bkroz

What's more engaging to a customer? "This year, Boomerang Bay has new slides and has been repainted!" OR "Kings Island's brand new and totally expanded Soak City water park!"

Both of Triotech's dark rides are also very, very different. Guardian is a roller coaster / dark ride hybrid with a very long interactive screen in an otherwise blank warehouse. Iron Reef uses Spider-Man style SCOOP vehicles (without the motion simulating base... rotating only) mixing screens with some physical sets. Neither, to me, is particularly engaging or wonderful. GYK, who prefers story and heart. One day when Iron Reef or Guardian is removed, neither will likely earn the admiration and beloved respect that rides like Phantom Theater do. Put simply, that's because one is far better than the other. Voila.

Retheming the water park to Carolina Harbor would be a nice nod to the historical Carolinas theme that the rest of the park was supposed to have. Certainly makes more sense than an Australian water park or a generic Soak City one. Each of the park's themed lands represents an era / area of the Carolinas. Then, Australia??

Certainly a far cry from the days when B&M was the "tried and true" manufacturer with standard lift chain and not much else!

Chalk this up as another example of "a new coat of paint does not mean a ride's here to stay." How long ago was it repainted in Raptor's colors? 2013?

As much as we don't want to admit it, we all have biases. The officer overseeing that bus stop may very well have gotten a little "itchy" as the bus stop fills with young people from what one might perceive as low income families, so a slight disturbance might've put him on guard. A lot of assumptions there on my part, but as to how this could happen and escalate so quickly, there you have it...

It seems to me that many officers today could use a refresher course in proportional response – the "punishment" fitting the "crime." After this seemingly endless wave of violence against predominantly black young people, I sense a thread connecting the incidents: a sort of god complex where a police officer thinks what he or she says is infallible. If someone talks back, take them to the ground. If someone won't answer your questions, put them in a chokehold. If someone runs, shoot them. No. If someone doesn't do what you want them to do, you don't get to stop them from running by killing them unless they pose an imminent danger to others. There's a legal process to follow, and mighty police officer doesn't get to impose vigilante justice on any who don't immediately comply. I can appreciate that officers put their lives on the line and must err on the side of caution, but there's this consistent and quick escalation where an officer "goes there" in a situation that doesn't require it, which in turn makes the confronted party feel bewildered and confused. Like, "is this really happening?" The two things at work here: First, we all should comply with officer demands. Second, officers need to re-evaluate. After being on the job for 5, 10, 15, 20 years you're likely to be pretty jaded and, put simply, think the worst of everyone. I get that. But while you should be safe and consider your own well-being first, you cannot enter every situation pre-escalated and enraged and frustrated. This officer tackled a 17-year-old for refusing to sit on a bench. Given the racial angle, we can ask if this is Birmingham 1963 (and it would be fair to ask, "Would the officer have reacted this way to a 17 year old white child in the same situation and saying the same things?"). Even not bringing that into it, this is a disproportionate response on the officer's end and a bad choice on the young man's.

Thank you! I've written probably a hundred features for that site, but the new line of in-depth recollections of forgotten attractions is one of my favorite. And of the four or five of those I've written so far, I think I'm proudest of Alien Encounter. What an attraction it was!

Despite what some imagine, none of us is rooting for the park to close. Why would anyone who adores this industry wish ill on a park that means something to even a single person? We all want Kentucky Kingdom to succeed. Even if we laugh and joke, I certainly don't wish to take any pleasure from watching the park's stumbles. But you're right - it's so easy to see the issues, and such a brilliant case study in this industry. We'll watch and listen carefully, and yes, we'll talk about it.

Quite a ways into my in-depth Alien Encounter feature: http://www.themeparktourist.com/features/20150310/30034/depth-retrospective-extraterrorestrial-alien-encounter?page=4

