johnjniehaus

I'd take that. I just think we need another story show when most of the entertainment is music based

We NEED what the Dickens back or some other old English style Christmas show. That one was hilarious

I was thinking the same thing. I never realized that it was basically just resting in the floor beneath it and was actually not nearly level with the floor in the building.

Cedar Point needs to bring back a new version of the pirate ride considering they still have the old building for it over by blue streak.

https://www.fox13now.com/entertainment/lagoon-retiring-jet-star-2-roller-coaster-after-end-of-2025-season Honestly, I know we've lost some special coasters the past few years but this one hurts because it was running so well when I was there in May. Super smooth, such a great compact layout, and awesome color scheme. I honestly think I'm more upset about this one than I was about Kingda Ka or the Vekoma Flying Dutchman... Probably the worst I've felt about a closure since La Vibora

I love to see the bright colors on the pad. I think even if it doesn't come back this season that Kings Island is going to try and do this project right. Monster is such a classic and I think they know it still has its fan. Out of curiosity, with the new colors on the pad, does anyone think they will repaint it any color besides black? I know black is the classic color for the model but I'm just curious if maybe it'll change...other rides on Coney Mall such as the scrambler and troika have gotten new paint colors through the years... Even racer got spruced up a few years ago... If they do decide to go with a different color, what color scheme do you all want to see?

https://www.instagram.com/p/DPgd0V5k_bZ/?igsh=Zm5id3FybDU1MHNi Looks like there's some painting on the pad now?

You are correct sorry if I worded that poorly - I meant that family owned parks close for reasons other than corporate greed or profit driven decisions. ZDTs wasn't a victim of a large cooperation it was simply another factor such as the family wanting to retire and not finding a buyer. Some family parks can't survive hard financial times or other things happen like big competition moves in etc. My comment was only to encourage folks to value and visit their mid size and family owned parks because they might not be there 10-25 years down the road

Such it goes with mergers and combinations of chains. The lack of competition usually results in parks closing because the same management company has other properties in the area or just doesn't want to invest in an older run down property to get it up to par. I'm not blaming Herschend or Six Flags for making decisions I'm just saying that there is no "good chain bad chain" anymore. Everyone is guilty of poorly managing or closing properties at some point. As much as we all loved legacy Cedar Fair, we shouldn't forget that they closed geauga lake and basically sealed the deal for CGA. Six Flags has a bad track record of closing or mis managing parks but they aren't the only ones guilty of some of this stuff. Kings Island is thankfully never going anywhere but anyone who has a small to mid size park as their home park please enjoy it while it lasts. The current climate isn't great for some of those parks either because of cooperate decisions from the big chains or sometimes family owned parks close too for other factors - look at ZDTs

So maybe we actually don't want hershlend purchasing additional parks? Just think it's ironic that the company everyone praised to the sky is doing the same thing six flags is. What it comes down to is that any of these big corporation chains are not afraid to close parks they don't feel represents their goals. It always comes down to money. I'm not saying that independent ownership is always 100% fail proof as we've seen plenty of small independent parks close over the years but at least most family owners do care about their parks and fight for them till the very end. I love Herschend and think they have done a lot of good for some of their parks but it always makes me worried when we start to see closures like this. Maybe it is also a testament to the economy and that some people just don't go to smaller parks anymore

