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abovethesink

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Everything posted by abovethesink

  1. Haha yeah, I was being facetious. Obviously it is a stylized, cartoony Bobcat. They just don't have stripes like that all the way through their outside of their fur. Just hints of them as you can see from your picture. They also aren't orange. They basically hybridized a Bobcat and an exotic cat like a Leopard/Jaguar/Tiger/whatever for effect.
  2. They revealed the front car for The Bobcat and it is beautiful. Personally I would have put a Bobcat on it instead of whatever that weird hybrid cat is, but it is still an awesome front car regardless. Again they exceed my expectations with what the chain would ever do at Great Escape.
  3. My view on this has evolved to basically one smaller concern that impacts manufactures and by extension mostly us coaster nerds. Think about the last decade or so, (not going to worry about an exact window) and compare what coasters Six Flags and Cedar Fair have purchased for their parks. Cedar Fair has, for the most part, gone with the tried and true big manufacturers and their established, proven models. Six Flags has been much more willing, for the most part, to play around with the cheaper and more experimental upstarts. Six Flags may have been moving away from this anyway prior to the merger, but whether they have or not we have lost the reality of two different companies having the potential of having two different minds as to what type of attractions that they want to build. The big example is RMC. They probably never get off the ground without the penny pinching Six Flags we have known. The chain also tossed up 4D Free Spins, brought back the compressed air launch, worked with Premier Rides, the new Vekoma boomerang model, etc. How much we like these things individually aside, they were decisions Cedar Fair has been much less likely to make. By extension they are decisions that the new combined company would be unlikely to make had they not already happened. Of course, you can easily flip this too. Six Flags wouldn't have done all these Gigas or worked with the more expensive Mack Rides as obvious examples. The loss isn't specifically the chances that Six Flags has taken, but that we will have lost an entire independent way of thinking about these decisions. Where there were two corporate minds, there is now one. The coasters going into all our regional parks going forward are going to be much more homogenous in nature. Maybe better overall, maybe worse overall, maybe there will be no overall quality change. Either way, there is likely to be less variety. That is a bummer to me.
  4. There is no ground for the FTC to block the merger. There has to be a legal argument that the chain would be anti-competitive and there isn't one like there is with the big tech companies that the FTC is going after. Whether those arguments against the tech companies are strong enough to be legally valid is beyond the purview of a forum like this, but they are easy to understand and follow with a couple minutes research. What argument could they put forth about this being anti-competitive? There are the three well documented markets with arguable competitive crossover, but those markets are still saturated with other competitors. No argument there to block the whole merge. Maybe to divest one of the properties, but with all the other nearby competition that would be a tough argument to make. I think the "nightmare" scenario for the new chain is that they have to pick one each of SFMM/Knotts, SFA/KD, and SFGA/Dorney and sell off the other and I would call even that unlikely. There is nothing to work with in terms of blocking the whole merger.
  5. They have competed because they had different ownership. Parks next to each other don't necessarily have to compete. They can use a synergy based strategy instead. The main example of this in the US right now is all the sister parks in Orlando. If there is a market big enough to replicate that in, I would say LA fits the bill. Sell two day passes with a day at each park, offer a shuttle if it makes sense, offer a cheaper season pass option that includes those two parks and excludes the rest of the chain, etc. There is a small change regulators make them divest one of the properties but I doubt it.
  6. On the bright side, while you probably will have to take out a mortgage for it, there will likely emerge a one price pass for all of Six Flags and Cedar Fair parks after a while. That will be great for us enthusiasts.
  7. Ya'll ready for Six Flags Cedar Point? Joking (hopefully, I don't think they would mess with that branding) aside, this leaves me with a sick feeling in my gut. If we get an elevation of the Six Flags parks towards previous Cedar Fair standards, I will be the first in here and everywhere I post to praise the new mega-chain. That just isn't what my gut is telling me to expect. When corporate power consolidates in a well developed industry, consumers suffer more often than not. Here is to hoping this is an exception, I guess. There certainly is a world in which the mega-chain maintains the Cedar Fair standards and slowly elevates the key Six Flags parks up to say a King's Island or Cedar Point quality experience. It isn't like the elite Six Flags parks are THAT far behind, I guess. I just don't feel good about any of this. Maybe it is just the Six Flags branding sticking around that is getting to me. Maybe that is a meaningless distinction. In one sense it was probably a no brainer to go with it from a marketing perspective. Six Flags is a nationally known brand while Cedar Fair isn't. I just don't want one national brand. I want unique regional experiences.
