2010 Best Theme Park Attraction nominee: Cedar Point's Raptor Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:44:00 -0000 By Robert Niles: The 16th seed in the Best Roller Coaster bracket of the 2010 Best Theme Park Attraction tournament, Cedar Point's Raptor, opened on May 7, 1994. This Bolliger & Mabillard Inverted Coaster features a top speed of 57 miles per hour, a 119-foot drop... and six inversions, including a vertical loop, zero-G-roll, cobra roll and two corkscrews.Photo submitted by TPI reader Tom FaraciOther top B & M Inverteds include Busch Gardens Tampa's Montu, Busch Gardens Williamsburg's Alpengeist, Knott's Berry Farm's Silver Bullet, Six Flags' Batman The Ride and Dueling Dragons at Universal's Islands of Adventure (soon to become the Dragon Challenge in the park's Wizarding World of Harry Potter).Let's hop aboard for the ride...As you can see, the view from the front is... intense. But some fans (okay, like me) knock inverted coasters for obstructed views on all other rows of the train. (I called my trip on Alpengeist last summer "like riding in a blender." Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.) Will enough fans of the B & M Inverted turn out to help Raptor to what would be a huge first-round upset? We'll find out when voting begins in March.Please use the comments to share your thoughts about Cedar Point's Raptor. Theme Park Insider vacation makeover: A roller coaster trip across America Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:17:00 -0000 By Robert Niles: This week's makeover candidate hails from Sydney, Australia wants to plan a roller coaster trip across America - riding 40 of the nation's top roller coasters for her 40th birthday. She's only been to California and Nevada before, so this will be her first trip to most of the country.I have narrowed down the list of themeparks my partner and I want to go to and am in the process of planning the traveling around the parks and their locations, however I am still waiting for opening hours in 2010 for a few places - especially those parks in the northern part of the US. Therefore we are anticipating traveling for 4 - 5 weeks in May to June.The current themeparks on my 'dream' rollercoaster tour are:Cedar Point, OhioKings Island, OhioSix Flags Magic Mountain, CaliforniaSix Flags Great Adventure, New JerseySix Flags Over GeorgiaHersheypark, PennsylvaniaDollywood, TennesseeBusch Gardens, VirginaCircus Circus, Las VegasI am also starting my rollercoaster tour on the Gold Coast in Queensland Australia to ride the Tower of Terror at Dreamworld (and add some local flavour!I'm going to lean on you folks, Theme Park Insider's readers, for this one, especially tips on hotels, side trips and money saving tips around the parks. Here are the coasters I would pick for this trip, in the order in which I would drive to the parks. Note that I'm dropping Six Flags Over Georgia from the list, since its coasters are pretty much redundant to what you'll have found elsewhere on the trip. But I am adding three Orlando parks, thanks to some top-quality original coasters at Universal Orlando. (See update below.) I've also skipped Adventuredome at Circus Circus in Las Vegas because it really only has the one coaster, Canyon Blaster, and I'd try to avoid any park where I could bag only one top coaster.Also, rather than simply flying to LA and renting a car (which might be difficult, if not impossible, given the number of states and distance covered during this trip), I'm suggesting flying to three U.S. cities, then hitting parks in those regions of the country. This would be a three-stop "open jaw" itinerary, so check with a travel agent in Australia for help in booking the best airline deal.The other option might be simply to buy an inexpensive used car in L.A. and use it to drive across the country and back, then selling it back to a dealer at the end of the trip. You'd need to do some research on reliability of various used U.S. car models first, though, as you wouldn't want to be caught paying for expensive repairs during your trip. (Or, finally, you could simply agree to take along a Theme Park Insider reader who'd be willing to drive you across in the country in exchange for being invited on this trip!)Riddler's Revenge at Six Flags Magic Mountain1. Fly to LASix Flags Magic MountainDéjà VuGoliathTatsuTerminator: SalvationRiddler's RevengeX2Knott's Berry FarmGhostriderSilver BulletXcelerator2. Fly to Washington, D.C. (You could try Baltimore of Philadelphia, as well, to find the best deal from LA) Six Flags Great AdventureBizarroEl ToroKingda KaNitroSuperman: Ultimate FlightHersheyparkLightning RacerFahrenheitStorm Runner: Vertical Horsepower!Cedar PointMagnum XL-200MaverickMillennium