Orange Cat
Well-Known Member
N-NO! THAT’S NOT A OPTION, & EVEN IF IT WAS IT’S A BAD OPTION ANYWAYS & YOU HAVE NO TASTE AT ALL BYE BYE I‘M RIGHT YOU’RE WRONG GOODNIGHT
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It Could Always Be Worse - Hype Thread
- Thread starter MickeyWaffleCo.
- Start date
Orange Cat
Well-Known Member
I was bored so I decided to check out Heroforge & my first effort is a frog demon cause I’m just in the mood
Orange Cat
Well-Known Member
Oops I did it again
tcool123
Well-Known Member
Final Atlanta trip update as today we leave to Orlando!
Started the morning yesterday by visiting the Center of Puppetry Arts. Pretty sure all things on display are authentic pieces from their productions.
First up masks from the stage production Lion King!
Next up are figurines on loan from Warner Brothers from The
And the highlight of the museum the Jim Henson exhibit featuring many Muppets, Fraggles, and more! This was definitely the highlight of my visit to this museum.
Started the morning yesterday by visiting the Center of Puppetry Arts. Pretty sure all things on display are authentic pieces from their productions.
First up masks from the stage production Lion King!
Next up are figurines on loan from Warner Brothers from The
And the highlight of the museum the Jim Henson exhibit featuring many Muppets, Fraggles, and more! This was definitely the highlight of my visit to this museum.
tcool123
Well-Known Member
We had a ton of time to kill and included in our Discover Atlanta CityPass ticket thing was the Fernbank Museum of Natural Sciences. Wasn’t really our thing, but we saw more animals! Many of the animals were split either into the exhibits or the animal presentation that was occuring throughout the day. At this point we had seen many of these animals given the Botanical Gardens, Zoo and Aquarium all contained much of what we saw yesterday however there were a few standouts, namely the North American Porcupine and a series of crocodilians.
Later on we left and arrived at the World of Coke which was cute but didn’t live up to what I remembered when I first went like 10ish years ago. Bright side though reunited with Beverly once again
Rounding out our day was a visit to Centennial Park to see the Olympic rings left from the Atlanta Olympic Games from whenever it occurred (I think 1996?)
Overall it was a pretty fun trip even if we had plenty of issues with the hotel! Yes plenty it went beyond the overbooking, our toilet got clogged once, and this morning we were awoken by the fire alarms so we had to run outta of our rooms on the 11th floor all the way to the bottom. Shockingly not as bad as you think probably because of the adrenaline
ThemeParkPriest
Well-Known Member
Disney Warrior
Well-Known Member
@AceAstroAnd the highlight of the museum the Jim Henson exhibit featuring many Muppets, Fraggles, and more! This was definitely the highlight of my visit to this museum.
tcool123
Well-Known Member
Also so y’all get the whole trip report I also visited Tennessee very briefly on the way to Rock City. Rock City is basically this place with a trail alongside the mountains and caves with some garden and statues thrown about. Was it worth the money and drive ehhhhhh it was nice to see mountains and caves as a person who has never seen them in real life. Supposably you can see seven states from on top but who knows if Thats true
After the peak you can go to the fairytale caverns which is a bit of a ways away. First we had to walk through this tight opening in which I crab walked through at some points.
Saw this lovely waterfall!
And rhen made it the fairytale caverns.
Overall not really my thing but it was neat to see something different?
After the peak you can go to the fairytale caverns which is a bit of a ways away. First we had to walk through this tight opening in which I crab walked through at some points.
Saw this lovely waterfall!
And rhen made it the fairytale caverns.
Overall not really my thing but it was neat to see something different?
montydysquith-navarro
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- No
Riding on an audio-muted It's A Small World sounds... unnerving.
blogmickey.com
Attractions, Lands, Fireworks to be Closed or Cancelled for July 24-26 Jungle Cruise Movie Premier at Disneyland
Walt Disney World news, photos, and reviews! We provide you with daily news from the Walt Disney World theme parks and beyond
blogmickey.com
montydysquith-navarro
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- No
Also, in Orlando news:
So what are the chances that for tonight (and beyond)'s showing of Happily Ever After, the crest is also projection-mapped like the other 50th decorations?
So what are the chances that for tonight (and beyond)'s showing of Happily Ever After, the crest is also projection-mapped like the other 50th decorations?
D Hulk
Well-Known Member
S'pose we're all doing trip reports at the moment? Okay, then, here's mine!