  8. I don't think Darien Lake is getting anything, but there is reason to suspect that the announcement wasn't all-encompassing for the chain. Discovery Kingdom, for example, has been teasing taking the park to "new heights" in 2024 and didn't have anything in the video.
  9. Yes, my dream would be to get hand me down family coasters from the chain when they close and replace Steamin Demon with some sort of small but real thrill coaster. An original raptor clone would be a dream, but it could be something as simple as a Euro-fighter. I would be less thrilled with say a 4D Free Spin or a Sky Rocket II, but beggars and choosers. Any of that would be a huge upgrade. As for the hand me downs, a wild mouse and a family spinner would be great when other parks need the room. Re-using the old building, as you suggested, would be the cherry on top. I'd say none of that will actually happen unfortunately, but I would have said the same about The Bobcat. Pretty hilarious that The Great Escape will have Six Flags first Gravity Group.
  10. I did not expect them to actually replace the Bobsled maybe ever and they are doing it immediately with a perfect fit for the park! This is 100% a family park and adding good family coasters is the absolute ideal. Amazing news. Anyone know if this is a clone of an existing GG Family Woodie or is it a unique layout?
  11. Lots of speculation that this park is getting a new age Vekoma Boomerang by the front entrance.
  12. I am very happy to see this, don't get me wrong, but I am a little surprised to see all the "perfect fit" comments. Of course I do get that literally any new coaster is basically a great fit because the park has been so starved for one. However, I wouldn't have chosen this model even though I expect to like it fine. Yeah, it has the beyond vertical drop, but otherwise it is a B&M sit down steel looper not too dissimilar to Hyrda and at least in the same realm as Talon. There are tons of models that would have been a better fit in my opinion. A modern woodie, any RMC, a B&M surf coaster, any flyer, anything that spins, a launched coaster with an actual layout, etc. I could keep going. Beggars and choosers, I know. To be clear I am not remotely upset about this. I am thrilled, actually. I haven't been back to Dorney in close a decade even though I live in NY and visit PA parks almost annually. There just has been no reason to go back so I always skip it. Now there is a great reason and I look forward to not only checking this out but also re-experiencing the rest of the lineup. It is just that my reaction to this has been "wow, that's amazing that Dorney is getting this, but also kind of a weird choice" and everyone else seems to be thinking "great choice!" so I couldn't help but comment on that.
  13. Honestly I think this is a bit of a push in terms of ride quality. Lose the great launch, add a fun, 300+ foot backwards vertical incline and vertical drop, and end up with a more full length coaster. I don't think this is any better or worse. It is just a different ride. And if the ride quality is a wash, then the added up time should make it a win if it actually delivers on that promise. Seems like it should.
