The Master

Screamscape reports that both Carowinds and Kings Dominion are going to year round operations on weekends. Personally I don't see it lasting long at KD as VA is barely warmer than our region and is still subject to bitter cold harsh winters. Last time I visited there I don't recall many indoor rides there to get out of the cold for a bit.

I thought B&M disliked building launch coasters?

I posted a long time ago that I didn't get to ride Shockwave while it was at GADV but did get to ride it at Astroworld. At Astroworld it was given a theming very similar to Batman the Ride theming except it was Penguin instead of Batman / Bruce Wayne. The outer queue was themed like a public park, there was a crashed cop car, and the station was themed as a cold storage warehouse. Basically Shockwave was rethemed into an ad hoc Batman the Ride at Astroworld.

I am glad they brought power hours back. Sadly it looks like the first one will be rained out.

Last year I found HP's operations so poor that I didn't renew my SP there this year. I did not have a single good trip there in a couple of years between bad operations, high number of SBNO rides, poor food service, and high crowds.

The weather the last several days have been terrible here. 20 degrees below normal and rain for the last 3 days and we still got a couple more to get through. Feels like late Nov rather than early Oct. Even when the rain finally stops everything will be muddy for awhile.

The park is decorating for FF much better this year than in recent previous years.

I find it pretty rough and canbonly ride it once. Great White is better IMO. Crazy Tram is small but good.

Moreys Piers were busy this summer. Likely crowds will pickup as we h3ad closer to Halloween. FF starts much earlier than it used to years ago which is another factor.

GA was pretty empty last night. Rerode Nitro in the front row 3 times, first time I was ever able to do that. I wonder if the news coverage over El Toro's incident has scared some people away?

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July.

Its sad to see the once extensive Bada Bing theming gone and there are probably two reasons for it. First is cost of upkeep and repair, the other being it doesn't mesh well with the current PC / woke culture.

I was at HH a couple of weeks ago and they were running Flash Pass then whichbmade standby waits terrible.

I was there on the 15th. The single tubes for the Hurricane Mt slide tower and some for the Bada Bing slide tower are dangerously overinflated. The tubes drag on the sides of the slides causing them to violently rotate and bang your feet on the slide walls or even spin you backwards. I don't know why the park would overinflate their single tubes to such exterme levels. Crowds were not bad, but dispatches were slow and over half the park wasn't running. Hopefully this coming weekend they will have mord attractions operating, especially the lazy river.

I visited HH this Sunday, May 15th, and found a pretty serious safety issue. The single yellow tubes are overinflated to the point that they drag and violently spin in the enclosed sections of thd Hurricane Mt tower slides, slaming your feet into the slide walls. The white single tubes over at the Bada Bing slide tower are not as overinflated, but they still dragged on the slide walls and tried to spin but not as violently. The park better fix this issuse ASAP.

This seems to be a fad in business now to monetize everything. Its been a big issue with software for awhile and its creeping into the automotive market like with Tesla making everything a upcharge subscription like extended range and quick charging. Disney which is market leader in the amusement industry has been increasing their monetization efforts with various new upcharge scemes. The problem for Six Flags is that their demand is not as elastic as Disney to pull off additional upcharges. It just seems like a repeat of the Shapiro era including the street performers on the park midways. Maybe they will try barber shops again.

They sound really out of touch, or they really like tendies.

Hopefully that is the case.

It seems the changeover back to Medusa is fairly half assed. The old Bizarro sign out front looks awful just repainted brown with a little bit of mine trim around the opening. At least paint the old sign to look like a rock formation. The old Bizarro wagon with square wheels is still in place. The Bizarro hoops and drill now really don't make sense. The change back clearly needed more planning.

As cold and miserable as the weather is this weekend, its hard to believe that HH is supposed to open next weekend. We have had a lot of prolonged cold snaps this spring. They better heat the heck out of the water.

The background for Swabinchen would have fit in well on Bizarro.

Perhaps its to extend the life of the strings? The contacts in the exposed sockets would corrde if left outside. UV rays would also degrade the wire insulation.

Winter is coming back with another cold blast that is going to hit us this week with record breaking low temps. 3 nights of hard freezes with low temps in the 20s will damage many of the flowers and blooms already out. This Monday the high will only be 35 degrees and windy. They are even forecasting some snow this Wed.

The best way to repaint something is to first completely strip away all the old paint first but that is not always practical. Even sections that aren't loose now will become loose later as the adhesion failure spreads. Painting over old paint can cause weird issues, one of the worst is when new paint dissolves the old paint layer which is called paint biting. I would imagine they use some type of single stage urethane paint. Not use if they use one part (1k) or two part (2k)?

Another snowstorm is going to hit tomorrow with 1-3 inches of snow expected along with a flash hard freeze. Northeast Springs can still be really lousy. While it will warm up next week it will unfortunately make the remaining road salt the DOTs will coat the roads solid white with even more reactive. Thus causing even more rust damage than in cold weather. Plus no forecast for a good soaking rain in the near future to rinse the salt off the roads once it becomes warmer again. A very bleak long term forecast. Shame the DOTs don't rinse salt off the roads once the weather turns warmer.