A week ago I did a 4-day trip through Texas, with the express & sole intent of riding roller coasters. I visited three parks - Six Flags Over Texas, Six Flags Fiesta Texas, and SeaWorld San Antonio.
To briefly sum up how this trip came about, in September I'll be visiting Orlando for my first time. I hope for Velocicoaster to be my 200th roller coaster. And since that trip requires a SeaWorld/Busch Gardens annual pass, I felt I'd shore up my coaster credit numbers in Texas.
The first whirlwind leg was to Dallas, for Over Texas. I flew out of Burbank, CA, around 7 AM on a Wednesday, landing in Dallas at 1:30 local time and heading straight to the Six Flags to knock out as much as possible before either their 9 PM closing or the 100F temperatures defeated me. (These consistently awful temps are the reason I took so few pics on this trip.)
Six Flags Over Texas is the chain's original park, dating back to 1966 when it opened with six lands themed to the six nations of Texas (Spain, France, Mexico, Texas, the Confederacy, and the U.S. itself). This theming is impressive by Six Flags standards, though it's still minimal and it's quite overshadowed by their more recent influx of generic branding and advertisements and carnival games everyplace. (Also an omnipresent puke smell.) The park's swampy oak grove setting was pleasant, so constant lush shade contrasted against the big steel rides. The park layout was total gobbledegook. You have to walk down hidden restroom paths and behind fried corndog stands to even find certain headliner coasters; without prior research, I'd've been flummoxed.
So I went here straight from the airport, stashed my luggage in a locker, slathered on the sunscreen, filled my water bottle, and set off to ride around a dozen new coasters. Oy! Over Texas boasts a janky vintage collection, including the first Arrow mine train, the first Premier Rides coaster, and the first RMC. Most everything else is a middling coaster, with a park-wide emphasis on strong positive Gs. Y'know, dehydrating grey-out moments! Not my favorite coaster element. I prefer airtime and laterals, crazy transitions, and long smooth rides. High intensity rides are a younger man's game.
Nonetheless, onward! First up was New Texas Giant, the park's best ride. This is a fascinating historical coaster, RMC's very first wood-to-steel I-Box conversion, the predecessor to wonders like Steel Vengeance. (To which it bears some similarities, since they share a similar underlying Dinn Corporation wooden structure.) Compared to newer RMCs, New Texas Giant is tame. No inversions, limited airtime, lots of repetitive overbanked hills, all slavishly following the original layout. It's still an amazing ride, exciting and long, and was world class when it premiered nearly a decade ago, so it's fascinating to see how RMC learned from their prototype and continued to one-up their designs.
Titan might be the park's 2nd best coaster. It's a near clone of Magic Mountain's Goliath, one of MM's worst rides. (A testament to Over Texas' overall ride quality.) Though over 250' tall, Titan doesn't capitalize on its great height like some B&M or Intamin hypers, instead favoring tons of high-G helices...plus the 2nd stupidest mid-course brake run I've ever experienced. There was at least one cool hill early on where I got some unexpected floater airtime - best I've ever gotten, actually, surprisingly. Too bad the rest was either mediocre or not to my taste.
Runaway Mountain was an enclosed family coaster, kinda like Space Mountain. It's far more physically intense, with some extremely tight turns which made me grey out. (I greyed out a lot in Dallas.) Not comparable to Great Adventure's superficially similar Skull Mountain. Shockwave is a vintage 1970s Schwarzkopf looper, with two back-to-back vertical loops guaranteeing even stronger grey out moments. For a respite after all these positive Gs and semi-unconsciousness, I did Runaway Mine Train, the first ever mine train coaster from 1966, which was both boring and kinda uncomfortable because of the awkward transitions. The smaller Mini Mine Train was a credit. Pandemonium was a tame spinning coaster, though our car's uneven weight balance and the overbearing heat made it overpowering and dizzifying, I had to sit and recover for a while before then doing Judge Roy Scream, a pseudo-vintage woodie from 1980 which - apart from a couple of neat airtime moments - is a testament to how timid wooden coaster design was before GCI and the Gravity Group took over in the '90s. Joker was a cloned S&S 4D Free-Spin, disorienting yet fun, surprisingly tolerable for how wicked it looks. I refused to do their Batman clone since the same model at Magic Mountain totally kicked my butt a few weeks earlier. It's just another positive G force machine, and it wasn't a priority.