ForceRaptorTop Thrill DragsterKings IslandThe BeastDiamondbackFirehawkFlight of FearVortexDollywoodMystery MineTennessee TornadoThunderheadBusch Gardens WilliamsburgAlpengeistApollo's ChariotGriffonLoch Ness Monster3. Fly to OrlandoSeaWorld OrlandoKrakenMantaUniversal's Islands of AdventureDragon ChallengeIncredible Hulk CoasterUniversal Studios FloridaHollywood Rip, Ride, RockitRevenge of the MummyAs for park tickets, buy a Play Pass for $54.99 online for Six Flags Magic Mountain. That will also get you in to Great Adventure in New Jersey, for no additional fee.Consider buying a Platinum Pass to Knott's Berry Farm online for $160. This will get you into Knott's, Cedar Point and Kings Island, with free parking at each. That works out to about $53 per park. With the parking fee, if you can find one-day ticket deals online under $40 for each park, you might go with those instead of the Platinum Pass.I wouldn't bother with the Platinum pass for the Busch and SeaWorld parks. At nearly $300 for the two-year pass, it's cheaper to buy one-day tickets for the two parks on this itinerary.Get the online $99 7-day/2-park ticket for Universal Orlando, though.Okay, it's your turn: Additions, suggestions and thoughts in the comments, please.Update: Much better suggestions in the comments. In fact, I'm now suggested dumping the Orlando leg in favor of adding Holiday World and Kings Dominion to the midwest/mid-Atlantic leg of the trip. Read the comments for more. What is the best theme park attraction in America? Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:52:00 -0000 By Robert Niles: It is with great pleasure that today I let you know about next year's Best Theme Park Attraction tournament.That's right. Instead of honoring the best ride in America, as we did for the tournament's first two years, we're opening it up to all theme park attractions in 2010, including rides and shows. Not only that, we're going to be running four tournaments in one. We're breaking the 2010 tournament into four brackets:Best Themed RideBest Roller CoasterBest Live ShowBest Movie or Animated ShowLast year's winner: Revenge of the Mummy at Universal Studios FloridaSixteen top attractions will compete in each bracket, for those respective titles. Then, the Best Themed Ride and Best Roller Coaster will face off for the title of Best Theme Park Ride, and the Best Live Show and Best Movie or Animated Show winners will compete for Best Theme Park Show.Finally, those two winners will match up in the tournament final, for the title of Best Theme Park Attraction in America.Other changes this year? Instead of keeping voting open all day, as we did in the past, we're treating these match-ups just like the games in the sports tournaments that inspired it. Each match-up in the Best Theme Park Attraction tournament will last two hours, and only one match-up will run at a time on the Theme Park Insider website. (I'm working on a new voting tool for this year's tournament, too.)I'll post reminders at the start of each match-up to Theme Park Insider's Twitter page, as well as sending a schedule of each day's match-ups to Theme Park Insider's e-mail subscribers, so if you haven't yet signed up for one of those services, they'll be great ways to keep up with the voting.So what attractions will be in this year's tournament? Well, you've already decided. I tallied the ratings submitted by Theme Park Insider readers over the past 12 months to select the participating attractions and to seed the tournament. Filling the brackets did require a few judgment calls, though, and I'd like to explain those now.The biggest judgment call came in the roller coaster tournament. From the way you've rated them, you folks love Bolliger & Mabillard Mega coasters. But I can't see the fun in having multiple match-ups in the roller coaster bracket devoted to splitting hairs over whether Apollo's Chariot is a better ride than Diamondback or Goliath or Nitro or Raging Bull. (I listed those alphabetically, so don't infer anything from that order.) Especially when the majority of readers on the site haven't ridden them all. So I've made this call - there will be only one representative of any model of coaster in the tournament. That means one Bolliger & Mabillard Mega, one Intamin Giga, one B & M Dive, etc. This way, if you haven't ridden the coaster in the draw, but have ridden one of the same model elsewhere, you'll be encouraged to consider that experience when deciding which coaster to support. The representative that was selected was the one with the highest reader rating on the site when I seeded the tournament.A handful of roller coasters with strong show elements were seeded in the best themed ride bracket, instead