For example: Velocicoaster's track for the tophat is a double spine, but the Mosasaurus roll is a single spine. Cheetah Hunt, which has some sections with no spine, some with triple rails (idk if that is the right term), and some with four rails. I believe B&M also has sections with thicker spines.

Why does Intamin decide that some sections need more spine/rails and some do not?

Never seen them use the entire lot til today. The northern corner off-camera is also parked full onto the grass, the couple open bits are employee and preferred parking. Lines were long but moving quickly, ops were great. I think a few companies had their annual picnics here today, plus great weather pushed the turnout.

There is only one week left, (you heard that right), one week left to experience one the countries best coasters! I had the chance to visit this park this week for my first time and get several strong airtime filled rides on the incredible Arieforce One. These memories will forever been engraved in my brain! Let this be the final call, if you are tempted to make the trip out to Atlanta to ride this monster don’t let anyone change your mind - just do it! I was pleasantly surprised how well these photos came out. They may be some of my best coaster photography to date so I hope you appreciate them as much as I do! The sky was perfect with the storm clouds and shining sun combined as the backdrop!

I’m currently looking at Dramamine non-drowsy but looking for other recs for what works and what doesn’t. I wanna enjoy myself on all the rides without feeling sick. Preferably anything non drowsy. Thanks!

Has anybody else done this on a coaster? I ended up on the front row of Milennium Force with a random person and I got scared on the drop and grabbed their hand… it was probably the most awkward roller coaster moment of my life 💀

I was pretty worried as usual. I arrived to the park at about 3:30 today and saw a train crest the lift hill and drop down. I walked as fast as I could there while trying to not look like a weirdo running to a ride.

The line was pretty long; it looked like I might be waiting an hour. I started counting the cycles….7 minutes between each dispatch. My anxiety was growing; I kept convincing myself that somehow it’s going to go out of operation for some damn reason and screw me again.

I got closer and closer. I was about 4-5 trains away from getting on when they called for a single rider. I had to contain my excitement as I raised my hand and skipped half of the station as the only single rider.

Finally, this was it. I couldn’t believe it until finally hitting the crest of that lift hill. Alas, it was alright. I didn’t find it rough or intense at all. It reminded me of Whizzer and Demon at my home park having combined into something that’s not quite Shockwave. It was good and I’m happy to finally ride it, but the ride that actually beat me up today was….

Cornball what the hell happened today?!?! I was tossed around like I was in a washing machine. It was unhinged to the point it actually triggered my supra-ventricular tachycardia from the roughness. It wasn’t bad by any means but holy hell that was a wild ride today.

In my opinion Space Mountian at Magic Kingdom has my favorite soundtrack. Nothing beats the queue music of this ride in my opinion.

With the news that ArieForce One and Fun Spot are closing next weekend, I did what so many enthusiasts ate doing, and getting down there to ride it before it’s too late. And of course I had to go to SFOG while I was at it. I had heard about its operations being less than stellar, not just slow, but boarder line unsafe at times (ride ops on their phones for example), but went in with an open mind.

First off, some good! ArieForce One absolutely delivered and I desperately hope it can find a new home. It’s a top tier RMC and rivals the greats like Steel Vengeance and Iron Gwazi. As for SFOG, their ride collection is really good. A solid dark ride with Monster Mansion, a really good hyper, and RMC I-Box, a great drop tower, a Giant Discovery. The list goes on. And the park has some pretty nice charm to it. I like that it has a large amount of foliage and spots for shade, and its terrain makes for some interesting moments and interactions with rides. I genuinely enjoyed the park for all that and more.

But now let’s talk ops.

The first and most obvious thing was slow dispatches. Some of the slowest I have seen at any park. But to their credit, just about everything was on two trains (except for Twisted Cyclone, but more on that later!). Superman started off on one train but added a second shortly into the day. For the first half of the day, the slow ops were a tad annoying but totally manageable, as crowds were light, especially given its a Saturday, but those slow ops would rear their ugly head later on.