Lastly was Mr. Freeze Reverse Blast, a contender for the park's 2nd best alongside Titan. It's the most unique shuttle coaster I've seen, which actually manages to run two trains thanks to an ingenious sliding platform setup in the loading station. Seriously, the station is the ride's best feature! The ride itself, I wish I could've enjoyed it more, but it was just even more positive Gs and at this point my body was nearing collapse. You launch backwards from the enclosed station, then backwards through an inverted top hat (pushing you at 5x normal gravity upwards into the sky!), before hitting a spike and doing it all again going forwards. Clever stuff, but physically overwhelming.
I passed out nearly instantly upon reaching my hotel room near the airport. Little time to rest, though! The next day saw a 7 AM flight to San Antonio. One hour later I went to the next hotel to drop off my bag and enjoy a continental breakfast while awaiting the opening of Six Flags Fiesta Texas - a five minute Uber ride away.
The best theming I’ve seen in a Six Flags park
Six Flags Fiesta Texas might have the most pleasant setting of any Six Flags park. Like the surrounding upper class neighborhoods, it's set in a converted quarry, which in another context would make for a tranquil, bucolic nature park. Exposed limestone rocks over 100' tall form a natural park berm, often plussed with roaring man made waterfalls. The quarry retains cooler temperatures from the running waters and pepper trees. Even the theming is above average for the chain (though still below, e.g., Knott's quality), with better materials and textures despite generic themes like Old West or 1950s or Boardwalk. I found Fiesta Texas the most enjoyable Six Flags to simple be inside of, which was good since their ride collection was somewhat meager. (Plus three of their coasters - Poltergeist, Boomerang, and their Free Spin clone called Batman - were all closed, putting a damper on my credit counting.)
Arriving in the park prior to rope drop, I prioritized Wonder Woman: Golden Lasso since it has terrible capacity - perhaps around 600 people an hour. This is an RMC Raptor single rail prototype, a mirrored clone of Railblazer in California's Great America. Though the ride is only 30 seconds after the lift hill, it packs in enough elements for a coaster 4x as long. These Raptors are simply the best paced, most aggressive coasters anyplace! In a good way, for me, since they favor airtime, punchy transitions, and hangtime-filled inversions, all elements which I enjoy. Despite the superior quarry wall setting and the okay DC theming, overall I prefer Railblazer for its better restraints. They fit much looser, almost too loose since Railblazer flings me around like a ragdoll, while Wonder Woman's comfort collars actually made it slightly painful to breathe.
Next was Superman: Krypton Coaster, a B&M floorless multi-looper. Typically I find this model underwhelming, since B&M's loopers follow a predictable formula. This was a pleasant surprise, though, taking full advantage of the quarry wall, climbing and diving off that wall multiple times, at other times bringing riders within feet of the jagged rocks, while also tossing in a good assortment of inversions along the way. Really fun! This might even by my 3rd favorite overall B&M to-date, behind only their flyers Tatsu and Flying Dinosaur. (Their hyper have never done much for me, for some reason.)
Now for the showstopper: Iron Rattler! This was only RMC's 2nd I-Box woodie conversion, after New Texas Giant, but it's phenomenal how much they learned from their first effort. Iron Rattler is a legitimate Top Ten coaster for me! It's a relentless journey interacting throughout with the quarry wall, with a few absolutely jaw-dropping dives, a glorious heaven roll inversion, and good filler in between. Over 3 days I rode this 3 times, twice in the back and once in the front, and each time was a wholly unique experience. (The queue was an hour long each time.) This first day was a noontime ride, which was a good thrilling baseline. The final day was a rope drop ride in the front row while the steel hadn't warmed up yet, which was distinctly less exciting. But in between I did a 7 PM ride, back seat, full train, 100F temps, and these optimal coaster conditions had the train running so relentlessly fast, that final quarry wall dive is now one of the best coaster drops I've ever experienced! (Behind only El Toro.)
Around 3, as the day was becoming unpleasantly hot, I exited Fiesta Texas when hotel check-in became available. After the exhausting previous day in Dallas, I was content to simply recover for the day's remainder, enjoying a steak, a beer, and sleep. A much-earned rest!
The following day was for SeaWorld San Antonio, the forgotten black sheep of its chain. I found it more to my taste than the semi-local SeaWorld San Diego, trading out California's claustrophobic layout for a way-too-open sprawling layout around a huge World Showcase-sized lagoon. The overall ambiance was like a clean, modern city park, nothing spectacular but always nice.