  14. Why hasn't this thread been renamed yet? Anyway, we took our first trip to Niagara Amusement Park on 7/1 to hop on Silver Comet. I'll keep this brief as we didn't do much. First, the open areas of the park look nice with well kept landscaping. There are lots of kids rides when you first walk in running now. The other side of the park past the Old West area where the coaster is remains sparse, but they seem to be working on it. You can't see The Serpent from inside the park except from Silver Comet as far as I could tell, but you could see it from the road and it looks fully constructed from that angle. It is next to the ferris wheel which I thought was supposed to be open but I didn't see a path too. Not that we looked hard as we were just there for the coaster. Silver Comet is fine. It runs pretty well but those CCI twister layouts just aren't my thing. The operations were more notable than the ride itself. Swarms of kids were just overrunning the thing and crossing into any row they felt like with no awareness of whether people were in line for those rows or not. The ride ops only tried to keep minimal control so it was certainly a different sort of chaos. A couple other notes: Bathrooms? As far as we could tell the only bathroom was near the entrance which is pretty awkward. I am assuming there must be another one in the still seemingly closed off area because otherwise this park requires strange backtracking just to pee. Not that it is big, but still. If there is another bathroom anywhere open right now, two different employees didn't know about it when we asked. Or maybe they want to keep it to themselves. We ate in the Wild West area BBQ spot which brought on two different shows. First were the show of the disgruntled employees. I felt for them as an off the clock employee and the two working the little restaurant ranted back and forth about a lack of hours. We were the only ones in there and they went on and on in full rant mode. One of the employees working also kept coming out and trying to give us more food for free. Boredom? Kindness? Trying to avoid throwing out sides as they aged? I have no idea, but I can definitely say I had never experienced that before. The second show was the planned one. Well planned by the park. We just happened to still be there eating ice cream when it started so we watched the Old West Shootout story before we left. It was fun and I am glad we did. That's really it. We will probably be back when or maybe if they get the Zyklon up and running and add the shuttle loop. I am glad to see investment happening in the park and I am definitely curious to see it return to full power in the future.
  15. We took our first trip to Marineland on 7/1. Combined with Niagara Amusement Park, it was the first day of our trip that was to take us next to Darien Lake, then to Kennywood, and finally to Cedar Point. Darien Lake day ended up being one never ending thunderstorm so we skipped that, but the other four parks went off without a hitch. MarineLand was up first. I had wondered how crossing the border at Niagara Falls on July 4th weekend would be. Unsurprisingly, it turned out that extremely busy was the answer. Oh well. We had plenty of time to spare only really planning credit whoring two small, close in proximity parks with one running coaster each. Marineland was what I had read it would be. It was huge and every single thing in it was isolated in a way that you can only really experience there. Even every mild flat ride is almost its on area in the park. What I didn't expect was to find that pretty charming. It makes everything you come across feel like an event in itself. All we did was check out the animals we came across on our way back to Dragon Mountain and ride that old weirdo twice, but I will say it was a pretty pleasant walk. The park seems to teeter on the edge of being unkempt. For example, there are grass and weeds growing up in the tiled walkway basically everywhere. It doesn't fall over the other side though. All the little areas have at least some theming and everything was clean and very green. This is probably the most green park you could go to as it is basically part traditional picnic-lunch-city-park just as much as it is part zoo and amusement park. I had done absolutely no research on animals, so the Belugas were a very nice surprise early on. The group they have were also by far the most interested and interactive sea creatures I have come across too. They constantly chattered above the water and swam up to people both above and in the underwater viewing area. I really loved being around them, though of course there are the moral concerns with keeping such animals in captivity so it is a conflicting feeling to say the least. Next we found the black bears. I am not sure if you can buy food to feed them or someone was being bad, but there was a bear up against the wall that you look down from catching food that a mother and child were throwing over the edge to it. Again, not sure if this is a good thing or not, but it was fun to watch. I see wild black bears where I live several times a year, but it is definitely different seeing one up close and not fleeing for an extended period of time. Finally after walking around the globe twice, we found Dragon Mountain and hopped on for two rides. Yup! Dragon Mountain is as befittingly weird as a weird ass park like Marineland deserves. It is a long, old Arrow looper just as concerned with wandering around themed hillsides and flying through tunnels as it is with the traditional Arrow inversions. I enjoyed it for what it was. The theming was fun and there wasn't any headbanging. It is such a long ride too. It shouldn't draw anyone there who isn't a massive coaster nerd, but come on now. We are all here on this forum, aren't we? Go ride if before this park randomly closes down one day. It is one of a kind at the very least. With that, we headed back to the exit. An aquarium sign briefly distracted us near the gate and in there we found some penguins in a pretty sad looking little arena. I mean they had water, land, and the right air temperature, but we were at SeaWorld a couple months prior so yeah. And if the penguin exhibit was a little lackluster, let me tell you about the aquarium. Koi. There I told you about the aquarium. Don't bother. After the akoiarium (see what I did there?) we were crossing back into the states to check out Niagara Amusement Park so off we went. I liked Marineland. We have twin one year olds and I could see us taking them there in a few years if it is still around. Four to six year olds would love the flats and animals. Until then though, unless something drastic changes, there just really isn't a reason to return. Usually I wouldn't say this about an independent park, but I would like to see a major chain gobble this thing up and try to drive up attendance. It is in a truly great location and has near infinite land to work with. It is hard to imagine that someone really investing capital couldn't see a return in that area.
