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One week left to enter the Theme Park Insider spring 2012 video contest

Next week is the deadline to enter our Spring 2012 video contest, so hurry up and get those videos shot, edited and uploaded!

We had two new entries on the Theme Park Insider Discussion Board this week:

Daniel Cernuschi submitted Spring 2012 Video Contest: The Florida Experience

Pyra-Danny V offered Spring 2012 Video Contest: POV from Blue Shoes

Here are the previous entries:

Nathan Alexander's Dreamworld Australia and Warner Brothers Movie World, Australia

Thomas tskogg, with A Decade of Disney (and Universal) 2001-2011

Jake Mappes' The Attractions of Islands of Adventure

And Jason Kwan's The Florida Project [Video about Walt Disney World]

If you'd like to enter, just embed your original video, shot in a theme park, in a new thread on the Discussion Board. (Upload your video to YouTube, Vimeo or any service of your choice that allows Web embedding. Videos should be embedded with a width no more than 450 pixels.) Please use "Spring 2012 Video Contest:" in your discussion title, so we can all find it easily. Your video can be a travelogue, a fictional story, or anything else you'd like, so long as it is set inside a theme park and wasn't shot in violation of the park's safety rules. (So no POV on rides where cameras are not permitted, please.) Campaign for your favorites in the comments!

Next Friday, I'll select the top five videos, which will be embedded on the Theme Park Insider home page, and put up to a reader vote. The video that gets the most votes over the weekend will be our winner. In addition to the attention, extra traffic and bragging rights, the winner will receive a Theme Park Insider T-shirt and a signed copy of Stories from a Theme Park Insider.

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By the way, here are a few more top new, non-video discussions from the past week:

Dan Babbitt asks about Rain Delayed or Rain Shortened/Cancelled Shows

B Higgins wants to know about Disney World in (early) December

And, finally, Jeff Elliott steps up to the mic for his weekly Trenches of Amusement humor column.

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What's coming to a theme park near you? Round-up of 2012 new attraction openings

Let's recap where we're at with new attraction openings this spring, shall we?

Here's what is open already:

• Wild Eagle at Dollywood
• Turtle Trek at SeaWorld San DiegoOrlando
• Universal's Superstar Parade and Universal's Cinematic Spectacular at Universal Studios Florida
• X Flight at Six Flags Great America

I've also heard that these two have opened, though we didn't have anyone assigned to cover them. Trip reports welcomed!

• Leviathan at Canada's Wonderland
• Shambhala at Port Aventura

So now here's what's still to come (at least, officially):

May 18

• Verbolten at Busch Gardens Williamsburg (has been in soft open)

May 25

• Transformers: The Ride 3D at Universal Studios Hollywood (has been in soft open)
• Manta at SeaWorld San Diego
• Pirate Reef at Legoland California
• Skyrush at Hersheypark (Need someone to cover?)

June pretty much belongs to Disneyland Resort, with the reopening of Disney California Adventure on June 15 headlining a slew of openings mid-month. (DCA will be closed to the public on June 14.)

June 5

• Ghirardelli Cafe opens at California Adventure

June 13

• Carnation Cafe reopens at Disneyland

June 15

• Matterhorn Bobsleds reopens at Disneyland
• Voices of Liberty debut at Main Street Opera House in Disneyland
• Buena Vista Street opens at California Adventure (including Red Car Trolley)
• Cars Land opens at California Adventure (including Radiator Springs Racers, Luigi's Flying Tires, and Mater's Junkyard Jamboree)
• Most lands' renaming takes effect at California Adventure
• World of Color adds Brave sequence at California Adventure

We have a couple of other openings elsewhere that we're expecting sometime next month:

TBA

• Lex Luthor: Drop of Doom at Six Flags Magic Mountain
• Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem at Universal Studios Florida

And looking ahead, later this year:

July 9

• Toy Story Midway Mania at Tokyo DisneySea

"Holidays 2012"

• Under the Sea: Journey of the Little Mermaid and Be Our Guest restaurant at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom

So, what are you planning to see this year?

