Kenban

As I remember it George Lucas also owns part of the rights and he only allows Disney to do rides based on his movies.

About the whole Meijer sign thing. The reason is actually pretty simple they sell PKI tickets and season passes. In addition to that Meijer puts up signs in the stores advertising PKI. I remember a 10 foot tall stand up last summer at my local Meijer with little plastic cards you could take to a checkout to purchase a PKI season pass. Also listen to the PKI ads at the end they say you can purchase tickets at PKI.com the park or your local Meijer store (I might be a little off on the wording). I have also seen Meijer ads that say you can purchase park tickets at the store. Its just a simple case of two companies advertising for each other. I suspect Meijer makes very little if anything off the ticket sales the whole idea is to drive customers into the stores and to advertise the stores. Also I am pretty sure the park had an official lawn care company before Paramount purchased the park. Disney already has a McDonalds (actually more then one). For a few Disney examples in Epcot alone we have the GM Test Track, the Exxon world of energy, and of course the AT&T technology area. Normally other then sticking the name in front of the ride name or sticking presented by X the name stays the same. Really it does not bother me too much because I know it enables the park to have a higher revenue. The more money the park makes the more that will be spent on the park. Companies paying part of the bill for a ride can make it so a ride instead of being a 10 million dollar ride could be a 15 million dollar ride. Or maybe the park can spend the money from a sponsorship in other areas like adding a new flat ride.

The current rumor for the upgrades to Space Mountain at Disneyland in California point to during the day it will be Space Mountain. Then at night it will turn into Rockit Mountain where you would have a ride similar to what the Soundwave idea is. I really think that the same idea could be used at PKI. Install speakers and lights in the drum. Then do some work in the queue area to add a DJ and more lights. During the day the ride would be the same as it is now but maybe around 5 in the afternoon the ride changes over to Soundwave.

Sounds right to me. Remember regular parking is $9 you pay an extra six bucks to be closer to the gate.

You know Winterfest is starting more and more to feel like one of those secrets that no one can keep. At this point I would be more surprised if it does not happen then if it did. I just wonder what they plan on doing since they have so few indoor rides. That bit about general admission tickets being good for two days sounds odd but a good deal if you want to only go twice.

You can tell the picture would have to be from before 1982. Both sides of The Racer are facing forwards and you can see the skyway running. (when did that get taken out anyways?)

John Miller if I remember right.

You know I have never heard of a ride that tilts you out 45 degrees. The 15 is it as far as I know. Its done this way to keep your weight in the seat rather then on the OTSR system.

I don't know of many parks that could actually build a test track like ride. Except for Disney and Universal (which universal has yet to build a ride like it to my knowledge but I bet they could). The technology is similar to what is used on the Indiana Jones ride in California. Its a 250 HP electric motor driving the car it gets its power from the slot the car runs in. The car also actually has 22 wheels the 4 you see plus 18 that clamp the car into the track. All the tire noises are just speakers no tire on test track actually should have a squeal during the ride. Also interesting to note is the amount of stuff that ends up falling off the track onto guests as they walk under the car that goes by overhead at 65 MPH. And about the computer on board its actually 3 computers which I am not sure if its total or each one but its more powerful then the computers on the space shuttle (which is not really that hard to do). One thing I am not sure about is the shaking of the car and the rough road test. On Indiana Jones in California its all done on the ride vehicle and the entire path is smooth. I would think that test track does it the same way but I am not sure.

The tilt out is only 15 degrees thats why I don't think you noticed it. It really is quite minor just enough to notice it for most people and thats it.

Yes you can use the season pass at all paramount parks (except the star trek experience in Vegas). Although I do not believe the parking is good at all parks only PKI. I think "Gold Pass" and "Gold Pass VIP" are the same thing. I have never heard of a third type of pass.

Daily operation not weekend's. PKI first full week is the 4th week of May so friday the 20th would be the first day its open for daily operation. Yes I know its open for weekends starting well this coming weekend the 9th of April (I don't count the sesson pass days since they are not open to the public). Cedar Point does not open for weekends early it just opens starting with daily operation on the 7th of May. Which is 2 weeks before PKI starts daily operation. Just trying to explain why CP is open a few more days a year then PKI was last year. Which actually the weekends balance out the 2 weeks of daily operation and most of the number of days differance comes from the fridays and weekends in September and October.