Overall, SWSA offers a combo of roller coasters, kiddie rides, and animal shows, with none of these things alone really being a standout feature, but the overall combo adding up to...okay. I'm glad for my annual pass; the $85 gate price is too much. With staggered coaster openings, I began with Steel Eel, a 150' tall pseudo-hyper from Morgan. It had a decent first drop and some powerful airtime moments, though the transitions and track profiling were much rougher than you'd find with like a B&M hyper, so a one-and-done for me. Wave Breaker was a family launch coaster from Intamin, with fun jet ski ride vehicles and a joyful setting over the lagoon. Great White was, sigh, another Batman clone, which I dutifully rode, and I enjoyed it well enough. The lady riding next to me vomited! Journey to Atlantis technically qualifies as a roller coaster thanks to this one random dip in the middle, though it's really more of a splashdown boat ride. Was a nice way to cool down. Following these rides, I took a break for a beluga whale show. SeaWorld's animal shows are their true E-tickets, so a day in a SeaWorld must revolve around show schedules. It's a different way of touring a park, and a nice shift from the commando approach I took in Dallas. (Oh right, I also did the Super Grover's Box Car Derby carnival kiddie coaster for the credit.)
But I was really here for Texas Stingray, a brand new woodie from GCI which opened in 2020. Thanks to the pandemic, an obscure park, and an obscure location even within that park, and constant walk-ons throughout the day, this is a totally underrated ride. Undervalued. Underappreciated. It wound up my 2nd favorite of the trip, behind Iron Rattler! It rivals Mystic Timbers and Gold Striker as my favorite from GCI. Great pacing throughout, with lots of rapid banked transitions, a good mixture of laterals and airtime, and super easy to reride constantly with just a brief pause for an orca show in between.
By starting at rope drop and touring efficiently, I managed all this and still completed SWSA by around 1 PM - just as the crowds and the heat were both becoming too much. Which was fine by me. I returned to the hotel, recovered for a spell, then spent my evening back at Fiesta Texas. Which I also visited for a final rope drop the following morning. That was a Saturday, with noticeably worse crowds than on previous days, so I only spent a brief while there on my final day. I took the long route back to the San Antonio International Airport, stopping along the way at an Alamo Drafthouse theater to see what the hype was all about, and to watch Space Jam. That was fun.
So overall a quick, tiring, wholly successful trip. My coaster count now stands at 187! There are a few smallish family coasters near enough to home that I can add to that tally in the next month or two, to get closer to that #200 threshold in time for Orlando!
A week ago I did a 4-day trip through Texas, with the express & sole intent of riding roller coasters. I visited three parks - Six Flags Over Texas, Six Flags Fiesta Texas, and SeaWorld San Antonio.
To briefly sum up how this trip came about, in September I'll be visiting Orlando for my first time. I hope for Velocicoaster to be my 200th roller coaster. And since that trip requires a SeaWorld/Busch Gardens annual pass, I felt I'd shore up my coaster credit numbers in Texas.
The first whirlwind leg was to Dallas, for Over Texas. I flew out of Burbank, CA, around 7 AM on a Wednesday, landing in Dallas at 1:30 local time and heading straight to the Six Flags to knock out as much as possible before either their 9 PM closing or the 100F temperatures defeated me. (These consistently awful temps are the reason I took so few pics on this trip.)
Six Flags Over Texas is the chain's original park, dating back to 1966 when it opened with six lands themed to the six nations of Texas (Spain, France, Mexico, Texas, the Confederacy, and the U.S. itself). This theming is impressive by Six Flags standards, though it's still minimal and it's quite overshadowed by their more recent influx of generic branding and advertisements and carnival games everyplace. (Also an omnipresent puke smell.) The park's swampy oak grove setting was pleasant, so constant lush shade contrasted against the big steel rides. The park layout was total gobbledegook. You have to walk down hidden restroom paths and behind fried corndog stands to even find certain headliner coasters; without prior research, I'd've been flummoxed.
So I went here straight from the airport, stashed my luggage in a locker, slathered on the sunscreen, filled my water bottle, and set off to ride around a dozen new coasters. Oy! Over Texas boasts a janky vintage collection, including the first Arrow mine train, the first Premier Rides coaster, and the first RMC. Most everything else is a middling coaster, with a park-wide emphasis on strong positive Gs. Y'know, dehydrating grey-out moments! Not my favorite coaster element. I prefer airtime and laterals, crazy transitions, and long smooth rides. High intensity rides are a younger man's game.
