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homestar92

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homestar92 last won the day on November 4 2023

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  1. https://www.carowinds.com/rides-experiences/thunder-striker Interesting to note, all of the photos now show the train from behind - presumably to avoid the trademarked imagery on the zero-car. Though I can't get the old Intimidator page to load properly on archive.org to confirm that this is a new change (but like, it's gotta be, right? those are far from the most appealing angles of the ride and I think the PR team knows that)
  2. https://www.carowinds.com/rides-experiences https://www.kingsdominion.com/rides-experiences Kings Dominion is calling the ride "Project 305" and Carowinds has scrubbed it from the website entirely. I presume this means that a licensing deal has expired and will not be renewed and both coasters will have a new theme (and perhaps new paint) next year. The jokester in me wants to suggest "Nitro" and "Superman: Ride of Steel" as potential ride names ;-P
  3. No way Six Flags Great America gets rebranded. That's been its name for decades, the two Great Americas are on opposite sides of the country, and the one in California will likely be closed for good before or shortly after the branding consolidation happens anyway. There may be some rebrands. I don't think either of those will be among them, and I don't think any current Six Flags parks see changes to branding UNLESS they are sold and leave the Six Flags portfolio.
  4. Keep in mind, Six Flags Great America (one of the most "Kings Island-esque" parks in their chain) retained its distinct themed areas long after the merger, having only lost one of them to a licensed IP (Yankee Harbor becoming DC Universe) almost four decades after being acquired. They also added a new themed area, Southwest Territory, which fits perfectly in line with Marriott's original vision for that park's themes. Six Flags doesn't just rip out all the history and replace it with copy/pasted IP-based attractions. I would argue that Six Flags has respected the themes of that park more than KI's recent owners have respected some of our park's themes. I mean, Mini Coopers and a helicopter with machine guns in the "classic American amusement park" section? South-American ruins themed coaster and a Mexican restaurant in Oktoberfest? Banshee and Bat in the "movie studio backlot" section? It's not like Paramount and Cedar Fair were always 100% in line with the "theme" of our park either. DC Comics and Looney Tunes can coexist in the kids' area. Camp Snoopy being a subsection of Planet Snoopy seems like a good groundwork for this. And it's not unprecedented - Hannah-Barbera Land and Nickelodeon Central coexisted for years in what is now Planet Snoopy. We all love Snoopy here, but that's because we're used to it. To our kids, snoopy is just the dog from Kings Island and that Christmas special. There was wailing and gnashing of teeth when Snoopy came to Kings Island and it seems it's the same thing again now that there is the *possibility* (nothing confirmed at all) of it happening again a few years down the road. This could bring Snoopy to Gurnee just as easily as it could bring Bugs Bunny to Mason.
  5. I think a lot of the sentiments I've seen here to the effect of "person in my social circle who doesn't even like theme parks has a negative opinion of Six Flags" doesn't realize that these people probably have an even less informed opinion of Six Flags than you do, because their opinion is likely just what they've heard from you. People who never go to parks aside from their local one only know about other parks from the things that their friends who do go to other parks say about them. Enthusiasts broadly seem to dislike Six Flags, so normal people who occasionally talk to enthusiasts end up with a negative opinion of Six Flags. It's really just a feedback loop. Six Flags operates *a lot* of parks and many of those parks feel very different from each other. Some SIX parks are indeed dirty and poorly operated, but not all. Six Flags does many things well. Their Flash Pass system is far more elegant than Fast Lane, and it works well at every park. The same cannot be said of Fast Lane (ever tried using it at Cedar Point? Enjoy somehow still waiting an hour after paying hundreds of dollars). The idea that *every* Cedar Fair park is always clean and always has great operations isn't any more true than the idea that Six Flags are all dirty and mismanaged. Six Flags Great America is one of my absolute favorite amusement parks anywhere, and they've won awards for their cleanliness. I'm also a big fan of Darien Lake. Both are SIX properties. Coincidentally, "dirty and poorly operated" was my experience when I visited Worlds of Fun, which is a Cedar Fair park. Six Flags also has two different parks with animal safari-type exhibits, so they have the experience and expertise to bring that back if they wanted to. Six Flags has IPs that are far more relevant to children than Snoopy (as much as I personally LOVE Snoopy, he's not culturally relevant anymore outside of the Christmas special). Kings Island is going to be just fine, and I don't know that we have any reason to believe that Six Flags will even be added to its name (aside from perhaps "Kings Island - a Six Flags park". Both chains have things that they do well and I really do think their collective expertise can really help both chains. Remember, Six Flags and Cedar Fair didn't compete with each other outside of California. But they *do* compete with the likes of Disney, Universal, SeaWorld, and other destinations, and this merger gives them access to the resources to actually stand a chance at competing with those chains. If anything, this has created more *actual* competition even though there are fewer competitors in the game.