You can't compare a parks attendence in that way. First do both parks have the same square feet of path ways? Do more people stand in line for rides at one park then then the other? How much time do you spend in the childrens areas of the park? You know a little kid counts as a guest as well. How many operating days are there in each parks season? You CAN NOT compare just on looking around and saying well it feels like there are more people here. Just an FYI CP was open 146 days last year and PKI 130. CP opens for daily operation earlier then PKI does and is open on friday evenings in September and October plus PKI rents out the park most weekends in September. Plus just what days your at a park have a huge effect on how many people there are. I went to cp usually tues-thursday even when it is pouring. So what? I said it before and I will say it again you can not compare parks based on just looking around and saying you believe there are more people in the park. I had forgotten one of the most important things about why can not use this as a way to tell how many people are in a park. The parks layout has a lot to do with how you feel about the crowd in a park. I spent some time and finally found attendence figures for Soak City. It was only 405,000 guests. Which combined with the CP figures does put them at 3.6 million. Part of the problem is this would double count guests who go to both CP and Soak City in a single day so who knows how many of those guests just visited Soak City. But the most important reason why you can not count it like that is simple money they are still seperate ticketed attrations. If a guest spends half the day riding coasters and half the day at BB PKI does not get a penny extra. Where if a guest spends part of the day in CP and the rest in Soak City then Cedar Fair gets extra at some point either a higher end Season pass or a couple of dollars extra on the ticket price.

You can't compare a parks attendence in that way. First do both parks have the same square feet of path ways? Do more people stand in line for rides at one park then then the other? How much time do you spend in the childrens areas of the park? You know a little kid counts as a guest as well. How many operating days are there in each parks season? You CAN NOT compare just on looking around and saying well it feels like there are more people here. Just an FYI CP was open 146 days last year and PKI 130. CP opens for daily operation earlier then PKI does and is open on friday evenings in September and October plus PKI rents out the park most weekends in September. Plus just what days your at a park have a huge effect on how many people there are.

Its two separate parks and thats why Soak City does not count. Go and take a look at the Disney World parks should you count them all as one park and combine the attendance figures? What about Disney Land and California Adventure the parks are only a few hounded feet away from each other. The Disneyland / California Adventure is a great example. If they remove the need for separate tickets or park hopper passes so you could just walk between the parks on a single standard ticket I would agree that the attendence figures should be combined and thats the same thing with Soak City. You either need a special ticket with admission to both or you need a separate ticket to go to both until that restriction is removed they should be and are counted separately. Shoot the normal season pass only works for CP its $55 extra for the season pass to work at both parks. Maybe its just me but if I want to go to a water park and not ride roller coasters I head over to the beach. Oh and I doubt 300,000 people go to BB and don't visit the rest of the park. But who knows its possible.

First I agree I doubt I will see 1000 pph on IJST. But I can tell you don't understand the ride of you think it could handle 5-6 trains. One of the LIM's is only to speed up the ride and is not a true launch. Unless there is a problem I never see anything running 3 minutes between trains there is no way its going to run that slow on a bad day maybe 2 minutes a train but nothing is going to run 3 minutes. A train with only 12 riders is going to load faster then a standard train already. I really think its going to end up around a 1:15 to 1:30 a train. You said in an earlier post that IJST will flop well if its that bad does it need high capacity??? You keep comparing the park to Cedar Point and basicly saying how PKI needs to build the kind of rides CP does yet PKI has the higher attendance figures . Fact is you make it sound like TTD drew in huge crowds. Sure it had a long line but did attendence at the park go up that much??? Well it went up 3% in 2003 then went down 4% last year I don't consider that a huge draw. Actually Cedar Points attendance overall has been flat for a while now. They broke 3 million guests back in 1976 yet only had 3.2 million guests last year. Yes I know the CP figures don't count Soak City but that is a seperate park. Oh PKI had 3.5 million guests last year. The whole reason you see these kinds of rides and not the 300 or 400 foot tall coasters is simple they are going after differant markets. Cedar Point is after the high end coaster market while PKI is after the familys. Guys don't get me wrong I love Cedar Point and plan on making at least one trip up there this year. I would actually go more often if it was only an hour away like PKI is from me. I just had a problem with the stupid comments this guy was making. But then this is all I think the point is the guess what PKI is getting next year which I think is going to be a flat and a Nick expansion which I enjoy good flats although I would love to see that Adams family coaster put in.

Gay Day is the name used in orlando. Which this year is 5 days in June. Here is a great quote from the gayday website.

Disney does have a "Pride Night" as well I have to pull some info up about how it happens at Disney though. As I remember what actually happens is an organization purchases a HUGE block of tickets and resells them to others at a discount and Disney does not and will not sell the discounted tickets directly. In the end Disney would do the same thing for ANY organization that wishes to do an event like this and can get enough people to go because they do not actually support the group in any way they are just giving them the tickets at the regular discounted price for that many people. So if you can get (TOTAL guess here) 20,000 people together you can get the same rate for the original tickets and it can be whatever day you want because of the number of people from the same group there. BUT Disney does not and will not advertise the event. I wonder if this event is being done in a similar way and what they do is just rent out the entire park then make money off the ticket sales. Its Pride Night just because they rented the park for the night and PKI I bet did not give them any discouts off of the regular rental rate for the park. Oh someone was talking about the islamic day at some six flags park. This was what happened at that park they rented the entire park for the day and did not receive any discounts. Its just the park making money it has nothing to do with support for any organization. EDIT: Here are some quotes from mouseplanet.

