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Hmm, that's interesting in light of the announcement today that Vekoma is building "a signature attraction in one of the largest theme parks to open in Southeast Asia in 2010"

Hulu has a sneak peak 30 Rock 3rd season premiere up at http://www.hulu.com/watch/40482/30-rock-sneak-peek-do-over and it contains a reference to the USH fire! At the start of the episode Jack (former fictitious head of NBC) is talking to Devon (the fictitious new head of GE) about what's happened to GE (owner of NBC Universal) over the summer. One of the things he lists is "and I hear that that theme park fire didn't destroy any of the stuff it was supposed to"

This ride looks REALLY short. The video is deceptive, since it keeps showing the same element over and over again (instant replay?). I edited together a quick copy of the video that shows the ride in real time, mostly POV. Looks like about a 45 second ride from the top of the lift to the brakes. The youtube edit is below:

My too. Over the years in the World of Cinemagic (and the later Special Effects Stage) I had the chance to drive a DeLorean as Marty McFly, get electrocuted building a pyramid, to hang off the Statue of Liberty as Fry, to dub the sounds of a burger trying to rob Harry and the Hendersons, and to try to dub over Sherman Klump, only go get eaten alive by Fluffy the Rogue Animatronic.

Honestly, that's a shame. In a park with fairly low capacity, Backdraft and the Special Effects shows were huge people eaters (since they can each have three shows going at one). Plus, in a rather shade-less park in Southern California, these were two of the only large air-conditioned shows (the only ones left are Shrek and T2:3D). All that means to me is that it will be the first Transformers ride in the world.

I missed posting here yesterday, but I wanted to wish this thread a belated 3rd birthday! That's right, this thread was started three years ago yesterday, and still the ride isn't open. Here's hoping the ride can open before this thread's fourth birthday.

I specifically asked about that, and they said that the $40 upgrade is good on ANY paid ticket, including group tickets, online tickets, and coupon tickets, no matter what the purchase price.

SFNE's passes are $85 normally, the $70 is the "early" price. Still, $55 is a great deal if you have a pass or have a friend that has one.

At Six Flags New England they have announced that a 2009 pass will be $85. There is a pre-season offer right now where you can buy a 2009 pass for $70 or renew your 2008 pass for $65. However, there are two more deals that combined can get you a 2009 pass for $55: The 2008 Season Pass Coupon Book has a coupon that allows you to bring up to 6 friends for $15 during October weekends Any paid ticket can be upgraded to a 2009 Season Pass for $40, even a discount ticket Therefore, instead of renewing, I went to the ticket booth and used the $15 Friend on Sundays in September coupon and my 2008 pass to buy a $15 ticket for a "friend". I then used that ticket to get into the park and went straight to Guest Relations with my receipt. I then paid another $40 to upgrade that ticket to a 2009 season pass. Total price: $55. Because you can buy up to 6 tickets with your coupon, you can use this to get cheap passes for 5 of your friends as well. Another nice perk is that there were no lines at all to get the pass processed (I've seen 1 hour lines in the spring), so 5 minutes later I had my 2009 pass, my free spring break friend ticket, and a voucher to pick up my new coupon book in 2009.

I was the only one, but something felt SO wrong with that place. Totally trying to be something amazing, but something was just horribly wrong! I did see a bit of that in the pics. The caption on the following pic said the theming was Disney/Busch quality, but neither of those would paint "rock texture" on steps, they would actually sculpt them:

After the overbank there is a straight piece of track hugs the ground and then dips into a gully. A fire effect could be placed right at the dip, since the whole train would be able to see it there.

Only the US Magic Kingdoms have Main St. going North. DLP is Northwest, TDL is Southeast, and HKDL is West. All of them have Tomorrowland on the right and Adventureland to the left. I made the image below a while ago. No aerial photo of HKDL was available, but Google Maps shows the dirt landfill, so I overlaid a map of the park on the aerial photo of the dirt. Yes, the park is actually that small!

Jurassic Park at USH is 54 degrees according to http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9606/22/jurassic.park/

No, I am saying that both rides are ridiculously safe, but saying "S&S towers are safer because this particular accident couldn't happen" is ridiculous. In any complex system there are thousands of things that can go wrong, and preventing problems is like playing whack-a-mole -- you solve one problem and another crops up. That doesn't mean that they're dangerous, it just means that you can't simplify problems and take a reactive approach.

Except that most people agree that Serial Thriller was one of the smoothest SLCs out there. I know it was the smoothest of the 5 I've ridden.

You didn't even stay for the 4:10 WaterWorld? Lousy movie, but great stunt show.

From the article: Did they add air conditioning, or was the 8-year-old wrong?

Stengel has primarily worked on coasters for Schwartzkopf, Intamin, Giovanola, B&M, Premiere, and Zierer. It's not surprising that Stengel worked for those companies. Intamin got its start as an international broker for Schwartzkopf, and Zierer's built rides for Anton Schwarzkopf after the Schwarzkopf company went bankrupt. Giovanola did steelwork for Intamin before making their own rides, the founders of B&M worked for both Intamin and Giovanola, and Premiere was founded by a former president of Intamin. It's one big happy incestuous family.

Thanks!

I went to Kings Dominion back when they were still PKD and they seemed to be very good about having storage space for bags on each ride (the cart system on Volcano was the best I'd seen at any park). Since Cedar Fair bought them out have they introducted a mandatory locker policy on any rides?

^ erasing the credit cards of everyone on board in the process.

The weight of the S&S car is measured by the pistons described earlier in this thread, not by the pneumatic/cable drive system. You can see it weigh the cars at the start of the ride cycle -- the car lifts up to allow the pistons to extend and then lowers slightly onto the pistons to see how much it compresses them. Shortly after, the car either travels to the top or launches, depending on the model.

They mount them on bus chassis and call them Mouseorails:

Here's the thing though: If, for some reason, all the cables on an Intamin tower break, the car will fall and be stopped normally by the magnetic brakes. There is danger from the loose cable ends, but no risk of the riders going SPLAT. On an S&S tower, there is one cable per side which holds the entire weight of the ride vehicle. If, for some reason, all those cables broke, the ride would plummet to the ground at full speed, and the chances of survival would be quite low.

You aren't paying attention. They haven't used a copy of the Disneyland show since 1999, when they changed it over to "The Enchanted Tiki Room: Get The Fever!". They basically replaced all the classic songs other than the "Tiki tiki tiki room" (or, in this case, the "chiki chiki chiki room") with the kind of songs you might get at a 12 year old's birthday party. Part 1 Part 2