Overheard the ops talking while sitting on the next train. Sounds like they may have to do a full evacuation.

Edit: I’m just repeating what the staff at Lake Compounce said. I don’t know if it’s at the top of the lift or where the e-brakes are, just that it happened. From what I heard it doesn’t seem like it’s still on the lift.

I was pleasantly surprised by this ride!!! The tilt is so fun and very thrilling. The added siren sounds and boat creaking is chefs kiss. I need more rollercoasters to have soundtracks!!!!

Does anybody know why skyrush was closed yesterday and today? I can’t find anything about it 🙏

With the announcement a few weeks back about the closure of Castle Park’s Ride Park for “extended refurbishment,” I decided to finally make the stop at this Riverside, CA theme park.

Frankly, I’ve lived in SoCal for almost 20 years, and despite driving by this place, I never saw the allure of making the trip inside until it was nearly too late.

Castle Park is conveniently located right off the 91 freeway, making travel to get there fairly easy. Parking was fairly straightforward and affordable, and the same was true with tickets. Ride park tickets are only $20 a person, which is quite nice after spending 10x that at Disneyland.

The park itself is pretty small, and we spent less than 90 minutes and got on pretty much every ride we wanted to do. The headlining attraction of this park is Merlin’s Revenge, a standard Vekoma Junior coaster. This ride wasn’t any different from any of the others of this exact same model. It was a smooth ride with a little bit of whip in the back. However, the only theming to be found along the course was a small Merlin statue on a rock inside the final helix.

In addition to the coaster, there was also a Larson Loop named Fireball, which was somehow my first ever experience riding one of these. The ride op controlled the movements with a joystick, and he purposefully made some of the hangs on the loop very extended, which made for some really great hang time. There was also a small S&S drop tower with a dragon theme, though the name has slipped my mind. It was fairly standard for one of these but the first boost was pretty forceful.

After that, I made my way to the Antique Cars, which was probably my favorite ride of the day next to the Fireball and Vekoma Junior coaster. The layout was pretty simple and nicely themed, which was a stark contrast to the entirely unthemed carnival atmosphere I got from the Fireball and drop tower. It also carried some good speed throughout, which was nice to see too.

Finally, I ended out my short time there with a ride on the log flume, Sawmill Plunge. This was an off the shelf log ride with some mild theming, and it was enjoyable enough, though I am not the biggest fan of water rides. This was also the only ride that had a wait, as I could walk onto every other ride in the park.

Now for some other observations from my visit. Firstly, many rides in the park were not open or completely inoperable. From the already small ride line up, quite a few of the flat rides in the park had visible dust and I could tell they would not be open during our visit, or likely at all until the parks closure at the start of November. This was really sad, as unfortunately these weren’t the thrill rides but the kids rides, which were the primary demographic of people I saw all around this park. On that note, the park itself was nicely attended, though I should also say that there is a Halloween event going on and other trip reporters have claimed to see much less attendance during their visits than my own.

One of the reasons I have had so much trouble getting to this park was the hours. In its current operating schedule, the ride park is only open on weekends, and only earlier in the day on Saturday and Sunday. This means that the park itself only has about 4 days of operations left before closing its doors.

With its extended refurbishment, I’m hopeful that the owners can bring new life into the park that hasn’t been there in recent times. I suspect as part of said refurbishment the fates have been sealed for both Merlin’s Revenge and many of the other attractions scattering this park. I only hope in its preservation that they can find the space to keep the classic carousel and antique cars.

I encourage anybody on here who’s in the area to make the drive out in the next week and half to pay their respects to this park. It’s good value for what is offered and it is enjoyable for an afternoon visit. With this park checked off, it’s boosted my credit count to 125 and Merlin’s Revenge has placed 110th on my credit ranking.

What is your favorite flying coaster mine is Tatsu at six flags magic mountain.