Disneyland tickets have never been taxed by the city of Anaheim. This year, that deal expired. Walt Disney Parks and Resorts held the discussion hostage, promising that they intended to invest $1 billion in a Disneyland Resort expansion BUT would have to re-evaluate their plans if Anaheim's City Council decided to begin taxing admission tickets. (Disney is not being noble here. Any dollar NOT charged by the city can instead be charged by Disney itself.) After rigorous and tumultuous discussions at the City Council meeting (including, among other things, city councilors being told by locals that they were "going to hell" for re-approving year-round fireworks permits for the resort), a 3-2 vote extended the tax-free status of ticket purchases IF AND ONLY IF Disney indeed promised to invest $1 billion in resort expansion to begin before the end of 2017 and to conclude before 2024. Should Disney not complete the expansion by then, the ticket tax ban will be forfeited. Alternatively, should Disney wish to extend the ban by 15 years, it will take an additional $500 million in expansion and improvements. The expansion would likely be largely infrastructural (including a new parking garage and at least one new hotel) plus large in-park expansion projects based on Star Wars and Marvel. Altogether, all of it makes you understand why Walt set out to create Disney World under the Reedy Creek Improvement District. And yes, it is widely believed that Disney was bluffing and would've done most of this anyway. Indeed, much of it is expected to be announced at this year's D23, which will take place next month in Anaheim. http://www.ocregister.com/articles/disney-670657-anaheim-city.html For our legally minded friends, here's the Agreement: http://www.anaheim.net/docs_agend/questys_pub/MG50462/AS50501/AS50506/AS50507/AI51120/DO51129/DO_51129.pdf

"Brilliant businessman Ed Hard revives crown jewel of Kentucky tourism; brings jobs, prosperity, peace to city." – Ed Hart If it's in the paper, it must be true!

Disney certainly doesn't like to get too close to controversy. A similar situation may have had lots to do with the closing of the ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter, if some are to be believed. And with Whoopi Goldberg's outspoken defense of Mr. Cosby – even in light of recent revelations – she's lucky that she's not in oodles of Disney attractions the way she once was. She could be spotted no less than three times at Disney California Adventure when it opened. It seemed to me then that the woman will do pretty much anything asked of her. Which was verified in The Muppets when she shows up to their telethon and asks, "I heard someone hear might have a job for me?"

Cedar Fair was always the king of redundant safety features (in this case, "redundant" meaning "backup," not necessarily "superfluous"). When Backlot's trains went through the strip shop and lost their doors, seat belts were added. I don't think that's a coincidence. (However, I think they're gone now...? Maybe they were taken next door to Diamondback. ) But this is a unique case. The ride already secures at the lap and ankles (in traditional Premier fashion). The collar is a clunky and – truly – superfluous element. Worst, it drastically impacts loading and unloading on a ride that's already incredibly low capacity for such a major park. If you ask me, they need to get the axe. Seems like a silly and unnecessary addition. It's possible we'll see them disappear (not because of this necessarily, but because of the loading time) but I wouldn't expect anything to change until next season. It would be quite a hassle to shut down the new ride to reconfigure the trains.

I'm sure it was LITERALLY an after-thought. "Hey, we could sell 3D glasses in the line!" The ride wasn't designed to be enhanced by them. And even if it was, charging for the "privilege" is... wrong.

The fluorescent colors of Boo Blasters are what make it work. Bright fluorescent reds appear to advance toward the viewer while fluorescent blues recede. It's gives a "trippy," disorienting depth to the scene. If you've been on Garfield's Nightmare, you've got the effect without paying $1 for it. It is sort of cool, but to charge for it is tantamount to highway robbery in my book. Especially since Boo Blasters wasn't thoughtfully created in the right color palates to make the scene look dimensional, so it wouldn't have the correct things receding / advancing. Rather, everything would just be prismatic. The same glasses on Phantom Theater wouldn't do much. They work specifically with fluorescent colors under bright / black lighting. It's that very specific "flat" fluorescent Sally dark ride color scheme that works. They were, for a time, sold in the queue for Disaster Transport, but only because they provided some interesting illusions in the queue (think of the old hand-print tunnel, fluorescent blacklight travel posters, etc). They didn't do anything on the ride, of course. THAT, I thought, was the epitome of the Kinzel era... especially once half of the queue was closed, and they continued to sell disposable 3D glasses and light-up wands in the line. In other words, it's not "WOW IMPRESSIVE AWESOME LIFELIKE" 3D like Spider-Man. It's just the flat painted sets looking sparkly and disorienting. ^ In this image, as in the Disaster Transport queue, the red handprints would float "out" toward you and the blue handprints would appear to float "back" into the wall, for a very trippy effect. Again, Garfield's Nightmare's splattered tunnels are another great example.

