AllegroCrab

Really good stuff going on at Vekoma in recent years. I think Hyperion would have been better as the Vekoma model, and Lech Coaster looks like one of the best in the world.

Had a walk through LPS for the first time in years last weekend. The place has hardly changed from my memory of it as a 12 year old. I thought it had a good amount of life to it, they had performers down the main street and music playing which gave the place an uplifting feel. There seemed to be a decent amount of guests in the park as well, mostly families with young kids. I think the Maurer spinner would be a fitting addition to the park, and a potential compact Eurofighter out the back end would probably seal the park's prosperity for quite some time. I've got a positive feeling about the future for LPS.

I thoroughly enjoyed my fish and battered sausage. Not stupidly priced, 10/10 would have again. The healthy options exist, I just choose to ignore them on park days.

I'll take whatever ounce of a rumour I can get. Coasters get people through the door and are a great addition to any park. A woodie would be another selling point, but I'll be happy with anything.

Why not? The main issue here seems to be encroachment on Sea World's parking. I fail to see how development on the spit will do anything but draw more attention towards Sea World as people visit the area for other activities.

I've tossed up making one of those panels myself. Maybe I'll do it over the summer. On another note, here's a coaster i made a while ago. You can get it on steam workshop here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1496787512 Currently I'm making a launched new generation Vekoma. But I've gone so deep into sketchup modelling and even a bit of NL2 scripting that it's going to be a while until I finish it. Especially as the uni semester is coming to a close I'm finding I have less and less spare time. Hopefully I can get something decent finished by the end of the year.

Unless there's a hidden block section somewhere that I don't know of, I'm going to say no. The unload platform is after the magnetic brakes which are not a block, they just slow the train for entry into the unload area (think of them as massive trims). The other train doesn't launch until the previous train has left the unload area into the station, so that the unload block is free. In terms of adding a block, even if you added one where the magnetic brakes are now, the ops would have to work significantly faster than they currently do. Even then I think the trains would stack very regularly, including before the launch if unload operations are slow, which isn't desirable.

The r/rollercoasters and coaster bot discords are where i get most of my international news. I'd say I get my Australian news from here but sometimes the guys on these discord servers are faster to learn about aussie stuff than I am. There's a really great group of people on there who I recently went on a coaster trip around the UK meeting. A few odd balls are annoying but where doesn't have that on the internet? If anyone wants to join, here's the invites: r/rollercoasters: https://discord.gg/zJf3Gz CoasterBot: https://discord.gg/2Ez9M9 Feel free to @PooDiePie (me) if you join. People are always having really in depth discussions on coasters and parks, or about anything really. They love hearing the Australian view on things, if you've ridden dc rivals they'll all be jealous.

Make it a tour behind the operation of the coaster with a knowledgeable guide, as well as a climb, and it's well worth $99.

https://m.onenewspage.com/video/20180830/10713638/Six-Flags-Great-America-announces-new-coaster-Maxx.htm This is something I'm happy to see. I'm bagging on S&S a few posts ago but this looks much better from them. Hopefully the issues I have with Steel Curtain are from the quality of the nolimits recreation they've got of it and don't reflect the real thing.

If you've ridden any other Mack, you'd know DC Rivals is like nothing else they've made force wise. It is a first of its kind in that sense, the other hyper is so tame in comparison.

This is too expensive and too much of a logistical nightmare to be routine maintenance. I don't know why they'd be doing this if there wasn't something wrong with that piece of track that needs to be repaired or replaced.

I'm kinda concerned for Steel Curtain. Going with S&S as a manufacturer was a very unexpected move. The layout and supports are wacky as hell, never seen anything like it, and I'd be very interested to ride it, but I don't expect it'll be that nice to ride. It just doesn't have the quality of layout design and element shaping that we're used to seeing these days (at least based on that nolimits video they showed for the reveal). I'll be pleasantly surprised by S&S if they get it open on schedule.

From these images the new paint job makes it look less like the stone it's trying to imitate and more like plastic. Not sure I'm a fan.

In July I went on pretty much the same trip you've done here. Good to see some Nemesis love. The UK enthusiasts I was with told me over and over again that Nemesis is overrated, but all I've ever heard about Nemesis is that it's overrated to the point where I'm not sure if it's really overrated at all. It was a phenomenal ride, I don't buy the "most intense ride experience" line (The Smiler is more intense), but it certainly is my favourite coaster I rode in the UK. I didn't share the love of icon to the same level as the others in the group I was with. Sure, it's a fun coaster, and insanely re-rideable, but I found it not as good as Nemesis or even the Smiler. I want to be able to explain it logically but it's really difficult to. Icon had some amazing moments, (top hat, immelman, the roll, and a couple of the airtime hills) but Nemesis' layout just destroys it as far as I'm concerned, even if it has a much shorter ride time. Perhaps riding DC Rivals killed Icon for me. I know they're quite different coasters but both rides have twists and airtime bunny hills, icon's were lacklustre in comparison, (as you'd expect when comparing a mack multi-launch with a hyper), yet they make up the majority of the layout. The unique elements that icon has were its standouts, perhaps it should have focused more on things like that. When thinking about it though, at a park like blackpool the limitations on what they could design must have been really difficult to work with, I think they've done an incredible job considering the circumstances. Nemesis just had an incredible layout, it's like nothing else I've ever ridden. The way it dives multiple times into the terrain and picks up speed as it continues rather than having one big drop at the start and slowing down afterwards like most coasters do was an amazing feeling. I think I annoyed people with my opinion on it compared to my opinion on icon, maybe they're so used to nemesis that they don't realise how good it is.