  16. Belated trip report: My son (age 12) and I (36) visited Kennywood for the first time on 7/3. The forecast was extremely poor for the day to say the least, so we actually tried to swing by the night before when we got into town for the last few, unexpectedly blue skied hours of the 2nd, but we found the park had closed early due to the weather. We had already skipped Darien Lake due to the terrible weather that day too, but we were going to give Kennywood a go the next morning no matter what as it was a higher priority park for us. We made the right decision. The clouds were ominous as we got in line to rope drop the park in the morning. The long, long line to initially get into the park gave the impression of a big crowd. This would prove to be an illusion very quickly. Sky Rocket was right there when we went in so we hopped on without a wait. That is a fun, if inconsequential coaster. We both enjoyed it. It has been ten days now, but if memory serves I thought it had a strong first half and then did nothing in the second half. After that, with storm clouds looming, my unnegotiable priority was Phantom's Revenge. I had heard about this ride all my life and we were not going to miss it due to weather. We didn't, but weather still interfered with the ride. After waiting only a few minutes for maybe two cycles with one train ops, we hopped on near the back and it immediately started to drizzle. I loved the powerful ride with its wild airtime in the second half, but the raindrops at that speed were painful and distracting. I had my fingers crossed that we would get another chance at a second ride without rain before we left. The dark gray sky said it was unlikely. From Phantom's Revenge was saw one of the old woodies, so that is where we wandered next. On the way we walked by what I thought was a haunted house from its name but have since learned it was a shooting dark ride instead. Either way, it was raining and I was disappointed to see it closed. The woodie right after turned out to be Thunderbolt and we had a walk on. This isn't a ride that does a whole lot, but there is just something super charming to me about these sort of very much older woodies. I really enjoyed the ride even in the continuing drizzle. It was especially unique in how it used its terrain, I thought. As we were exiting, the rain really began to start to come down hard. We cut right across to some covered restaurant/pavilion type area, grabbed some drinks, and used the bathroom. In that short time the rain stopped. The only coaster we could see from where we were was Steel Curtain. I had warned my son that it was often down by reputation and we hadn't seen it run, but it was a direction to walk towards in an unfamiliar park so we went that way. The paths we chose first brought us to Jack Rabbit. That double down! For me the mark of a great rollercoaster is how stupid hard I am laughing by the end of it. By that metric Jack Rabbit is an undeniably great coaster thanks to that one moment. As my son would say, it tries to yeet you into space without a restraint. The rest of the ride is similar to Thunderbolt in how it just sort of meanders around in its up and down terrain, but that double down! What a legendary moment. I could hit that thing all day, again and again and again. There was much more to do though and the weather was not promising. Racer was next. I can't remember the color of our train, but the coaster was still racing despite the lack of a crowd. There was was still enough to fill both trains and off we went. I could tell immediately we were in trouble by eyeing both trains. We had a ton of kids and they had all the weight. Predictably, we lost, though for some reason the station announced us as the winner. Do they ironically announce the obvious loser as the winner or was that just weird? Anyway, Racer wasn't nearly as good as either of the other two as a standalone coaster, but a proper race is always good fun. No complaints here. From there we took the sad short walk over to Steel Curtain to confirm what we already knew. It wouldn't be opening. That left Exterminator to find so I pulled up a map. Our route led us back by Kangaroo and this time we had to ride. We basically just do coasters or heavily themed rides normally, maybe something like a drop tower, but I had heard so much about this thing that we decided to try it. It is fun and quite unique. I get why people like it. Its hops would be a great introduction to airtime for young riders. Next our route led us back by Phantom's Revenge so we hopped back on for the dry ride that seemed so unlikely just a couple hours earlier. I cannot express how much I love this ride except to do it in the geekiest coaster nerd way possible. I now have 231 credits and I keep a top 50. Phantom's Revenge sits at #10 for me. We grabbed two quick rides back to back, the first in the back and the second almost in the front. This is a rare one that seemed better up front with how it hit its airtime hills. Great ride. I can't say the same for Exterminator. It was our longest wait by a longshot thanks to its low capacity and, for me, it wasn't worth it. My son loved it though and I don't think it is a bad ride for most people. I just don't care for a spinning wild mouse, theming or no. I don't like to spin and I don't like being jerked around. That is what Exterminator does. The effort the park put in to differentiate it from most others like it was nice at least. From there we ate a mediocre meal from Johnny Rockets (not my choice), decided to hit up Jack Rabbit one more time for that double down, grabbed a t-shirt, and exited the park. We did all we wanted to, minus Steel Curtain of course, in less than four hours. We weren't even out of view of the park before the day's downpour began in full force. We wouldn't have timed it any differently if we ourselves were the weather gods planning on when it would storm that day.
