BoddaH1994

It's a long story, but to give you the short end of it, Bret had to make a business decision for his own reason, and he thought this would be best.

The flats could always be a reasonable distance off the midways. Granted, you'll get a fair amount of noise from them, but trees would deter the noise.

If you really have some sort of interesting photo, send it to one of the staffers. Also, you may or may not be a full time employee, I really don't know, but if you were I don't think that you'd be on here telling us, even in general, what's to come in 2007. Sorry.

I know it's a little too small for this, but I'm thinking that it would be great to put some flats in an area similar to this... just imagine having the sanctity, beauty, and shade of the Paramount Story throughout a whole section of the park.

You make a very good point. Unfortunately, as good as this anti-smoking deal could possibly be for the health of America, it's also a foot in the door for society to put a stop to a lot of the little evil pleasures of life.

I totally agree. The worst part would be trying to market the ride as a new attraction, sounds like a flop waiting to happen. There would be a lot of patrons who would go to the park and realize that it's the same old Top Gun and would be disappointed. The best way they could do it is kind of how they do the FX Theatre movies, announce the big attraction, and throw that one in as the "mystery 3rd attraction" or however they did Spongebob in 2003. Of course, this would be a VERY expensive emulation of that.

A couple of the things mentioned above are in the PKI boneyard.. or at least we last year to the best of my knowledge.

I disagree.. I think that if they do add an area behind The Racers, they'll put in one or two rides as part of the expansion and add food, shops, games, etc there in order to 'fill' the area, but allow a lot of room for expansion. At that, I think it would be heavily themed in order to give it an identity that is seperate from the rest of CM.

This has been a problem at the park for years. Bring your Off spray next time.

I highly highly doubt that Top Gun's going anywhere. On another note -- for those of you who have been around the block for a couple of years now, you may remember at the first CDBB construction tour in November of 03 that Siebert mentioned that they had looked into getting floorless trains for TG and it was just too expensive. Sorry Klocke, they beat you to it.

I think we'll leave this open so long as it remains tasteful... Here are my two cents -- No, PKI is not cheap. PKI is one of only a few parks that can say that every year of its existance, it has done some sort of expansion. That is definitely something to be proud of. I think the park really does a good job pleasing as many people as they can at once and that accounts for a lot of their success. On the other hand, if you're going to be empathetic to the individuals who aren't season passholder and drive two and a half hours to get to the park, if someone is willing to travel long and far to go to the park and dish out $42.99 just to get in and at least $9 to park, I don't think that it's entirely too much for them to expect certain things out of Paramount Parks. I mean, I realize that there are certain constraints like budget that affect this and it's not simply too lofty a concept for PP to pick up on, but if a family travels long and far to visit the park and in the end dishes out hundreds of dollars in a single establishment in just one day, I think they should expect respectful employees, rides that work as well as they should, a clean and well-kept park, and most directly towards PKI, a full experience in themed attractions. To be honest with you, I'm sure the management of PKI would give anything to be able to do a $100 million expansion like Disneyworld, or be able to paint half the park as needed, but for the money that they get, they really do a great job. Ryan

The fire didn't really have any explosion noises that I could hear, but it did make the eerie hissing noise that a burning gas line would make, so it sounds pretty cool regardless. Now the helicpoter on the other hand... I don't know if it's the actual choppers or a sound effect, but it sounded VERY realistic.

Yeah -- same reason that a Camero has the same seat belts as a Cavalier... it's a manufacturer's standard.

If any download link doesn't work for you on the site, right click on it and go to "Save As".

Click here to see a brand new video of IJST being tested on Saturding including rare shots of pyros!

Click here to see a video the the Italian Job's pyro testing on Saturday/put Joe in his place. :-)

He's right, it's just primer... it'll be greenish-blue soon enough.

Don't forget to stop by Duhlee sometime, but I usually get sent since I'm only an honorary member of the crew.

Nah, doesn't sound like it. Dane's alter ego has super strength and can fly and stuff.

In all honesty, I want a big steel giant as much as the next guy, but think of it this way: What more can we really do with coasters anymore? We've seen almost every element physically possible to man at some park at some time, so now when they build a new coaster, it's almost a matter of "same stuff, different day". It is for this reason that I am content with the concept of IJ. I think that the themeing will cause a really unique experience that you can't find anywhere else... (well, maybe PCW, but you know what I mean!) The new innovation is themeing... putting you in a ancient tomb, an LA chase sceen, a haunted castle, etc when in all reality, you're in the little farm town of Mason, OH. This form of entertainment really knows no bounds. I mean, think of it this way: what does a coaster do anymore? Granted, you have your launches and things like that, but for most coasters, they tow you up a hill, send you down, you go through some elements and its over. There's really only so much you can do from that point on... I see IJ as the beginning of a new era. This era is going to be the merger of themeing and thrills. No only will you be shot through turns at amazing speeds, or have great air time, but you will have a memorable experience with a story behind it. Let's just hope that when the revolution happens, they keep the themeing up.

I like that much better... I only got to go to Fearfest 3 or 4 times this year because Saturdays and Sundays are really inconvenient for me...

LOL... I wonder if he's even met Dane yet.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... It's unlikely that FoF will be rethemed to Soundwave. More than likely, they'd build FoF clones at the other Paramount Parks with different themes.

Good idea... anyone want to pitch some contests?

The park was open to gold passholders only, but the official opening day is Saturday, April 9th. There is no official word as to whether or not IJST will be open to the public.