Joshua

I think the problem is the people who smoke wherever in the park tend to be problem people in other areas, i.e. the same people who show up intoxicated, pick fights, harass employees, cut lines, etc. They just don't care. An uphill battle as it is, if it bothers you, say something. If nothing is said about it, then nothing will be done about it. At minimum, you are letting the park know that it is a concern.

Maybe we shouldn't judge a coaster by what it is, but instead how it actually rides?

It's like this with most fandoms these days. There are just some people who want every new thing from their fandom to be tailor-made just for them and if something doesn't meet their expectations, they rant it about it endlessly online, making it seem like a much larger issue than it really is. Having said that, I certainly don't think everyone who isn't impressed by Orion is like that. Most of that I notice from randoms on Facebook pages anyway. It is perfectly okay to not like a ride, but there will always an extremely vocal minority who don't care to admit that nothing will ever be good enough to match the expectations they've built up in their heads. For those, Orion was always going to be too short, too basic, not ambitious enough.

I don't get why someone would buy a house next to an amusement park and then complain about the noise.

Which begs the question, where did this render come from?

I brought this up a few pages back. At first I thought it was meteorite, but the more I look at it, it looks like charred rubble. I hope it is a piece of Firehawk.

Any thoughts on why recaR is the only CG Racer model available? Could it have possibly appeared in a previous announcement video? Perhaps one where it was far-off in the background? I'm genuinely curious.

Strangely, I sometimes feel safer on a rollercoaster than I do driving up to the parking gate...

The whole "I will not be purchasing season passes" thing again? Even if you don't like Orion, KI is still the same park with the same great rides and entertainment. Do you stop going to a restaurant because you don't like their newest sandwich, especially one you haven't even tried yet? I don't get it.

Batarang? Explosive Gel? Batmobile? Wait a minute, this Bruce Wayne guy is Batman!

^^ I wouldn't think too much about it. It's as simple as the content creator probably loved Recar as a kid and threw it in there for personal/nostalgic reasons -- and also because Racer is right next to Orion.

It was put there as a a fun little easter egg/tribute.

What is in the fenced-in area in front of FoF? At first I thought was a piece of meteor, but is it charred rubble?

I think this looks incredible. Orion is one of my favorite Metallica songs and one of my favorite movie studios and now it'll probably be one of my favorite rides at KI. My guess is that it is just a tribute.

I believe the traditional shirts are available during Haunt. But when I went to Winterfest last year, they mostly only had Christmas stuff with the exception of The Beast 40th Anniversary shirt.

I love that people are leaving gifts in the box. Surely not the park's intention, but it makes it even better in my eyes.

Unless they decided to call the new coaster "Frequently Asked Questions"...

You might want to save some of that money for medical bills if you are going to eat even a fraction of those Big Macs.

I agree. As much as facing up a great height can be intimidating, looking down is far scarier.

At this point, I half-expect the music video to be in FunTV's rotation next year.

Lester Bangs, the referenced music journalist, died in 1982 and composer Leonard Bernstein passed away in 1990. The latter is obviously yet another reference to the R.E.M. song. Both men have connections to the music industry, but the real connection comes from their initials. Could the ride's name have the initials L.B. or is this just a funny little red herring? EDIT: For those who have never heard of Lester Bangs, he used to write for Rolling Stones magazine and was portrayed by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Almost Famous. In college, I once had to read an article he wrote about taking cough medicine and going to a Tangerine Dream concert.

On that Chain of Possession form, I see references to Leonard Bernstein and music journalist Lester Bangs. I don't recognize the other names.

Diamondback. Start 'em off early.

At the very least, it shows the name "Spacelvania," which sounds like B-movie gold.

They don't always use the early trademarked names. Other members can elaborate on the subject better than I -- and IIRC have done so in this thread -- but there have been a couple examples where ride names were trademarked, but a different one was used. Also, I believe someone elaborated on the complications of using Polaris or Orion. Forgive me, I've forgotten who posted this and I hope they chime in because they would probably know better. But if I recall, they explained that the rights that allow for merchandising had already been taken for both trademarks and suggested that in order to use either name, the park would have to alter the trademark (ex. Polaris 301). Orion, and Polaris just seem a little pacified to be attached to a coaster with a big end of the world theme. In theory, they could still be attached to the ride's canon as "shuttle" names. As an aside, I wonder if they might incorporate those Firehawk remnants as part of the "rubble."