  17. I took my first trip to Cedar Point since way back on Maverick's opening day. It was my almost 13 year old son's first time. We were there on good ol' July 4th. On the whole, I really only have good things to say. The crowds were much lighter than expected given the holiday and sunny blue skies. Maybe they were all in the water park given that it was in the 90s. We had Fast Lane+ which proved vital to getting all the coasters in, but only because of the sheer volume of them. The less popular rides had 10-15 minutes wait for the most part. It was only the likes of say Steel Vengeance, Maverick, or Millennium Force where we were skipping 45-90 min lines. The rides were all run well and efficiently. Everything was up and running with a few breakdowns that were either resolved before closing or happened really late in the night. The park closed at 11 PM which was a nice surprise because I had it in my head that it was closing at 10. If I had one complaint, it was the lack of drinks being included on All-Day Dining. Obviously the lack of research there was on me, but I swear these were included at Carowinds and King's Island the last two years. Maybe not. Maybe my memory is failing me here. Either way, it was annoying to drop $10-$12 every time we ate a meal when I went into the day thinking that was paid for already. Oh well. Onto the coasters! We opened by rope dropping Wild Mouse. Those things are not for me. I don't love laterals or spinning. Also, when we returned to the area later in the day, the thing had a long, long line running way out of its queue so I would say rope dropping the strange, low capacity choice of an addition was the right move. Next we backtracked to redeem our Fast Lane+ purchase before heading to the back of the park. On the way to the back I let my son grab the Corkscrew credit midway. No thanks on that one. Corkscrew is the only coaster I skipped and he hit them all. We tried to hit Magnum next, but it was broken down. Onto Gemini we went and we grabbed a ride on the blue train. The ride was racing and as much janky fun as I remembered with one big catch. The turn around back into the station at the very end of the ride was downright violent and really hurt my back in the moment. I was not expecting that and for a little while it had me worried that my back wouldn't hold up to a long day of coasters afterward. Thankfully the pain faded quickly. Other than that, Gemini held up to my strong memories. When we got back to Frontier Land or whatever it is called back there, we tried to hit up Maverick but it too was broken down. This wasn't a great start with it and Magnum down, but SteVe swooped in to save the day. What a ride. I had ridden Iron Gwazi and Velocicoaster just two months prior so I was expecting something on their very high level, but Steel Vengeance blew them away for me. It is my new #1 and the gap is big between it and Gwazi which was briefly my #1. What an unrelenting spring of non-stop airtime. That is my kind of machine. We also took a ride on the Mine Train while we were back there which was the expected pleasant meander around not doing much. There was a decent helix in there. It is a good family ride for those not ready for the big coasters. SteVe did come with our longest wait of the day which didn't come as a surprise, but at this point we were around midday. I decided an afternoon nap back at the hotel in the AC was in order with the promise that we would hit more of the lineup on our way back up front. I dreaded it a bit after the surprise pain last time, but the Gemini red train was first up. This was a longer wait than expected because of what I hadn't noticed the first time. While two blue trains were on the track, red only had one. Once we got on, the ride itself was very different than the blue side. A lot of the janky speed and airtime was missing. Thankfully, however, there was a trim that hit before the turn around at the end and we didn't fly through it as aggressively. We also had a group of maybe eight people together leading a chant and pretending to paddle in unison on the lift or whenever we needed to catch the blue train which made the ride a lot of fun even though it wasn't as good as the ride the blue side had given us. Magnum had opened when we got back to that spot and I gladly hopped on. I still love that thing. It is exactly as I remembered. So much violent airtime. So much pain. My boy had mixed feelings on it as I imagine so many do, but for me it was still awesome. Don't ask me to marathon it, but as a one off I still love Magnum. After Magnum, we made up some ground towards the exit and I took him over to ride Blue Streak only to find it broken down and some poor riders stuck on the lift hill absolutely baking in the sun. I did not know Valravn's entrance was right there, but we gladly hopped on when it presented itself. This is my new favorite dive. I think I only have ridden Yukon Striker, Griffon, and Sheikra, but of those four I will