While I wouldn't choose the system myself, I would argue that it DOES make your vacation simpler. You pre-book your flight, right? You pre-book your transportation. You pre-book your hotel. You pre-purchase your park tickets. [if you want into a good, sit-down restaurant,] you pre-book your dinner reservations. Now, you pre-reserve a select number of attractions you'd like to be on. You probably wouldn't arrive and say "Oh, we'll figure out the hotel when we get there." Now, planning your DAYS is built right into that. Once you arrive, it's ALL taken care of. Smooth sailing. Many analysts argue that Walt Disney World is NOT primarily a theme park business, but a real estate business. What really matters to Walt Disney World is hotel occupancy; DVC membership; keeping people on-property to eat, shop, be entertained, etc. It's a physical walled garden where Disney earns your dollar coming and going. Think of MyMagic+ as the cornerstone of that. Arrive at MCO unsure of what to do or where to go. But look, Disney's Magical Express shuttle is waiting for you! With a wave of that gee-whiz MagicBand, you're on board. You won't see your luggage again until it "magically" appears in your Disney Resort hotel room. You don't even need a rental car thanks to Disney's foresight and generosity! Wow! Then that crazy gadget on your wrist lets you into your room, provides easy wallet-free payment, park access, dining reservations... And don't forget, you even got to reserve FRONT OF THE LINE PASSES for each day of your vacation FOR FREE! Just like you already knew exactly where you'd eat (dining reservations are made months out at Disney) and where you'd stay (same) and how you'd get there (same), you now know exactly which park to go to each day and what will be waiting for you at each! By the way, if you want to spend even a day at that resort down the road with that wizard, you'll forfeit all of this for 24 hours. No more easy access. No MagicBands. No convenient hotel. And if you INSIST on stepping out of Disney's garden, good luck finding a route. Your only option to get to Universal is probably going to be a cab. Have fun! MagicBand and MyMagic+ are part of the business plan. They tie you even further to Disney's geographical resort and the program's forced pre-planning is – like it or not – a way to simplify and solidify vacation plans well ahead of your visit. I don't doubt that many or most families like that.

I'm enjoying watching the police lights, billboards, and flame bursts from Backlot! Phew.

I do not understand how rides aren't built with more options for speedy evacuations. First, ride manufacturers MUST understand that rides WILL emergency-stop for any number of reasons. A bird lands on a sensor, it trips, and the ride shuts down. It's not an infrequent or rare occurrence. Fine! So why isn't there a way to quickly and safely restore the ride's operation, or at LEAST default it into an unload / evac program? (I'm not talking JUST about the Orlando Eye, either. Think WindSeeker. Why is the ride's default protocol in MOST situations to seize up, lock operators out of the controls, and strand riders? Should there not be a leveled response to stops? An ability to quickly analyze the issue and get the ride into a controlled evacuation mode?) And secondly, in that same vein, what if this actually WERE an emergency? What if a storm was approaching so the ride E-stopped? Or a fire? Or an electrical hazard? This again begs the question: why is the attraction's computer's FIRST response to lock everything and seize the ride, stranding riders? It's downright dangerous. A fire in one of the cabins at the top of the ride, so the computer shuts the attraction down and locks operators out for three hours. HUH? How is there no quick way to regain control? Basically, I'm no engineer. I just don't see why the computer systems powering these rides aren't able to logically progress through this in seconds. Ride e-stops. Analyze the reason. If the ride can safely operate (i.e. the e-stop wasn't triggered by a structural issue) then default into an evac mode.

Keeping in mind that I don't mind the Buzz rides at all: Toy Story deserves a better dark ride. It's sad to me that Toy Story will always be relegated to easy-to-replicate Buzz Lightyear blasting rides (Astroblasters or Space Ranger Spin depending on your coast) and Midway Mania blasting rides. Toy Story would make a wonderful full, classic dark ride in the Fantasyland style, or even in the new age, built-out style of Tokyo's Pooh ride. Separately, Tomorrowland also deserves a better dark ride. It's a shame that we're beyond the age where Take Flight or Adventure Thru Inner Space could be a functional balancing act to the land. But those kinds of experiences needed to be grandfathered in. If introduced from scratch, today's visitors would say, "Huh?" So Buzz Lightyear is a fine ride. But it's not the best representation of Toy Story or the best fit for its location, which is all a little disappointing. I'll probably always prefer plot over interactivity, though, so I could look at even the world's best interactive ride and say, "It would be better without the guns." The one exception that comes to mind is Tokyo's outstanding Monsters Inc. dark ride, which is interactive but wonderfully so. And no lasers OR score-keeping! Can you imagine?!

