Richard

Better late than never, right? I'm pretty busy, yada yada yada. Hope everyone had a great 2003, and that 2004 will be an equally great year full of all sorts of fun and fulfilled dreams. Anyone have cool travel plans, be it just up to the Gold Coast, or over to America or somewhere cooler, do share in any of the appropriate forums. There are many people here who can really help you with tips, advice or jealousy. As you all know, the plans are big for Total Thrills as it moves into the future. Stay tuned in particular in coming weeks for some big announcements and whatnot in terms of progress! Happy 2004! -Richard

No they're not. I've not experienced a ride that's anywhere in the league those two are. Gwazi at Busch Gardens Tampa is the roughest I've ridden, and it's bumpy - not at all causing pain like our two do. Wonderland haven't spent nearly enough on maintenance, nor do they realise how much good full retrackings and whatnot do, and Luna Park's Scenic Railway looks to still have much of the original wood, which says a lot. Considering its tallest drop is all of about eight metres and so gently taken, it's amazing that it could be so painful.

We haven't done Disney yet - that's starting tomorrow morning. It's freakin' hot over here, and those two water parks look seriously cool from all the Disney ads we've seen (actually, there's a dedicated Walt Disney World advertising channel which Simon's taken a liking to, or rather Krissa, the host 8)), and from reports I've heard over the years from relatives and friends. The five day passes come with an extra two tickets for some of the non-theme park things, and we're using them on the water parks, so that'll be cool.

Well, not the real Jack, his head is much much bigger and whiter. But he was just a really nice guy who was joking around and was glad tohave a conversation with us (he's one of the very few who have traveled, let alone seen Australia), and even the bums that seem to loiter around outside the place, who aren't the nicest looking people. Yesterday we did Universal Studios Orlando. It's a much much prettier park, that's tried to be more than the Hollywood equivalent, but still lacks quite a lot. At least unlike Hollywood, it's not built on the side of a mountain, so you don't need to take 400m long escellators that go down the side of a mountain just to get to different rides, which is slow and pretty unintersting the after the first time. We just did things in the order that they appeared, starting with Twister. Compared to the USH equivalent, Backdraft, it's not nearly as good, and often just silly. You'll see photos soon, so I won't go into detail, but this is basically where all the theming ideas from Cyclone were "borrowed" from, right down to the ride shop name. Next was Earthquake, which starts of silly, becomes annoyingly silly, but ends with the subway ride that you've all seen. The cool thing about this part of the park , was it's San Francisco theme. As someone who's both been there, and absolutely loves the city, it's great to see something as Authentic feeling as this. You could be walking along and swear you're in Fisherman's Wharf, aside from the heat (it's Aussie-summer hot down here!!). We went to Men in Black next, the dark ride shoot-em-up thingy. The queue outside wasn't too bad, so we went in, but the majority of the queue was inside. At least it gave a great opportunity to soak in the theming, and it's great to watch it go from what are the best animatronics I've ever seen to some of the worst from one room to another. The actual ride is pretty cool once you're on. The idea is to shoot as many aliens as you can along the ride, getting bonus points for shooting another car and whatnot. Some would say the highlight is Will Smith's appearance at the very end, which seems to be for no other reason than to say "Look, we got Will Smith in our ride!". We had to compare Back to the Future to that back west, so on we went. It's absolutely identical, but the movements are way too rough and sudden. I prefer the other one much much better. E.T. was cool. It's basically a suspended dark ride, which starts off cool and by the end it's just It's a Small World with singing and bright colours and all that (not that it's not cool ). Woody Woodpecker was another Vekoma roller skater - it's the short model, the same as Disneyland's. One train makes it a pain for capacity, so we ended up waiting about 20 minutes for this thing. And that's Universal Studios Orlando. We had lunch over in San Francisco before heading to IOA to walk around frustrated by the disgusting crowds and incredibly plain stupid and ignorant people that that place had. Note to parents: a stroller is NOT something that gives you right of way and allows you to cut through and in front of anyone. Thankfully a foot in front of the wheel quickly stops them. We didn't actually ride anything in our five hours or so there, but got some photos and video. Today we went to Wet 'n' Wild Orlando. For a water park in the theme park capital of the world, it's hard to think you could find something so crap right in the middle of the tourist area. They have seven slides (I don't count a structure of three or four of the same basic thing, just with a slightly different order of turns, different) and a wave pool. It took some convincing to get Simon out of the place, even though he didn't like it either. We went back to IOA after lunch, as Universal's only a fairly quick walk away. Today as we entered a guy who was leaving had some nearly-expired Express Lane (that's the Universal's upcharge Fastpass equivalent) tickets for Spider-Man, so we took these and walked past the 75 minute queue into the 10 minute EL queue. You've all heard about this ride, a moving dark ride that combines just about everything into one. It's basically Disney's Indiana Jones, with the added element of 3D, and a slightly longer and more meaningful ride. It's damn hot, so we trusted the sign which said Ripsaw Falls had only a 45 minute queue. It ended up being an hour, and they seriously need to work out a way to make the EL system integrate better, because as it is it just punishes the non-EL people, unlike Fastpass. The ride's pretty good, but not worth the queue. It really soaks you, right down to some guards on the side which actually direct the splash right back into the boat, soaking you, which is cruel. The drop isn't that bad, but they've got these money making water cannons (a quarter a squirt), which are aimed straight at riders, are are really powerful. I came of head-to-toe wet, which was pretty nice in the weather. The sign out the front of Ripsaw said only a 10 minute wait for Dueling Dragons, which is on the other side of the park, around the lake. By the time we got there, it was up to 25 minutes, which we were willing to do, but their no-items policy insists you leave items with friends or get a free locker. All fair, but the queues for lockers alone were about 15 minutes thanks to a hopeless design on IOA's behalf and stupid people, so we called it quits and headed out of the park (we're coming back to really do the park once the vacationers head home). In Universal's CityWalk (that's Downtown Disney, only nicer), we decided to see a movie and had dinner at Hard Rock. Tomorrow's Busch, and I'm in the process of getting all the photos up until now online, which should be done tomorrow.