of best roller coaster. I'm not revealing any participants yet, but you probably can guess a few rides that may be officially "roller coasters" but have far more in common with their dark ride neighbors than the free-standing B & M and Intamin tracks you'd find at a regional amusement park. Only rides that have been opened by now, and will remain open under the same name and in the same location in 2010, are eligible. We'll hand out a Theme Park Insider Award on July 4, 2010 to the best new attraction opened between June 1, 2009 and May 31, 2010. But attractions that opened after November 1, 2009 won't be eligible for the 2010 Best Attraction tournament. Nor will attractions that will have closed or moved before March 2010. The big effect of this decision? No Dueling Dragons. Those Islands of Adventure coasters will have closed by March 2010, to be rethemed as Dragon Challenge for the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter, expected to open later that spring. (Frankly, it'd be kinda pathetic to award the title of Best Attraction to a ride that technically no longer exists.) There will be a Bolliger & Mabillard Inverted in the tournament, however, so fans of the Dragons will have a coaster to root for. The difference between "live shows" and "movie and animated shows" was a bit of a judgment call, too. I understand that some of what we'll be calling "live" shows are, in fact, prerecorded. And that at least one of the "movie and animated show" nominees uses live input at each show. The difference, to me, was the presence of live performers (people or animals - not to give too much away) visible on stage during the performance. If a show had that, it went into the live show category. If not, then it went into movies and animated shows.The tournament will start on March 18, 2010, with the tournament final on April 5, 2010. So why I am telling you all this so early? Because, starting tomorrow, and then on each weekday between now and March 12, we'll be profiling one of the tournament entrants here in the Blog Flume. That means 64 days celebrating the best of the best of the theme park industry - 16 each of the best roller coasters, themed rides, live shows and movies and animated shows that America's theme and amusement parks have to offer. We'll include attraction descriptions, reviews, photos and videos (when we have them) and encourage each of you to submit your thoughts and experiences on these attractions as well.What better way to get through the cold winter months? (Well, for those of you who don't live in Southern California or Florida....) I hope that you'll all vote in this year's tournament, and enjoy the build-up over these next few months as we experience some of these great attractions here on Theme Park Insider. December's Wizarding World of Harry Potter update Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:09:00 -0000 By Robert Niles: Excuse my spacing out, but I realized that I haven't been keeping you up-to-date on what I'm hearing about the progress of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando's Islands of Adventure.I'm not on the scene, since I live in the Los Angeles area, but my sources on the scene in Orlando are feeding me some good information. Here's what I know:The physical interior construction of Hogwarts is almost complete. Scenery and decorating crews are moving in, transforming the rooms from a bare building into the castle we know from the films and books.The Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey track is installed and the ride vehicles are cycling. Work is proceeding now on installing ride effects and timing. The Forbidden Journey is using Kuka robot-arm ride vehicles, so the ride timing for this involves many more variables that a traditional Omnimover-style dark ride.Most of the familiar sights from within Hogwarts castle will be found not in the Forbidden Journey ride, as many initially suspected, but in the queue for Dragon Challenge (the former Dueling Dragons roller coasters.) You'll walk through Hogwarts for the Dragon Challenge queue, proceeding through at least one of the house common rooms, as well as the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom and Dumbledore's office.Despite the complexity of the decorating and programming work that needs to be done, my sources are confident that Universal will have Harry Potter ready for a May debut. Having major construction finished by Christmas was an important milestone for the project, and Universal appears to have beaten that. Universal Orlando has promoted to its grad night attendees that they will be able to walk through the area in during that event, in late April. It's not off the table that at least