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capnkyle1

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About capnkyle1

  • Birthday 04/11/1979

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  1. I started having this same problem a few years ago as well - I could handle speed, hills, drops, turns, but loops were making me so sick. And I actually started to shy away from looping coasters to avoid ruining my day. Since then I've found that being in better shape has helped me last longer on park days and I echo the getting enough sleep tip. I also find that making sure that my stomach is full and that I'm well hydrated also prevents nausea for me. But I know my limits and if I'm going to a park on a hot day with some intense rides I always take Bonine beforehand. It's similar to Dramamine but without the drowsiness.
  2. I took a solo day trip up to Six Flags New England and to Quassy yesterday to process my Six Flags season pass, get some rides in, and check out Wooden Warrior - the newest woodie in the Northeastern area's stable. Weather was mild and cloudy but both parks were fairly crowded for April. Six Flags New England First of all Bizarro was running just okay. Granted I rode it only in the morning before the line got too long and before it had gotten properly warmed up but the airtime was really just limited to the first hump and the last three humps. So yeah, just okay. It was rocking the turns though! Thunderbolt was closed with track work in progress. There wasn't any topper track in place yet that I could see so I don't know what treatment it's getting but there was definitely new wood. Gotham City Gauntlet Escape from yada yada. Fun wild mouse. Heavy braking of course but the theming was very good. I would say it was almost to the level of the Dark Knight mice if they happened to be outdoors. I loved that the cars were themed to the different villains though, that was an excellent touch. Cyclone is half running like a dream and half running like a curmudgeonly old caffeine addict that hasn't had his morning coffee fix. The topper track is in place on most of the first half of the coaster excepting the first drop sequence and the lift. The difference was staggering - like being on El Toro and Rolling Thunder in the same ride. Let the debate begin whether this constitutes a steel coaster or a wooden coaster but in my opinion - even while being awesomely smooth it still felt like a wooden coaster - like El Toro. I'm sold on the topper track! The last half of the ride was typical Cyclone - heavy braking, shuffling, squealing, dumbness. . . Batman the Dark Knight opened at 1:30 and I caught a ride on it to end my day at SFNE. It went fast. I liked it. Nothing else to report there. Other items of note - the park was in full bloom and looked great. The public areas were very clean and the employees were all on top of their friendliness game and it seemed that without exception everyone looked genuinely happy to be at work. I was very impressed with how outgoing everyone was, my kudos to the staff! Operations weren't super efficient but probably acceptable for a typical weekend in April. However Season Pass Processing was lightning quick. I was in and out of there in less than five minutes. Quassy Park This was my first visit to Quassy. I had attempted to go a couple years ago but traffic in Connecticut has a habit of often confounding me and I didn't make it in time. This was a quaint little park and something that I would be very happy to take my kids to each Friday night like my parents did with me if I lived closer. Ahhhh memories. . . Anyhow, the staff here was also very friendly and the park looked well kept. Clearly they aren't a gleaming theme park but it certainly isn't a pit either. I would recommend it to anyone with small kids to check out. Small enough to provide a few hours of diversion before their attention wanders and reasonably priced. Wooden Warrior was great! I went in with the impression that it would be better than the Scooby Doo clones and Pegasus out at Mt. Olympus but not up to Kingdom Coaster's high bar of awesome junior woodiness. How wrong I was! This ride has a level of fun and aggression to match Cornball Express! Sure it's short but it packs a huge airtime punch! And it was clear with the patrons of the park yesterday that it is a HUGE hit with them as well. The Timberliners were performing well. However I can't say for sure if Wooden Warrior will provide an ideal experience since the dynamics of this ride are vastly different than that of, say, Voyage. I was impressed with them on this ride though. They tracked very well and the ride was incredibly smooth except for all the airtime! The side mounted lap restraints were surprisingly comfortable since they came across your hips rather than your thighs. They also stayed in place which is something that always bothered me about the Millennium Flyers. I will say that the manual lap bar release process looked like a real bear which could cause issues on lift hill evacuations. The ride is still in the calibration process as it was overshooting the station brakes by just enough to not engage with the lap bar release which provided a lot of rerides for happy riders. Okay, enough yakking. Lookit th' pitchers. So SFNE has this Bizarro thing. That's how you know where I am. If you're looking for the entrance to Gotham City Gauntlet you aren't gonna find it here! Gotta-go-round! See here it is! On the other side. I wonder why they couldn't use the entrance