Nonetheless, onward! First up was New Texas Giant, the park's best ride. This is a fascinating historical coaster, RMC's very first wood-to-steel I-Box conversion, the predecessor to wonders like Steel Vengeance. (To which it bears some similarities, since they share a similar underlying Dinn Corporation wooden structure.) Compared to newer RMCs, New Texas Giant is tame. No inversions, limited airtime, lots of repetitive overbanked hills, all slavishly following the original layout. It's still an amazing ride, exciting and long, and was world class when it premiered nearly a decade ago, so it's fascinating to see how RMC learned from their prototype and continued to one-up their designs.
Titan might be the park's 2nd best coaster. It's a near clone of Magic Mountain's Goliath, one of MM's worst rides. (A testament to Over Texas' overall ride quality.) Though over 250' tall, Titan doesn't capitalize on its great height like some B&M or Intamin hypers, instead favoring tons of high-G helices...plus the 2nd stupidest mid-course brake run I've ever experienced. There was at least one cool hill early on where I got some unexpected floater airtime - best I've ever gotten, actually, surprisingly. Too bad the rest was either mediocre or not to my taste.
Runaway Mountain was an enclosed family coaster, kinda like Space Mountain. It's far more physically intense, with some extremely tight turns which made me grey out. (I greyed out a lot in Dallas.) Not comparable to Great Adventure's superficially similar Skull Mountain. Shockwave is a vintage 1970s Schwarzkopf looper, with two back-to-back vertical loops guaranteeing even stronger grey out moments. For a respite after all these positive Gs and semi-unconsciousness, I did Runaway Mine Train, the first ever mine train coaster from 1966, which was both boring and kinda uncomfortable because of the awkward transitions. The smaller Mini Mine Train was a credit. Pandemonium was a tame spinning coaster, though our car's uneven weight balance and the overbearing heat made it overpowering and dizzifying, I had to sit and recover for a while before then doing Judge Roy Scream, a pseudo-vintage woodie from 1980 which - apart from a couple of neat airtime moments - is a testament to how timid wooden coaster design was before GCI and the Gravity Group took over in the '90s. Joker was a cloned S&S 4D Free-Spin, disorienting yet fun, surprisingly tolerable for how wicked it looks. I refused to do their Batman clone since the same model at Magic Mountain totally kicked my butt a few weeks earlier. It's just another positive G force machine, and it wasn't a priority.
Lastly was Mr. Freeze Reverse Blast, a contender for the park's 2nd best alongside Titan. It's the most unique shuttle coaster I've seen, which actually manages to run two trains thanks to an ingenious sliding platform setup in the loading station. Seriously, the station is the ride's best feature! The ride itself, I wish I could've enjoyed it more, but it was just even more positive Gs and at this point my body was nearing collapse. You launch backwards from the enclosed station, then backwards through an inverted top hat (pushing you at 5x normal gravity upwards into the sky!), before hitting a spike and doing it all again going forwards. Clever stuff, but physically overwhelming.
I passed out nearly instantly upon reaching my hotel room near the airport. Little time to rest, though! The next day saw a 7 AM flight to San Antonio. One hour later I went to the next hotel to drop off my bag and enjoy a continental breakfast while awaiting the opening of Six Flags Fiesta Texas - a five minute Uber ride away.
The best theming I’ve seen in a Six Flags park
Six Flags Fiesta Texas might have the most pleasant setting of any Six Flags park. Like the surrounding upper class neighborhoods, it's set in a converted quarry, which in another context would make for a tranquil, bucolic nature park. Exposed limestone rocks over 100' tall form a natural park berm, often plussed with roaring man made waterfalls. The quarry retains cooler temperatures from the running waters and pepper trees. Even the theming is above average for the chain (though still below, e.g., Knott's quality), with better materials and textures despite generic themes like Old West or 1950s or Boardwalk. I found Fiesta Texas the most enjoyable Six Flags to simple be inside of, which was good since their ride collection was somewhat meager. (Plus three of their coasters - Poltergeist, Boomerang, and their Free Spin clone called Batman - were all closed, putting a damper on my credit counting.)