More correctly, there's something in the chlorine over here. Nah, it wasn't Jack in the Box. I had that in San Diego, and I think you just had a bad go. It's just nothing different from all the smaller (meaning there's only hundreds of locations around the place) franchises here. In fact, the manager at this place would have to be one of the nicest guys we've met overhere. I'm reporting from International Dr, Orlando Florida. We've got twelve days and ten parks before coming home. It's nice and warm, so it won't be quite as stupid as it has been to go on some of the mega-soaking rides.

That's a real shame, though I hope at the end of the day the cubs are alright, and it's for reasons other than health or anything.

Report on Six Flags Over Texas, live from Florida: The park opens from November 28 - January 4 for "Holiday in the Park". It's an excuse to open the park in freezing weather, get enormously huge crowds, and open enough rides to count on one hand. We flew in from Vegas December 27 via Denver, Colorado. After changing hotels once, we ended up at a place that was just across the road from the park, meaning a nice quick walk over to the park. As luck has it, I got some sort of food poisoning (it figures, I live off crap for three weeks no worries and then decide to go for nice clean Subways for a change, and get violently ill from it), so I missed Monday at the park. I went the night before for about half an hour, and checked out Titan. Titan is a pretty nice ride. It's similar, but definitely not identical to Goliath at SFMM. The first drop is pretty nice, but prepare yourself for the tunnel, expecially if your arms are up - 140km/hr into a tiny hole makes it feel like you're hitting a solid wall of air. It's hard to imagine it, but it's enough to throw your back off. After a day in bed, I finally headed back out. It was time to do the rest of the open rides. We started the day easy, doing Mini Mine Train, an early Arrow kiddies coaster, which is all that needs to be said about it. Right next door was Mine Train - the first "runaway train" coaster, which has an amazing three lift hills and a cool dive under a muddy pond, presumably called a lake. We then went onto Shockwave, an Schwarzkopf looper. Revolution at SFMM wasn't at all bad with the OTSR, but with lapbars, I can definitely see how much better they are. There's some awesome pops of airtime on this thing, and some cool banked turns. Next was La Vibora, an Intamin bobsled. This thing was pretty cool, a really fun ride. We did Titan again. The queue was significantly smaller than my ride two days before. Compared to Goliath with one-train operation, this thing's two trains make the queue bearable - I'd love to see it (or any ride for that matter... which I hopefully will down here in Florida) with three trains happening. It's the same as Goliath for the first drop and turnaround, but has a pretty different second half, but keeping the same infamous helix. Superman: Tower of Power was the last real ride open that we had to do. Simon's not a fan of any tower rides at all, but I love them. It's the best I've ever ridden. Maliboomer at DCA just shoots you up and down and Supreme Scream just shoots you down, but this thing does both in succession, which is by far the best way to do things. The queue was bearable, but in hindsight, the single-riders queue is a great idea. Because it's four sides of three seats, there's a lot of spares going straight to these people. It's pretty bad that they didn't open Batman or Mr Freeze or even the Boomerang. The park was absolutely packed, and I understand the wooden coasters being down for offseason maintenance and whatnot (and they actually were working on them), but these three rides would have been great for overall capacity (particularly Batman). I suppose it is Six Flags after all, as much as I hate to say it, but two out of two SF parks I've been to are run like this. I'm pretty disappointed that we've had to skip Wild Adventures up in Valdosta Georgia, but it was a bit much, and we weren't sure how quickly I was going to get better again. Boomers! down here in Ft. Lauderdale is also off the list, which is a shame, but once we hit Orlando tomorrow, it gets fun. If you haven't seen, Knott's pictures are up, and SFMM, Vegas and SFOT will come eventually!