So due to extremely cheap flights on frontier, my partner and I met up with two of our friends in Denver for a short two day weekend trip to hit up what was originally supposed to be Elitch Gardens and Lakeside Amusement Park. However, turns out lakeside's last weekend was the weekend before we were scheduled to go so our group decided we would rent a car and drive out to Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. Elitch Gardens - I had heard horror stories about this place to be honest. Lots of closed rides, bad staff, bad food, anything bad you can think of, I've heard it about this park. Funny thing is while I'm sure others have had horrific experiences at Elitch, we had quite the opposite! So to be fair 2025 is the first time all over the coasters at the park have been operational for over 3 years. With the reopening of both Twister and Sidewinder we couldn't not go to the park and we were surprised that most everything was operating that day (the Drop Tower, breakdance, and water rides and water park were closed). We hit up all 6 coaster credits and walked away with mixed impressions. The half pipe and SLC had some pretty bad headbanging but their boomerang is definitely one of the better ones. The kiddy coaster was decent and the two big credits (twister and Sidewinder) were both running great! Sidewinder was my first shuttle loop coaster and I enjoyed the airtime on both drops and got a grey out on the loop. Twister was also fun albeit not quite as good as the Knoebels version but definitely the #1 coaster in the park for me personally. Elitch has a solid flat collection including a beautiful PTC carousel, an Eyerly Spider, a giant wheel with a fantastic light package, arguably the best troika we've ever ridden (got airtime on that thing), Tilt-A-Whirl, and a super rare Vekoma Wave Swinger. We also rode the MeowWolf Kaleidescope ride and it was probably the worst permanent dark ride I've been on to be honest. Overall the ops were not super fast but the dispatches were decent and everyone had a good attitude which goes a long way sometimes. The food and beverage places were all open and everything we purchased in terms of food tasted good. I actually liked Elitch Gardens so much that I'm afraid to go back because I don't want to ruin my wonderful memories of the park if in fact it sucks on other days or years. As I said, I was shocked when everything at the park went basically perfect because of how much hate I've heard about it through the years. Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park was one that I have mixed feelings about. First of all the pros is that it has a stunning setting and some solid flats including the Crystal Tower (indoor underground Drop Tower ride). The coasters however were not all they had been cracked up to be. The Cliffhanger coaster was the underrated gem of the park that we lapped about 4 times. Defiance unfortunately was quite a headbanger and very uncomfortable. The kiddy coaster was fine but the mountain coaster had a lot of trims and was definitely not as good as the ones down in pigeon forge. The park in general is pretty expensive but it does include cave tours which we participated in one. The tour we took was Kings Row and while pretty it was much shorter than some other tours I've done done at other caves. Even one of my friends said that it was a lame version of the cave tours at SDC. So all in all we are glad we visited Glenwood Caverns but none of us are in any hurry to return. Well that's a wrap on our short but sweet trip to Colorado. I have heard rumors that Lakeside might get the Cyclone running again next year so I might be heading back there for those credits in 2026!

As in they are working around the base? What type of activity are we talking about? I wouldn't think they would attempt to get it running this year at this point

To be fair we did not thoroughly explore the zoo section as we had approximately 8 hours at the park. From what I saw of it, I did look decent. The snake displays in the que for sidewinder Safari were a nice touch

