Aaron

PKI is in no way making The Beast slower, or worse, they are improving the ride quality. The first curve out of the tunnel was simply not adequately designed when The Beast first opened, and over the years, it has been showing excessive wear and tear. Because of the new brakes that they introduces last year, the ride is running faster than it has been running in 20 years, and they thought it would be best to re-engineer the first curve to handle these increased forces. By retracking the ride, that makes the ride smoother and more enjoyable. All wooden coasters that are properly maintained are retracked every few years... Son of Beast is basically retracked every offseason because of the extreme wear and tear there is. You are getting everything all wrong WildCat, everything PKI is doing is for the good of the ride, and to make it better.

I'd have to go for a Coney Dog in front of The Racer.

I believe that dark purple is a primer coat. If you look in the first photo, on the right side of the caste you can see there is a blueish paint on the building along with some grey. That's probably what the whole "castle" will look like... and Aaron LIKE A LOT!

Here's a summary of the information we learned this evening from Jeff Siebert: -Oktoberfest Gardens is being rethemed around Forrest Gump and will have a bar in the back. I think Oktoberfest has had some improvements as well. He said there will be two more new restaurants at PKI (my guesses are the rumored Chinese restaurant replacing All-Star Cafe and a Subway restaurant coming). -PKI has completely redone the first major turn after the drop on The Beast in order to handle high speeds better and the ride has been retracked. -Son of Beast has received new restraints which will hopefully be much more comfortable. It should be open opening day and it doesn't have new tunnels this season... -The Beast and SOB clearing Jeff was talking about at the end of last season was him just messing around. They simply just cleared some brush. -Scooby looks very nice so far and Jeff says the ride itself is incredible and is set to open with the park. Check out the photos here -Delirium (Huss Giant Frisbee) and SpongeBob 3-D (F/X Theatre film) are the two other new for 2003 rides, which most of us know about. SpongeBob will not open until May, but Delirium is set to open with the park. -The Action Zone pathway has been widened and the entrance to Delirium is location on the direct right side of the path and the queue will go around back of the ride. I think it will be a covered queue. -Top Gun will be back to two train operation. -The new PKI book will be available at the park for the 2003 season, they will be selling for about $12, and they are expecting another book to come in 2004. -There was mention of a "focus" on theming for TRTR, FOF, and Adventure Express, they are trying to start improving the theming on their older rides, like for this year, they have made some aesthetic improvements on AE. -Marquee/message board PKI sign in the front of the park, the fountains, and other things around the park have been rehabbed/overhauled or have aesthetic improvements. The PKI logo on the sign hasn't been changed. -The PKI.com Webcam should be up as soon as they can. Currently the PKI.com webmaster is trying to get several park webcams placed throughout the park for the website. That's about it! I would like to thank Jeff for being so cooperative this evening, and we're looking forward to chatting with him again!

If there are going to be any parks in the US affected by the war, it will be the major parks like Disney or Universal that will be affected. People travel from all over the country, and even the world, to visit Disney and Universal parks. The majority of PKI's attendance is from the midwest, so I think PKI will be fine and dandy and we have nothing to worry about.

I am not sure about the status of Scooby, but I do know that Delirium started testing earlier this week. We will have pictures up ASAP.

Remember, this is an UNOFFICIAL PKIU day. It's great that you guys are getting together, but this is not officially sponsored by PKIU (and I will not be there). Currently we are in the process of possibly having a PKIU day at PKI this year, but that all depends... we might have to wait until next year.

OK, listen... there will be no coaster for 2003. If you are looking forward to a coaster, you'll have to wait probably until 2004. I guess it's these dreaded off season days where we're itching to get to PKI make us all start coming up with crazy ideas!

While Intamin Impulses are fun, they aren't very reliable and don't have the greatest capacity. I believe that PKI's next coaster will be a B&M. If PKI wants the best, they have to go w/ B&M. They are the most reliable coasters out there, they are the safest, and they have extremely good capacity. B&M just seems like an extremely good fit for PKI IMO.