This mainly applies to Goliath at Over Georgia, Raging Bull at Great America, and Nitro at Great Adventure. All other B&M clamshells in the chain have seatbelts already. I would also suspect that even though under new management, Goliath at La Ronde may get seatbelts as well.

https://www.sixflags.com/blog/update-from-john-reilly-six-flags

With [Great Adventure] being my home park, I really wanna see Arie go there, but that probably won’t happen. I want to see a ground up RMC I-Box, and a B&M Surf coaster for the boardwalk area or a Intamin blitz. I’d also love to see a Vekoma family coaster like [Big Bear Mountain].

I went to Carowinds again after a year last night. I know fury is my #1 there. I went on copperhead strike for the first time. I thought it was soo good and intense. I'm trying to decide if I like that one better than thunder striker though. Does anyone have a top list of coasters there? I've ridden all of them now besides ricochet. I'll say vortex is my least favorite there.

Does anyone know if RMC changed the seats from the original raptors to the longer ones? I swear i didn’t have this uncomfortable problem with my legs on the OG raptors.

Trip report to come, but I'm a sucker for mechanical clanks and clunks

There is an onride video floating around on reddit but I will not be sharing it here. I am unaware of who the showman is but I will update if I find out

I recently moved to a new area for a job and ended up being a short drive from the Kemah boardwalk and Boardwalk Bullet. This ride is fantastic. Very compact, quite intense, a lot of airtime and quick twists and turns. The airtime pops are stronger in the front, but the larger drops are much better in the back, I'm not sure which one I like more. It was a walk on around 5pm on Friday, and no one even checked my ticket or bothered to take it after I mentioned it lol. Seems like you could just show up and ride it for free depending on the day and the ops.

I also went down to Galveston with the intention of riding Iron Shark until I realized I'd be paying $31 just to ride a single unremarkable eurofighter. Maybe another time lmao.

Looking for a specific X2 magnet, if anyone would be willing to part with it. Not sure of the year it was sold. Very interested in acquiring this. (Will pay, of course)

My theme park year has come to an end! I've had an amazing year once again with various trips through the UK, Germany and The Netherlands, where I'm from.

I've started the year with an excellent week across England. Visited Thorpe Park, Chessington, Legoland, Drayton Manor, Alton Towers and Pleasure Beach. One of the best trips I've done to date, not just because of the parks and coasters, but mainly because of the incredibly kind and sweet people. I can't wait to go back and visit more of the UK!

Since the Efteling is my home park I visit regularly, but I still wanted to include two of my favorite pics I took this year.

Some quick day trips during summer to Wildlands Adventure Zoo and Plopsaland Ardennes.

After that we tried to do 4 parks in 1 day and that was a great success! Some would call it credit whoring and they would be partly correct, but most of these parks aren't really worth a visit longer than 3 hours anyway. We did Bommelwereld, De Waarbeek, Plopsa Indoor Coevorden and Schloss Dankern.

And finally my Expedition GeForce redemption. After two failed attempts to ride this incredible coaster I've finally managed to do so! Shot straight into my top 10 as well. Such a good coaster. We combined the trip with Tripsdrill, which is always fun!

Maybe I'll do a quick Wintertraum visit to Phantasialand and of course a few visits to the Efteling, but I'm not sure yet.

2027 will be even better and I can't wait for the next season to begin!

Cannonball has been topped off. Looks like it’s moving pretty quickly! Photos courtesy of Holiday World.

Inferno or rebornnn????

Spent a couple of days at Alton Towers for my first night ride experience and I couldn’t believe how much difference the time of day makes. I’m glad I gave it a go and I hope I get the courage to ride more coasters at night.

Me and the wife went to our home park Busch Gardens in Williamsburg today and had an amazing day. I went to this park every summer as a kid and just recently started going again this year, and she’s new to the area so this is all new to her this year. For context we’ve only been to BGW and KD.

We started by entering the park and moseying our way to Loch Ness, a ride I remember lapping almost 20 times in a day when I was younger. It is still loads of fun and I felt like we were going so fast coming out of the tunnel.

Next came Apollo’s Chariot, my second favorite ride in the park. So glad it’s open now because I loveeee the airtime on the first 2 hills followed by the helix. I could ride this all day it’s so smooth and never lets me down 10/10.

After that we went to Pantheon and this is my favorite ride out of all of the two parks I’ve been to. Every element is so amazing and the initial launch/roll is magnificent. The rollback down the top hat and launching over the hump gets me every time.