they built for Dark Knight. The queue has shade. This is thoughtful. There are signs on the top level that correspond to all the Batman villains. This one proclaims that you are entering a "Pouncing Zone" which was always the best part of Batman - when Catwoman was pouncing on someone. More of the upper level. The lower level had a lot more props an mist and flashing lights but were tough to photograph because of the fencing that surrounded the ride. Here comes the Catwoman car from which she will pounce. Perhaps in the pouncing zone. But she is part cat so she may do her pouncing when she dang well feels like it. More villainous cars up to no good and taking innocent people along for the ride. Although since we are Escaping from the Asylum, does that mean we too are deranged lunatics? As I mentioned the park was looking very bloom-y. Sorry folks, ride's closed. Moose out front should've told you. You can sorta see the track work going on in the first drop area. And also the track work is visible on Cyclone. Although it was open so no need for a moose. See, here's that topper track I was talking about, see? Nyah. And here's where that topper track starts, see? Nyah. And here's an artsy fartsy photo, see? Nyah. Really working that F-stop, nyah. Oh my God would you shut up with the Snidely Whiplash nonsense! Now stop this dickering around and get to the Wooden Warrior pictures! That's what everyone came here to see anyway. And go get me a live chicken. You big dummy. Right, sorry Leona Louise, sorry everyone. Wooden Warrior shots begin now. From the parking lot. Wooden Warrior from the road. All the kids in the two classes who came up with the name Wooden Warrior got their names on this plaque in the queue. Heather Fotheringham has a pretty sweet last name. Entering the double-up. On the brake run. Being awesome. Making pudding. A closer look at those Timberliners. Looking all spacey and out of this world. The hood ornament is a particularly nice touch. This is a picture of the loading process of the Timberliners showing the side down motion of the lap restraints and is absolutely not a picture of the ride operator's heinie. The head choppers start off right away! The first drop. This picture looks like vomiting eye sockets to me. Vomiting eye sockets through the trees! Yay cliche! The butt of the Wooden Warrior. So that's all the Wooden Warrior pictures. For the interested Quassy also has a wet/dry slide. An arcade. Which has a bunch of games in it. A carousel. Which has a bunch of rowdy horses in it. And a choo choo that has a tunnel. And Scooby Doo. Scooby Doo is not pictured because the engineer rather fancied blasting through the tunnel at 90 miles per hour. But take my word for it. Scooby is in the tunnel. Games on the midway. The kiddie coaster. These are not Kennywood potato patch fries. However, the chili is good. Very chunky and I like my chili chunky. Trabant. Yeah I got nothing. They seem to be pretty permissive with their pedal boats at Quassy. I can see across the lake, does that mean I could pedal all the way over there?? They have schwings. Bumper cars. And a water play area. Okay, that's all from Quassy. Hope this was informative. I liked the place a lot and it's well worth a stopover when heading out to SFNE or Lake Compounce. Okay, very nice. Thanks for sharing. Now go get me a live chicken. And apologize to Chuck for ripping off his Angus McNasty bit.
  3. These photos are bringing back a lot of memories of my honeymoon! Its nice to finally see the Australian parks and coasters get the TPR level exposure. Thanks so much for putting the POV movies up so quickly, I've really enjoyed watching them! Have a great remainder to your trip!
  4. I had El Toro in my number 1 spot and Voyage at number 3 out of 81 total wooden coasters. Hades was at the number 2. I last rode Voyage (and Hades) in '06 and El Toro in 2010.
  5. Just saw the changes made to the Park Index, looks great! I'm looking forward to exploring during my lunch hour tomorrow!
  6. What a great photo pictorial! Did Westchester County put that out? Thanks for sharing it with us!
  7. This is a personal goal of mine as well so congratulations from a like minded individual! How did you manage to get the Kiddie Coaster at Rye Playland though? I got denied when I asked to ride it.
  8. Color me impressed by what they managed to pull off in a week and watch now as I eat my words. . . Munch munch munch. . . these words need salt.
  9. I was just out at Coney Island yesterday and I'm not too confident that they'll make the Memorial Weekend opening. They were finishing installing the Surf Ave. entrance gate while we were there but there wasn't any sign of the boardwalk entrance yet. From the Wonder Wheel I could see that the Disk O and Eclipse (Frisbee type ride) looked ready to go and the Tickler and Lunar Express were completed but there were no cars on the tracks. The rest of the rides were either still in various states of assembly or were not yet unpacked and aside from the ride pads there hasn't been any concrete poured. Here are some photos: Close up of the Luna Park sign element. Entrance area. Entrance area later in the day after they had installed a third wheel element to the sign. View from the boardwalk. View of the Tickler and the north end of Luna Park from the Wonder Wheel. A blurry photo showing the other coaster - Lunar Express. This one is tucked up against the wall and is a bit tough to get a photo of but it looks pretty lengthy for a compact family coaster.
