ahecht

I'm not sure your first two are real. The first one looks too small, and the second one looks too big (and I'm pretty sure it's a support). Here are my five. I'm only really sure about 4 of them, but given that I underguessed the last two weeks I figured I better take a few risks.

Count me in for 5 as well.

The best part is when you read Mario Palombo's comments here:

I think this picture says a lot: The routes of the Costa Concordia when it sank compared with it's previous "saluting the island"

From http://travel.usatoday.com/cruises/post/2012/01/costa-concordia-cruise-ceo-captain/604363/1 I guess there's evidence to contradict the CEO's statement that ships "always stay further out to sea".

If you ever want to read a good explanation about how a modern gps-guided cruise ship can run aground, I would highly recommend reading the IEEE Spectrum article Automated to Death which describes, among other things, how a GPS-guided cruise ship, the Royal Majesty, ran aground off of Massachusetts. The gist of it is that when you're in charge of any system that is highly automated, be it an airplane (as in Air France 447) or a cruise ship (such as the Royal Majesty), you tend to fall into a sense of complacency. Since you rarely have to actually DO anything while controlling such a system, your brain gets bored and starts taking mental shortcuts. The article cites Charles Perrow's book Normal Accidents: Living With High-Risk Technologies, which is also an interesting read if you're interested in designing complex systems. Perrow talks about the concept of "incomprehensibility", where the brains of people in high-risk situations can't cope fast enough and instead they revert to their ordinary routine. In these cases, where the ordinary routine doesn't match the current situation, the brain finds a way to rationalize that what they are seeing (plane about to stall, ship about to run aground) is actually a normal well-practiced occurrence. In the case of Air France 447, this was the Co-Pilot assuming (and saying out loud) that he was in a TOGA (Take Off, Go Around) situation, which is a relatively common procedure for aborting a landing. He flies the plane as if he's aborting a landing, which in the thin air at 38,000 feet causes a fatal stall. He reverted to a take off and landing situation because the pilots are so rarely in control of the plane when it's at cruising altitude due to the advanced autopilot systems. I'm not saying that this is what happened with this particular ship, but it's a possible situation. If you want more info on how the Royal Majesty ran aground,there is a great 20-or-so page (with pictures) excerpt The Grounding of the Royal Majesty by Asaf Degani available from NASA. The factor of "incomprehensibility" comes into play when the crew ignores all the signs that something is wrong (breaking waves near the ship, missing navigation buoys), and instead just pays attention to the one wrong buoy that coincidentally appeared in the place in one of the buoys they were looking for. The complacent trust in technology also led the crew to ignore cross-checking the GPS position like they were supposed to. There were other problems with the Royal Majesty, including a disconnected antenna, badly designed machine-machine and machine-human interfaces, and a disabled depth sensor, but without the human factor the crash could've been avoided. Okay, I've gone on WAAAAY to long here, but the point is that no matter how much technology is added, no system is foolproof. However, it's not going to stop me from Flying or Cruising (or riding roller coasters).

Okay, enough holding out, I'll press my luck with 8 duckies.

^Yup, despite what the foamers say, I'm surprisingly okay with the concept.

Decoys!

If it's not too late, lock me in for 5 Liseberg duckies.

From this angle, that element reminds me (in a good way) of the High-Five element on the new wooden coaster at Happy Valley Wuhan. Especially the description in the IAAPA video of going sideways through an airtime hill.

Of course it's too late now, but how did you trigger the animations?

Sorry, but I totally disagree. I think if you're playing the "claw" to seriously win a ball or something else, seriously, you're taking the whole thing way too, well, seriously. I see what you're saying Robb, but when you repeatedly see the claw successfully pick up a wrapped box only to have a guy holding a beer reach in and swat it out before it can be dropped in the chute, and then give the middle finger to the camera, you can't help but feel frustrated. If they're staging this as a contest for publicity, and sending out actual prizes, they shouldn't allow people to interfere like that. This is the second person I saw swat the package away before it could be dropped. I didn't manage to get a screen capture of him giving the camera the middle finger immediately afterwards.

Apparently, if you get the green box, you win the life-size LEGO Yoda Santa.

Queue music attached. assets_sound_00001.mp3 TheSantaClaw line music

Gizmodo posted your video to their front page! http://gizmodo.com/5866717/4+year+old-girl-winning-a-ball-with-the-santa-claw-is-so-delightful-i-might-die?tag=gizmodo-gallery

Some more screen shots -- he's been standing there a while! Big Mike at the Santa Claw

THEY BROKE THE CLAW! The claw almost grabbed one of the guys, he swatted it away, and broke the cable that lifts the claw. EDIT: Fixed it. Okay, I've been watching this much too closely. Time for a break.

There's three people sitting in the machine right now, typing on laptops. Go go go! EDIT: Doug beat me too it, although now there's three.

The Fast & Furious, Bourne, and Jurassic Park franchises have upcoming sequels, and only one has a serious theme park presence in Florida.

Six Flags New England? Two boomerangs next to each other is just silly. Yes, but SFNE already has an awesome compact woodie. Big Fun would be as redundant as Flashback is.

Do they change the water between riders on the Fishpipe? Because I have to say, the brown frothy water looked pretty gross.

Neither do I, but I don't see any investigative reporting in that article that required a week-long cruise. Most of the info in there is stuff you could get from cruisecritic or any of the various CM testimonials that have been posted online. If he really needed first-hand interviews with current DCL CMs, he could've just hung out by the pay phones at the port. Besides, the main interview in that article was a CM that the family put her in touch with, not someone he met on the cruise.

^Sounds like someone found a great excuse to get his company to pay for a cruise. I can't believe that "Someone went missing on this ship 8 months ago, so I need to go on a week-long cruise to 'investigate'" actually worked with his editors.

^Thanks for sharing that. It sounds like a reasonable explanation -- as an engineer, those are the sorts of trade-offs we have to make all the time.