sixflagsguy5

Great Bear is a change of pace for most US B&M inverts. It's layout isn't packed with inversion after inversion, it's designed to be more of a relaxing and fun ride. Have fun

When SF announced Evel Kneivel I thought it was a stupid idea for Six Flags St. Louis, but it turned out to be really good. Six Flags Magic Mountain only has one wooden coaster (two tracks). I'm sure they'll figure out some sort of good theme for it. Even if the theming is a total mess up, you still have a good coaster.

The nearest parks to Chicago (big parks) are: -SFGAM -MIA -King's Island I'll drive you to SFGAM, MIA, and KI depending on the dates and the understanding that we'd split gas. It's very last minute but give me a PM. Coaster Craze at Valleyfair is friday, july 25th and I was planning on doing that. PM me and we can try to figure something out.

Top Ten Wood 1- El Toro (Six Flags Great Adventure) 2- Voyage (Holiday World) 3- Boulder Dash (Lake Compounce) 4- Ravine Flyer II (Waldameer) 5- Hades (Mt. Olympus) 6- Dania Beach Hurricane (Boomers) 7- Shivering Timbers (Michigan’s Adventure) 8- Raven (Holiday World) 9- Renegade (Valleyfair) 10- Legend (Holiday World) Top Ten Steel 1- Superman: Ride of Steel (Six Flags New England) 2- Maverick (Cedar Point) 3- Goliath (Six Flags over Georgia) 4- Storm Runner (Hersheypark) 5- Millennium Force (Cedar Point) 6- Superman: Ride of Steel (Six Flags America) 7- Phantom’s Revenge (Kennywood) 8- Griffon (Busch Gardens Europe) 9- Xcelerator (Knott’s Berry Farm) 10- Nitro (Six Flags Great Adventure)

Ravine Flyer II saturday night before driving home 8 hours to Chicago. Great wooden coaster.

^^ When we were there we saw advertisement for 'the future of Coney Island' on the street that goes from nathan's hot dogs to the boardwalk/ beach where the thunderbolt used to be. Coney Island is in a very bad neighborhood, so I woudn't be suprised to see it shut down eventually or only have the Cyclone. Anyways, this is probably the wrong topic for this, so I'll stop talking about Coney Island.

At the ACE Mt. Olympus event we had a Q&A session with the park owner. He said that Dive to Atlantis was one of the worst investments that he had ever made, because of late opening (late in 2004), maintenance costs, and breakdowns. He told us that last summer a ride operator noticed that the track (coaster part of it) had basically broken off/ cracked and snapped off. They e-stopped it so that no accident happened with a train/ boat. They fixed it by welding the track back together and ran it for the rest of the 2007 season. After that they chose to take it out. They now have a picnic/ group catering area there. During the event the owner's wife said that we could help ourselves to any Dive to Atlantis parts that we wanted. We looked through it but it was mainly scrap metal. They also sold their Disk-O to somebody in Mexico because "they got an offer that they couldn't resist."

Usually wooden coasters go anywhere from $3- $7 million. Steel coasters vary, but a B&M is usually $12- $20 million. The most expensive were the two strata coasters and I think the coasters themselves were around $25 million and the theming/ queue was more.

It was really rough and I felt it in my back at the bottom of each hill/ drop from the transition from dropping to going back up. I've been on a lot of coasters and I've never felt anything quite that bad. Usually I don't mind coasters that most people consider 'rough' such as Manhattan Express or even Rolling Thunder at SFGADV. I'm guessing that they haven't done much work on the Cyclone or its trains recently. I would still suggest riding it if you're in the area, because it's an old classic woodie. There are some other cool things in the area such as the wonder wheel, the wacky worm (big apple) with a 'transfer track' loading station, and nathan's hot dogs. I only took one ride on the cyclone and it was in 2:1 (second car, front row). My friends had a bad ride in 1:4 also.

-Six Flags Great America -Holiday World -Six Flags St. Louis -Celebration City -Silver Dollar City -Magic Springs -Six Flags over Texas -Frontier City -Mt. Olympus -Timber Falls -Little A-Merrick-A -Cedar Point -Darien Lake -Seabreeze -Knoebel’s -Six Flags Great Adventure -Bowcraft -Playland Park -Astroland -Deno’s Wonder Wheel -Casino Pier -Funtown Pier -Dorney Park -Dutch Wonderland -Hersheypark -Del Grosso’s -Lakemont Park -Kennywood -Waldameer 29 as of right now. I still have several trips left.

