violakat03

Notice I said "gyro drop" not freefall ride.

One of these days I'll go through and do Cedar Point's. There's someone looking at writing a guidebook to the Point and I offered myself up for help on fact searching on former and current records. Theirs is easily three times longer than Kings Island's list.

Alright, let's try this one. http://www.imeem.com/people/4pecV9X/music/...9j/vn-00001amr/ Someone let me know if this link works so I can stop worrying about it.

BGE charged an arm and a leg to get your picture taken with one of the Clydesdales. Cedar Point could get quite a few nickles by doing the same.

Try this one. http://www.esnips.com/doc/a4af96b4-1718-4f...amondbacks-horn The first link I posted is the link it gave me for "share" .. this one is copy and pasted straight from my address bar. If it doesn't work, I'll try uploading it somewhere else.

Racer Fastest roller coaster: 1972-1976 (succeeded by Screamin' Eagle at SFStL) The Bat First modern suspended coaster Screamin' Demon First shuttle loop coaster The Beast Longest drop (141') in the world. (succeeded by American Eagle at SFGAm) Fastest in the world (succeeded by American Eagle at SFGAm) Longest roller coaster in the world (succeeded by Ultimate at Lightwater Valley in the UK) Longest wooden roller coaster in the world (current record holder) It was not the tallest, Gemini's lift hill is 15' taller but does not have as long a drop due to Beast's terrain. King Cobra First looping stand-up coaster First coaster to be designed as a stand-up (previous stand-up was modified from a sit-down coaster) Votex Most inversions (6) on a coaster (succeeded by Viper at SFMM) Tallest inverting coaster (succeeded by Viper at SFMM) Fastest inverting coaster (succeeded by Viper at SFMM) Flight of Fear First LIM launched coaster Also won an award from IAAPA for it's use of technology Scooby's Ghoster Coaster First family suspended coaster Son of Beast First wooden 'hypercoaster' Tallest wooden coaster (current record holder) Fastest wooden coaster (current record holder) Only modern wooden coaster with a loop (until 2006 accident) Longest looping coaster (wood or steel - until 2006 accident) Drop Tower Tallest gyro Drop Tower (current record holder) Fastest gyro Drop Tower (succeeded by Drop Tower at KD) Delirium First HUSS Giant Frisbee Diamondback First B&M hyper with a splashdown I think I got them all. And our Backlot was not the first LIM family coaster - the version at Canada's Wonderland opened about a month earlier.

It was brought up in Tom's birthday meet-up thread that many people have never heard Diamondback's all-clear horn. This is the horn that is sounded after the coaster is stopped for any amount of time to warn anyone in the vicinity to clear the tracks. Yesterday when it was down for a minor mechanical problem, I got a very clear recording of the horn when the ride started back up and I thought I'd share it on here for everyone that hasn't gotten to hear it yet. http://www.esnips.com/doc/a4af96b4-1718-4f...amondbacks-horn WARNING: This sound clip is VERY LOUD. Turn the sound on your computer almost all the way down. I had mine on level 7 (out of 100) and could still hear it perfectly.

I tried the astronaut trick of tightening your lower stomach and butt muscles on Backlot yesterday, and it worked! My first ride on it without coaster blackout. I'll try it on Millie next time I ride it. Posted from my BlackBerry mobile device.

It wasn't quite as far back as the station is. Kind of where they separate the queue into which side you're going to. It was right before the land starts sloping.

I miss the special things they used to bring to the park. Anyone else remember the studio tour stuff? They did Titanic movie memorabilia one year, where you could see a lot of the props used such as the scale model of the ship and the replica of the grand staircase. They also had a similar tour of Star Trek and had costumed characters roaming around the entrance area. Somewhere I have a picture of me with a Klingon. I worked on I-street during Paramount and the music was most definitely way way better. Some of it was movie and show themes, as I heard Star Trek the Next Generation's theme quite often, but no matter what it was it just seemed to fit the mood of a day at the park. And inside the stores such as Emporium, there were music videos playing of current pop hits, which I also find more appropriate of the atmosphere than the current music. Posted from my BlackBerry mobile device.

Yesterday as we're exiting Flight of Fear: "That thing goes like a hundred miles an hour!" I resisted the urge to say anything about TTD. While riding Diamondback: "is this taller than The Vortex?" I told her it's about twice as tall. she started freaking out.

Any word on June 11th? The weather's looking pretty nasty today as well.