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A soft-opening look at Busch Gardens' Verbolten

Busch Gardens Williamsburg' s Verbolten had a soft opening this weekend starting on Friday May 11th. It was open all three days of the weekend for the soft opening. I heard about the soft opening from a friend on Friday and even saw posts on Twitter & Facebook from Busch Gardens about it.

I got to the park around 3pm on Friday and the wait time was shown to be around 45 minutes. It seem as the day went along the wait time got shorter. I rode it three times before 5pm. I was able to ride it in the middle row, front row and back row. The queue and the station for the ride have a lot of little details in it. They were running four trains on Friday and like Cheetah Hunt in Tampa they loaded two trains at a time. This helps make the line move a lot quicker. You will need to go through the queue multiple times to be able to see all the little details that are in it. After I saw the final showing of the day of Celtic Fyre I came back over to the ride and rode it twice more. On my final ride the car before me had about half the cast from Celtic Fyre in it as they had come over to the ride after the final performance of the show that day.

The ride itself is different depending on which scenario you get in the Black Forest. There are three different scenarios you could encounter in the Black Forest and they are a Storm, a Spirit or the Wolf. I only encounter two of them in my five rides, but know of people who encountered all three of them. The experience for the ride is basically the same for every train except if you are at the loading station and get in the back train instead of the front train. The back train will pull out of the station and stop for a few seconds and you will hear sounds like a car engine trying to rev up. The train will then head down the track toward the Black Forest building. Right before you enter the Black Forest is the first launch of two. Inside the Black Forest it will be dark and you will see different lighting effects. Before you exit the building you will get one of the three scenarios while you are stopped and than the train will drop. You will then go down a little incline before being launched out of the building toward the worn down bridge. When you reach the bridge the train slows down and you hear the sound of creaking like the bridge is going to give out before you go down the drop over the Rhine River.

They didn't have the video available during the soft opening, but you were able to buy a photo of yourself on the ride. They have also added sound effects to the wrecked car outside the queue. The ride itself seems short, but is a worthy replacement for the Big Bad Wolf. I expect this ride to top many peoples top coaster lists after they ride it.

The seats on the train are comfortable and when you pull the restraint toward you it isn't tight like Apollo's Chariot. They do have a seat outside the building that you can try out before you get in line.

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Vote of the week: What's the parade you most want to see in Orlando this summer?

With Universal's Superstar Parade debuting this week, let's talk about parades.

Many observers don't realize this, but there's a simple logistical reason for top theme parks to run parades in the middle of the afternoon. That's the busiest time of day at a theme park - even the late-comers have arrived by that point and few of the earliest-arriving guests have left for the day. So the park is packed.

Having a parade at that time helps draw visitors away from crowded queues, making wait times a little more manageable during the worst part of the day. The guests who opt for the parade get to enjoy a fun show, instead of more frustration in hours-long queues, and those who don't get to enjoy slightly shorter wait times for their favorite attractions.

This summer, with attendance rising at the Universal theme parks after 2010's hit debut of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Universal Orlando's jumped in the game, too, with a cartoon character parade in the Universal Studios Florida theme park.

It's early to see what impact this new parade will have on Universal's attendance patterns, but it's not too early to draw some impressions about the new show and how it matches up with existing parades from Walt Disney World, especially with our Domenik Jost's full video and photos of the Universal's Superstar Parade.

My first thought was to ask what you think is the best parade in Orlando? But that question seems a bit simple, and even a touch cheap, given how few people have seen Universal's new parade by this point. So allow me to tweak the wording a bit, and to ask - based on what you know and have seen of these parades - which parade would you most want to see in Orlando this summer, if you were going to Orlando and could pick only one parade?

Your options are (click the links for videos):

• Celebrate A Dream Come True Parade (Magic Kingdom)
• Main Street Electrical Parade (Magic Kingdom)
• Mickey's Jammin' Jungle Parade (Disney's Animal Kingdom)
• Pixar Pals Countdown to Fun! (Disney's Hollywood Studios)
• Universal's Superstar Parade (Universal Studios Florida)

Tell in the comments why you voted the way you did. Or if you just want to answer the "which is best" question, go ahead. Thanks for reading Theme Park Insider, and have a great weekend!

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