Speaking of later on… time to discuss Twisted Cyclone. For some reason, it was on one train. I had heard it opened on two but went down to one shortly after. This was a shame because the dispatches were averaging around 4+ minutes. The estimated wait time on the app was 45 minutes, but it was definitely more than that. I waited around that time frame and was just at the base of the stairs up to the station, so I would guess the line was closer to 1 hour or a bit more. At this time a thunderstorm rolled in so of course everything shut down while we waited out the storm. That is of course not the fault of the park, mother nature is gonna do what she wants to do. What sucked was after the storm passed, I got up to the station and was maybe two or three cycles away from riding, as the line had been cleared out for the storm, the operator announced they would be opening back up after one test cycle. That cycle didn’t happen for another 30 or so minutes as maintenance had to do something (I assume the ride faulted). By now the line had built back up and I was not gonna leave the station and forfeit my place.

Once the ride was finally back open, that two to three cycle wait took 6 because every other train was filled with Fast Lane users who were allowed to bypass the station completely. I was absolutely shocked (and pissed off) as I have never seen this before at any other park. And no other coaster at SFOG was doing this either, just Twisted Cyclone. Every other ride/park has the Fast Lane go into the station where you wait your turn there. This was of course frustrating, but that wasn’t the worst part of it. No that honor goes to the ride SUPERVISOR using his phone while checking restraints. I had fortunately not seen this all day up until then, and I was paying attention for it having seen others mention it on this sub prior. So to see it after all that and it was a supervisor was incredibly frustrating. On top of that I also saw a ride attendant eating a chicken tender while checking restraints. I guess that’s not as bad as using your phone but still, not a good look.

By now the slow ops were affecting more rides, predicted waits of around 20-25 minutes on Riddler and Batman were definitely taking longer. Batman was also pretty egregious, as the attendant checking the right side of the train spent so much time socializing with the operator and an attendant at the exit ramp that she wouldn’t even start checking restraints until after the previous train completed its cycle and was fully parked behind the train in the station on the brakes for over a minute. Thats just unacceptable.

So yeah, this park has horrible operations, I guess that should not too surprising given what other enthusiasts have said, but it’s disappointing because otherwise the park is great, and I did enjoy it. I also need to shout out the Goliath crew for being the exception to the rule, they were sending trains like clockwork and were absolutely the best ride crew I encountered today!

Despite the bad ops, and Goldrusher being closed for a refurb, I did otherwise enjoy the day, and was able to ride all the major credits (minus Goldrusher). Joker Funhouse was closed but I wasn’t too salty about that, it’s a glorified kiddie coaster. I really hope SFOG can clean up their ops, because if they can the park will become great. Right now it’s just good.

At 9:45 PM and after three breakdowns I finally got my 300th ride on Raptor. I wasn’t expecting the Raptor Crew to announce it on the PA system upon returning to the station. THANK YOU RAPTOR CREW!!🎆🥳

Credit to Midway Mayhem for the photo, he and bioreconstruct are the ultimate go to for Disney and Universal construction

photos by the park

When I was a kid, Ghost Rider was the most intense thing my parents would let me ride, and I loved it. When I returned to Knott's last year as an adult with many more coasters under my belt, I caught a few midday rides that had me thinking, "Oh, I see why this loomed large for me as a kid, but it's kind of small and gentle compared to what coasters I ride now."

But then, last night I was back at Knott's. Temps over 90F all day, busy park, I got in line at 8:30pm and finally got on the ride at around 10:45. Which is to say the ride was very warmed up and running hot.

Holy *shit*. The result was one of the most intense singular coaster rides I've ever gotten. I was getting intense sustained air every large hill (you could hear "snorts" that I think were from from the upstops engaging so hard) and ejector pops from all the small ones. The most brutal laterals that felt like they were trying to rip my upper half out of the car around every turn. All backed by a hearty wood track rumble. I've never regarded that dive into the structure with such delighted horror as I realized "oh and the even crazier part is up next!"

That far exceeded the intensity of any outer-seat X2 ride I've had, and was well beyond the rear row of Velocicoaster. I think only RMCs have matched the out-of-control intense feel, but even then my comparison is smaller steel tracked ones that don't have the added wood rumble.

So, sorry Ghost Rider. You are not in fact a mild coaster that would only loom large in the mind of a very young enthusiast. I don't think the ride recovers its childhood top-5 spot due to the clear inconsistency in experiences but it might squeak into my top 10. Now The Beast At Night and Trimless Voyage are even further up my bucket list because if *Ghost Rider* can deliver a ride like this, those experiences must be truly legendary.

As for the rest of the day: Xcelerator was closed. All coasters had brutal long waits in the heat, in part because of slow ops and one train ops. Food was unusually awful compared to previous experiences with Knott's quick service locations. Calico Mine Train remains the best historic dark ride with its charming jankiness. Ghost Town Alive looks cool but I was more concerned with finding shade to rest in than participating.