I'm a category 6 member as well. The bigger, the badder, the better! Some day in my life I will go sky diving and bungee jumping and I absolutely adore scuba diving (which is considered an extreme sport though I'm not real sure why - I find it incredibly relaxing). There's a park up in Wisconsin that specializes in high thrill rides, such as bungee jumping and free fall jumping (basically a 100 ft freefall into a giant net) that I desperately want to go to and ride everything. Their Sky Coaster is probably the tamest thing there! And I'll second Terpy's El Toro!

The best description I ever got of riding Drachen Fire was to put your head between two heavy books and smack it back and forth repeatedly. Then you'd have a good idea of what it was like. Violent, unpopular coasters do not stick around for long. I'm glad that Flight of Fear was modified rather than removed, because it could have easily gone the same way as Drachen Fire due to it's unpopularity. The lapbars turned that ride around and made it popular again, as it has remained ever since. I firmly believe that the ride quality (or lack thereof) is one of the reasons Hurricane:Category Five was torn down rather than being sold. I never rode it but have never heard of anyone that was a fan of it.

I totally have the MF station music as my ringtone. http://www.cedarpoint.com/_upload/inside_t...force_theme.mp3

I saw a picture of it in angrybeaver's PTR and it made me crack up laughing. Because it's so random... giant Rubik's cube in the middle of KI.

Thanks, and I'm looking forward to your SFGAdv PTR. Well it may already be up, I haven't Checked yet. Not quite yet. I've uploaded the videos but I'm awfully lazy when it comes to writing things, so I'm trying to stop procrastinating and get it done already.

lmao @ the picture of me on TTD. I look so happy to be there.

^ Lightning rods? I dunno. Your photos are absolutely fantastic. You've got some amazing shots in there. I particularly like the one of Flight Deck's overbank and X-base at night. I'm very impressed!

I'm surprised she was ok with the bumper cars - they are truly bumper cars, not "slightly tap" cars like KI has and can get very violent very easily. I have back problems that are not bothered at all by roller coasters but can be bothered by particularly violent bumper cars. Hopefully that's not what caused her the pain later on. Let us know what's up with her, we're all a bunch of mother hens on here and we worry. Glad you had a good time at Cedar Point. I firmly believe it is a park that everyone should visit at least once in their life.

2002 - Merchandise, Water Park 2003 - Merchandise, (Pre-season) Merch setup and Emporium, (Main season) Water Park 2009 - TBA

Having visited CP's lost and found no less than 4 times this year (searching for both my missing cell phone back and now my earring), I'm sure they'd be able to come up with many phones that would fit in quite well with that! CP has divided their cell phones (and parts) into a box by month, and the May box had some interesting stuff in it. Some were complete and intact with a note on them that said "won't turn on" or "dead battery" on them. Some were halves of phones such as just the keyboard, or just the screen. Some were pretty much unrecognizable as phones! I think the worst one was the one with a note that said "Disaster Transport" on it and was held together with practically an entire roll of scotch tape. It looked like it was, at one time, an LG Voyager. I think every single piece in that phone had been seperated and some had been broken into multiple pieces aside from that. There was also a camera that had been recovered off Maverick that was in at least 13 pieces with wires hanging out. And then there was the iPhone with a screen so cracked it looked like someone had run over it with a car, which is probably pretty close to what happened to it. I had to wash my hands after sorting through that box because they were covered in cell phone grit from all the broken pieces. Seeing that box makes me even more grateful that my BlackBerry returned to me majoritably in tact. And doesn't give me a lot of hope that my diamond earring will ever be recovered.

