silver2005

I'm not familiar with Carowinds, so what is that structure Fury 325 dives under near the far end of the course? I rather like the colors. It looks like the colors of a coaster that should be slapped somewhere in Florida rather than Carowinds, and at 325 ft, it'll be quite the eye catcher with that bit of neon green towering above the park.

^Banshee looks like its made of licorice in that picture.

I have a running theory that SFMM is just in a location not conducive for running wooden coasters. Its practically in the middle of a desert. I would imagine air that dry plus the heat must be torture for wooden coaster track. I do agree that most of Six Flags' GCI collection isn't that great. The Roar duo are earlier models, plus the SFA one runs with PTC trains, which, as we've seen on early GCI's, aren't a good combination. Although, I preferred PTC's on Wildcat at HP, but that's just me. After that its Apocalypse which I believe suffers from being in a desert, and American Thunder at SFStL which is decent.

What's worse is that Six Flags and RMC market the Topper Track model as wooden coasters, which they clearly aren't if you study the track design closely. I kind of fear for actual wooden coaster producers like Gravity Group and GCI having to compete with a wooden coaster knock off which it spreading like wildfire in Six Flags.

WindSeeker but only because of the prospect of being stuck for hours and hours a la Knott's Berry Farm.

Well, if Kings Island were bought by today's Cedar Fair, that means Paramount would have owned the park in the intermediate time. I for one wouldn't have liked to see how the park turned out especially the way they handled their last few ride installments. More so, the rides we could have potentially lost. Makes me shudder thinking about it.

I was hoping for something cool to be done with Mission: Impossible. There's a ton of stuff you could pull off with that theme, especially pulling inspiration from the recent movies. I'm also very surprised more wasn't done with Star Trek. Other possible movies of interest- - Beverly Hills Cop (the first 2 at least) - Friday the 13th for Fear Fest - Grease (possible show) - Godfather themed restaurant? - Indiana Jones (I know AE kind of counted, but I mean among the chain)- - Braveheart

The way Kentucky Kingdom has been handling their business reminds me of this.

Wow, I was expecting something along the lines of Dollywood's Firechaser Express. This looks incredible. Bravo Herschend and SDC.

Where in the park are they placing it? EDIT: Nevermind. I found it'll be located at the far end of the park by their Whip ride in the Midway America section.

I had a rather annoying encounter with the Banshee crew last Saturday night. If I didn't know better, I'd of guessed they ingested a lot of Red Bull and caffeine before their night shift. The person on the microphone was talking way, way too fast and the crew was just annoying. They stood right by the cars as they unloaded and loaded, rushing guests to get on and off. I felt they were breathing down my neck as soon as the gates or restraints opened. Some of the crew gave creepy responses, either being dead silent and giving awkward stares or giving off these weird squeals like they were a 10 year old that had too much Mt Dew. It was almost robotic how they were acting.

Yeah, I didn't like the overcast. I thought some of these pictures wouldn't turn out as well as they looked really bright at the top of the picture. They turned out darker than I would have liked, even after I tried to get the settings to get brighter shots. I like how the sun peeked out in that one photo I posted of Racer from Oktoberfest.

What kind of omen is it when you hear "NOW YOU WILL PAY" after your proposal?

Sheesh, did I just happen to go to all the wrong stands and/or people at the wrong time on Saturday?

Pictures from 8/9/14

And for the record, the 2 stalls I went to prior to going to Guest Services were Coney Refreshments and Auntie Anne's on I-Street. I gave up after GS as I figured it was a park-wide thing. Also, that theorized conversation is almost word for word the way it went.

^Well something isn't right then, there's a lot of miscommunication across the park concerning them, especially if Guest Services of all departments is clueless as to their existence.

Don't you know? The Lemon Chill guys know everything.

Well....for Beast to be longer, it needs more wood, so it kind of makes sense. Then again, I'm trying to decode stuff from the GP, so that may be a problem in itself.

Trip Report- 8/9/14 I got a bit of a later start for this visit. Wanted to sleep in an extra hour or so, but I did manage to get in 1 ride on Banshee and Bat right before ERT ended. For this visit, I went with a Fast Lane Plus. I was a bit worried if I was getting it with how the crowds would turn out as there were scattered t-storms in the forecast We got a small drizzle after lunch, but that was it. Crowds were typical for a Saturday, though most things were walk-ons until about noon when crowds just exploded. Did get on Flight of Fear early too as it wasn't on FL. I took it pretty easy today. I didn't ride a lot on a few particular rides, but I did manage to ride a good variety. The only 3 I didn't get to in the non-Planet Snoopy areas were WWC (wait nearly to the bridge over the train), Scrambler, Monster and Dodgems. I have to admit, I miss Shake, Rattle N' Roll. If its up next year, I'm making sure to make up for the rides I didn't have this year. I learned today that the drink wrist bands are no more. Apparently there was mis-communication between the food department and management and they weren't supposed to exist. Being a fan of the Coke Freestyle Machines, this makes me sad. I had a few interesting points of the day. Around lunch and dinner, I went around to do a bit of a photography session. I approached it somewhat differently. I know we have plenty of photographers that zero in on the rides, which is fine, so I paid attention to little details and park atmosphere. I hope it comes across in the photos I'll soon be posting. I particularly like the ones I got on I-Street as well as a nice overview of Rivertown and Coney Mall. Near the end of the day, I pretty much rode Banshee, Racer, Vortex, DB and Beast for 2.5 hours since this was my last visit until mid-October by the looks of things as UC and band own my soul until then. In the evening, I got to ride both Beast and Diamondback with Gary Coleman, who is up to over 10,200 btw. Turns out he actually does ride stuff other than Diamondback. Then something kind of epic happened. I barely made it on Beast before they shut it down for the fireworks, and with 9 minutes to spare, I power walked from Beast to Banshee with about 2 minutes to spare for 1 last Banshee night ride. The fireworks started as soon as we hit the final brakes. The timing for that couldn't have been any better (along with a full moon illuminating the track on Beast, it was a GORGEOUS night ride). Anyways, that'll do for my trip reports for a while. I'll post my pictures sometime before Wednesday. I might do a few TR's on interesting band events. I absolutely will do one for the OSU trip with pictures. EDIT: I also caught the 80's show today. This suffers from the opposite problem the Boyz show did using key. They keys matched the songs, but the singers had to make octave jumps to compensate, usually going down octaves, which some couldn't hold up. There were a few songs taken way too fast as well. The singer for one of the Madonna numbers tried to growl her notes country music-esque which really ruined it.

I found a point of conflict involving the park selling the all day drink wrist bands. I have several versions of an explanation, but the most common one was the food vendors weren't supposed to sell them in the first place, they got in trouble or something of that sort. The lady I talked to at Guest Services didn't even know they were being sold, she was adamant they didn't exist for this year. So it sounds like somethings didn't match up between the food department and upper management concerning them, thus they are now not being sold anymore.

Technically that is true, in a weird, bad grammar way.

What's your point?

Going to Kings Island, likely for the final time before October, this Saturday and I will be going with a Fast Lane Plus.

Canada's Wonderland will be removing SkyRider after the end of this season. From their Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/CanadasWonderland/posts/10152349914303924