Triotech. Cedar Fair. Iron Reef. Is it Spider-Man caliber? No. DarKastle caliber? No. But it's within reach. Leave out the laser guns and I'll buy Platinum Passes for myself and all of my friends!

Some of us would be thrilled!

I fundamentally disagree. First, ours is (to my knowledge) the only one of the Boo Blasters where you can't see a targeting laser to show you where you're aiming. Once you've ridden a blasting dark ride with the laser, it seems absolutely absurd that you can't see where you're shooting on Kings Island's dark ride. Secondly, and maybe most importantly, the Omnimover ride system is detrimental. Every other Scooby-Doo ride at the Paramount Parks was built from scratch and uses the more traditional (and preferred) powered carts that stop in the loading station, then are dispatched one at a time into the ride. Your cart approaches a doorway, pushes through it (in classic dark ride style) and then is alone in a room as you blast away. Once you leave that room, props, targets, and scenery can reset as the next car enters. That allows scenes to make more sense and come alive just for you, compared to the Omnimover where a new group passes by the same scene every 4 seconds or so. For just one example, skip to about 2:00 in this video. Your cart enters the finale scene where Boocifer is standing under a stone arch covered in thorns. He says you'll never leave Bleakstone Manor, then you blast the target under him. When you do, he screams, sinks into the well, and disappears. Then, all of the room's blacklights turn off and are replaced by white light, which change the scene - the brambles turn into roses, the dark forest at night behind him becomes a bright, sunny field, etc. Then, as your car exits the room, Boocifer resets and the lights turn back to blacklight. It's a small, short scene but it shows you the benefit of the individual carts instead of the continuous omnimovers. Compare that to Kings Island's, where he just sort of screams continuously, because the cars pass by constantly. Which is necessary and can't be helped. Every other Scooby-Doo ride at the Paramount Parks was built from scratch. Ours reuses the Phantom Theater omnimover, doubtlessly to save money. Think of how different Boo Blasters would be if each effect seemed to happen ONLY to you... the cabinets that fall forward would be startling instead of annoying; the fog screen would be dark until you approached it, instead of hearing and seeing every car in front of you pass through, etc.

Three years, then. I can appreciate the scale of this project and just how dramatically it will change the look, feel, and size of the former Downtown Disney. As well, I won't go on to list how many things Universal had constructed and opened in the last three years (including a pretty sizable renovation of their own "downtown" district) because - while I prefer it - I can admit that Universal Orlando is working a completely scope. Think of Universal Orlando. All of CityWalk was built at once, alongside Islands of Adventure. All of the infrastructure is unified. The entire resort was master-planned to fit perfectly where it is and to expand in the ways it has expanded. CityWalk, for example, was built all-at-once to be an integral part of the resort's transit system, hotel system, parking system, and the mandatory entry to the theme parks. Brilliant design that's functional and united in the same aesthetic. The expansion from a single park and its parking lot to a built-out resort was instantaneous, NOT over many many decades. See also the Disneyland Resort. Same thing. Disney California Adventure, two hotels, Downtown Disney, the resort's parking system, the resort's transportation, and the Esplanade traffic center all came online at the same time. You can sense that it's all very brilliantly planned and purposeful, and all united in the same style and substance thanks to being designed and built all at once, and recently. Again, Disneyland and its parking lot were expanded and built out all at once, NOT over many many decades. Walt Disney World is different. Downtown Disney was operating on elements from the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and 00s. That whole resort is piecemeal technology and infrastructure from the last four decades. To install sweeping renovations there requires a lot more work and a lot more cohesion. That's not the case at Universal Orlando or Disneyland Resort where all of the infrastructure (from transportation to traffic flow to hotels) has the benefit of small size and all-at-once construction during the new millennium.

It was flawed from the get-go. The ride is very clearly the cheapest, quickest, most insincere "generic" version of Scooby Doo they could make, which was probably already the wrong step in a park where people were personally offended by "Flight Deck," "The Crypt," "Backlot Stunt Coaster," etc. But the one singular improvement / stand-out was the fog screen effect. And because of that effect, many of us thought, "Yeah, it's actually not bad! They did an alright job with it!" And I mean, I find it truly laughable that it literally lasted one or two weeks. Literally. Sounds like something we'd make up to be dramatic, but it was truly that short-lived. Like, after a week or two it broke or needed refilled with fog fluid or something, and we joked that it would probably never come back, and then it literally never came back. It's just funny.