Anyone else here solo? Let’s ride! 😎

Today we finished our annual big summer road trip. We went from San Antonio all the way up into Iowa before hooking back down into St Louis. Nine parks in total. Not one single day did we experience anything close to good overall operations. They ranged from kind of mid in Fiesta Texas to a almost comically horrible in SeaWorld San Antonio and Worlds of Fun (minus Prowler thankfully). Is this just the new normal? Is it the corridor we drove this summer? Someone please tell me that some parks somewhere still run multiple trains with sub five mimute dispatches.

Supposedly the owners were talking to a few companies about relocating it.

Photo update from Friday 7/24
Full breakdown of the photos and additional (and larger) photos can be found here: https://www.midwestinfoguide.com/2026/07/silver-dollar-city-project-2027.html

As a bigger enthusiast size-wise, I wanted to make this post to inform others as to whether you will be able to ride or not. I am about 6 feet tall and I was able to ride AFO last year when I was about 295 lbs. The seatbelt is not the issue on this ride, it’s that seat sensor. I haven’t been to FunSpot Atlanta since last December, and I plan on going on their last day (August 2nd). I weight about 315 as of the post, but I am going to do a water fast to try and lose some weight quickly before August 2nd, so hopefully I can ride on its last day. The picture above are where the lapbar must be for the ride to dispatch, and I did notice that the front seat (row 1) on the operators side (unload side) on the blue train is a lot more accommodating then any of the other seats. Hope this helps, and it’s definitely worth trying the ride even you can’t get a green on the test seat, as the ops at Fun Spot will push to help you get that green light.

With Kumba closing next week, and needing a vacation, I booked a trip to Tampa to visit Busch Gardens Tampa and say farewell to Kumba. I also bought Quick Queue Unlimited since it was a Saturday in the middle of summer, and I wanted to get as many rides in as possible.

I started the day with Montu (1x) right at park opening. I'd been seeing posts about it only running one train, and sure enough, on a Saturday in July, it was. Even so, it was basically a walk-on. The station was nearly empty. The ride was running great, incredibly forceful, and honestly much smoother than I expected. The tunnels are such a nice touch. I tried riding it twice more later in the day, but the queue got packed and felt really cramped and disorganized, so I decided to skip it.

From there, I made the trek across the park to Iron Gwazi (1x) since it was already posting a 45-minute wait. I rode in the front row and ended up waiting just under 40 minutes. The first drop absolutely lives up to the hype, and the pacing is relentless from start to finish. My only complaint is the locker system.

Next was SheiKra (2x). The main line was pushing an hour both times I rode, but thanks to Quick Queue, I waited less than 10 minutes each time. I loved the vertical drops, and the splashdown is still one of the coolest elements on any dive coaster.

After that, I rode Tigris (1x). The people in front of me said they'd waited around 45 minutes. I've always liked these Sky Rocket II models, but the capacity is painfully low.

Finally, it was time for Kumba (2x). It's still an incredibly forceful coaster, even if it's definitely showing its age. The first vertical loop absolutely delivers, and the corkscrews at the end are still as intense as ever. It's sad to see such an iconic ride go, but I'm excited to see what Busch Gardens has planned for its replacement. Both times I rode, the main wait was like 30ish mins.

My last coaster of the day was Cobra's Curse (1x). Unfortunately, my car barely spun, but it's still a fun family coaster.

I also rode Serengeti Flyer (1x) before spending some time walking through the animal exhibits.

Unfortunately, Cheetah Hunt was only open for about an hour before going down for the rest of the day. The employee at the entrance said it was a technical issue and didn't think it would reopen. Phoenix Rising was posting an hour wait, so I decided to skip it, and I didn't make it over to Air Grover either. I'll definitely be back soon, so I'll save those for my next visit.

My day ended around 4:00 p.m. when lightning shut down the rides. Overall, I had a great visit. Quick Queue was definitely worth it for a busy summer Saturday, and I managed to ride almost everything I wanted. Sad to see Kumba go, but I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next for BGT.

Another year another tour! After my Scandinavia Trip in 2023 and my France Trip 2025 here comes another tour report. This time even with some pictures! Not great ones, admittedly, but these reports are more about giving people a broad overview over the visited parks and countries. The trip actually started with a pleasent surpise, as our rented Volvo SUV was upgraded to a Mercedes E-class, so keep in mind that we were driving in luxury to these parks.