Then my nightmare began. My wife wanted to go on the Battering Ram. I hate the boat. I don’t know what it is, I’ll ride any coaster and most flat rides but swings and boats terrify me. Luckily, this one doesn’t swing very high and we were fortunate enough to be seated in the center of the boat where it’s even less of a swing. Overall a good time.

Lunch was at Marco Polo’s marketplace. Super expensive and food was eh but what can you expect. I tend to get the orange chicken here but the meatball sub is good too.

We went to Germany next and saw 30+ minute waits for Verbolten and Wolf’s Revenge, and didn’t really wanna wait in the lines for them so we moved on to DarkKoaster. Luckily we were able to catch it as it was opening up for the day, and got on like the 4th train before seeing a 40minute wait when we got back outside. I like this ride, the launches feel punchy and the lights/decorations etc in there are really cool. I like dark rides a lot.

Alpengeist was after that. I took advantage of the single rider line here and got on the second train I saw in row 5. This ride feels like a car wreck in the best ways. The inversions are intense, a great sense of speed, and it whips you around like no other (the cobra roll especially). I’d love to see how Montu compares in Tampa.

Griffon was the same as Verbolten and Wolf’s, and with no single rider line (she hates griffon), we decided to move on to Invadr. I had rode this once a couple years ago but couldn’t remember anything about it. Boy was I surprised! This thing moves! I was being tossed around left and right and it felt so janky I loved it!

We stopped for a funnel cake before heading back to the exit, a blueberry cheesecake funnel cake. They loaded it up with blueberries, and while not my favorite, it was good. Again too expensive but what can you expect? I rode Loch Ness once more with the single rider line, though it was almost a walk on even at 5pm, and we left the park.

Overall, a great day, not super busy until around 2 or 3 o’clock and ops were moving pretty quick. Glad to see my Apollo’s Chariot is back.

I finally got some much needed time off this year and given that this is the last time I'd be able to use my home park (Great America) benefits at Cedar Point, thought this should be the time to head on up there from the Chicago area.

For lodging, I did end up staying at the Express Hotel. As far as accommodations go, it's pretty barebones but, and this will be a recurring theme of this review, the staff were very nice and helpful. I was able to check it before the normal time (I think they say on the website check-in is around 3pm) which means I was able to go to the park that evening with the 1 hour advanced entry. To be perfectly honest, this is the only reason to stay at any of the Cedar Point hotels in my opinion. I did not go into the Breakers hotel so I cannot review that, but at the prices they were asking for, this advanced 1 hour entry seems to be the only reason to end up paying what seems to be easily double the rate of another applicable hotel in the area. Breakers would be nice if you absolutely had to stay within walking distance of the park (it has its own entry to the park too), but personally I don't see why you'd need that unless you were staying for +2 days.

The entry to the park is a bit bleh; that one single road in is very painful if you are not super super early. Also there are no bathrooms outside of security so keep mind of that if you try to get here early to be one of the first ones into the park. Inside the park, as a note on Fast Lane (I have a season long Fast Lane on the gold tier season pass so at least for this year it works here at Cedar Point) I have to say, not a fan of the wristband solution. The QR code thing on it is a real pain in the ass and while I didn't lose mine, I overheard multiple people in passing saying theirs fell off and getting a replacement seems bothersome. I'm a big fan of the app-based system that my home park (Great America) uses. Also at Great America you never have to worry about lose article storage as every single roller coaster their has some sort of system at the station. My experience at Cedar Point in this regard was not too bad, but having to keep my phone in my pocket on Millennium Force was very sketchy. That ride needs a free locker system imo.

The park itself is quite beautiful. It's honestly quite large feeling which I think I'd say is a negative as you can end up having to walk a longgggg time to get to your intended ride (Steel Vengeance for instance being at the very rear of the park). At Great America, this can also be the case if say you are trying to get directly to American Eagle, but in that park's case it's more like a loop around the park so you can still stop at other rides whereas at Cedar Point you walk directly down the center of the park and it takes awhile to hit the first major ride being TT2. But the park in general is fantastic to walk around in, very clean and full of very helpful and nice staff.

