TPDave

^ yeah, I was prepared for it to be rough but was surprised at how it surpassed my expectations. As others have said the new part is good (and the little drop back into the tunnel is actually pretty fun, but it's just not worth it for the rest of the ride (which actually beats you up during the slow parts as well...)

^ 640?!? That's horrendous. My enduring memory of CW was huge lines for everything, I don't want to be waiting for that next Summer!

I'm not sure this is entirely unexpected! I wonder if the person at CF who decided not to go with the starflyers still has their job

Forgive my ignorance, what are of the park is this in?

I love we're technically looking at YEARS of R&D that went into to a train design that works properly and its just made of pipe and sheet No backseat engineers please, we all know the story - just struck me as kind of funny!

I love how this small park that not many people have heard of seems to have an unlimited theming budget for everything they do! I know they got some insurance money quite a few years go but I'm forming my own conspiracy that there's drug monry behind it or something This all looks immense!!

Does anyone know how the whole Disk-o planning permission saga ended? Last I recall it wasn't looking too good?

^Yup! And I don't want to speak before all the info is in but I'm pretty sure the NTAG incident wouldn't have been prevented by a visual scan. In the great sprit of ass covering though I'm sure it's a very useful process to have!

Aww, I kinda preferred the "EPIC TRAIN OF DEATH" vibe that was going on for a second there!

^ I think we're all used to seeing inaccurate reports in the media, especially when the subject matter is something that we are relatively well versed in. I don't mind simple errors that don't really affect the perception or narrative of the story (I've seen references to "Six Flags over Arlington" for example) since they're harmless, it's concerning to see how many outlets have repeated the "restraint only clicked once" line through. Since we still don't' really know what happened, I would have thought that's a potentially libellous statement to make. I forget where I saw it but one of the Gerstlauer engineers stated pretty emphatically that he didn't believe this would turn out to be a case of lap bar restraint and I would agree.

These parks thrive off of that kind of hype though. It's not nice but you shouldn't be surprised!

I was walking through London the other day and noticed that they are making a Five Guys! It opens on July 4th (of course...) I can't wait to finally get my Five Guys fix

How many years has CW been doing shows like this? I never really thought about it until I saw that video but they've got a pretty good setup to do them!

I'm loving the act that the tilt coaster is getting a ton of praise! I always saw it and just assumed at was a crappy gimmick ride but it looks like I was wrong, you can probably get a decent one of those on a small footprint so it's surprising they haven't sprung up elsewhere.

Looks cool, I really like the trains!

I just had a massive nostalgia hit so dug this thread up and read it start to finish!! I'm so excited to go back after seeing all of the awesome bits of Japan that I had forgotten about. Great report Divv, we're not going back to every park next month but the Disney anticipation is building after reading back through this!

I went and saw Muse over the weekend in London, still the best live act out there in my opinion. Absolutely stunning show! The show was really well designed to get as many people as possible close to the band throughout the evening. They performed from three different places in the stadium and had some really cool set pieces and story lines running throughout! You know, just someone hanging about under a gigantic lightbulb. Robots and fire. Standard. We were quite close to Matt. It was a pretty good crowd!

I'm aware of CSR through some work I did on it university but I studied civil engineering so I was confined to the construction industry and didn't get involved with the automotive market. Aside from seeing a few "eco-firendly" cars from VW (I think they're called blue motion, right?) I wasn't really aware that they had a targeted CSR policy.

I'm not sure I had one defining moment that I can isolate, I just remember that I used to be scarred of coasters then when I was about 12 I got really interested in them and started wanting to ride them. odd.

I don't think the ride will "duel" as such, but if they're good on dispatches you could have a couple of trains going through the course simultaneously. By that logic most wild mice are dueling coasters though s I'm not sure it's a good term to use.

^ It's a space issue though, not many places have the space to put such a low capacity ride. Great fun though!

Nice! This is being built on a Disney-esque timescale! The queue building looks like it's going to be awesome!

^ I was going to mention that one! Sky Rocket was probably the heaviest rain I've ridden in (and a launched coaster too!). There was a launched coaster on the Scandi trip that we rode in heavy rain as well, both instances weren't too painful though as I was in a full poncho with my face fully covered. I've ridden a few in the front row in the rain though and that stings, I'd have to be pretty desperate to ride to do that again!

^ I don't know if Merlin are still maintaining dictatorial control over the balance of their spinning wild mice, but when I was at Alton Towers a couple of years ago they were sending employees round if there were only 3 riders in a car. Not a bad deal for the staff I guess (though I would prefer a more spinny ride!)

I think it comes down to how much of a die hard coaster nerd you are. I really like them parks but I wouldn't go on my own or marathon ride things so in my teenage years it was good for a couple of jokes with my non-theme park friends but it wasn't something all consuming for me. Theme parks are just another way that I socialise with people. For instance I'm not a gamer at all but I have friends who are really into them and play online/with each other or just talk about the game industry together and I view that in the same way as my theme park hobby; it's just another way that people socialise.