Last Saturday started out very, very, very early for me. I woke up somewhere around 5:30 a.m. at my brother's apartment in Alexandria, VA. Anyone who knows me or has spent the night with me would know I am NOT a morning person. I still believe it to be some sort of miracle that I actually woke up and left when my alarm went off that day, especially considering I didn't fall asleep until after midnight. After loading myself and a cooler full of snacks into my car, I headed out for the 2 1/2 hour drive to Williamsburg. Since it was Saturday, traffic was light through D.C. and Richmond, so I made good time and arrived in Williamsburg around 8. I dropped by a gas station to pick up a couple 5 hour energy shots since I knew I'd be running down before the end of the day and still had the long drive home to look forward to, and pulled into the park at a quarter after. I eventually got directed around the traffic jam by some helpful park employees and pulled up to the toll booth to pay for parking. In the confirmation email for the event we were told to let the attendant know we were here for the ACE event and that we needed a pass for England parking. Much to my surprise, she handed me a receipt and a parking pass and told me to have a nice day! Sticking my cash back in my pocket and taking a glance at my receipt (which read something like complimentary event parking) I headed through the maze of a parking lot, almost getting myself lost twice. Finally, I pulled into what I knew had to be the ACE parking. Sticking my Saturn in between two cars with coaster-related license plates, I took a look at the small crowd forming near the employee entrance and wandered over that way. After a fast and efficient check-in, I had my lanyard, park ticket, and picnic voucher and was ready for Griffon! My thoughts on Griffon were that it's definitely a cool ride and I like it better than the other two floorless B&Ms I've ridden. The elements are cool, though you can't feel or notice the splashdown when you're actually on it. I liked the opening Immelman where you first go under and then over (while upside down) the walking path. The second Immelman was cool too. You get some awesome views from the lift hill and from pretty much the entire ride. The turnaround on the lift hill gives you stunning views of the area. As promised, after 4 rides on Griffon in 30 minutes (including front row middle, front row end, middle row end and back row end) I headed over to Alpengeist. Like Griffon, there was no wait for most of the seats. I decided to wait a train and get a front seat ride with 3 nice folks from Louisville. We discussed Diamondback (they love it too) and Raptor before the ride began. I was blown away by Alpengeist. Raptor is a great ride, but Alpie is better! The foot chopper effects, the opening Immelman, just .. everything. It was great. I got another front seat ride with the group from Louisville again before heading back to Griffon. Griffon gives a nice view of Loch Ness Monster and you can see Big Bad Wolf from the front seat as well. I decided BBW would be my next ride because that was the coaster I was most looking forward to at the park. I ended up meeting up with two locals as I headed for BBW. Though the park opened at 10, most of the rides did not open until 10:30. We'd gotten there at about 10:20, so we opted to wait for it and were the first people into the station at 10:30. I sat in the front seat for my first ride on BBW and ... wow! I never thought an Arrow suspended would jump into my top ten, but Big Bad Wolf did. I couldn't wait to give back seat a try, but a decent line had already formed and my new friends and I wanted to go to Curse of Darkastle, a dark ride. Once again, I could not see the 3D effects. It kind of annoys me that I can't see any 3D effects. Either way, we met up with some more ACE folks after Darkastle and they wanted to ride Big Bad Wolf since the line had dropped. Of course, I wasn't going to argue with this! It gave me the opportunity to get my back seat ride, which was awesome, as expected. The second chain lift is the best part, even heavily trimmed like it is, because it swings you way out over the river and you are really moving at the bottom of it. It ends with a wide swing over a waterfall near the walking path. The guy in the orange shirt shooting the video of me (Luko) and the guy next to him with glasses (David) are the two guys I ended up hanging out with pretty much the rest of the day. After Festhaus, we wandered around trying to find something with little line. David has ridden over 600 coasters and spied an opportunity for a new credit in the new Seasame Street Forest of Fun. There's a nice little Zierer family coaster called Grover's Alpine Express. Two trains later, David, Luko, myself and a handful of other ACErs piled into the kiddie coaster, along with all the odd looks from the parents! As we were leaving, we passed some of the characters and I just had to get my picture with Cookie Monster! We were getting hot and tired and it was closing in on lunch time, so we stopped by another dark ride, Corkscrew Hill in Ireland. Another 3D ride, this one's similar to Action Theater with the motion seats, but with a much better story line! By now, it was lunch time and we headed back to the Festhaus to get some lunch. The park provided fried chicken, fresh watermelon and soft drinks while we got to have a Q & A session (pre-empted by a "no questions about the future of the park" requirement) with the park's General Manager. There were also some prizes given out, mostly old souveniers from area parks. I got a commemorative coin from Hypersonic XLC at Kings Dominion. And yes, a coaster wheel was given out! What's up with coaster wheel prizes at ACE events? After a filling lunch, David, Luko and I headed for Loch Ness Monster. On the way to Ireland, we passed by the Clydesdales stable, where they were out greeting guests for photo ops. I have complete faith in seat 5-1 on Arrow loopers so I dragged David back there with me while Luko headed toward the front of the train. This