I'm going with Hydra and Hades. I'm not a big fan of Thunderbolt, besides the fact that it's an old wooden coaster and it's not that rough. Also, the Bobsleds at Seabreeze have a nice little prelift.

Coney Island Cyclone. It was the worst coaster I have ever ridden. I'm happy that my 400th coaster was accidentally the Big Apple instead of the cyclone.

At Hersheypark someone behind me in line said that Lightning Racers cost 5 Billion dollars.

I liked Evel Kneivel more than any GCI I've been on except Renegade. Anyways, last coaster was the Demon at SFGAM even though the last coaster I sat on was American Eagle.

That's definately a do-able trip, but I'd double check with whoever you're going with so that they understand you want to do all these parks. I don't understand why so many people don't like the S:ROS at SFA. It seems like a lot of people let the poor park atmosphere ruin their ride experience. In my opinion, the two are completely unrelated. I can go to a completely run down park in a ghetto and hate the park, but if there's an intamin hyper with tons of airtime I'd still like the coaster. S:ROS at SFA is somewhat boring in the helexes, but besides that it's a great ride. If I were you, I wouldn't skip out on a park just because somebody on the internet didn't like the ride.

I understand how it is for people in the area vs. people who live far away from the park (like me). When I was really little I used to go to Opryland with my family all the time. My mom grew up going there all the time, so when they decided to gut the park it really sucked for us. I think Opryland was privately owned, but still it left the whole Nashville area without a nearby park (with the exception of SFOG and Dollywood). I know that people could say "hey Cedar Point's only an hour away," but it's not just that the area is in need of some coasters, it's that you cannot experience the same thing as you did at Geauga Lake. Sorry to go a little bit off topic.

This ride looks really cool. When it was first announced I wasn't expecting much, but now that it's completed I'm much more excited to ride. I'll be checking it out next tuesday.

I always wondered how much one of the plaques would cost. It's too bad that somebody didn't take the Little Dipper from Geauga Lake, however, I think that the relocation costs would be way too high, especially for ACE. It'll be sad to see this coaster go, but at the same time it's just a part of the coaster recycling process. This has happened many times before with coasters and entire parks and I think it's best to realize that there are still tons of parks out there with great rides.

You're covering a lot of area with that trip. It's more like an east coast/ south/ midwest trip all in one. Sounds like fun though. Do you think you'll be squeezing in any smaller parks last minute?

I've been to all of the parks you're considering and that's a really tough decision, especially if you've never been to either park. Both parks don't really have much besides their different S:ROS coasters. I liked both of the S:ROS's, but the one at SFNE is much better than the one at SFA. Either way, you're in for a good ride with lots of airtime. From my experience, SFNE has longer lines than SFA, but I've only been to each park once, so I might be a little off. Busch Gardens Europe is a really nice park. All of the coasters are pretty good. I was expecting a little bit more from Apollo's Chariot and Alpengeist, but everything else was much better than I had expected. I'm guessing, from the way you've described your trip, that you're doing a family trip out east and you're trying to talk your family into doing a few parks on the way. Busch Gardens is a really good 'family' park, because they have fun things to do for everyone, even if somebody in your group doesn't like big rides. I hope your trip works out for you. Have fun.

I'm considering doing this one. I've never been to any parks out of the US and I was hoping to do the upper NY/ Canada parks this summer. It sounds like a sweet event though. I could probably get most of my credits just during the ERT

It's really sad that somebody would burn down a coaster, especially one that holds that much historic value. I'm glad to hear that they aren't giving up on the ride and they plan to rebuild it.

Giant Dipper at Belmont Park (credit #362)

With magnetic launches I'd go with Maverick or any of the Premier launch coasters. Suprisingly, I really liked Superman; The Escape. It was somewhat windy and it was dark out, so that probably added to the experience, but I thought that the launch was fairly intense.

The norweigen roll (intamin pretzel loop) looks a lot bigger than I was expecting. Hopefully there'll be a nice pop of airtime at the beginning of that roll before flipping over. I'm sure it will be a great ride that'll fit right into Hersheypark.