I have been very busy and haven't gotten time to write up a trip report on my travels to the bay area parks over Labor Day weekend. My partner and I decided to spend the holiday weekend in the bay area as we wanted to get to California Great America before it possibly closes in the near future. More on that later. 8/30: Six Flags Discovery Kingdom was the first park in our list. We joined ACE Northern California for an informal meetup to celebrate the reopening of Flash Vertical Velocity. This was definitely my favorite impulse coaster and they were a great bunch of folks! Highly recommend you check out some of their future events! The Boomerang was closed this particular day and my partner rode Batman (s&s free spin) without me because I was dehydrated and not feeling well. I got all the other credits including Medusa which is arguably in my top 3 floorless coasters and Joker which was an ok RMC. Fun and a good fit in the park much like Storm Chaser at KY Kingdom. Definitely not SteVe or even Twisted Timbers. I did ride Kong (the SLC) and it was definitely one of the worst. It was relocated from opryland so that was the only significant thing about it. Superman (the original skyrocket 2) was running fantastic and didn't have the stupid comfort collars making it a much more enjoyable experience. Two hidden gems in the park are the flat rides Thrilla Gorilla and Monkey Business. Both are older zamperla flats and both kick butt. Definitely check them out. 8/31: In the morning we drove down to Gilroy Gardens for about 4 hours. The Morgan mine train coaster was pretty amazing. Definitely one of the better mine train coasters. We also loved the variety of vegetable and fruit themed flat rides. The train was cool considering it went through a conservatory area and provided transportation from the front to the back of the park. One ride that is not to be missed is the 1920/1950 auto car ride. This one has an electric rail but you still get it steer (much like Dollywood) the course is about 4 minutes long and has a tunnel on both tracks. Definitely one of my favorite car ride attractions. They also had a gorgeous Illions Supreme Carousel that we enjoyed very much. That afternoon we made our way to California's Great America. We had decided to buy fastlane because we knew we didn't have an entire day to spend at the park. We started with Berserker which is the Schwarzkopf Byrne kurve. It was fun but definitely one of the weaker Schwarzkopf rides I've experienced. We hit up railblazer which was definitely not as good as stunt pilot at Silverwood but still enjoyable. Next was demon which was running better than it's clone in Chicago. We rode the Drop Tower and the redwood rally rides before getting on Grizzly. We rode front row so we didn't notice any roughness but rather that the ride is just plain boring. Up next was Phyco Mouse which reminded me why it's a shame Arrow never built more of these. They have good laterals, smooth profiling, and a few airtime pops. Hope this ride finds a new home after the park closes. We then grabbed the skyride to the front of the park and got a ride on Rue le Dodge which is one of the better dogems style rides because it still has the old fast moving cars. Flight Deck is definitely the best of the older inverts. Such an underrated ride! Super forceful and I got a grey out for several seconds. We rode Mass Affect New Earth which was cool considering I never got to experience Days of Thunder at Kings Island. Next we tried to ride Centrifuge but it broke down and we were told it would remain closed the rest of the day. We grabbed the Woodstock Express credit and rode the kiddy breakdance (Peanuts Pirates) before moving back towards the front of the park for a ride on Orbit which was a stunning Schwarzkopf enterprise and the only one currently operating in North America. We snagged a ride on Patriot and then did a wonderful night ride on Gold Striker. We watched the fireworks as it was a special show for the holiday before heading out for the night. 9/1: On Labor Day we drove down to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk to spend about three hours at the park before our flight home. The Giant Dipper was running fantastic as were their other coasters, we enjoyed numerous flats including a rock o plane and their Looff Carousel with the brass rings and iconic clown. What surprised me about the boardwalk was their good dark rides. All 3 were fun and well executed in their own ways. The ghost blasters was better than any boo blaster ride I've ridden, the cave train had a Hanna Barbara feel to it, and then the haunted Castle ride did have some pretty grotesque animatronics and jump scares. All I'm all we enjoyed our short time at the boardwalk and definitely want to return in the future!

I know right! To be honest they could just be ripping out boo Blaster at the moment, no clue if there's any more progress on phantom or not

We're about to have SoB all over again. I don't wanna cast doubt on the woman if she really did get hurt but why are we just now hearing about it? There is unfortunately a trend in the amusement park industry that as soon as someone hears "free money" they all decide to get involved and try and get a piece of the pie. Again if you didn't seek first aid or go to a hospital, I don't think you should be entitled to anything. Just my opinion

Anyone noticed that the concept video for the new coaster has the conquistador in it which they just announced is going to be removed? Makes me wonder when they decided to pull the plug on their swinging Ship? Were the animation guys just having fun or was that not the original plan?

Cedar Point needs to bring back THE PIRATE RIDE! I believe the building is still there it's it?

Hey if M&Ms sponsorship keeps it running for a good many more years I'm all for it. I think it would look cool if the main ride was black and then there was a red, yellow, green, and blue pod on each arm

Yeah harassing the park and faking emails is definitely an issue... Don't blame the park there I hope that if they're not going to run it for haunt that they do take time to give it the proper treatment and get everything fixed on it so that it's good to go for a few years without anything major. I do think that a new color scheme might be cool. I mean black is classic but I do wonder if adding a second color on the pods could look nice.

Did someone get banned?

I unfortunately don't see the light at the end of the tunnel with how much their stock keeps dropping and their attendance is crashing too. Cutting events at parks where they aren't the most profitable is probably the right move unfortunately. Selling off land around some of the larger parks I think is smart. However they are in so much debt that I think history is probably going to repeat itself and they will be facing a bankruptcy situation sometime in the future. Big parks like CP, Kings Island, Magic Mountain etc with be safe but smaller or mid size parks may not survive. All I can say is, enjoy the parks while you can. I just visited CGA and actually really enjoyed it and it sucks that park is going to get closed. Six Flags America has sucked for a long time so I wasn't surprised nor too sad to hear it was closing but CGA was arguably the best park in the bay area market and it's unfortunate that they are going to lose it

Anyone got any monster updates recently?

Firehawk was more reliable than batwing! I think batwing is at the end of its service life and has been for the past 3 years just six flags America hadn't pulled the plug on it