We do not know for sure whether or not PKI will be getting a B&M, I just thought it was interesting that ACE News only mentioned B&M in their short little blurb about PKI. ACE News does not put out "false" information, they would most likely lose their relationships with the parks if they did so, and because of their relationship with parks, they usually know all about their future additions, they just obviously cannot reveil what those additions may be until announced. So in conclusion, we don't know for sure whether or not we will be getting a B&M, nor do we know if we'll be even getting a coaster. I just found this article interesting, and it makes you wonder if we will be seeing a future attraction at PKI from B&M. There's no reason why we should be getting into fights. It's fun to speculate, let's just not blow this out of proportion.

If I remember correctly, usually PKI would announce it's coasters early in the season. Son of Beast was announced in May... so who knows. Maybe they would like to announce before they started clearing land and pouring footers.

I would believe when it says that it wasn't their first trip to PKI, that's most likely that they were there on previous occassions to get a good idea of where the coaster would be placed, and to check out the land, and other fun surveying stuff like that.

I just received the latest issue of ACE News in the mail today, and here's a little something I found interesting... and I quote, ... and they follow in the next "Speed Bump" by adding... Hmmmmmm......

Thanks Shags! Man, Scooby Doo is really going to be one great ride! I wasn't really thinking much about Scooby when first announced, but now, I think I am looking more forward to it than Delirium!

Thanks for the awesome "Diary" Sparky!

Beastfreak, now that you mention it, a scary thought comes to mind when one of my friends decided to wear a thong over his shorts in the mall.... not a good mental image. Where he got the thong, I have no idea... I don't think I want to know, lol. OK, that's enough talk about the thongs.

LOL. Hey, ya gotta have something for everyone!

Yes, the PKIU eShop is new. You can get anything from t-shirts, to even boxers or a thong. As teenageninja said, all proceeds go towards keeping this site alive and well. Click Here to start shopping! EDIT: We are now selling PKI 2003 Calendars! Each month has a different high quality photo taken by PKIU photographer, Chris Tyson. Visit the PKIU eShop to order your 2003 PKI Calendar for only $17.99!

We're looking at maybe within a few weeks. Since I'm sure not all of you have mIRC, I'm looking for a good IRC Java chat applet for everyone who just wants to chat through their Internet browser. Aaron Spriggs (AZ Kinda Guy) and I tested an applet out the other day, and we think that's what we'll use. The only problem is that I'm going to have to dish out $50 for it, but it's worth it.

I have been discussing putting up a PKI Unlimited.com chat room on PKIU with the staff, but I want to know what you guys and gals think. If we were to have scheduled chat events on the site, would you participate?

Sure it would be awesome to see Tomb Raider have a longer ride duration, but you have to remember that if PKI was to reprogram the ride so it was longer, they would have to record an entirely new sound track for the ride. That would cost big bucks. But who knows, it may happen sometime.

I honestly do not this PKI's food prices are nearly as bad compaired to any Six Flags park. I mean, $8 for a freaking slice of pizza!?! Give me a break.

I'm in no way a PKI employee, but when it comes to ruthless guests, some of the non-ACEer guests can be quite evil whenever I do the ACE walk-back. I mean they scream, cuss, and yell at everyone on the walkback asking why we get to ride the ride before everyone else and cut them in line. Most of the time it's pretty darn funny, but one time on the Tomb Raider walkback I had one guy threaten me. Pretty freaky.

I really wasn't interested in Scooby until now. Those construction photos show that this is really going to be one fantastic ride. That picture of Jeff is pretty funny, maybe he's trying to scare something, or trying to be just plain weird. lol

I believe Drop Zone at PKD will have a taller drop, at 305 feet, while DZ @ PKI's drop is only 264 feet (but the actual tower height, including the pole at the top, is 315 feet). I might have to check into this more, but I remember seeing somewhere that the tower heights for both DZs will be the same. Can anyone back me up on this?