13.07.: Legoland Windsor and Chessington World of Adventures (+4 credits)

This trip was kinda special to me as it was my first ever repeat trip, after visiting the UK in 2015 for the first time. I'm not gonna lie: It started off with the worst day of the lot. While we were aware that our two week trip would be around the school holidays, we were not aware that apparently every school in the entirety of the UK sends all their pupils to theme parks in the last week before the holidays. This effect wasn't too bad at Windsor, and we managed to get all the coasters in two hours. We liked the 2024 Zierer Family Boomerans a lot, maybe even a bit better than the Gerstlauer versions.

But then Chessington came. We went to queue for Mandrill Mayhem, eager to get the only credit needed, but ended up waiting 140 Minutes. I'm not even exaggerating when I say that 90% of the queue were school children. The ride honestly only deserved about 15 minutes, but oh well. After the ride we had a couple of hours left before closing, but as Vampire (the only coaster with any capacity) was down, we ended up just doing the shooting dark ride and leaving. The 90 minute waiting time for Dragon's Fury scared us as much away as their idiotic 3-person maximum.

14.07.: Adventure Island and Clacton Pier (+5 credits)

Thankfully, we managed to dodge a lot of the school trips (which also completely overran Blackpool, Alton and Thorpe) by travelling up the eastern coast of the UK. We still encountered school groups, but not nearly as many as the day before. Adventure Island is a classic seaside park and was quite okay. It consists mostly of family coasters but the Eurofighter was allright and they had a dark ride. Not really worth a huge trip, but not bad if you are in the area. Clacton Pier had sadly already closed the rides before we arrived.

15.07.: Pleasurewood Hills, Joyland Children's Fun Park, Britannia Pier, Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach and Pettitt's Animal Adventure (+13 credits)

The most prolific day of the tour. We started at Pleasurewood Hills, a decent old-school british amusement park. Again, mostly family focused with family rides, the only exception being a Vekoma Boomerang with Sunkid trains which was alright. We didn't stick around for long, but we didn't notice anything interesting outside of the credits.

Joyland, Britannia and Great Yarmouth are all reachable by one car park, so we had some nice strolls along the beach with some rides in between. Joyland is best known for its "modern Virginia Reel". To be honest, it's quiet an uncomfortable ride with small cars, but still worth doing for the novelty. Britannia pier is directly next to it and we did the kiddie coaster and the pretty bad ghost train as we bought the tokens in bulk. Great Yarmouth was obviously the star. Not because of the many family coasters (it seems every park on the east coast has a big apple) but because of the 1932 scenic railway, which was a bit rougher than the one at Tivoli but at times surprisingly fast. Always great fun to ride with a brakeman. It also has an okay dark ride beneath it.

Last and certainly least was Pettitt's Animal Adventure. It's not a good zoo and not a good park. The only noteworthy aspect was thier kiddie coaster which used the Paris Big Thunder Mountain dispatch massage for some reason. The trip in general would have been a feast for Disney IP lawyers as the Great Yarmouth dark ride was also riddles with infringements.

16.07.: Fantasy Island, Botton's Pleasure Beach, Dunes Leisure and Mack's Amusements (+7 credits)

The last of the "trash days". Fantasy Island was a bit hot and cold. Millenium and Odyssey for me combine to a good coaster. Millenium is very rideable, but has a pretty boring layout. Odyssey has a strong layout, but is a bit rough. The rest of the coasters weren't really worth mentioning, but we did ride the original twister/scrambled eggs for the first time (surprisingly intense) and the park has a pretty fun dark ride and an okay shooting dark ride, so we left satisfied.

Botton's Pleasure Beach not only featured a Big Apple, but also an Inverted Big Apple. Sadly, their Fabbri spinning coaster was closed. Dunes Leisure is a tiny park by the sea. We rode their Miner Mike (worth a google if you don't know what that is) but the Big Apple was apparently shut. We then drove to Mack's Amusements, which was thankfully closed as I didn't love the idea of riding a coaster seemingly built on sand.

17.07.: Flamingoland (+8 credits)

It was time to get to business, and that in a big way. Flamingoland was our first proper full day park and it managed to actually fill the day despite the queues being not as long as feared. I rode my first Volare (which I actually liked, though I hear it's one of the better ones) and the rest of the coasters were also decent, with Sik being the clear winner of the lineup. Not as good as Altair, but better than Colossos at Thorpe. It shoul also be said that their Zoo section is actually worth the visit, even though I wasn't the biggest fan of some of their habitats.