  10. Lotus of Siam is the best Thai restaurant I've ever tried. Well worth the trip off the strip and braving the creepy shopping plaza in which it resides.
  11. Awww this made me sad. Thanks for posting these trip reports, I've really enjoyed them. I've also been drinking tonight but still - overall - a very fun ride. See you on the Orlando side soon, I hope.
  12. Thanks for posting this Erik. I was never made to go see this film but I remember all of my friends did in my junior high school years and they all had horror stories about how awful it was seeing it with your parents - so I was always curious about what the big deal was. Apparently not much. . . What a bunch of whiners.
  13. Movie World was pretty good to us. I'd put Superman ahead of Kingda Ka and Top Thrill Dragster but behind Storm Runner.
  14. And so now we begin part four of four for the Australian parks. After leaving Dreamworld, we took the TX5 bus to Warner Brothers Movie World which was about five minutes away. There was some confusion at the gate as the ticket we bought from the train station in Brisbane was actually only a voucher and had to be exchanged at the ticket booths for a real ticket. But once we sorted that out in we went. The entrance is kind of strange because there is a big plaza with the Batman themed rides to the left, Superman straight ahead, and then the Main Street and the rest of the park goes off to the right. Kirsten went off to get some lunch while I went to ride Lethal Weapon. This ride is brutal. I don't think I've ridden a roller coaster rougher than this one. The theming is incredible, it has a bonus helix, and a great footchopper moment on inversion number three against a parking structure but aside from those nice extras, they couldn't save this ride from going right down to the bottom of my list. Lunch was hot dogs and chicken fingers from the restaurant in the western themed area. Somewhat expensive, it wasn't unreasonably priced and tasted decent. The park has four areas. There is the superheroes area up at the front entrance and the main street area which is covered by an expansive roof. Then there is also the western area and the Looney Tunes land and with the exception of the Looney Tunes area, the park walkways are very spacious and it never felt crowded. After lunch we first rode Scooby Doo Spooky Coaster which actually ended up being our favorite coaster of the trip. The theming of the queue was excellent and the dark ride portion of the beginning of the ride was a lot of fun and the actual ride was a lot of fun and had some great thrills. Probably the best indoor mouse I've ridden - right up there with Exterminator. They really kept the line moving on this as well. After that we went back up front to ride Superman Escape. This was Kirsten's 100th coaster. As you might know it's themed to a subway train that gets caught in an earthquake. There are some nice stunts to see as you go through the dark ride portion at the beginning. Collapsing ceilings, flooding, cars crashing through walls. Finally Superman tells you he's going to get you out and that's when you get launched out and into the coaster portion of the ride which was great fun, very thrilling, four spots of great airtime and three high G turns yet not quite as satisfying as Scooby Doo was as an overall ride. Definitely number two on the trip though! I would note that the ride ops are VERY anal about nothing coming on the ride. Before they allow riders into the station, everyone is interrogated individually about what they have in their pockets. They don't frisk you physically but they do make you turn your pockets inside out and it doesn't matter if they button or zip up. They were even making people remove hankies, kleenex, necklaces, pretty much everything. I'm not sure what prompted the need to have pocket police patrolling this ride but it was incredibly irritating and greatly detracted from the ride. For the locals, is this usual practice for Superman? From Superman we went to ride the Wild West Falls - the park's log flume. This was set in a very impressive mountain tableau rivaling Big Thunder Mountain. There was absolutely no line and we walked right on. The boats are the newer style 8 or 10 passenger two abreast set ups similar to the systems at Dollywood and Six Flags America. It has two large drops, a few surprises, projections of devious prospectors, and a float through a ghost town complete with an unseen gunfight. This was a great log flume with a very thrilling and wet drop. We liked it so much we went for another ride immediately after our first. We hadn't ventured over to the Looney Tunes side of the park yet so we went to check that out next. This area was a bit more crowded but seemed to be well thought out and seemed to be a great kid's area. We went for a ride on the Looney Tunes River Ride which turned out to be a lot of fun. The premise seemed to be a hunt for Bugs Bunny as he went AWOL down in Australia from a movie shoot in Hollywood. Part Old Mill, Part Pirates of the Carribean it features a gently thilling end that was a nice little touch. We liked it. Next to the River Adventure was the Road Runner Rollercoaster. A standard Vekoma Roller Skater set in a nice canyon environment. It was fun. Also, no line strangely enough. Finally we we went back up to the superhero section part of the park with a detour to take another spin on Scooby Doo. We checked out the Batman Adventure and skipped the spaceshot Batwing. The theming of the preshows of the Batman Adventure were also