkwardly steep for an inverted coaster. The array of inversions that followed could be described as somewhat formulaic but they work so well and are so big in comparison to other inverted coasters (looking at you Raptor) that they left me breathless: the train ripped through the first loop, which was followed by a really tall and snappy zero G roll. After this the train sort of dived to the right and then dived again slightly to gain some momentum before the cobra roll, which was one of the fastest ones I remember. The MCBR was a nice break from all the intensity. The second half felt a bit weaker and perhaps rougher but the final supertight helix more than made up for it. Despite showing its age in some rough patches, the coaster rides like heaven and it is a must for those who love big B&M multiloopers. By the way, this was my #400 coaster, yay! 10/10 Gold Digger: L&T standard mouse. I guess it must be really popular among guests beacuse it had long queues throughout the day. Smooth track and almost no braking before the sharp turns made for a really scary ride thinking we were going to derail any moment. Good for a laugh with friends. 7/10 Rexplorer: Mack Blauer Enzian clone. Ridden one, ridden them all. This one featured some retro-looking cars which were sort of odd considering it was themed to dinosaurs? It was well themed though. 6/10 Other attractions: Dead Town: new for 2018, as I was told, this used to be a dark ride, which was taken down. Since the space inside the main building (an actual permanent tent) is huge, Mirabilandia decided to install a permanent upcharge horror walk-through attraction. The park sells this as the “biggest walk-through attraction in Europe”; superlatives aside, the attraction is quite family-friendly and if you are a big horror fan, you might be disappointed. Good sets and good length but the scare actors were sparse and scares fairly predictable although there were some nice effects. Auto Splash: I really love flumes with double drops and I was expecting to like this a lot. The boats themed to cars were a nice touch. We got to share a boat with two Italians who were not really impressed with having to get squeezed with two foreign randomers. The amount of wetness this provided was just right and most welcome given the high temperatures on both days of our visit. Reset - Anno Zero: omnimover shooter dark ride similar to Buzzlight Year at Disney or Atlantis Adventure at Europa Park but with a darker/post-apocalyptic tone to it. The ride is *really* tucked away at the end of a cul-de-sac meaning you really have to want to go there to ride it, hence the short wait times despite being a major attraction. On the way to Reset, there’s DiVertical but I wonder what the idea was when they decided to place the ride where it currently sits. As for the ride itself, it has a very simple 0-shaped layout, it has some large sets and interesting air and water effects but it feels a bit repetitive and generic. By the way, if you get easily dizzy (nice alliteration right there xD) on spinning coasters, this one might not be for you since it features two areas in which cars will spin like crazy for a good 5-10 seconds. The downside of Reset are the targets (or laser guns), which I found not to be working properly, thus detracting from the competition. Oil Towers: S&S Space Shot/Turbo Drop tower complex which has been recently been themed to the Old West and retrofitted with the newer S&S restraints. Nothing special but nice to look at. Cycle felt a bit weak in comparison to other S&S towers. Operations: since it was a long weekend in some countries in Europe, we expected some crowds but both days the park seemed to almost be at capacity. We were stuck on the road leading to the car park for a good hour. All car park attendants were on their A-game trying to process as many cars as they could, some of them even attending both sides of a single booth at the same time. Inside the park lines were very long and anywhere you looked, even small flat rides, had lines spilling on the midway. Operations on the attractions were much better than expected, considering the park is run by Parques Reunidos, with the exception of DiVertical, which had abysmal operations with just 2 boats running and no other boats to be seen on site. As for the rest, iSpeed and Katun were running 2 out of the 3 available trains: on iSpeed, they were sending a train every 50 seconds or so and it broke down just once. Since iSpeed runs 12-seat trains, this means that at best, capacity was around 800 pph, but I have to send big kudos to the team for filling most trains with 12 people even though the ride doesn’t feature any single-rider line. As for Katun, being a B&M coaster, 2 trains seemed sufficient to manage the crowds and even the regular queue didn’t reach more than 15 minutes all day. On Katun I saw minimal stacking with just two attendants, who were checking restraints, batching guests and dealing with FP in an efficient and courteous way. Great job overall. Minor complain: I would have liked to see a 3-train operation on this monster, but I am aware that having just two attendants on duty are not the right conditions to make this happen. The rest of the attractions were not understaffed, although you could tell the park was probably not expecting those many guests. Lines for food were long but manageable and most big kiosks and restaurants were open, meaning guests could easily sit down to enjoy a nice break from the crowded park and the Italian sun. Overall impressions: Positive: - Polite employees who dealt with queues rather well in most cases. - The park is well-rounded; there are a ton of rides for everyone scattered in little themed areas and kiddie rides are not just on one side of the park but next to the big rides, meaning families really have something for everyone in every area. - There’s a Flash Pass line for almost any ride, even those you wouldn’t expect to have it. Ride crews also made sure the balance between FP and regular line didn’t affect the regular line too much. - Food was not too overpriced and quality was decent. I liked that there was the option to eat vegetables instead of fries as side dishes. Most places offered fresh fruit and healthier snacks as well. - Some rides/areas well themed, notably the entrance, which is spectacular. In a way, it reminded us both of a scaled-down version of IOA’s Port of Entry. Katun also offered nice interaction and provided some amazing picture opportunities. - To load guests, Mirabilandia had an original and seemingly efficient turnstile system: each attraction merge point had a turnstile fitted with a red and green light to tell guests when they could advance to the loading area and a counter to see how many people could still get on the ride. Simple and Italians seemed to respect it, and since it was all automatic, no grouper was needed. Room for improvement: - Roads leading to the park were so congested it caused traffic to be easily backed up for many miles around the park. - Park hours could have been longer. Maybe I am used to longer hours at Spanish parks but having the park open from 10 am to 6 pm felt rather short, especially considering that the park was very crowded. - Despite having a good coaster collection, the park should get another wooden coaster (the park’s former wooden coaster Sierra Tonante was torn down to buid iSpeed). Maybe Italy’s first RMC? Even a family GCI could do wonders for them. - The giant wheel, despite being one of the park’s landmarks, didn’t open because of “bad weather”. Granted it was a bit windy and there were some scattered rains, but it’s a shame, because it would have made for some amazing aerial shots of the park. - The monorail was just running one train despite being rather popular with guests. - DiVertical running just two boats and having technical glitches on both days. - It would be nice to have some displays showing wait times at the entrance of the major attractions to help guests plan their visit. Overall, my friend and I had a wonderful time. We took both days easily and even had time to explore the park while taking short breaks from so much riding and hot weather. Having read recent mixed reviews about the park I am happy to report that it’s a park that I could easily see myself going back to when they install something noteworthy in the future. Now, onto the pictures! (Some of them might have an accidental glare because my phone camera is partially broken!) Our ride for both days! The free upgrade was veeery nice! You can see the people counter and the lights on the turnstiles. Simple yet effective! Thank god we had FP because the queue for Master Thai looked WAY too long for a dueling mouse. We got our Flash Passes sorted! It was funny seeing those t-shirts on sale AT THE PARK. lol Theming on this was scarce but effective. The moment I was SO waiting for: Katun, the HUGE B&M! That skyline was a sign we didn't get directions wrong! YAY! Katun was teasing us right before we got in! The theming on some areas was top notch! It sort of reminds me of Port of Entry at IOA These little touches were everywhere! First ride. DiVertical! Then we headed for iSpeed! My friend, self-confessed Intamin fanboy, loved it! These angles are rare to find but the monorail provided good photo opportunities! The coaster is so photogenic and looks really imposing! Trains were fitted with onboard cameras. This train was charging them on the storage track with these little wires. When we left Mirabilandia, we shot some unusual pics from the backside of the park (it was a public area). The last helix is on par with Nemesis' as a positive Gs powerhouse! You just can see how CLOSE you can get to the track. BTW, Katun was my #400, and what a coaster to celebrate such a milestone! Next door was a standard mouse. Very fun and a little scary with absolutely no trims before the sharp turns. New for 2018: Dead Town, which used the former space of a dark ride. Thing was huge but not too intense! The indoor queue was well-themed and had a nice effect of a collapsing house. I am told this area was renovated and turned into Far West. They really did a nice job incorporating new rides into the newly themed area. I thought the junior replica of this was hilarious xD To complete the Far West area, they even have a REAL church which I was told holds actual masses on Sunday. The splash was... well... soaking. See? We sat it out! I was hoping we could get on the giant wheel but it was closed because of winds The monorail fills my quota of control panels. The rapids ride was nice and not too wet. STOP.RIGHT.THERE. Is that... is that A PIZZA vending machine? We couldn't believe this but there were many of them throughout the park! The park was crowded but they did a good at keeping everyone entertained. More iSpeed... because, Intamin! I would have liked to go on these but I am told adults are not allowed... Reset had a very post-apocalyptic feel to it. We ran into the park's mascots in the gift shop. It was shocking to see a park selling cigarettes IN THE GIFT SHOP. What is wrong with you!? Random chopped logs make for an artsy picture. I didn't want to leave but I guess this jail was not an option. Mirabilandia was a very nice park! (Shame the guy that took this picture had zero picture-taking skills xD) Back at the airport we saw a Ferrari store with this impressive replica.