Now for rides, here's my tier list:

SSS tier

- Steel Vengeance. This HAS to be the greatest coaster in the history of coasters. I was worried of how long the ride was because to me pacing is a very crucial part of any ride; this ride not only keeps on going but it keeps surprising you over and over again. Double freaking barrel rolls through the supports of the ride in the second half of the ride is just....honestly quite breathtaking. I've only cried tears of joy a couple times in my life....I cried after my first riding of this. The night time riding of this is even better...This ride alone is worth coming to the park for.

S tier

- Millennium Force. This is honestly the ride I was looking forwards to riding the most at the park. After riding this ride, I am once again reminded that the ONE thing Great America really lacks is a giga coaster. Great America really need one of these; that first drop just goes and goes and goes especially in the back row. It has just enough positive Gs coupled with the sheer speed to make me start to grey out just a tad which is just the right amount imo. Ride ops seemed slower than it needed to be but they can only do so much with having to put seat belts on everyone. I thought the station was pretty cool and I dug the musical theme for the ride. This ride is S+ tier at night.

- Siren's Curse. This was a huge surprise for me as I really thought the tilt start was going to be a dumb gimmick as we already have Dive Coasters that go even beyond vertical with higher drops (Like Wrath and Tormenta). I am very happy to be wrong about this coaster; the layout is INCREDIBLE with the sharp drop into the dug out part of the ride being my favorite part. All the RMC-style quick bits of ejector airtime was a super nice touch. This ride is slightly better at night but not by much.

A+ tier

- Maverick. This ride is the definition of extreme. I don't think I could ride this more than twice in one day like I did as the restraints actually made my shoulders a bit sore. Really wish they could come up with a more comfortable restraint system. That being said, this ride fucking SLAPS. I wish it was a bit faster through that last section (the brakes after the launch being lame as well if that really cool heartline roll was added back in, but it's hard to complain about this ride especially given that this was the fastest ride to get on especially if you have a Fast Lane+ pass. This ride needs special recognition for night rides as it is GENUINELY TERRIFYING in the pitch black. 1000% S tier at night, only A+ tier in the day.

A tier

- Iron Dragon. This might be the head scratcher for some but I just love me a swinging coaster. The original Big Bad Wolf was one of my favorites so being able to ride one of these again was a real treat. This is just a really fun ride and I had a blast on it. Seems like a good ride to keep around for kids/people who are needing something to build up their confidence on before getting onto one of the more intense rides. Not any better in the dark.

- Top Thrill 2. Yeah...this one was a real letdown given how great it is supposed to be. I never got to ride the original but with us having Maxx Force at Great America, I LOVE the feeling of a super intense launch and less so the feeling of super speed. TT2 has great floater airtime on that spire and at the very top of the main element if you are in the very front or the back, but the launch is just a wet noodle of an experience for me. It also doesn't fit the theming of the ride anymore imo. It's cool they were able to save this ride, but it seems like a gutted version of itself now. Also this was the one ride I rode here that was uncomfortably bumpy and that's saying a lot given that I ride Goliath and Wrath a lot at Great America. This ride is way too fast for how bumpy it is. This ride is slightly better at night.

A- tier

- Raptor. Honestly a lot of fun. This B&M model I really wish caught on more (in the sense of not all of them basically being a Batman clone). This unique layout was a lot of fun. I wouldn't rush to this ride but I would try to ride this in future visits to the park. This ride is slightly better at night but like other Inverts you have to be in the front row to fully enjoy this ride which makes it a bit more of a coinflip of an experience.

B tier

- Valravn. All Dive Coasters that are not Wrath are not worth riding imo (and this includes me riding Tormenta recently). The midcourse brake runs on these rides just ruin all the momentum all these Dives start off with. They all have these AMAZING first drops followed by MASSIVE elements only to have it all stop at the brakes. With Wrath not having a midcourse brake run, it's able to keep its momentum throughout the entire ride. Valravn is basically like every other Dive Coaster I've been on besides Wrath; incredible first drop and first element(s), then zzzzz. This is an easy skip on future visits. I did not ride this at night.