Arriving in the park prior to rope drop, I prioritized Wonder Woman: Golden Lasso since it has terrible capacity - perhaps around 600 people an hour. This is an RMC Raptor single rail prototype, a mirrored clone of Railblazer in California's Great America. Though the ride is only 30 seconds after the lift hill, it packs in enough elements for a coaster 4x as long. These Raptors are simply the best paced, most aggressive coasters anyplace! In a good way, for me, since they favor airtime, punchy transitions, and hangtime-filled inversions, all elements which I enjoy. Despite the superior quarry wall setting and the okay DC theming, overall I prefer Railblazer for its better restraints. They fit much looser, almost too loose since Railblazer flings me around like a ragdoll, while Wonder Woman's comfort collars actually made it slightly painful to breathe.
Next was Superman: Krypton Coaster, a B&M floorless multi-looper. Typically I find this model underwhelming, since B&M's loopers follow a predictable formula. This was a pleasant surprise, though, taking full advantage of the quarry wall, climbing and diving off that wall multiple times, at other times bringing riders within feet of the jagged rocks, while also tossing in a good assortment of inversions along the way. Really fun! This might even by my 3rd favorite overall B&M to-date, behind only their flyers Tatsu and Flying Dinosaur. (Their hyper have never done much for me, for some reason.)
Now for the showstopper: Iron Rattler! This was only RMC's 2nd I-Box woodie conversion, after New Texas Giant, but it's phenomenal how much they learned from their first effort. Iron Rattler is a legitimate Top Ten coaster for me! It's a relentless journey interacting throughout with the quarry wall, with a few absolutely jaw-dropping dives, a glorious heaven roll inversion, and good filler in between. Over 3 days I rode this 3 times, twice in the back and once in the front, and each time was a wholly unique experience. (The queue was an hour long each time.) This first day was a noontime ride, which was a good thrilling baseline. The final day was a rope drop ride in the front row while the steel hadn't warmed up yet, which was distinctly less exciting. But in between I did a 7 PM ride, back seat, full train, 100F temps, and these optimal coaster conditions had the train running so relentlessly fast, that final quarry wall dive is now one of the best coaster drops I've ever experienced! (Behind only El Toro.)
Yes, this is a Six Flags!
Rounding out the few remaining Fiesta Texas coasters, next I did Road Runner Express, a surprisingly aggressive Arrow mine train which too uses the quarry wall to perfection. Pandemonium was a bland clone of the Over Texas model in a prettier setting. Goliath was a Batman clone. I actually worked up the gumption to ride this one, despite my recent experience in Magic Mountain. It proved not only tolerable, but even thrilling and enjoyable, thanks to being much newer than Magic Mountain's installation, and with much better maintenance. Then I spent an embarrassing hour collecting a Streamliner Coaster kiddie credit, even waiting out a ride breakdown so I could get on.
Around 3, as the day was becoming unpleasantly hot, I exited Fiesta Texas when hotel check-in became available. After the exhausting previous day in Dallas, I was content to simply recover for the day's remainder, enjoying a steak, a beer, and sleep. A much-earned rest!
The following day was for SeaWorld San Antonio, the forgotten black sheep of its chain. I found it more to my taste than the semi-local SeaWorld San Diego, trading out California's claustrophobic layout for a way-too-open sprawling layout around a huge World Showcase-sized lagoon. The overall ambiance was like a clean, modern city park, nothing spectacular but always nice.
Overall, SWSA offers a combo of roller coasters, kiddie rides, and animal shows, with none of these things alone really being a standout feature, but the overall combo adding up to...okay. I'm glad for my annual pass; the $85 gate price is too much. With staggered coaster openings, I began with Steel Eel, a 150' tall pseudo-hyper from Morgan. It had a decent first drop and some powerful airtime moments, though the transitions and track profiling were much rougher than you'd find with like a B&M hyper, so a one-and-done for me. Wave Breaker was a family launch coaster from Intamin, with fun jet ski ride vehicles and a joyful setting over the lagoon. Great White was, sigh, another Batman clone, which I dutifully rode, and I enjoyed it well enough. The lady riding next to me vomited! Journey to Atlantis technically qualifies as a roller coaster thanks to this one random dip in the middle, though it's really more of a splashdown boat ride. Was a nice way to cool down. Following these rides, I took a break for a beluga whale show. SeaWorld's animal shows are their true E-tickets, so a day in a SeaWorld must revolve around show schedules. It's a different way of touring a park, and a nice shift from the commando approach I took in Dallas. (Oh right, I also did the Super Grover's Box Car Derby carnival kiddie coaster for the credit.)