one of the attractions could be soft-opened for them at that time, as well, though no one feels confident enough to guarantee that. (Given everyone's experience with Hollywood Rip, Ride, Rockit last year, no one associated with Universal is in any mood to guarantee any specific opening dates for anything anymore.)In all, I'd have to say that this is good news for the project. Word from the inside is that Universal is throwing every resource it has toward getting this done right, and on time. Promotion for the Wizarding World in national media has been somewhat light for a project of this magnitude, but if Universal's decided to under-promise and over-deliver this time, I think that many fans, ultimately, will be pleased. Theme park cast member stories: The company Christmas party Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:38:00 -0000 By Robert Niles: We hosted our annual family holiday party yesterday, which, of course, raises the subject of... holiday parties.Having been in the workforce now for a couple of decades, I've watched companies' holiday parties deteriorate from expensive blow-outs to family dinners to workplace luncheons to... nothing. The first newspaper where I had a full-time gig rented the largest hotel ballroom in town for its event, serving a prime-rib dinner and hiring a live band. By the time I left the newspaper industry, the company Christmas party was reduced to a pitch-in luncheon in a staff meeting room. Okay, the newspaper industry is dying, but businesses across the economy have cut back over the years. I don't know what Walt Disney World does for a company Christmas party these days (am I sure that a current cast member will fill us in...), but it used to be that Walt Disney World would rent out, well, Walt Disney World for the evening.Specifically, the Magic Kingdom, where I worked. Today, of course, you know this event as Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party. So many people in the Orlando area were angling for invites to the party from cast members they knew that Disney realized there was a market for this kind of event, and converted the cast party into an after-hours hard-ticket event.I never went to the party, opting to work each night of the event instead. (Hey, someone had to!) I loved working the cast Christmas party, because they were the easiest "busy" shifts of the year.First, you got to ignore a whole slew of rules about what you could, and couldn't do, on stage. The company figured that even though you were working the event, the party was for you, too. So you could buy the discounted food or go get one of the freebie goodies and eat it stage. Want to sit down on a bench in Frontierland and chat with a friend on break? Or sneak in a trip on your favorite ride? Go ahead.Since the whole crowd was cast members and their family or friends, you got almost no grief from anyone, despite the large crowd. Working parade and need to clear a crosswalk? You felt like Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea - wave your arms, and they're gone. Trying to load the theater in Country Bear Jamboree? You didn't need to spiel for folks to slide all the way down to the end of each row. They knew, and did it.These were park pros, just like you.Frankly, the Walt Disney World cast Christmas party spoiled me forever on company Christmas parties. Even though I appreciated that first newspaper prime-rib bash, it didn't awe me. I mean, it's not like we got a free ride on the Haunted Mansion or anything....Here's the archive of Robert's stories about working at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom. Vote of the week: Which ride most needs a refurb? Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:27:00 -0000 By Robert Niles: Our discussions about the most overrated and underrated theme park attractions revealed one bit of consensus:Several of what could be the nation's top theme park attractions really could use some TLC. Poor show quality is ruining what could be some fabulous rides. But which is the most egregious example? What's the top show maintenance problem at a major U.S. theme park attraction?Fixing the light levels on Animal Kingdom's Dinosaur?Getting the Yeti fully functional on Animal Kingdom's Expedition Everest?Restoring all the show effects on Disneyland's Indiana Jones Adventure?Repairing the audio and restoring the decor on SeaWorld Orlando's Journey to Atlantis?Smoothing the ride and freshening the theme of Disney Hollywood Studios' Rock n' Roller Coaster?You tell us: poll by twiigs.com Let's hear your argument, in the comments. And, as always, have a great weekend and thanks for reading Theme Park Insider!
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