rewindniwer, You're going to have to typing using whole words, punctuating and other basics of the English language. Type however you want in your chat rooms or Avril Lavigne fan sites, but here at Total Thrills you're going to use conventional English. "It's easier" is not good enough. Take the time to type correctly, or don't obther at all. I'm not going to waste my time reading unstructured dribble, and neither will many other people. If you're not writing stuff people can read, then you're not meaningfully contributing to this site, and are wasting my money and time. You've improved already, and let's keep going in that direction. By all means post here, but take the time to post so that people will actually read what you say.

wonderbus, we're having this discussion because people think that even parks that don't have a no-items policy, i.e. Sea World, Disneyland or Universal Studios (who even have recordings suggesting you do it, but to be careful of the water, on Jurassic Park). The parks that do have such a policy in place, i.e. Dreamworld, Knott's Berry Farm, provide space for items to be stored. Okay, it's one thing to use different sides of the station to enter and exit the ride, but what about rides like Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster or practically every non-stationary ride at Disney parks, which have separate load and unload stations? This is about the only situation I can ever think of where storage space isn't practical. Wonderland has none of these sorts of rides, so that's not an excuse for them, and every ride I've ever been on like this allows the loose items on the ride. My real point in that is not really anything directly to do with the cameras on rides issue, it's that Wonderland enforces such a no-items policy, but doesn't really provide any suitable space for the items to go for the duration. All Sea World uses are a few store-bought plastic boxes, and that's all you need, or expect from a park. It's a bit unreasonable for them to expect you to not take them on, and instead to leave them lying around the station. I'm not necessarily saying they should change their policy and you should be allowed to take them on. I'm saying if they want the policy, they should give a safe alternative.

It's pretty ironic, Daniel, that for someone who's so intent on insulting everyone else that you're getting so worked up about something that was nothing more than a simple example. I'm fully aware that there's no harm in the actions you took. It was simply used an an example of how something can be done in a way other than they would be expected to do it. Daniel, would you have done the foot thing if someone from management happened to be standing behind you? I'm well aware that my scenario is about as likely as, well, a camera held tightly in someone's hands being ejected from the ride. Tell me, anyone, in your experience as a ride operator, how many times did incidents occur where an object held in a rider's hands was ejected from the ride? I don't mean a mobile phone falling out of their pocket, or a stuffed animal sitting on their knees, but a camera, held in the hands, falling out.

Is is procedure to press buttons with your feet? Would you get into strife if you were seen by a supervisor or management? If someone is going to do something the wrong way, regardless of how insignificant it may seem, how can you tell me it's entirely impossible for it to happen in another situation? How about we get back to the topic at hand? If a park says something is alright, then who am I, or anyone else, to suggest otherwise?

You're saying that there's no chance of staff taking shortcuts or doing the wrong thing for one reason or another? If an operator dispatches a ride using their foot, then I wouldn't put it past them to change things to suit their purposes. It's pretty poor that you say Wonderland has a very strict no-items policy with their rides, yet doesn't provide any safe way to store them for the duration of the ride. Every other park I've ever been to has done so.