But I was really here for Texas Stingray, a brand new woodie from GCI which opened in 2020. Thanks to the pandemic, an obscure park, and an obscure location even within that park, and constant walk-ons throughout the day, this is a totally underrated ride. Undervalued. Underappreciated. It wound up my 2nd favorite of the trip, behind Iron Rattler! It rivals Mystic Timbers and Gold Striker as my favorite from GCI. Great pacing throughout, with lots of rapid banked transitions, a good mixture of laterals and airtime, and super easy to reride constantly with just a brief pause for an orca show in between.
By starting at rope drop and touring efficiently, I managed all this and still completed SWSA by around 1 PM - just as the crowds and the heat were both becoming too much. Which was fine by me. I returned to the hotel, recovered for a spell, then spent my evening back at Fiesta Texas. Which I also visited for a final rope drop the following morning. That was a Saturday, with noticeably worse crowds than on previous days, so I only spent a brief while there on my final day. I took the long route back to the San Antonio International Airport, stopping along the way at an Alamo Drafthouse theater to see what the hype was all about, and to watch Space Jam. That was fun.
So overall a quick, tiring, wholly successful trip. My coaster count now stands at 187! There are a few smallish family coasters near enough to home that I can add to that tally in the next month or two, to get closer to that #200 threshold in time for Orlando!
ThemeParkPriest
Well-Known Member
@Disney Warrior do you want to be included in the brainstorming threads as a non-official guest judge?
Disney Warrior
Well-Known Member
Part of me says yes, because I am going to review them, but the other part of me says no because the reviews will be minimalistic and short. Include me in them just in case.
EmFromPlanetEarth
Well-Known Member
Due to my tendency to disappear I’m not participating in this however I wouldn’t mind giving some of my ideas for the prompts just for funsies: my idea for the test track prompt would be like it doesn’t fit at all in Epcot but if it was rethemed to movie stunts and such. Like your a stunt double for a movie and the big stunt at the end is a high speed chase, so you would crash into walls, jump over rivers, w bank heist. The ride vehicle would be a stuntmobile: a new high tech device to make stunts with. It would also be how I’d imagine test track would be if it were designed for Hollywood studios instead of epcot
- In the Parks
- No
Calling all coaster nerds!
I don’t know how many of you have been there, as it’s not a massive park, but I’ll be taking a trip to Lagoon in Utah next weekend. While it’s not a huge park, it’s got a good number of coasters! I’m not really a coaster nerd, but I enjoy them and I don’t tend to get sick on them, so I can handle some more intense ones. Does anyone who’s been to Lagoon have any suggestions on must-ride coasters?
I don’t know how many of you have been there, as it’s not a massive park, but I’ll be taking a trip to Lagoon in Utah next weekend. While it’s not a huge park, it’s got a good number of coasters! I’m not really a coaster nerd, but I enjoy them and I don’t tend to get sick on them, so I can handle some more intense ones. Does anyone who’s been to Lagoon have any suggestions on must-ride coasters?
D Hulk
Well-Known Member
While I haven’t been there - yet - I am very seriously considering a trip out there sometime this year. Here are the highlights:
Cannibal: Their elite tier headliner, built in-house by the park. When it opened, the 205’ tall, 116 degree first drop was the steepest in the world; it ranks 3rd now I believe. Also has some ludicrous inversions.
Wicked: A multi-inversion Zierer model, which features a vertical launch straight up (maybe the only such launch in the world), immediately followed by a vertical drop straight down.
Roller Coaster: Yes, that’s its name! This classic wooden beauty is 100 years old in 2021, and is still supposed to be in pristine shape.
There are several other coasters out there which sound like good filler as well, plus a funky haunted dark ride and tons of fun carnival amusements. Have a fantastic trip!
EmFromPlanetEarth
Well-Known Member
They’re making a Star Wars hotel and that got me thinking: imagine how cool it would be if they made a hotel like Star Wars hotel but with walle and the axiom? The story would be that, many many years before the events of walle you sign up for a prototype cruise of the axiom (like with the test of the hyperloop and such) and you’d stop by various destinations. That would be so much cooler than a Star Wars hotle imo. Just imagine. Being able to get on the spaceship from walle.
EmFromPlanetEarth
Well-Known Member
JokersWild
Well-Known Member
Personally I'd rather Star Wars, but this is still a good idea.