silver2005

^Actually, I could see KD getting it. CF wasn't underneath sending one to Carowinds after all.

^What, you don't want to see CF copy the SFNE model of slapping two Boomerang style rides in the same park? Also, CP and KD don't have a Boomerang model.

Was the Emporium split up into so many shops back then or was that set of buildings still one big store? Also interesting to see that what is now a store just to the right of the entrance used to be a lost and found.

I think I still call it Amazon Falls from time to time.

Speaking of Vekoma, I think a CF park (or at least some park) may be getting a Boomerang seeing that Knott's is taking theirs down piece by piece instead of being violent in taking it down.

I kind of given this some thought, but I think KI is going for a bit of a pseudo-Beast vibe with Mr T. Once all those trees grow in, it will be difficult to see the layout from the midway with nothing but the first 2 hills in sight. Obviously you'll see it well from the WWC queue, the flume and the train, but it still has a bit of that aura about it without it seeming to have too much in common with Beast in terms of aesthetics.

^Notice that B&M's design starts you in flight mode and spends little time where the riders are on their backs. That's what Vekoma needed to do.

^Will Ride of the Valkyries or pirate music be involved?

^That's still a shot against Vekoma and their ability (or lack thereof) in improving the design and show that they can make it reliable.

^Firehawk and Nighthawk are notorious for downtime issues.

I find reactions to Vekoma's to be a bit of an over reaction when they're given a negative light. I have had a few headbanging rides on Invertigo, but I've also had pretty smooth rides on it. I agree about the Disney Vekoma's being smooth (I've only done BTMR). Hershey's Sidewinder, a traditional boomerang, wasn't too bad, even with its original train. T3 was funky in how didn't have consistent forces, but I liked the layout. My thing about Vekoma is I wish they did more custom work. It seems most of their resume are their standard designs. While useful for newer and smaller parks, they don't really have much to offer for bigger parks. Their flyers and all their inverted boomerang models are quite unreliable on top of that.

I imagine that early queue will look even better once those trees grow in.

^Yeah, the point being that I thought this was more of a way to update, modernize, and give new coasters new life, thus spreading out the lines. Putting VR on coasters already immensely popular seems kind of unnecessary and arbitrary.

Without breaking the 11th commandment of course.

This probably tells you how much I eat Skyline in the park, but do they have hot sauce in the park's Skylines?

Didn't SFNE slap VR on their Superman hyper coaster, aka, one of the highest ranked steel coasters in the world?

Question regarding CP dining- are the on-property restaurants like DQ and Quaker Steak as good as their off property counter parts? Also, do I get Platinum discounts at those restaurants?

There's a bit of space between Racer and Flight of Fear that they could use as well.

So here's how I'm gonna handle Pittsburgh. I'll book the hotel and get admission to Kennywood now. I will wait until the week before, or at least when I'm comfortable that the weather is accurate, to get the ticket for the Reds @ Pirates game I want to attend. The Reds' series in Pittsburgh I'm going for is August 1-3, so the actual trip will be leave on the first, do whatever combination of Reds and Kennywood on the 2nd and 3rd, and return to Cincy on the 4th. Ideally I wanted to do the game first, but with Kennywood's early closing stuff, weather will be the determining factor in when I do both things.

I get why SIX is doing this because money, but how does a 400+ ft free fall tower attached to the side of the world's tallest coaster not hold your attention enough to warrant using VR?

^Yeah, I'm nervous about booking that week because weather can screw that up a ton (along with the Reds/Pirates game). I may book the hotel early, but I'll wait to buy the ballgame ticket until the week before or even the day of if I can help it (hopefully, the Pirates are mediocre at best this year). I nearly got royally screwed over by weather during my HW trip last year as well.

You guys are making me miss the trams.

That is, unless you're malem.

Hotels all booked for Michigan and northern Ohio! I did contemplate skipping a night on a hotel stay, aka, pulling a malem and going straight from my house to MIA, thus, only staying the one night in Muskegon, but then saw I'll be on the road for roughly 7 hours, so that's a big nope. Oh, and my hotel in Port Clinton on the shore of Lake Erie. Just out of curiosity, given the nature that MIA is Cedar Fair's smallest park, are there any types of policies regarding early closure for low attendance or other such not well known park policies I should be aware of (for Kennywood, too)? EDIT: Day by Day Itinerary of Trip June 18- Leave for Muskegon June 19- MIA June 20- go from Muskegon to Port Clinton June 21-22- Cedar Point June 23- back to Cincy

I can't really say I had many funny memories working in food, but there were the hardships. Anytime leaves clogged the drain during a rain storm, the stand (RT Potato Works) flooded with about an inch of water on the floor. Same would happen at the very back of WINGS' (now Reds HOF Grille) kitchen (I closed there a few times, even on weekdays I didn't get out until well after midnight). Also, from what I remember, the storage areas of RT LaRosa's weren't kept up very well (we got rotated to Happy Days as well and on rare occasions, Festhaus, that place is the worst place to close just on its sheer size alone). We did have a few incidents involving customers. Example, the park had a system where if you spotted anyone drunk ordering alcohol, you had to report it to the food department HQ and describe the person where it was told to every stand that served alcohol. We've also had lost and stolen credit cards, plus fake $50 and $100 bills. The worst time of day was while the water park was closing and that train rolled in and gave us instant midway crossing lines (at least on weekends). We also got a lot of trays of food from WINGS and LaRosa's for people who wanted the big fries with it. I also saw that not a lot of people fully finish those fries. Lots of salt, pepper, ketchup and malt vinegar everywhere as well. It's amazing to see how messy people can be with a simple cup of fries (this is before they added cheese and chili cheese fries). Also of note is that they used to have registers which didn't print out receipts unless you paid with a credit card, so memorizing orders was a bit of a chore (you'd be surprised, though, our stand also sold popcorn shrimp and chicken along with a chicken sandwich). The worst part of it was the fact I was working there in 2004 when they were slowly taking out Antique Cars within a stones' throw of the stand which was heartbreaking enough, but one day, they hit a sewer line which sent a pretty strong smell through I-Street around the Eiffel Tower and Carousel, and half of RT and CM.