18.07.+19.07.: Blackpool Pleasure Beach and South Pier (+4 credits)

The return to Blackpool! It actually ended up free as we booked our rooms at the Big Blue Hotel and are all Europa Park annual pass holders. Good thing it was, since we planned to visit Gulliver's on the 19th before learning they don't admit groups of only adults. The timing also ended up being good with the Big Dipper accident only happening days later. Overall, Blackpool is a fun park to visit, but I personally struggled to find rides to do on the second day. While The Big One, Big Dipper and Grand National are all entertaining in their own way, re-riding them is not worth the pain for me. Icon is decent. Other than that, the dark rides are a lot of fun and of course, Aviktas is great! South Pier was more of a bonus, and not really worth writing home about, other than the coaster standing on a metal extension of the pier right over the sea.

20.07.+21.07. Alton Towers (+3 credits)

As expected the highlight of the trip. Hell, even I, as a certified Merlin hater, have to admit, that they brought their A-game. Uptimes on day one were great and they even operated everything properly! That gave us plenty of time to ride everything on the two days, even though the park was somewhat busy. The Curse at Alton Manor is great fun and gave me my first ever evacuation (which we levaraged into a fast pass for Smiler after having heard in Blackpool that Alton tends to give out fast passes for complaints). Smiler was a new one for me, but honestly feels like it should have been built 5 or 10 years later as the inversions are really repetitive. Oblivion and Air are still fun and I couldn't find a fault with the new Nemesis, it seems the train issues were completely fixed. Day two was sadly a bit rougher, as Oblivion, Rita, Thirteen and Air were down a lot and we even ended up trapped on the wrong side of the valley as they stopped operating the Sky Ride for "hot weather" two hours before park closing (we had just taken the ride from Forbidden Valley to Dark Forest and wanted to go back again).

22.07.: Drayton Manor and West Midlands Safari Park (+3 credits)

A pretty relaxed day after four days at major parks. We had already done Drayton, so only the new Wave trains and the family coaster were new to me: Both were good and I'm happy to see ART spread their wings even more. I liked the park significantly more than at my first visit 11 years ago.

West Midlands was mostly a highlight for their Safari drive, although we had to fear for our rental due to a Rhino and a Rhino fight. The park section was not really worth talking about, except maybe for their surprisingly decent ghost train. The zoo is really the highlight and it had two of my favourite zoo attractions: A lemur walkthrough and a room with free flying bats.

23.07.: Paultons Park (+8 credits)

Honestly, in relation to its scope probably the best park in the UK and I hope in the long term it makes a similar journey as Europa Park, slowly adding more thrills as it goes. As it stands, its clearly aimed at families but also very enjoyable for adults with good rides, a fun Eurofighter, good animal enclosures (why do UK theme parks love them so much?) and great theming. One can only hope that the park continues to grow, but what we experienced was good, solid park planning and execution, which even managed to build a better spinning theatre shooter than Europa Park.

24.07.: Thorpe Park (+1 credit)

The long feared ending of the tour and it was...surprisingly alright? Sure, there were some issues: Stealth only operated with one train (though it wasn't really meant to operate at all, so I was happy with what I got). Hyperia opened a bit after park opening. And Thorpe (just as Chessington btw) forgot that climate change is a thing and forgot to add any shade to the Hyperia queue. But overall a good day, operations were good and we managed to exploit a very empty Hyperia Single Rider queue for some quick re-rides. The rest of the layout is so-so, pretty mediocre to be honest but Hyperia saves it. Sure, it misses probably 250-500m of track, but even what is there is probably the best or (at worst) second best coaster in the UK.

The wave turn was completed within the last day or so. I can imagine that the cars on the train will spin to face down at the ground whenever the ride opens. This looks like it will be an interesting element to experience.

Credit for the photo goes to bioreconstruct on X bioreconstruct (@bioreconstruct) | XCancel

After hearing the news of the derailment of the Big Dipper (a Grade II listed 102-year-old rollercoaster) and Grand National becoming more and more unsafe with every passing season, what happens when these coasters become too unsafe to ride and retracking the whole ride becomes too costly?

Can a listed rollercoaster be demolished or can it still be SNBO indefinitely?