The UDF shop is turning into a doughnut shop. This is from the IJST video that was posted here Jeff talks about it as the tour is walking down I street.

If you remember at the end of last season that shop on the right near the entrance I think it sold Hello Kitty stuff or something like that had a clerance sale. The talk was a food vendor of some sort was moving into the space. If you read the PKI message it says "Located inside the park entrance on the right side of International Street" Sounds like this might be whats going in that space.

This is what I figured would happen. Although I am suprised about the 19 locations. Most parks that do this go for closer to 6 or 7. Although I would really like to see a map with the spots marked or just walk around the park and see where they are. They should be off the paths far enough so the smoke does not bother the other quests but close enough that smokers are willing to walk over there. Just 19 sounds a little high. I just figured it would have been closer to 10.

I am positive its a Citigraph map. Really does any major park at least in the US not use them? And yes Disney does use Citigraph (I think). Was in California last year the Universal Studios, Disney, Knotts, PKI maps are very similar. Makes you think they only have one or two overworked artists. EDIT: On the disney front thats a guess really. As its not actually listed as being one of the parks they do maps for on the Citigraph site and yes PKI is listed. Its just that they have that look to them. EDIT 2: OK I was starting to wonder about those Disney maps. So I did a few google searchs. Now I am not sure if its still done this way today but as of only a few years ago they did the maps in house and websites that had old copies of the maps were even able to give the "Imagineers" name. So I guess my guess was wrong oh well.

Thats interesting was not aware of the smoking ban in Huntington. Like I said at the end of the post if you don't like the ban all you need to do is not go to PKI. If attendance goes down you will not see the ban last very long. The problem is companys don't get the same say in the matter when forced in cases such as my example of New York. I actually don't support citys and states forcing smoking bans on restaurants. I just found what happened in New York interesting. Its actually very similar to what has occured in several other citys that have banned smoking in public locations which is why I brought it up if I had known about the problems in Huntington I would have said something. Normally the restaurants don't see any differance. Ok that got totally off topic there for a second. I don't support government forcing companys to say that you can not smoke within the building. Except I do support companys who have a no smoking policy. It should be up to the company not the government what a paying customer can and cannot do. Oh and I know I said if park attendence goes down that your not going to see the smoking ban last very long. With a new high profile ride opening this year I except double digit growth so it would be very hard to put a dent in the attendence this year.

In 2002 smoking was outlawed in bars and restaurants in New York city after a very long fight with many companys saying they would end up going out of business because of the ban. In the end what happened? Business actually went up not down. Turns out even some smokers prefer having them smoke free. In surveys only 4% of people said they were eating out less often then before the ban while I believe it was around 20% said they were eating out more often. If you go and look at the big parks which PKI and the entire paramount park chain is trying to copy. Both Disney and Universal Studios also only allow smoking in marked areas. Don't really want to add fuel to the fire except to say sometimes companys do these kinds of policys to make more money. Its quite simple if you do not agree with a policy don't go there. If the attendence at the park drops because of this policy trust me it will not last.

Disney - Frankly this is the only one on this list I could almost see buy the park but there are a lot of problems with saying this. It was only a few years ago they did some heavy studies of building seasonal parks and they were very interested. Although I could not see them want the entire chain maybe 2 or 3 parks if they would even want more then one. Six Flags - Too many money problems there is no way it could happen Universal - Same boat as Six Flags they have lost money for several years (I think they finally are back in the black last year) Also the parent company wants to sell the parks and is waiting til they are making money so that they can get a better price for the parks don't expect them to actually be owned by universal for much longer. Busch Gardens - This is the same company as Seaworld. Really I could not see them purchase a park and if they did I could not see it be done in ohio they already gave up on Seaworld Ohio which is now owned by Cedar Fair. Coney Island - Don't know enough about them to really say anything but I don't think its a big enough company Cedar Fair - I enjoy the companys parks (even went to Knotts last year) but they are viewed as a stable stock for a reason. They don't expand quickly etc. With the purchase of that Six Flags park in ohio (used to be something lake and also contains the old Seaworld park) I could not see them even looking at more parks for a few years. There have been some talk about Paramount wanting to sell the park division but I don't know of any companys that want something like it right now. But I also don't think Paramount is going to sell them the parks have been doing well for a few years now and while other chains like Universal were losing money the Parks stayed in the black for Paramount. If Paramount were to sell the parks expect them to try to get rid of them as a chain and I don't think any company wants that right now.