Block Brake

I left my small home town of Alfred to drive eight hours to Kings Island. I arrived at 5:00 in the morning to wait for Bre and Bryan at the main gate. When they arrived, they brought their friends Mitch, David and Shayna. We hung around the outside of the main gate until the sun slowly came up. By the way, it is really nice seeing a sunrise come up behind a park.

When we got in, we headed to gold pass member’s ERT (which we waited longer for than you would think when I say “ERT”). None the less, Diamondback was a great coaster! It is my number three behind Magnum and Maverick. You get some really nice floater and ejector air including some intense moments around the helices. The splashdown is huge and I highly recommend going there to ride it. The ride alone was worth my eight hour drive.

After that we rode Runaway Reptar and Avatar: The last air bender. I must say, it was a neat little ride. If I remember correctly, we rode The Beast, where we actually waited for it. I have never waited for that ride once. I really like it, but I don’t consider it a top 10 coaster. Below, I completely forgot which order I rode these rides, but here’s what I thought of them.

Read more »

Cedar Point is auctioning the first rides on the Magnum XL200 for the 2009 season. If you’re going to be at Cedar Point opening day (May 16th) and love Magnum this might just be the best way for you to combine your love for coasters and help out a great cause!

If you win the bid the VIP bundle includes:

Ticket to the park for the day
Commemorative T-shirt
The first two rides of the day
Commemorative Group Photo
Lunch at Breakers East Conference Room
And a Commemorative Medallion

For more information on Magnum XL200 visit its official webpage here. For more information on the event or to place a bid, please be sure to visit the webpage here.

With the economy being in such a terrible state, and many folks just not wanting to leave home as much anymore, big vacation destinations like Disney are becoming a bit less popular for families. We will be writing a bi-weekly column on the regional U.S. parks that are adding major new attractions - one park at a time - highlighting whats new, what to check out, and what to keep your eyes open for this year at each specific park. It will also include some basic information about each park so that you can find it and get in contact with the parks for more information. We’re going to kick off this series with something fun to talk about - Holiday World.

Holiday World and Splashin’ Safari
452 East Christmas Blvd, Santa Claus, Ind. 47579
http://www.holidayworld.com/index.html
(1-877-463-2645) or (812) 937-4401

Pilgrims Plunge - New for 2009!
Pilgrim’s Plunge is going to be the world’s tallest water ride at a staggering 165 feet tall, this ride will take you up 135 feet and drop you 131 of those. Just to increase the thrill you won’t be using a standard chain lift, instead the folks at Intamin and Holiday World went with an open air elevator system to take boats to the top of the tower. The ride also features dual entry from both Holiday World and Splashin’ Safari, so you’ll be able to get wet no matter which park you’re in! For more information on Pilgrims Plunge please visit Holiday World’s website here.

Read more »

Prowler has been testing starting last night apparently, according to the Worlds of Fun official blog. Have a look at the pictures here.

In other news, I’m hoping to get some Diamondback reviews and Trip Reports from Kings Island by tomorrow, so have an eye out for that. We’re looking forward to bringing you a constant stream of reviews and photos from the weekend, so stay tuned for more!

If you have a review of Diamondback or a Trip Report from a park feel free to post it in our Trip Report section! We’re always looking for interesting Trip Reports,  and if we take notice of yours, we could get in contact with you to put it on the front page!

We’ve found a video of Diamondback, and from what I can see this coaster looks amazing. The video includes a front seat PoV and a rear facing camera where you can see how much air the folks on the ride are getting. This contains spoilers for those of you that are going this weekend so we’ll have the video for you after the break.

Read more »

http://www.cedarfair.com/ir/conference_call/index.cfm

The event will be held on May 5th 2009, if you’d like to listen in please follow the links on the page linked above. If you are unsure of what they will be discussing be sure to read the page linked.

Be sure to check back on May 5th where we will have a full write up on the discussions during the call.

Also make sure to come discuss the call in real time on our news forum.

http://www.teaconnect.org/etea/TEAERA2008.pdf

A quick l0ok through the pdf shows Disney and Universal on top (as expected). Further down the list the seasonal parks take root however out of the top 25 in the world none are seasonal in North America. Its interesting to see how all the different regions performed, and even more insightful to look at how parks that are close to one another performed. A great example is Cedar Point and Kings Island where Cedar Point only had 72,000 more guests than its sister park down in Cincinnati.

Another column to pay attention to is the %change, you can see that most regional parks attendance went up, while the year round parks seemed to have been the same or gone down. Comparing these numbers to the 2009 numbers is going to be an interesting read.

Come and discuss these numbers with us in our news forum - just register and you’ll be free to start posting!

As we draw closer to the beginning of the major summer season, more and more parks are opening and more trip reports and news starts flowing. We want to know what you guys think would be the best way to organize the forums for the coming summer. Please register on the forums and vote!

James

There are many highly anticipated roller coasters opening for the 2009 operating season: Diamondback at Kings Island, Manta at SeaWorld Orlando, Prowler at Worlds of Fun, just to name a few. However, there is one coaster opening in 2009 that has been under construction for two years, and may just be the most important and influential roller coaster opening this decade.

“Flying Turns,” the newest roller coaster at Knoebels Amusement Park & Resort in Elysburg Pennsylvania, will be the first wooden bobsled coaster, known as a ‘flying turns’ coaster, to operate in 35 years. Even though you can construct a flying turns coaster in the popular Roller Coaster Tycoon game series, according to the Roller Coaster Database (rcdb.com) the last wooden bobsled coaster, “Bobsled” at Coney Island New York, was demolished in 1974. Read more »

Hello everyone its James again, its been awhile from me hasn’t it? I’m going to be posting something similar to this every Monday to have a look at the coming week. Well, we’ve been busy bees so have a look at what we’ve done in the past week:

• Trip reports are live!

• We’ve added a brand new photo gallery software to the website, be sure to check it out when you’re reading through the trip reports!

• Trip Report forum is up and running

• We are live on Twitter and Facebook

Coming up this week:

• We will have two Trip Reports from opening day at Kings Island with Diamondback.

• News articles from around the industry - including any announcements from the parks and companies.

• Another user submitted Trip Report

• And hopefully a fun surprise for everyone!

Its looking like a very busy and exciting week for us. So stay tuned for more content as we go through this week! Please make sure to register on our forums and discuss our articles and trip reports - we’re always looking for feedback and help! If you’re interested in writing for us be sure to check out the Help Us Out page with information on that. If you want to keep up to date on our latest articles and reports make sure to subscribe to our twitter or facebook page, we’ll be updating those whenever a new article comes in!

James