silver2005

Hersheypark and Knott's Berry Farm say hi. I think Banshee and Orion both are begging for another ride to interact with, especially Banshee and the currently unused SOB station.

^I take enthusiast talk with a grain of salt anymore. I believe in the 'those who know don't tell and those who tell don't know' approach. A lot of enthusiasts are 20-somethings who aren't privy to the whole picture of things and cherry pick one or two things to try and predict something without taking in the wider picture. I'll believe it when I see it, but I'm not putting much value into predictions with the initial high emotions a lot of enthusiasts are having at this early moment in the merging process. Heck, I don't even consider MIA or Great Escape on the chopping block yet either, it's too early to predict anything like that IMO.

I try not to post POVs that aren't from sources like Coasterforce or TPR as I don't know if they're done legally.

^I don't buy that. I drove that distance last summer doing my trip and SFA definitely has the DC and Baltimore markets to pull from comfortably. DC and Baltimore to KD, HP and DP are a hike. I'm taking the patient approach to all this. I'm nowhere close to the doom and gloom approach a lot of the KI fanbase is taking, especially knowing that CF higher ups are still mostly in control of things. I'm choosing to be cautiously optimistic for now.

I haven't been to the park this season, but upon looking at a Diamondback POV from what appears to be this season, there appears to be earth work or something around the Crypt building, the ground looks rougher around the building than normal. Anything going on there?

^Dat weather today.

I prefer Millenium Force. I like that you get to enjoy its high speed with areas lower to the ground passing trees and other things at 80+ mph. Orion feels too similar to more typical hyper coasters with some extra height. Orion is still a good coaster, its just I want a little more out of gigas with the added speed they have to play with. I like a balance between higher elements and low to the ground elements. For me, Fury is the creme de la creme of gigas, and for me, MF is the next best example which does with Fury does (which, I have high hopes for Leviathan whenever I get to CW). I do prefer Orion to P305 as the KD ride, while nice, focuses too much on sheer intensity for me. I prefer a giga be a scaled up hyper coaster over the hyper-intense focus of P305.

^Add onto that a certain other Arrow once at the park had structural issues due to taking unbanked turns too fast with heavy coaster trains.

Count me happy about a potential new water coaster. I was hoping we'd see one once HW had a few.

Hershey and Knoebels flood all the time and their wooden coasters in those areas prone to flooding are still doing good.

@TombRaiderFTW That feels like a very Dan Snyder move when he was at SIX to essentially patent/trademark everything.

You also have to take into account what Paramount/Viacom was trying to do with the parks, they were trying to make them more like Universal Studios parks. I think all 5 would have lost that more traditional seasonal park feeling and turned into directionless monstrosities. I'm glad Paramount left. Paramount couldn't have saved SOB if they tried. From what I know (I can't pull up sources since they're all archived into the ethers of the internet), everyone approached to fix SOB turned it down. Kinzel and his ego were so desperate to get it back they chose to do it in-house. I'm surprised Gerstlauer even approved the use of their trains on it.

There are easily climbable fences around old SOB queue that are low to the ground and near the service road that goes towards the batwing.

^The parks you listed do a LOT of things better than KI. Sub $200 is a steal for a DW season pass.

Another fear of getting a new coaster in the current park climate, especially with the merger upcoming, is it might mask the faults of the park and they could use that distraction to further undercut other things.

^Them being thorough about loose articles sounds like proper training, not the ride crew not telling them anything. I fail to understand the problem with a ride op trying to be more thorough about guest safety.

People can still use pockets to get things loose articles such as glasses into line, then wear them while boarding, which, ops should be rechecking for that if that's the case. Its not like they do on Kingda Ka or other SIX rides where they even check your pockets. I've had to be reminded by the line separators before about sunglasses on the rides that check at the queue entrance and I immediately obliged.

^You know that Banshee ops check for loose articles at the beginning of the queue just like Mystic Timbers and Orion, right? Sounds like they're just doing their job.

July 14, 2004: Coaster shut down after debris hits riders (beaconjournal.com)

I did a bit of eyeballing certain water coasters in that space, and while you can't exactly do anything on the scale of Wildebeest at HW, you could do a smaller one like HP's. You can always go above the path in sections for one in that spot as well. silver2005, having wishful thinking.

I know you don't exactly need a lot of room for water park additions, but with the proximity to the power lines, I suspect its nothing too big. I say that because I want SC to get a water coaster at some point, and the I don't think the area in question would fit one.

Of course not, but I just see a lot of similarities to past failures with record breaking rides that got too ambitious and to that of how X basically ruined Arrow. I've seen this story before.

I have major concerns about this. First, I hope they have a 700 ft crane to help the train over the biggest hill if it were ever to stall and it has no way of saving itself. Overheating is also a concern being it's in a desert, hitting those speeds, and the wear it has on the LSM's. The spoked road wheels may help, but the upstop and side wheels aren't spoked. Also, how would you like to get stuck on the block on top of the cliff for long periods? I imagine there will be a service road to get up there. I also hope the maintenance crew likes walking nearly 3 miles of track in those conditions. I mean, I hope it does well, but good googly moogly does this have a lot of things that can go wrong.

As someone utterly fascinated by amusement park history, the specific history of all the coasters that have crossed the 100 mph mark comes to mind. All of them have had major issues getting open and/or staying open. Superman: The Escape and Tower of Terror had major power issues due to LSM's beings so new and the weight of the cars, I read Superman required its own line off the California power grid which was mind boggling at the time. For the S&S attempts- I'm not privy to Dodonpa but I'm sure it had issues given how Hypersonic went and has been dismantled, and Ring Racer was blowing air compression tanks. TTD and Kingda Ka- cable snaps, overheating wheels, the TTD incident which led to TT2 Formula Rossa launches straight into trims because even with its giant layout, the curves are still too tight for the necessary G force requirements to riders, also requires goggles to ride due to sand particles flying into your face at 150 mph I'm really, really skeptical about Falcon's Flight. I think it has the potential to be to Intamin what X was to Arrow. I don't think the industry has really got a lock on how to do coasters over 100 mph.

It's hard to see in those photos, but some other parts around the staging area suggest gunpowder black supports so far (could be wrong, but nothing else to go by currently). I was initially guessing they'd go for Volcano's color scheme to pay homage to it and use a volcano theme again with how beloved that ride was. Now I'm imagining they still had the volcano structure and then have a wing coaster do a bunch of the near miss inversions through it.