take Valravn now with only really Yukon Striker being all that close. I especially liked how we kept a little momentum going into the second, usually pointless dive which provided some big air time. I don't know if that was a fluke or if it is how it normally runs, but I expected it to basically stop us and hang us over the edge like on the other dives and Valravn most certainly did not do that. When we exited, Blue Streak was back up and running so we hit that next. Still a good old woodie. Lots of air in the first half of the ride and it wasn't particularly rough. We grabbed lunch at the pizza place near the entrance across from Raptor which ended our first half of the day in the park. We returned to our hotel down the road and took a short two hour rest before returning. Raptor then GateKeeper were up first. I didn't have strong memories of Raptor before. I certainly do now. That thing was hauling with great force. It might have been the best ride I have gotten on a B&M invert not named Montu. Banshee didn't deliver like that, for example. The extremely hot day probably had it moving at peak speed. GateKeeper was the opposite for me. It was smooth and graceful and just a little boring. That has been my experience with most of the wing coasters that I have been on too. From there my son decided we absolutely had to check on Maverick, so we embarked on a super inefficient journey back to the back of the park. This time it was running and, a running theme here, it was everything I remembered. I absolutely love Maverick. Everything about it. The second launch, the inversions, the airtime, the overbanks. It is near perfection. It took all these years for Intamin to finally top it with VelociCoaster. On the way back there I tried to re-direct my son to get on the family coaster in Planet Snoopy, but my son would hear nothing other than Maverick. After we rode that great ride we then further inefficiently tracked back to the family coaster and got that credit for him after what was sadly probably our second longest wait of the day. Then we took a just as awkward route back to Frontier Trail and up to Millennium Force. Millie was also as I remembered it, but that isn't high praise like it is with most of the other rides. Don't get me wrong, Millie is a very good ride with some great moments. It just needs more. All the low, speedy turns don't do anything for me so it is only the first drop and those couple airtime hills that I really like. It was starting to get dark at this point and we needed Rougarou and Iron Dragon. Unfortunately, Iron Dragon was broken down and stuck on its lift hill. It looked like it had been evacuated there too because the train was empty. Prospects didn't look good there. We got on Rougaroo and I guess it was a little better than I expected. My expectations were low based on what I had read so that isn't super high praise, but it was fine. It was at least better than I remembered Mantis being. Side note -- What is the consensus on these conversions, if there is one? New credit or nay? From there, 12 year old legs once again decided what we needed was to be all the way in the back of the park for a SteVe night ride. I followed on the long walk only to find it had broken down. I don't believe it ever opened back up either. Maverick was roaring next door, thankfully, so we took that instead and were not disappointed. The fireworks also started while we were in line and went on for a long time so we got to ride while they were banging away which was fun. After a disappointing check back in on SteVe, I informed my son that we were done. We just needed to grab a couple t-shirts on our way out which we did while the fireworks went on and on. It was well after 10 at this point. Since that is when I thought the park closed, I was confused to see so much seemingly still open but happy to have one last spot to use our All-Day Dining at before we left when we noticed a BBQ place still open. After we ate, we began marching to the car. To our surprise, a running Iron Dragon caught our attention on the way out and we headed over to grab the last credit available to my son. Iron Dragon is a tame ride which I was fine with at the end of the long, hot day. The cooling, night air felt absolutely brilliant after a hot day at the park too. I also can't praise the park enough for even re-opening the thing at all. It was broken down still well after 9 PM. I can't imagine too many other parks are bothering with a low popularity ride like Iron Dragon until the next day, but not Cedar Point apparently. They got it running and off it went for the last hour. With that, we left. Or we tried to. It was well past midnight when we finally got out of the parking lot. That was a madhouse. But what can you do with so many people leaving at once, I guess? All in all it was a great day. There was very little to complain about other than the heat. And maybe that too was actually a good thing with how sparse the crowds ended up being.