I didn't read between the lines. I told the truth. Disneyland Resort only has two attractions where space is provided and they insist, or even suggest you should not take items with you. We're talking about Disney here. They have what are probably the highest capacity rides in the world. The only rides where there is not multiple groups running are the small flat rides, for obvious reasons. Most rides also have different load and unload stations. Placing items randomly around the station isn't what I'd call safe. Let's say I've left a bag in the station of Demon. During the course of the ride an operator is moving around the station for one reason or another. His foot gets entangled in a strap and not only has he landed flat on the track, but there's a several tonne train heading at 75km/hr straight for him. If a park wants people to stow items, they should do what just about every other park out there does and put in some sort of proper storage system. I understand Flea's camera was damaged because a ride operator stepped on it, so obviously you can't say it wouldn't happen.

Let's learn to write properly. Take the extra time to use punctuation, capital letters and correct spelling (sumfin is not a word) and people might actually read what you have to say. One Nightshifter is enough around here. Now, wonderbus, two things. He says explicitly that it's not forbidden. Meaning simply that they allow it on attractions (meaning all rides, shows, walkthroughs and other experiences). Don't go trying to fill gaps in what you were told. Secondly, and I repeat this from earlier, there are only two rides at the Disneyland Resort that provide any sort of place to store belongings - Maliboomer and Orange Stinger, both at DCA. The only lockers anywhere are found outside of the park, about 100m down from the Disneyland entrance. It can take up to half an hour just to re-enter the park. Unless "most attractions" means those two, our friend James is slightly stretching the truth.

Down in Texas now. I can see Judge Roy Scream and Superman at SFOT from where I'm sitting right now. We got into town at about 4:00 this afternoon - the best thing about having a SF season pass is being able to just hop into the park to kill an afternoon... pity that there's only two parks open right now. The Grand Canyon was quite nice. Absolutely freezing, it was snowing most of the way up and back, and hit -12ºC. Don't buy hot chocolate in America unless you want to die of a sugar overdose - that's all I can say. We didn't really do much of the strip, which I think was quite a disappointment. Before I come back (I really want to do it in a few years time again), I'm going to learn to count cards (which isn't illegal, by the way ), win a few hundred and spend it all on a few nights at the Bellagio. Off to SFOT for two days. The park is only open 12-6pm, so it means we can sleep in nicely and get other things done as well for a few days. I rode Titan this afternoon, which is really nothing more or less than Goliath at SFMM, though has a few different turns and whatnot. I'm really looking forward to the rest of the trip down in Florida (a stop in Georgia on the way). It'll be nice and touristy and what'll be the best parks of the trip hopefully.

Yeah, Boxing Day's are typically fairly quiet (certainly on the Gold Coast). It's more of a family day than anything. If only Vegas was the same, but too many gambling addict parents and their incredibly whiney families everywhere! The Shrek show would more than likely be the Shrek 4D that the Universal Parks are running. It's a pretty good show - certainly one of the best "4D" shows I've seen. It'd be a very cool addition, but I can't imagine it being cheap (especially if they go as far with the effects as they did here).

Pretty miserable day in Vegas. It was actually snowing at the top of Stratosphere (obviously melting before it hit the ground below), so not only were all the rides up the tower closed, but so was Speed, Manhatten Madness and we didn't bother heading way out to Bufullo Bill's to find out Desperado was closed too. So we only did Adventuredome at Circus Circus. Canyon Blaster was good, but not great. Certainly nothing like what it's been made out to be. It was no smoother than our Corkscrew or Viper at SFMM. The whole park was pretty bad. The roof leaked, and most of the ground was painted smooth concrete - quite a lot of fun to slide down to wheelchair ramps on the slippery floor, but a lawsuit waiting to happen. We're going to the Grand Canyon tomorrow (there's more to the world than coasters ), and flying down to Texas, so we unfortunately won't have a chance to get good weather for the rest of the rides. We're staying at Days Inn Downtown - it's two blocks from the Fremont Experience - the biggest and most confusing waste of $70 million dollars ever - and this is Vegas. It's a pretty dodgy area (we're surrounded by hotels that you can pay for at hourly rates :shock:), but only $40/night and not the worst we've stayed in.

Well, it's good to know that December 26 (today over there ) is the reopening date. They were pretty quick about it - they said no internal damage was done, so it was just facade repairs.

After forever, we've finally updated CoasterTrips.com with the Disneyland Resort report and galleries. See: http://www.coastertrips.com/gallery.php?dp...er=/california/ Check out the Disneyland and California Adventure galleries. They have to be some of my favourite photos. There's something like 150 of them there, so it'll keep you occupied for a while. We're in Vegas now, about to head out for lunch and do some of the rides (admittedly the only ones that really take my fancy are those up on the Stratosphere, but we might head down the strip to Circus Circus or NYNY after). There's still a Knott's Berry Farm update to come, and probably something from San Diego (SeaWorld and the zoo) and then Vegas. Then it's down to Texas for SFOT and over to Florida via Georgia.