ended up being the last we saw him for most of the day because we ended up on different trains and got split up. Loch Ness is hands down the best Arrow looper I've ridden. It is not violent whatsoever. The loops are a lot of fun, and there's even an enclosed helix! The downside is, the helix is trimmed harder than The Beast is. There was no force to it at all. David was very disappointed because he said it used to not be like that and you used to fly through it. The interlocking loops was definitely cool but sadly we didn't get to cross through them with another train (a rare occurance but it does happen!). From there, we wandered through the park a bit, and decided it was hot enough that we could brave a water ride, so we headed for the highly-themed Escape from Pompeii. Because my phone has no back on it, we stuffed it inside David's fanny pack and left it in the loose articles bin, and it's a good thing too! This is a standard shoot-the-chutes, but as you creep through the upper turn-around, you go through what looks to be an abandoned anthropological dig site. A fire then starts spreading, shooting up behind and around the fallen statues and columns, then spreads across the ceiling. The ceiling fire was absolutely wicked to watch, it's worth riding just for that! Finally, it was splash down time! I'd strategically chosen my seat in the middle of the back row, and David had wiggled in close to me in the hopes we wouldn't get too wet. As we got the big "skloosh!" noise, my right side got fairly wet and my hair was definitely soaked. However, David was completely drenched! Time for the 'spin cycle' as David referred to it - Turkish Delight, a.k.a. the tea cups! We watched carefully and noticed that some cars spun better than others and since we were the second set let into our cycle, we ran right for one of the best ones, which we had whipping around quite nicely. Since David was still practically dripping, we decided to hit the closest roller coaster and Apollo's Chariot is right next to Turkish Delight! After Apollo's, we determined we were dry and headed for some flat rides in the area. First was the Flying Machine, which is a Tivoli Orbiter (similar to a spider), then Davinci's Cradle, which is a Flying Carpet ride. By this time, we needed to head out to our cars for various reasons. Me for some caffeine, and David to drop of some purchases he'd made throughout the day. After I'd refreshed (and it'd gotten dark out) we headed back into the park, grabbed dinner at one of the small restaurants in Ireland, and took 2 legs of the triangle-routed Sky Ride. We decided that now that it was night time and we still had some time to kill before the night time ERT, we wanted Big Bad Wolf night rides. We did one ride in the front seat and then ran around again for a ride in the back seat. These night rides confirmed what an amazing coaster it was, and I decided that it was like The Beast and night rides must have their own count for me because it's another one where the ride transforms at night. You fly through a darkened forest, and the houses in the German village have lights on in some of the windows. Then it's out over the dark river, the speed feeling even faster due to the pitch darkness. Absolutely amazing. On our last night ride, we ran into Luko again and the three of us headed over to Fiesta Italia for Apollo's Chariot. I wanted back seat and David and Luko wanted to wait for the front seat, so we split again and didn't meet up again until after ERT. I ended up spending several rides with the family from Louisville that I'd met on Alpengeist that morning, ironically. We all decided that Apollo's is great, but Diamondback is better. After they got it back up and running, I did get two more rides in, bringing me to a total of 8 for the day. Luko, David and I walked out to the front of the park together, discussing places we've been and places we'd like to go. I learned Luko was going to be at CoasterMania the following weekend and we exchanged numbers so that we could meet up. Then it was time for one of those 5-hour energy shots so I could make the dark 2 1/2 hour drive home! Since I didn't do a finale video, I'll discuss my overall thoughts of the park here. The theming and overall atmosphere was nothing less than I expected. It's a beautiful park and each section really feels like the country it's supposed to. I only snapped one picture of the theming and that's because this section of Italy (just before the Roman Colosseum) looked just like pictures I've seen of city streets in Italy. England had very Tudor-esque buildings, a well-designed Globe Theater, and of course the ubiquitous red telephone booths. Ireland had stone buildings and a real pub. It was just very, very well done. Each 'country' had it's unique food (we ate in Ireland because David wanted some stew in a bread bowl), and every time I walked past Italy's restaurant the smell made my mouth water. As for the employees, I can't really say good or bad about them. Except during Griffon and Apollo's ERT, they weren't too excited to be there. They weren't rude but they weren't going out of their way to excite people either. There wasn't a lot of trash, but I didn't really see a lot of sweeps. I don't really recall seeing any security. However, I'm betting they were there doing their job, as I never saw any line jumping, the crowds were well-behaved, and the park was clean. The rides collection was great, and I wish I'd had more time to spend on the flat rides available as well as the coasters. I will definitely be going back to the park, probably for next year's ACE event as the ERTs and the people there made it worth it.

Or you could just do what I did, and go to a Busch park where they have the Clydesdales displayed daily.

I've been stuck at 45 for over two weeks now as I've been exploring many other parks this country has to offer. But I'm definitely missing that big red, yellow and tan snake that's lurking in the woods. I'm hoping it doesn't rain as much as they're claiming tomorrow so I can make a trip down there and get over 50.