I’m literally so excited for Tuesday it can’t come soon enough. Looking at Sally dark ride’s past displays and from what they’ve shared: It’s publicly confirmed that two animatronics will be shared and the new flashlight technology will be demoed. With these two, 100% we’ll be hearing the new voices for the first time. Sometimes they record speciality audio for iappa, but especially if the two are used in the same scenes together they’ll just use those, which I’m very excited to hear I bet they sound amazing.   While it’s not confirmed, I think there’s a good chance we hear a sample of the soundtrack they’ll use for the first time as well. I’m really hoping for a rescoring of the original, but I also have a gut feeling they’ll try to make a Grim Grinning Ghost style lyrical song so we’ll see. Basing it off of their previous headlining attractions they’ve promoted at the expo, there will probably be concept art for a few scenes of the attraction, which I’ll appreciate if they don’t show anything off because I really want good references for the characters so I can draw them. I don’t forsee the ride vehicles being highlighted since Sally isn’t directly involved with creating it. I’m REALLY hoping they don’t show a full layout of the ride, but if the park approves it directly, I’ll probably analyze that. I’m also sure there will be small details released through interviews, which I will probably be checking every source hourly to get. 

I think the Refresh Stations would all need new machines for them to have the auto-dispensers, but it might make more sense to do that if the park(s) switched to associates pouring the drinks. That way you could also have a steady flow since those drink machines sometimes work on a conveyer-type system. As for the mobile ordering, I believe Cedar Fair abandoned the effort soon after implementing it (rather poorly if you ask me). The new Carowinds app allegedly has a mobile ordering feature currently in it or coming soon, so I think that might be a priority for the large parks. The only issue I can see with the food lockers is that they might need a QR code to unlock them and I don't know if I trust a sizeable amount of guests to not lose their receipt to scan it. Also the fact that Carowinds got an update to their single-park app has me hoping we will continue to see separate park apps when the rest are updated/released. With trays, the park would only need to install separate tray returns in places where a trash can is not directly there. I believe the Festhaus trash cans all have tray return slots on top, so those would only need to have a label added and someone sent to collect them every so often.

I think it will be the first look at PT:ON animatronics at IAAPA. I'd love for it to also be a reveal of one of the Opera Boxes, but I don't know how realistic it would be to get one mostly done and shipped by the time the convention starts.

What do we think this "special surprise is"? Maybe an IAAPA-related surprise?

I don't know if I would say it feels like Dollywood... But I really do hope Herschend is somehow able to help with making operations faster, especially on the two woodens. Timber Terror and Tremors can take forever even with a short line because ops aren't great. And faster ops would also be good on Aftershock as well. Stunt Pilot has great ops, mainly because of the continuous loading station. But increased ops would be a great benefit for that park! The park is growing rapidly, good move on Herschend imo as long as they can avoid becoming like Six Flags