  18. Hey all. Is heading directly to the Wild Mouse at rope drop the best strategy to get all the coasters in on a very busy day but with Fast Lane Plus? I would assume that is the case given the capacity of those things. I am looking at the list and it looks like the other coasters not on Fast Lane Plus are the mine train, Iron Dragon, Woodstock Express, and the kiddie coaster. I can't imagine the mine train or old arrow suspended coaster get big lines and the kiddie coaster is off the table for us, so I guess the other candidate would be Woodstock Express unless I am dead wrong about the other two. I am trying to get all the credits for my 12 year old son as it will be his first time in the park.
  19. Thanks in advance to anyone who chimes in here. Long story short, I had a larger family trip for the beginning of next month fall through relatively last minute. The bright side to that situation is that I now have a six day window and the funds suddenly available to take my about to be 13 year old on a coaster trip. It is pretty last minute, but we have the freedom to dream as big as we want with this short window of time. Passports are current too so really we can go anywhere. Obviously from this thread, I am considering a short European coaster trip. This would be travel day, four days of coasters, and a travel day. We wouldn't be looking to do anything else both because he wouldn't be all that interested yet and if we did anything culturally significant in Europe without my wife we would probably be murdered. Maybe we do this or do a domestic trip here in the US, but at the moment I am a bit overwhelmed with the map full of possibilities. So here are my two questions to help me out: First, if you had four consecutive days to work with, where would you go to get the best "bang for your buck", so to speak, in Europe? And I don't mean that financially, but in terms of time and quality/quantity of coasters. Basically, where is the best cluster of parks/coasters that could be reasonably done in only four days considering the distance between them? Second, having ID'd a country/region, what would be the most time efficient way to navigate around there between parks and hotels? Car rental? Are there logistics renting cars as foreigners I would need to know about? Or is public transport the way to go? Buses/trains, maybe? Thanks again guys!
  20. We spent a day at SeaWorld while in Orlando earlier this month. I'll echo a lot of what people have said about the operations. They were very poor. With that said though, we had a really good day still. Our group was myself, my wife, her sister, our 12 year old son, and our 14 month old twins. We opened with Manta. Well, they did. I have ridden it a few times and just don't like how I feel after the pretzel loop. All those flyers are just one moment of too much intensity for me coupled with a lot of boring. I don't hate them, but they aren't for me. Since someone has to stay with the twins, I volunteered. Instead I pushed the twins around the attached aquarium before taking them over to see the penguins while everyone else waited in the line. I forgot that the penguins themselves have a decent line too though. Long story short, I was regretting the decision a half hour later when we finally got to go in. The two of them were remarkably good for 14 month olds waiting in a line, but it was still exhausting. One can walk super well and the other can't at all, so I had to hold one or two of them the whole time. It would be nice if strollers could go in. Wheelchairs can. Please note that my tongue is almost entirely in cheek here, but who is more handicapped than a single parent with twin toddlers? Let me bring the stroller in! Yet, all that exhaustion immediately melted away and I had our best moments of the entire trip in there. Our boy twin, the strong walker, absolutely lost his mind. He spent the entire five minutes pointing and alternating screaming "duck duck" and "quack quack" at the penguins. He was in heaven and remained captivated the entire time. Penguins are now known as Ice Ducks in our family. When we went back to Manta to grab everyone else, we turned around and went right back to the penguins to show everyone else. He repeated the act. Not much holds the attention of a young one year old but apparently penguins will do it infinitely for him. We got some amazing video there. Even after two full five minute sessions he was still enthralled by the views of the tank you get from outside the refrigerated habitat. After that we had lunch in the restaurant nearby. The line to pay was a clusterbadword to say the least. There were two lanes and both looked like they had tellers, so both lanes filled up. Apparently one was just doing something on the monitor though and disappeared without saying anything. This