I last rode Skyrider (that's the cable car ride, right?) in 1999, and I'm pretty sure it was operating through until last year. The park was built by an American company, and has been sold a few times up until now. It's now owned by Sunway (The Malaysian company), who've definitely had plans for big things, but none of them have come to fruition sadly. I don't hold too much hope for the park in terms of new rides to be honest. They're still surviving with pretty decent attendance, but they don't seem willing to add anything to the park. Even if they only spent relatively small amounts replacing the small flat rides that have been retired over the years, it'd just be a nicer place to be, which would really give them a lot in return.

Well, the media preview of Tomb Raider was on the 17th. No Total Thrills gallery updates or reports from it, given that I was at Disneyland that day. That's pretty much it.

As I mentioned earlier in my trip thread, today was our video day at Disneyland/DCA. It's not just a few small Australian parks that choose to stupidly risk every human being on the face of the earth by allowing loose objects on rides, but the father and leader of the industry. Both Disneyland and California Adventure make you take all objects onto the ride with you, with the exception of Maliboomer which has the strict "absolutely nothing but yourself" rule. We got videos of Mulholland Madness, California Screamin', Matterhorn and a heap of others, which I'm sure will please some people. Operators were more than happy, and there is absolutely no written policy about loose objects. Just something that's been looked over for the past 48 years. Clearly something that they've never looked at and thought about. I tell you what, Roy Disney's campaign to highlight the problems with the corporate side of Disney is a wasted effort. He should be just get a season pass and open a can of whoopass on anyone he catches with any sort of loose item on any ride. That's where the problems lie.

I'd presume that if it was there when you were last here, it's still there now. The name sounds familiar, and as far as markets go, the Disneyland area would be pretty stable. Today we made use of our video camera; we filled nearly two 60 minute tapes. I'll add something to the on-ride video debate shortly. Great day, though packed, considering it's not a holiday and Tuesday is supposed to be their weakest. Contrary to my last post, we decided it wasn't worth the hike to off-property food, and we ate in DCA this time. The nachos were a decent size so we went with them. Not too bad - at least filling, but I'm not a fan of refried beans, which make up a lot of the gunk they stick on the chips. Day three tomorrow. We've done everything we needed to, wanted to and most of the "what the hell why not"'s, so it'll be a fairly quiet and slow day, probably mostly spent in DCA. Disneyland's great and all, but considering two of the four mountains are MIA, and it is targeted at the families more than "our kind". At least there you've got less crowds, smaller queues and more thrilling rides.

I'm trying my hardest to resist the temptation of Denny's. It's right there - a lot closer than McDonalds, but do I want to put my body through the torture of all-you-can-eat? They seriously should change the name to all-you-should-eat for the sake of people like me.

Disneyland Resort (Disneyland and DCA) Quick report from day one of three at DLR. We covered both parks with ease today - including the notorious big-queue rides, Soarin' and Indiana Jones thanks to Fastpass, which is a great system. The best indicator of the quality of the coasters and rides in general is the amount we laughed in enjoyment during the ride. To give you an idea, at Dreamworld I don't think any rides have ever made me laugh. Not Cyclone, not TOT, not Giant Drop. Scooby-Doo got us going a bit when we first went on it. Mattorhorn had us wowing and giggling from start to finish. Same for Splash Mountain (a great ride which you can't judge at all until you're walking down the exit path) - the final drop is crazily steep. Same with California Screamin', which was the first true airtime I've ever experienced sadly. We're not talking about rides with the most ejector air or the tightest curves, but rides that are next to flawless in terms of enjoyment. Now, onto the bad stuff. Their food is nothing short of terrible, and also a ripoff. At least Dreamworld's food is relatively cheap for the crap you get. US$10 for a burger, chips and drink. The burger is tiny (even by Australian standards!) and made for looks, not taste. The chips were nothing special and you got barely any. For $2.50+tax, a cup of ice with a dash of Coke is a complete ripoff. Take this advice - head out the front gate when you're hungry and shoot straight down to McDonalds off the resort (onto the midway that divides the two parks, head away from Downtown Disney). Half the price, food you know you can at least pretend to like, bigger servings (food is huge here... don't go near large, let alone super/king sized) and free refills. We've got the next five meals booked with them.