See? I am glad Hersheypark is charging 110 $ for this unlimited option. As someone has already mentioned, they are still keeping their old skip-the-line programme which allows you to skip the line once for a smaller fee, so no it's that big of a problem. These passes are a premium service. Making them available to just about every visitor defeats the purpose of having fewer people using them. Maybe it's not an option for locals, but for international visitors I am sure it will be extremely popular. Heck, I'd gladly pay for it if I had not been to Hershey before. I just pray they apply a fair ration at the merge point (if all parks applied Disney's FP ratio it would be a blessing!).

They already have (had?) a walkthrough attraction in which you were given an interactive wand and you could wander around a castle activating different effects. I am talking ca. 2009...

I have a question: aren't all powered coasters included? I have found Alpenexpress at Europa Park and Runaway Mine Train at Alton Towers listed but not Gold Mine at Nigloland, Tibidabo Express at Tibidabo or Odinexpressen at Tivoli Gardens. They are custom models and fairly large yet not on the poll. Thanks for the huge job you are doing, guys! Having a poll like this is always fun!

I am pretty sure it is up to the park to decide if they prefer vest restraints or the older ones. Look at the junior Dive machines across Europe, the newest one being Baron 1889, they all have the old OTSRs.

^^Yeah, why would you change high-capacity trains for shorter, less-capacity trains? Magnum is fine as it is! I can't wait for SteVen to start testing...

New generation spinners by Mack (Le Twist at Le Pal and Dwervelwind at Toverland) have vertical transfer tracks.

Sure did! No wonder they could reach THRC back in the day. I wish you could see parks train their employees to shift trains like they used to... Great footage! By the way, who made those triple ferris wheels? They sure looked great, had good capacity but none of them are around anyomre (I think?). It would be great for a park (looking at you, Knoebel's) to bring back such an iconic model...

Huh. That IS weird. I could've sworn the designers had just watched a YouTube video of someone being placed in a trash can, set on fire, thrown down a flight of granite stairs, and then thought to themselves, "Hmm... how can we simulate this experience with a roller coaster?"