led to the worker in the other lane yelling at everyone in the wrong lane for being in the wrong lane which made people grumpy. It wasn't great customer service to say the least. And on top of that, two full lanes had to somehow merge together into one lane that was already completely full. Yay, SeaWorld. A nice group of people gave up their space when they saw us trying to find shade for the toddlers at least. We were super grateful for them. The food was plain but edible. Then we wandered over to Kraken. This still remains my favorite B&M Floorless. I always see mixed reviews but I have never had a bad ride on it. The wait was only a couple trains but the dispatches were slow enough to drag that out for a bit. The ride itself has a bit of a rattle but otherwise runs super well still. After that we tried to get on Pipeline. It was passholders only as expected. We live in NY about as far north as you can go in the state. It would have been nice for an upcharge option other than buying season passes we would have no way of using again this season. It is what it is though. We travel down to Orlando every couple years, so Pipeline isn't that far into the future. Before we went to Pipeline, my wife took the toddlers to the Sesame Street area while us remaining three went to Pipeline and then Ice Breaker. Ice Breaker was a new credit for me and a very pleasant surprise. I think they missed the mark if they were going for a family coaster though, The airtime on the hill during the repeated passthrough launch was pretty strong. After you finally crest the hill the ride is pretty tame, but that first part of the ride exceeds family coaster status in my view. It made me think of Hershey's failed attempt at a crowd pleasing hyper and subsequent redo. SeaWorld should turn around and put another family coaster in if they really want one. While I don't have any complaints about the on ride experience, the wait was almost 45 minutes despite not having much of a line. What is the point of the switch track if you are only using one train? They were loading that one extremely slowly too. The line moved so infrequently that most of it sat down while we waited for the next shift in location. After that we found the wife and kids and called it a day. This was day one of four straight parks, so we weren't looking to spend ten hours at SeaWorld. We definitely would have ridden Mako, probably more than once, if it was open. The new paint looks nice at least. I've ridden it before and love it like most people. It'll still be there in three or four years when we are back at least. All in all it was a good day despite the operational shortcomings. Crowds were light and we did what we could given not being allowed on Pipeline and Mako being closed. You can tell it is a pretty poorly run park operationally, but at least the stuff they have to do is all pretty good.
  21. Heading to Orlando in early May for work. I gotta swing by and get Icebreaker still, but what are the odds that Pipeline is open too? It seems pretty good looking at the construction and the "Spring" opening date, I'd say. Any news I am missing on that front? Thanks guys
  22. We got our first trip to King's Island as a part of our road trip about a week ago now and I think it might be my new favorite park. The operations were outstanding, the park itself is well maintained all around, and there is legitimately not a bad coaster built for adults in the park right now. Mystic Timbers is just below the top tier of woodies, awesome ride. Diamondback is probably my favorite B&M hyper now. Orion might be the weakest of the three B&M gigas, but that still makes it a top 25 coaster. We also made what turned out to be the right decision to wait for dark to ride the Beast for the first time. Not only did we get an amazing experience that was one of the most fun coaster rides of my life, but while in line we lucked into a great view for the fireworks/drone show which was great too. I left the park with zero complaints.
  23. It is always sad news to here of a park closing. On the bright side for me personally, we are making our first California trip next year from the east coast. While it was only supposed to be LA and San Diego, obviously CGA is going to need to be worked in before it abruptly closes without notice after one of these next 11 years.
  24. Does anyone know if they are running Flying Turns this year? I don't think it opened at all last year. I am planning a road trip and that is the difference of adding Knoebels or passing it by since I have never succeeded on getting on it. I mean I know even if they are running it sometimes it will be closed a lot of the days anyway, but we love the rest of the park and it wouldn't be the end of the world.
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