Dollywood - Wild Eagle - B&M Wing Coaster - 210ft tall, 135ft first drop. Elements - giant loop, zero-G roll, incline immelmann, giant flat spin, camel back, spiral, an eight curve, then you attack your trainer, make off with a fish and build a nest where no one can get to it.
SeaWorld California - Manta track is on site. Which is about the only thing at the site.....certainly not any visitors or anything.....
Tokyo DisneySea - The park just celebrated its 10th anniversary. Soon it will officially be a teenager and then the mood swings, the locked doors, spending way too much time in the bathroom, and then your keys are never where you left them and the gas tank is always empty....
Kings Island - Boomerang Bay rebranding and expansion - Those of you who were looking forward to something big for the park forget that last year you got dinosaurs, so quit complaining. According to the announcement, Boomerang Bay is going to be rebranded to Soak City, double in size, get rid of the Australian theming, yet only add one new attraction, a wave pool, although I thought that they already had one. So, double in size, but only one new attraction, yet spend $10 million, we are probably going to see a bunch of cabanas and other upcharge things. It seems like they are missing a huge opportunity to save Son of Beast with the Iron Horse tracking system. And then to get rid of a theme to go with the highly generic Soak City branding seems like a step in the wrong direction. I hate to say it, but it looks like Six Flags is kicking Cedar Fair’s butt with next year’s new attractions.
Six Flags Great Adventure - Kingda Ka looks like it is going to be down for the rest of the season. And the new attraction for next season is a stinkin’ Sky Screamer.
Universal Studios Singapore - The owners of the park are looking into the possibility of bringing the Simpsons to the park. They are only settling for the Simpsons, they really wanted South Park, but Cartman told them to *%^&$#$ their #$$%^$ while dressed up like a mailman.
Disney’s California Adventure - elecTRONica is going to be on hiatus until Sept 30. Apparently Laserman is getting behind on his LASIK practice.
Moron of the Week - In the second price increase in the last year, SeaWorld Orlando just raised their prices by $2 for adults and $4 for kids, as well as raising their parking fee to $14. Not to get off on a rant here, but there is not $81.99 worth of stuff to do at SeaWorld and after such a dismal attendance showing, they should be decreasing the gate fee, not raising it. Does anyone have a copy of the old Lemonade Stand game? The executives at SeaWorld need a copy so they can figure out their pricing model. To explain the concept of the Lemonade Stand game, if you charge too much for lemonade, then you get fewer customers, but your cost remain the same. If you charge too little then you don’t make enough money to cover those same expenses. To be honest, I haven’t even thought about going to a SeaWorld park in 15 years, and have only been once in that 15 years when an old friend of mine took me there with free tickets. When I went to Orlando last year, I did every major theme park except SeaWorld. If SeaWorld had been a $30-$40, I would have at least considered the idea. I’d buy all of their stock and fire their entire executive team if I thought for 2 seconds that I could make my investment money back.
Six Flags America - It is official, SFA is getting SF Great America’s leftovers in the form of the Iron Wolf roller coaster, that they are going to retheme to the Apocalypse......a fitting theme for such a rough coaster.
Six Flags Great America - Six Flags confirmed that Great America is getting a B&M Wing Coaster that they are going to call X-Flight, a name that was already trademarked by Six Flags for the flying coaster at the now defunct Geauga Lake park while they had briefly owned it. Oddly, "X" also mean "no", as in "No Flight", as in maintenance nightmare and will never be open.
Six Flags Magic Mountain - Instead of building a new drop tower, Magic Mountain is going to Crazy Glue a drop tower onto the Superman - Escape From Krypton structure. Just what we wanted: another severely low capacity ride. Way to go! What’s next? A merry-go-round at the top of the Sky Tower?
Six Flags Mexico - The park is getting a hand me down spinning coaster direct out of California's Discovery Kingdom. Apparently it can no longer pass government inspections in the USA. I wonder if we can send other things that are crappy and don't work to Mexico? How about Congress? Paris Hilton? Windows Vista?
Kings Dominion - Windseeker! Yaaa! Upcharge dinosaur attraction! Yaaa!
Six Flags Discovery Kingdom - The park announced a Superman themed launch coaster for next year. Wait.....Kings Dominion is getting a crappy Windseeker and a crappy upcharge dino attraction and Discovery Kingdom gets a launch coaster? What the heck is going on here?
Six Flags Fiesta Texas - Sky Screamer! Yaa! I can see my car being stolen from up here!
Six Flags New England - This park also looks like it signed up for the crappy ride exchange program and is getting Magic Mountains old and crappy vertical boomerang coaster. Since I know a couple of people who live in New England, I can honestly say that they will be absolutely thrill with this ride.
Sky Screamer / Windseeker - I haven’t quite figured out why every single thrill ride park is putting up one of these stupid rides. They are not very exciting and really, really expensive. This isn’t like a wave swinger or the tea cups that every park needs.....this is just ridiculous......for the cost of a good sized wooden roller coaster, we are putting in stupid spinny tower rides.....the manufactures need to be commended for the sales job they put into getting those things out of the door......I have a new idea for you guys.....how about a sit in a box in the dark ride? I am sure you can get both Six Flags and Cedar Fair to pay $5 million a pop to install it in every one of their parks.
Six Flags - While there were a couple of interesting things made in the announcement by Six Flags, the one thing that I could help but think the entire time is most of the rides that they are trying to sell as new rides are ones that are abysmal failures at their current parks. But let’s get excited anyway, because if it comes down to crap from another park or a freakin’ Windseeker, I’d take the crap from another park any day of the week.
Dorney Park - Yaa! We didn’t get a Windseeker! We got a cast-off from another park! California’s Great America’s Invertigo is going to try and test out the East coast.
Moron of Week (dual prize.....it’s been a busy week) - Playland Park - A 3000 person Middle Eastern tour group decided to go to Playland park last week and didn’t bother to check over the safety rules at the park that ban the wearing of headgear on certain fast moving rides. Instead of understanding that the rule was in place for the rider’s safety, they started a series of fights that sent two park rangers to the hospital and led to 15 arrests. This is like a vegetarian going to a McDonald’s and starting a brawl.
Create My Caption - In the discussion thread below, post your best caption(s) for the following picture showing someone getting very personal with the mascot of the "Dog Fart Coaster" at Bon Bon Land in Denmark (and yes the whole park is this way).
If I have missed anything (and I have, so no worries there) please post below. If you have some inside information, more news, more rumors, first rides, please share with the rest of us.
Sources: Screamscape, Amusement Today, and whatever else I happened to read this week...
http://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2011/09/sorcerers-of-the-magic-kingdom-coming-to-walt-disney-world
Hope your info is wrong about Kingda Ka.
P.S.: I tried telling some of these jokes to my family and they didn't get them. Guess that proves it: I'm a theme park enthusiast!
Caption: "I wonder what's in here?"
Caption: "I found the cat!"
And X Flight is a B&M not an Intiman. Don't think it's going to that much downtime