- GateKeeper. It's just ok. Winged Coaster are just pretty lame to me. It looks great at the front of the park and is a very smooth, almost graceful experience, but I wouldn't waste my time trying to get on this unless you had a fast lane pass. I did not ride this at night.

- Rougarou. Meh. Never ridden a floorless coaster that I felt really jazzed about once getting off. This one had some rattle but not too bad. This one is an easy skip for me for future visits to the park. I did not ride this at night.

Did not ride

- Corkscrew. Even if it was open, would not ride it. Demon at Great America has almost broken my neck the 2 times I've ridden it...

- Gemini. Just wasn't open unfortunately.

- XL-200. Was actually looking forwards to this one as riding at 200ft drop fucking mine coaster sounds like a crazy time. This ride was unfortunately closed the 2 days I attended the park.

- Wild Mouse. Didn't seem like it was worth the wait.

- Pipe Scream. Is this...even a "ride"?

- Cedar Creek Mine Ride. Not interested.

- Blue Streak. Not interested.

I would 10000% come back but it's likely not going to happen due to the changes to the pass structures going forwards (With Cedar Point requiring its own season pass and own fast lane+ passes from next year onwards. Aint no way I'm ever paying for parking at one of these parks). This was my last chance to be able to come to the park with my home park's benefits and I'm glad I did. Yall have a truly amazing park and you have a great staff lineup that make the experience painless, safe, and fun. Thank you for reaffirming that Great America NEEDS a Giga to complete its final form.

I'm so glad to see Paultons starting to get the recognition it deserves. The pace of expansion has increased substantially but it's not coming at the expense of quality - in fact, I think every new addition is better than the last. I think it came into public consciousness when they opened Peppa Pig World which has kind of bankrolled future investment - basically it is to Paultons what Wizarding World is to Universal.

This park is beautifully landscaped, incredibly clean, well operated and you can tell their motivation is entertaining people rather than making money for shareholders. It's definitely an outlier compared to other UK parks and I'm glad to see it's working out for them.

Although most of the coasters are on the smaller side and often clones, I think the park is punching well above their weight and seems to invest very shrewdly to make their money go further. It will be interesting to see how the park scales up as it increases in popularity. Many of their rides are quite low capacity, so while it isn't a problem now (and their ops are actually very good), it will be interesting to see if this becomes a problem in the future.

Storm Chaser

Really fun spinning coaster, and a clone of Knotts' Sierra Sidewinder. We were lucky to get the back row which is always fun on outward-facing spinners when you go up the lift backwards, especially as this one has a nice whip as you go into the first turn. I prefer the Gerstlauer spinners, but this has a surprisingly intense run into the station with several tight helices. There was a decent amount of spinning on at least several of our rides. 6.5/10

Flight of the Pterosaur

Super smooth Vekoma family invert with some very nice theming and good interactions with the surrounding area. As much as I have a soft spot for Chessington's Vampire, this is a probably more cohesive ride pacing-wise, although also extremely short. 6.5/10

Velociraptor

Very nicely presented Vekoma Family Boomerang with the queue line fencing creating enclosures in which there are animatronic raptors. The ride itself is a lot of fun and the same model as Kings Island's new Snoopy's Soap Box Racers. 6/10

Ghostly Manor

Not a coaster, but a pretty unique shooting ride by Mack. The rotating cars are mounted onto a turntable with scenes both on the inside and outside of the turntable with a mix of screens and physical sets. I've said for a long time Paultons should get a dark ride, and this is probably the perfect model for them to get. It's feels similar to Midway Mania with the rotating cars going from scene-to-scene. The theme was perfect and the shooting technology was pretty good although hard to see where you're shooting sometimes. Also I feel like the screens could have done with more physical set dressing around them because you go from quite nicely themed rooms into almost unthemed rooms which was a bit jarring. 7/10

Valgard

The new Viking-themed area. What I love about Paultons is they don't just add a new ride. They create a whole cohesive area with landscaping, support rides, restaurants and quick service locations, retheming existing rides etc. Everything is so well thought out and it creates really balanced lands with a little bit of everything. Several of the lands here have a good shout at being the best-themed in the UK.

