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Requiring guests be vaccinated opens several cans of worms I don't think CF wants to do. For one, it's not exactly clear that it would be legal. Even if they were ultimately successful in defending such a policy in court, is it really worth the money and effort? And then there are the logistics of it enforcing it. Do you make every guest bring medical records to the park? And who checks them, the front gate folks? Do you really want your admissions people trying to determine if someone's vaccination records are authentic? I think the only way things will change is once the public data show that the community spread is under control. Given the efficacy rates touted by the pharmaceutical companies, and the timeline for the vaccine to be available to pretty much everyone in the spring, you'd hope cases would be few and far between, and hospitalizations and deaths would be a thing of the past by early summer. Then and only then will restrictions on capacity, mandatory masks, half empty trains, etc., be lifted. If all goes according to plan, I don't think it would be unreasonable to hope things are back close to normal by Memorial Day. Considering what we've been through the last 9 months, I think we'd all be happy with that.

You're right. Magic Kingdom/WDW to me is a far better experience than Disneyland. The only thing Disneyland has going for it is that it was there first. With WDW they took everything good about Disneyland and recreated it, and then improved on it in ways that Disnelyand's geography wouldn't allow. Disneyland is crammed into a small space in the middle of a city. It's a pain to get to, and it always feels more crowded. I honestly can't think of any reason to recommend it over WDW, unless you're already on the west coast. Should every enthusiast visit at least once, to mark it off the list? Sure. But it's pretty far down the list. All just my opinion, of course. And full disclosure, if I never set foot on another Disney property again, I'd be just fine with that. As to the question at hand, while I don't consider myself an enthusiast, at least to the extent most others here would be, I can't imagine anything topping Cedar Point on the list. The quality, quantity and diversity of rides/coasters at CP make it a pretty clear cut #1 for me. Now, if your definition of "enthusiast" assumes someone who has already been to CP, as I assume most enthusiasts have been at least once, the conversation can shift to other parks. Of the places I've been, Dollywood and Hersheypark are the two that stand out. I haven't been to enough small, local/regional parks to speak to those. I enjoy reading about them on here, though, and hope to visit some of the more historic/iconic ones once the world settles down, and it's safe to travel again.

^^^The issue I was having seeing embedded tweets was caused by Ad Blocker. Disabling it for KICentral fixed the issue, in case anyone else runs into this.

The swinging gondolas without restraints were part of the charm of Skylab, and I'm generally not a fan of OTSRs. But I'd still love to see KI get an Endeavour. Right now the only flat I make a point to ride each trip is Delirium. Not to say I don't enjoy some others (SR&R and Viking Fury, for example), but I could take or leave most of them. It would be nice to have another flat to get excited about, and an Endeavour would fit that bill for me. I just hope they don't waste money and space on something you can ride at a county fair or parking lot carnival.

Twitter doesn't seem to be blocked, but I do primarily access the forums on a work laptop, so I suppose it could be a network setting. Unfortunately the only other browser I have on this computer is an out of date version of Internet Explorer, and the forum is basically unreadable in IE : I've cleared my cache and cookies in Chrome, and that didn't fix it. Not a big deal. I just thought maybe someone else would have run into the issue before.

I don't think this has anything to do with the software update, but does anyone know if there's a setting either in my options or in my browser (Windows desktop Chrome) that will allow me to see the contents of tweets when shared? Here's an example of what it looks like for me when someone shares a tweet (text is hard to read because of dark mode, but it's there): Then if I try to click on any of the links in the tweet, I get this:

I went to the CM arcade in front of Racer a couple years ago during an afternoon thunderstorm, and I'm pretty sure they had a handful of skee ball lanes next to the pop a shots. I was pretty unimpressed with the state of the arcade at the time. It was like being at a Chuck E Cheese. It was nothing at all like I remember from when I was a kid in the 80s, but arcades were a lot more popular back then.

That's amazing quality. Thanks for sharing. Made me a bit sad to see the Cobra from the top of the lift, knowing it had reached the end of its life. I certainly miss KC a lot more than SOB.

