Here's what's up today:
They're both Disneyland dark rides that send you on boats through rooms of singing dolls. Now, beyond that, they only thing that (6) Splash Mountain and (59) it's a small world have in common is that they're stuck together in this first-round match-up.
How do you like your reality-twisting dark rides? Fast, (14) Revenge of the Mummy (USF), or slow, (51) Alice in Wonderland? (A tea party? Hummph. What does it take to get a cup of coffee around here?)
This match-up absolutely kills me. It might be the toughest one for me to pick in the entire first round: (22) Popeye & Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges vs. (43) Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters (Disneyland). Two ridiculously run fun rides. Which is your favorite?
And, finally, today's roller coaster smackdown matches (30) Dueling Dragons - Fire vs. (35) El Toro. Wait a minute! A ride that's not from Disneyland or Universal Orlando? How'd that get on here...?
Meet in the comments for the verbal brawl....
Update: Quote of the tournament so far, from the comments: "El Toro is losing because Fire burns wood."
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I wonder if people will like Dueling Dragons as much next year when it is re-themed to Harry Potter's Dueling Broomsticks, or something like that?
I had a lot of trouble choosing between Popeye and Buzz. Both are very fun, well themed rides deserving of a victory. So, I had to default to my 10 year old for choosing between them....he finally said Buzz.
It might be a very tight race today.
I guess, due to the "classic nature" of those rides, they should be bumped up to a 3 and a 4 respectively! =)
My point is that there should be a lot more separation in the ratings between the "classic" Jungle Cruises and the "modern" Kilimanjaro Safaris, but with everything getting a 7, 8, or 9, it is much more difficult to make a distinction.
Point of view is huge in ratings, though, so I understand the issue. My two year old had a blast on Dumbo, and couldn't care less about the Safaris, but that is where I think we can use "comments" to elaborate.
Hope that makes some sense. But honestly, who wouldn't want to see Jungle Cruise get a modern day update???
Where are all the Small World Fans, that ride is the best example of technology and story telling a ride has ever seen. :)
DD to me is very very very underrated, best themeing of any coaster anywhere, unique track layout, 2 rides in 1 and in my experience never a line. Longest I have ever waited was 20 min and that's the first week in July.
I don't know why, maybe its because were mixing themeparks and sports my two favorite things, but I can't get enough of this. Thanks again Robert, only problem is your hurting my overall sales numbers cause I can't stop checking the matchups.
My other votes were for Popeye, Splash Mountain, and Mummy. It's a Small World (and it's stupid song) can go to you know where. Good Lord I hate that song.
But give DD credit for more than the queue. The precision of the near misses is quite impressive. But if you removed either of those coasters and dropped them into a Six Flags, you'd have a terribly mediocre B&M coaster (which at least is still better than an SLC).
1)Montu -Busch Gardens FLA
2)Alpengeist-Busch Gardens VA
3)Raptor-Cedar Point
4)Silver Bullet-Knotts
5)Top Gun-Carowinds
All are the same type of coaster made by the same manufacturer of Dueling Dragons. Even with the queue of DD, it's number 6 or even 7 on the list above in terms of track layout and wow factor. My opinion is this...A queue is part of the ride experience, but not part of the ride itself. It is a factor, but not a big one. I walked off of Dueling Dragons thinking this. "The queue was really cool, but the coaster didnt quite stack up to other similar ones I've ridden." In contrast, El Toro is everything a wooden coaster should be, fast,furious and alive with a great layout. I'll take that over a middle ranked inverted anyday.
Escapism. Good movies do it, good music does it, and good theme parks do it. For your $50 you get to leave the world behind and enter a new world as set up by the imaginations of the geniuses who designed the theme park.
If I just wanted to ride thrill rides I could drive 30 minutes to Cedar Fair's Worlds of Fun (Kansas City, MO) and ride coaster's all day long. They have a great wooden coaster, Timber Wolf, a great hyper coaster, Mamba, a top notch B&M inverted, the Patriot, and a family friendly spinner, Spinning Dragons. But you know what, whenever I go to Worlds of Fun, I ride each coaster a couple of times, then I leave. Why? Because there is nothing immersive about the park. It's clean, the rides are nice, the people are nice, but when I am there, I am always just in a stationary carnival off of I-435, 30 minutes from my house. Yippee.
It is all in the immersion. That's why I spend $5000 every couple of years to drag my family back to Orlando. That's why Walt Disney World is the #1 vacation destination in the world. And, that's why Dueling Dragons beat El Toro....because people remember the great time they had in an immersive theme park like IOA. The ride itself is only part of the fun. In a way, the ride is like the icing on the cake. It may be the best part of the cake, but the two combined together make one heck of a delicious treat!
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Popeye and Buzz, especially. It's depressing to choose one over the other.