Of course Dollywood gets the first major modern Vekoma coaster in the US. In retrospect that makes perfect sense and I really should have seen it coming. I think the most exciting part of this is how much it rounds out Wildwood Grove as a land. It's a really great area to walk through at night, but this will for sure be the big cornerstone the land needs and hopefully take some of the demand off of Dragon Flyer. I think the park desperately needs a proper dark ride to compliment Mystery Mine and Blazing Fury as themed experiences, but this is definitely another worthy investment. I do hope the coaster is a bit more forceful than Firechaser, which is a really fun ride with some great theming but lacked any kind of pop in the thrill department outside of the launches.
I feel bad for bailing on this comp, as it did have an excellent roster of prompts. My Lagoon trip happened to land on the Vegas coaster prompt which I would have loved to work on if the timing was better. After I got back from the trip work just got really crazy and my schedule never recovered after that. I really do think a more short term elimination-based competition work work well, as I think the structure of eliminations does add a level of interest and drama that the non elimination ones just don't. I think the pop in/pop out structure, as well intended as it is, works better in the context of larger brainstorming efforts. I've also been playing around with the idea of doing an Armchair Imagineering comp in the Prometheus style using Zoom or Streamyard. I absolutely don't want the concept of Armchair Imagineering comps to fade away, but I do think we as a collective group should be looking into ways to evolve the concept. As great of a hub as this site is, message boards are a dying art and diversifying how the games can be played could really give this community a boost. I've been wanting to bring the idea of Armchair Imagineering to the broader Facebook ORG scene for a while now.