  6. One thing I've learned all too well since moving into a management position at my work: no matter how important somebody is to your future vision, employees are, at the end of the day, people. People with their own life goals and motivations. A successful business can move forward from losing any employee, and I have no doubt that both Don and KI will be just fine going forward. One of my best employees left because they inherited a bunch of money and didn't need to work anymore. Another left because he simply didn't want to live in the Midwest, so he moved to Boston. No matter how well you treat your employees or how good of a manager you try to be, people have their own lives and motivations which have nothing to do with work and sometimes your company just isn't a fit anymore. It's a bummer, but it's life.
  7. Much of the old guard has moved on to other hobbies and other forums. Folks like you and I have to pop in every now and then, just to keep these youngins on their toes!
  8. Six Flags Great America is an hour's drive away from both downtown Chicago and downtown Milwaukee and doesn't really connect to either of their transit systems (Chicago maybe has a bus that runs to Gurnee, but it's about as useful and frequent as the one running from Cinci to Kings Island). Gurnee is pretty close to Kenosha, which has been the site of some recent political unrest. But that was an extenuating circumstance and I don't even think the park was open when that was going on. The problem isn't so much a class thing as some have suggested in comments on articles like this as it is an uninvolved parents thing. Kids from wealthy families and kids from poorer families are both going to turn into little jerks if they have the kinds of parents who will just drop them off at the theme park frequently to be rid of them for a day. Now, there is some correlation to involvedness of parents and class just because obviously married single-income families are better equipped to spend time raising their kids, but the married single-income family is an incredibly rare thing even in the upper levels of middle class. Additionally, the chaperone policy equally prices people out. You either pay more for your kids' passes which costs more money, or you have to buy passes for mom and/or dad, which costs more money AND requires them to spend their time accompanying their kids to the park. So you either increase the cost or you increase both cost AND hassle. Raising prices is the better solution for everyone. Especially that sweet, sweet "one visit a year but we bring two kids and buy one of everything" demographic that theme parks LOVE.
  9. American Eagle at SFGAm to literally anything aside from "peeling chips of decades-old paint" color.
  10. I think we need a poster of the one, the only #Jonathan. You young whippersnappers won't know what I'm talking about, but if you're reading this thread, you've seen it even if you don't know that you have.
  11. The problem with this is that training will not stick if it relates to a program that will be used so rarely. When I was at Valleyfair, the employee at one of the stores commented "ooh, a Platinum Pass" when I scanned my pass for the discount and said that mine was only like the third she'd seen all year (probably because there are no Cedar Fair parks particularly close to that one so locals certainly won't buy Platinum very often). If employees at the smaller more distant parks rarely see platinums, Prestige+ will be even more rare and you can expect a hard time getting them to give you a promo that was probably mentioned one time in their first week of employment, if at all. Heck, my first visit to Valleyfair I bought Fast Lane and I asked which rides required Fast Lane Plus (not realizing that all FUN parks didn't have FLP) and she literally said "what's Fast Lane Plus?" If the Valleyfair people don't know what Fast Lane Plus is and rarely see platinum passes, you can't expect them to know about the front-of-the-line pass when the extremely rare Prestige+ passholder shows up.
  12. As a big, big Whizzer fan, this looks like it perfectly captures the essence of the old Schwarzkopf model on which it's based. Very cool addition. If not for the fact that the park's closure is already planned, I would say that this would be an awesome addition to California's Great America too, especially since there's not anything of note in the spot that once housed their Whizzer.
  13. You get one per visit. I really don't think it will affect the length of Fast Lane lines much at all. First off, only Prestige Pass holders get the perk. Second they get to use it on only one ride per visit. Once they've chosen their one, it's gone until tomorrow. So you're only adding the Prestige Pass people to the Fast Lane queue, you're spreading them out amongst all of the Fast Lane rides, and once they've used their one and only skip, they're out of the pool. The effect on the length of Fast Lane lines will be negligible at best. MAYBE one additional cycle if you are very, VERY unlucky.
  14. So at first I was like "who's this for"? But then I realized, most of my visits are just a quick little one-hour or less visit after work, where I grab a meal and maybe catch a ride. But that means I ride almost exclusively rides like Racer, Adventure Express, The Bat. Things that rarely have any line at all on weekdays. But the single skip-the-line pass per visit means that my quick little half hour visits will allow a ride on literally anything I want. So I can maybe ride Backlot or Invertigo more than once a year. Or Flight of Fear. Plus, if the perks are good at every park, I can use my skip-the-line pass during my annual CP visit on Steel Vengeance and buy just a regular Fast Lane because I don't find the other Fast Lane Plus rides all that appealing (especially since most are part of ERT already). In the past I just suck it up and stand in line because I don't want to pay for Fast Lane Plue, but regular Fast Lane doesn't feel worthwhile. This changes the equation entirely. VIP area is meh, unless they are significantly better than what's offered this year.
  15. I've seen many, many Skillet shows and I'm pretty comfortable saying that the oldest songs you'll hear will be from the Comatose album. The last time I heard anything older was at a show in 2015 in which they played a single song from Collide (Forsaken specifically)
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