incredible. The first takes place in Bruce Wayne's library where everyone is made a cadet in the police force but then some funky nonsense goes down and we are escorted through a secret passage into the batcave where we're briefed on our mission involving hovercrafts. Finally we're escorted into the hovercrafts (simulators) and go for a CGI romp through Gotham City busting the bad guys. The simulators were a little on the lame side but the preshows were worth the short wait. After our success with Gotham City I made another trip on Metropolis' train system. Kirsten didn't ride again because she was still irked with the pocket police. We ended the day with the Shrek 4D show (the Stunt Driver Show wasn't open that day but it occupies a huge area of land and would have been cool to see). The show was fun and had all of the usual 4D gags and was very amusing. When the show let out it was after the 5:30 cutoff for the park to start shutting down the rides in order to get everyone out by 6. We took our time getting out because we had some time to kill before the bus came by to take us to the Helensvale station for the train back to Brisbane. It was a solid day and we had a great time at Movie World. A half day with moderate to light crowds seemed to be the perfect amount of time to see this park. Perhaps it could be combined with the Wet n Wild waterpark next door to have a complete day. Aside from Lethal Weapon and the pocket police on Superman this was a great park. Hey! Don't be looking at my white panties! And with that, we conclude our amusement adventures in Australia. Until next time. . . . Well we've got some time to kill let's sit here and watch these birds show off their white panties. And finally, here's Shrek's 4D show. It was fun. Now let's go catch the bus to the train station to catch the train back to Brisbane shall we? And here is a blurry photo of Bruce Wayne's library before I was made a deputy in Gotham City. So we rode it and it was true, I did completely forget about the arms in the video and in fact, I completely forgot about taking any photos of Looney Tunes World. But I did take a photo of the batmobile. Nope. Sorry. Just a log ride. But it's a really good log ride, perhaps you'll forget about the arms you saw in the Escape Club video from the 80s if you ride it? She's so mean but I don't care, I love her eyes and her wild wild hair. Dance to the beat that we love best, heading for the nineties, livin in the wild wild west. Perhaps we can find some of those disembodied arms with hands at both ends that hover in the air here! It was also Kirsten's 100th, not number one as she seems to be indicating here. She just doesn't have three hands and we didn't have a blank sheet of paper and a sharpie. And holes. Climbs and dives (I see you Batwing!). It has humps. Superman was next. It go fast. Oh this is gonna be fun! . . . darkness falls across the land, the midnight hour is close at hand, creatures crawl in search of blood, to terrorize. . . what? Oh, this is Scooby Doo? Well I'm really very sorry. I thought this was something else entirely! Enough of this negative torture nonsense! Let's ride something fun! Like whatever happens to be in this spooky looking exterior! The depressing industrial tone should prepare you for the physical torture you shall soon be subjected to at the hands of the Lethal Weapon. That is, if the Lethal Weapon has hands. It's sort of a figurative thing. I suppose it's more wheels and rails and general vekoma malaise that lingers over you. Mmmmmm malaise. . . So apparently you find lethal weapons in abandoned body shops with rusting wrecks stacked three high. Ah ha! Juth ath I thuthpected! There's gotta be a roller coaster around here somewhere! Time to ride Lethal Weapon. The sign indicated that it would be down this alley. Hmmm, if this were in a real city I'd feel I was trespassing. Okay, so I'm not sure how to work my way out of that plot line so perhaps I'll just ignore and show you some pictures of ride entrances. Like this one! I think I need to sit down. . . American flags everywhere I turn! Look. . . there's a buffet. Maybe I AM back in America. . . Well I'm pretty sure we were in Australia just a little while ago. . . I don't understand. Things are so blurry. I'm starting to feel woozy. . . Just a minute just a minute just a minute! Where are we again? Welcome to Warner Brothers Movie World where we've just put up this canopy to keep that pesky sunshine out!
  15. Paul, I'm not much into the spinning flat rides so no Claw or Wipeout for me. But one of these days I told myself I will get on one of those top spins, it just hasn't happened yet. We did want to ride a few other rides like the log flume and the rapids ride but due to our time constraints, couldn't swing it. I didn't think about the boredom factor for the enclosed queue of the Cyclone. I can't imagine how frustrating that wait would be when the park got really crowded. I guess holistically I liked the atmosphere of Dreamworld better and there was definitely a lot more to look at and round out the day but some of the operations were really odd and the park seemed to have a lot of tourists of an "offensive persuasion" when we were there. I don't know if that is typical or not though. We managed to get more done at Movie World and their theming efforts were very impressive but we definitely didn't need more than a half day there while we could have filled an entire day at Dreamworld. They're both worth a trip.
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