I would be disappointed if Action Zone is still recognizable in 2030. I can't imagine keeping Invertigo, Amazon, Timberwolf or The Bat for another 10 years. They can get rid of Drop Tower, too, AFAIC. That will open up a lot of prime real estate in AZ, To me AZ is just a soulless reminder of the latter Paramount era, which for me was the low point in KI's history. I would hope for a complete retheme at the very least. My preference would be to just roll that area into a larger Oktoberfest, but I think KI can and probably should dream bigger than that. The problem is that they're not going to be inclined to make over the entire area all at once. Transitioning from AZ to something new over a period of several years will take some creativity and thinking outside the box, to say nothing of the capital required. But I think CF can and will pull it off. I would hope the initial internal discussions about this have already begun.

I would have initially voted for The Racer, for most of the reasons listed in this thread, but this point about The Beast is what makes it the winner. for me The Beast made KI a destination, in the sense that people from around the country (world?) who otherwise wouldn't have been to KI, had to get there to check out The Beast. I'm not the historian many others on here are, especially when it comes to other parks. But how many other parks at the time had a ride as grandiose and magnificent as The Beast? What other parks/attractions would people have said "I have to visit this park just so I can experience this ride?" I'm sure there were others, but not many. KI dreamed big, took a huge swing, and built something most people wouldn't have ever conceived in their own imaginations. Doing it almost completely in-house just makes it even more impressive. I think it ultimately influenced how other parks thought about coasters. It changed the perception of what a coaster could be, in a way that led to bigger, faster, and more epic thrill rides. I'm biased, because I grew up as a kid in the 80s and early 90s, and The Beast always just had this aura. You could see the lift hills from various points in the park, and the paw prints leading you there meant The Beast was always in the back of your mind, whenever you were in the park. I still get chills and butterflies when I approach the queue to ride The Beast. So maybe those feelings warp my view of it. But I still think objectively, you can't deny the impact it had, simply due to its magnitude and uniqueness.

I think most states and municipalities in this country have all but ruled out another lockdown. It seems pretty clear at this point that it would be almost impossible to implement and enforce. People just aren't going to go for it. Unless things get drastically worse (worse than this past spring for sure), efforts would be better focused on mask wearing, social distancing, and other measures to reduce transmission, that people may be more receptive to. We're going to have to learn to live with the virus. Unfortunately that means a lot more people are probably going to get sick and die. Hopefully an especially effective vaccine is available soon, but even that isn't likely to completely eliminate the virus. I'd be surprised if anything happens to KI or CP over the next couple weeks, but it's hard to envision a spring opening without some of the same restrictions and regulations currently in place. We're roughly six months from this year's planned opening date, as well as when they would presumably open next year. Six months feels like a lifetime ago, so who's to say what will happen between now and April? The only thing that would surprise me is if life is back to the old normal by then.

This ain't it, chief. Unless she doctored the screenshots of their chats, who cares what her motive was? It's pretty clear he was preying on a child. Since it's not a crime in OH, what was she supposed to do? This is the same straight-up victim blaming you claim to be against. He was a creep well before she decided to expose him. She didn't make him do any of this. Exposing him almost certainly stopped him from preying on more children. Imagine being just as outraged by Chris Hansen as you would be by the pedos they catch on Dateline, because he set them up, too, right?

Thunder Island was the spot back in the day. I can still hear their tv commercial in my head. I never felt Thunder Island was dangerous, but I guess by today's standards it probably was. Now, if you go back far enough in Indy to Boogie Mountain on the east side (21st and Shadeland), that place was dangerous by any standards. The slides were concrete and you were supposed to use a mat, but every time I went I ended up with nasty scrapes all over. It also attracted a pretty rough crowd, especially toward the end. The last couple times I remember going there were fights, trash floating in the pools, kids wearing tighty whities instead of swimsuits, etc. It made Thunder Island look like freaking Xanadu.

It really doesn't matter at all to me, but I do think they changed the definition of giga to include Orion. Before Orion, I don't remember anyone debating whether giga meant 300' total height or length of drop. Seems to me it was always understood to mean total height. If CF says it's a giga, it's a giga. But if the term ever had any significant meaning, I'd argue it has less so now, since they've expanded it to include Orion.

Forget about Fauci. The chief of mortality statistics at the CDC said Covid is listed as the underlying cause of death on 92% of death certificates where it's mentioned as a factor. This is the guy who is responsible for the statistic in question, providing additional context. If you believe the CDC, you believe this. https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1301205399312441344?s=20

They started selling the full year Fast Lane again right after they opened, and single day Fast Lane a couple weeks after. I'm not sure they were ever set on not selling Fast Lane this year. I think they were just waiting to see how crowds would be, and how Fast Lane would work with all the new restrictions. They seem to have determined it would work just fine, in relatively short order. It's a nice source of incremental revenue that costs the park very little.

