PREMiERdrum

If the "home" position of the valve is closed, and the valve is properly sealed, I can see it working. My question sits with the financials: How much more expensive is this cup compared to the standard plastic beer cup? There is nasty beer... and there is great beer.

Great! Another reason for stadiums and parks to raise beer prices!

It's nothing personal. It's business. Those two had great intentions, but lacked the time an knowledge to properly execute the project. As I said before:

Exactly. Let's not forget, Rowling signed a letter of intent with Disney back in 2005, and park / miniland / ride concepts were produced. That's on the books. When Disney and Pixar decided to renew their partnership (which looked doubtful for a time), the financials of other large projects and initiatives came under scrutiny. At this point in the Disney/Rowling discussions, an entire Potter Park was being developed. Several on the inside have said that her demands were unrealistic in both financial and operational aspects, compared to the Disney business model. Rowling started whispering with the folks up I-4, Disney re-upped with Pixar, and the rest is history. I'd love to see what they were planning for the potter park, though.

It's never come out on a Disney stage, but it's out there.

There is much to what you say, but there is also an element of "sour grapes anyway" in Disney's rationalization now as to why they didn't get the Potter concept... BUT, the cramped walkways, tiny shops, and overall under-scaled area (relative to the park) lend credence to the imagineers claims. This wasn't Disney brass trying to save face by saying "we didn't want it anyway," this was imagineers expressing their concerns with the project. Concerns that appear to have been validated at IoA. I'll add here, too, that I think the concept is a much better "fit" for Universal than Disney. That potential tie-up always seemed a bit odd to me.

And it is my understanding that it was much more about the artistic control than the money... Disney brass didn't mind to pay the cash (if nothing else than to keep Universal from getting the rights), but Rowling demanded total control and exact replicas of the world she had imagined, which didn't gel with Disney's use of scale, imagination, and overall imagineering outlook. She wanted a literal recreation of the spaces. She got that, with Universal. Some Imagineers who worked up preliminary plans to show her have since said that they had major concerns about capacity and crowd flow with the scale and scope she was demanding. Those issues are now Universal's headache.

The problem with the Orlando property is that, new attraction or not, people come. Visiting Walt Disney World is still the ubiquitous family vacation for Americans and foreign tourists alike. Disneyland has a very local, vocal fan base of SoCal'ers and Annual Passholders that keeps the pressure on TDA for new attractions, as well as the meticulous maintenance of existing attractions. With Disney World, if Splash Mountain has missing effects and moldy boats, people still come. If the glass in the Haunted Mansion's ballroom scene is left dirty, people still come. Hell, the over publicized Yeti in E:E stopped working 6 months after the ride's opening and has been broken since, yet people still come. TDO has shown their commitment to add just enough, while spending as little as possible, to keep the parks from appearing completely stagnant. There are current, incredible concepts for each park just waiting for the greenlight... Carsland and the Monsters Inc coaster at DHS, Journey into Imagination redo at Epcot, and a Mysterious Island (Tokyo DisneySea) area for Animal Kingdom. It will be interesting to see if Rasulo's attention shifts to Orlando once California Adventure's extreme makeover is done.

While her heart may have been in it, the effort was not there. There was nothing insulting at all. The effort was poor, at best. Just look at the website and updates (or lack of updates). it comes off as internet spam. What judgements were passed without facts? The effort was not there, and the project failed. You can call it "passing judgement"- I call it the brutal truth based upon the facts given (or not given) by the fundraising website. If you have more "facts" that have not been released, please enlighten us. Being an enthusiast does not entitle one for fundraising. Where can I acquire the ability to tell how hard someone works simply by looking at their website? Perhaps not a direct reflection of how "hard" somebody works, but definitely an indicator of how seriously they take the project. And couple that with the fact that donors were not directly contacted or thanked after making their donations, and it's easy to see a lack of planning and foresight in their efforts. Nobody is doubting their intentions. They made the classic mistake of applying emotional justification to a business decision without the necessary planning, procedures, or protocol. They claimed to own the ride when they didn't. They didn't even make the full, agreed upon, down payment. They lost any ounce of credibility with me when they proclaimed "the ride could run today if it had power." The ride had been sitting for several years, and the trains were sitting, exposed to the elements, in the exact same spot on the midway where they were on the day of the auction.

I'm excited to see if this (likely Vekoma) rocking coaster system is better than the solidly "meh" eMotion system from Mack. I'm impressed with the changes to the plan... sometimes it helps to have a fresh set of eyes come in to look at a project. Spending that much cash on something that appealed almost exclusively to a reasonably small demographic was, IMO, stupid from the beginning.

Not so much wind to seek, but when it comes to hot air, Kinzel's full of it.

Exponentially so. Food sales have been solid, but get this: You are welcomed to bring your own food and drink into the zoo. They have also made a mint off of the 4 rides offered within the zoo boundaries: The Grant Carousel ($1 per), North America Train Ride ($1 per), Journey To The Islands Boat Ride ($1 per), and the Pony Ride ($3-$4 I think, and not a lame pony-in-a-circle, rather a nice winding wooded course). The POP wristbands for all the rides in Jungle Jack's Landing have also been selling very well to guests visiting both the Zoo and Zoombezi Bay.

LINK - Columbus Dispatch Columbus Zoo broke their annual attendance record (2nd year in a row), bringing in 2.37 million guests in 2010.

Four years of German in HS... and I didn't even notice that the "l" was there.

And, it's German for "Forbidden," which could lend itself to some cool back story.

The potential names, of which one or none will be selected. Hmmm... I like "Verbolten" The others are pretty weak though. "Black Forest Turbo?" That's almost as bad as "Cheetah Hunt."

The SpongeBob license for Action Theater's film comes from the producer (iWerks?), not directly from the property holder like the kids area.

+1 DoT was the best "fit" for AT I think... of course, the theater was designed for it.

Or, use the hardware as "spares" for other parks with the same setup, especially if another park's iteration is more popular. The building isn't visible from many ground-level guest areas, so it would be easy to gut the other half, send the seats and projector to another park, and let the shell wait there for another purpose.

And also remember that there were "discussions" as to Action Theater's status before the 2010 season began.

Eh... I'm not saying Action Theater isn't opening next year, and I'm not some tin-foil-hat-wearing paranoid conspiracy theorist. I minored in Public Relations. Things are said they way they're said for a reason. I'm sure they're looking at how many people rode AT in 2010, and how much it cost to keep the attraction running. All I'm pointing out is that the park's official comment on AT doesn't convince me.

Official statements are worded they way that they are, for very specific reasons. It's often just as important to read what they don't say in addition to what they do say.

"There are no plans to close Action Theater next year." 1. As far as Mr. Helbig is concerned, that may be true. PR folks are sometimes among the last to know. 2. They wouldn't have to "close" it in 2011 if it never opens in 2011. Just sayin'.

Concrete tinting was very popular among parks in the '70s, but it needed to be restained every 2 years or so. It didn't take long for parks to go back to the old standby asphalt.

I would guess that the concrete was deemed too expensive to maintain (especially with the addition of restaining it every few years), and was replaced with asphalt to simplify surface maintenance park-wide.