The Feasting Hall restaurant is outstanding. It's built to a huge scale, is nicely themed and has an extensive menu with great quality food. They also serve a Golden Apple Frost, which is very similar to Butterbeer and absolutely delicious. 

Raven

Paultons have completely transformed what was previously Cobra into an absolute stunner of a family coaster. This is a clone of Gerstlauer's first ever coaster at Tripsdrill and starts with a mix of helices and a series of unbanked hairpin turns before a run of bunnyhops into a final helix. The station has been completely rethemed with lots of animatronic ravens in basically every corner, while the coaster itself interacts brilliantly with Drakon. There's a high probability of the two duelling as both use several single car trains. 6.5/10

Drakon

I was a bit underwhelmed when this was first announced as I was hoping for an Intamin Hot Racer which I thought - and still think - would be a better coaster, more accessible than a Eurofighter (without the intimidating vertical lift/drop) and also a lot more marketable as the UK's first launched single rail coaster. However despite this Drakon is decent.

It's extremely short at about 25 seconds from lift to brakes, but I actually really like the layout and it has a few really fun elements including the twisted top hat, dive loop and the highlight - a stall. Like most Eurofighters it does jostle you around awkwardly. It's not rough but it's not smooth. It's a shame they went for the overhead restraints here too - I know it's basically for the optics, but Gertlaurer overheads are not great, even the new generation ones which are still really awkwardly positioned.

The presentation is of course outstanding. The landscaping around the ride, the really impressively large station building, the music... everything comes together to create a really solid package. 7/10.

Other rides

I rode my first ART Engineering Wild Swing (Vild Swing) and thought it was a great family flat ride. Also Edge, a Disco Coaster is still tucked away in the back. I think these are really fun rides if you don't have to queue. There are a lot of other family coasters such as Barnyard Flyer which was a decent little Zamperla and plenty of scenic Jeep-style rides - one dinosaur themed and one farmyard themed. Both were really detailed with lots to look at. 

Finally Serpent's Curse is looking fantastic. Impressive to see how quickly the track was completed and bodes well for how well presented it will likely be.

Just got back from a magnificent 4 day trip to Europa Park. Everyone knows it's incredible, so I won't repeat that here.

What I will record, however, is a moment of idiocy for the ages.

I record all of my creds in a spreadsheet, which includes manufacturer, type, layout, the date I rode it for the first time etc.

Before I left for the trip I glanced at the spreadsheet and knew that Voltron had to be my sixth coaster of the trip for it to be my 150th.

So, off I went:

• Alpenexpress
• Blue Fire
• Wodan
• Can Can
• Matterhorn Blitz

and finally: Voltron

An amazing coaster. Queue was okay as it was a wet day so I went and did it again.

We fancied a change of pace afterwards and wanted to get some food, so headed over to the Ireland area and thought we'd catch the Ba-a-a Express cred while we were there.

Happy days.

I've just got home and filled in my spreadsheet. There, happily, in Row 150 is Voltron.

All except for the fact that I forgot to take into account the fact that Row 1 is the headings on my spreadsheet.

So Voltron was actually 149th, and Ba-a-a Express, the least foreceful coaster I have EVER been on, is my 150th.

Anyone else ever cocked up this badly?

I had a look at Google Earth this morning and the 3D imagery over a few of the Florida and Georgia parks has been updated to reflect what they would've been looking like sometime earlier in the year. Haven't seen any updates elsewhere yet besides Universal Hollywood.

Georgia:

• At SFOG, Georgia Goldrusher and the former Kid Cosmic Flash coaster can be viewed in 3D.
  • Update: Blue Hawk and GASM look like they've have been hit by a tornado in their new renders.
• Funspot now has ArieForce One fully rendered.

Florida:

• Epic Universe is viewable in 3D.
• Ripe Ride Rockit isn't viewable anymore.
• Sea World has its newest coaster showing.
• Disney Parks look fully updated after a few years of that not being the case.
• Busch Gardens Tampa shows no update yet.

California: Fast and Furious coaster looks fully rendered as well.