Bring back the Keelboats. And Skylab.

Sounds like Universal flexed their muscle to help get it killed, too.

Thanks for sharing this. I loved the King Cobra, and would kill to get to ride it again (even mentioned in another thread that I've looked into visiting the park with the clone in Italy). I miss a lot of great rides KI has removed over the years (Skylab, Flight Commander, Keelboats, etc), but the Cobra is at the top of my list. I have so many great memories of waiting in that queue, the thrill of finally stepping onto the train and strapping in, the slow climb up the lift, and then just pure exhilaration. I always returned to the station with a huge smile on my face. I understand of course why they got rid of it. The capacity had to have been abysmal, renewal parts were difficult or impossible to obtain, it seemed to suffer more and more from downtime, and standups fell out of favor with the GP. If it still stood today, it would be an obvious anachronism. But it had character, and it was such a big part of my formative years at the park. I miss it dearly. Thanks again for the blog. It was a nice bit of nostalgia to start the week.

I miss the King Cobra probably more than any former ride in the park, so much so that I've looked into incorporating a quick trip to this park in Italy into a larger vacation, just to ride the Cobra clone.

Whether there has or hasn't been an outbreak tied to Indiana Beach doesn't seem like the best assessment of their approach. Hopefully there haven't been any outbreaks there or anywhere else. While so much is still unknown about this virus, from what little we do know, at least about effective measures to reduce its spread, any lack of outbreak would seem to be in spite of their approach. You can factor in that it's located in a remote area with very low known virus presence, but they certainly draw visitors from Indy and the region, which have seen significant transmission. They gambled, and so far it seems to have worked out for them. That doesn't mean it was a good or smart bet. Just because I've hit the hard 6 or 8 at a craps table or a six team parlay doesn't mean it was a smart place to put my money. Eventually bad bets are always losers. Considering the stakes of Indiana Beach's gamble, let's hope they make it through the season before their luck runs out. Unless anyone here is involved with Indiana Beach's ownership or management, I don't see how anything in this thread could be construed as harassment. I certainly won't be visiting Indiana Beach, although I probably wouldn't have gone there anyway. It's never been my cup of tea. I wish they were taking more precautions, because outbreaks that start at places like that tend to impact lots of other people who weren't anywhere near the place.

It's a little better than I expected. I figured they'd close by 6 or 7 in October. It won't be the night ride marathon October usually is during Haunt, but considering many comparable parks aren't opening at all in 2020, it would feel silly to complain. Given the circumstances, I think the park deserves a lot of credit for how they've pulled off the 2020 season. I hope to be able to go on one of those two 10pm Saturdays in September, which I'm sure will be plenty busy, and definitely a day in October once the weather cools down a bit.

I'm sure they'd love to sell everyone in your group a daily meal plan, and they're not going to explicitly encourage sharing, which would potentially hurt sales. But for $30, they know people are going to share. Another way to look at it is that they know if they wanted to crack down on sharing, they'd either have to lower the price, or live with lower sales. Considering how much markup there is on food and drinks at a place like KI, they're not in any danger of losing money on meal plans. It's just a matter of whether they think they could make more. They seem to have determined $30 is a good price, in that the revenue and other benefits of offering the plans offset the incremental food sales lost due to sharing.

I think it becomes gimmicky when you start narrowing it down to specific types of coaster. Tallest, fastest, longest, are legit records if you're talking about all coasters, or all steel or all wooden coasters. But saying something is the tallest dive coaster or the fastest floorless? That's pretty meaningless to me, and I doubt the GP cares much about it, either. I don't disagree that it still makes for good marketing fodder. But I have my doubts that it moves the needle at all in terms of GP interest.

I've never been to the P&G version, but GE does (did?) a similar thing on a different weekend, and I went a few times when I worked for GE in the mid-late 00s. We always went on the Saturday, which I'm sure didn't help, but the park always felt like it was packed. There were no walk-ons, for sure. You'd be lucky to get on The Racer or Adventure Express in under an hour. I specifically remember waiting an hour and a half to ride Face-Off, probably around 2006-2008 timeframe, and thinking I would never go back, although of course we did. I think GE must have been a bit more liberal about giving out tickets. It's probably been close to 10 years since I've been to GE Days though. I'm not even sure if they still do it anymore, and if they do, it may be totally different.