Gazza

In Europe RCS GMBH get a lot of work because they are specialists in ride assembly, and EU laws make it easy for them to work across the continent. Before RMC started building their own coasters they worked in a similar niche in the US market. But any competent construction company can do the work, with supervision by the ride manufacturer.

Zomg....it goes backwards?

Dunno why, Maurer Skyloops are better.

My perfect park would have some sort of RMC/Intamin/Mack airtime machine, but then at the other end of the spectrum I'd have a B&M wing or flyer, with the full knowledge that offers a less intense experience. I think its important parks offer both styles of thrill coasters....an intense relentless ride appeals to some, but then at the same time a pleasant experience that comes close to flying would speak to many others.

A bit did fall, hence the mesh awning above the seats being retrofitted.

No, no secret intent there. I just wish people would say what they mean exactly.

Smiler doesn't have any yellow striped track.

I think I speak for everyone when I say stop talking in damn riddles.

How do you mean? Lost Gravity and Smiler are basically identical in terms of how tight the elements are. I mean, it doesn't have as many inversions, but its still a tight ride....Look at that airtime hill for example.

Drawn out?

After Kansas City I drove south to Springfield MO to stay the night, before continuing further south to Branson, MO for Silver Dollar City. http://www.parkz.com.au/parks/US/Branson/Silver_Dollar_City/ Silver Dollar City is another Herschend park like Dollywood, and that carries through in terms of the look and feel of the park, the quality of the theming, food choices, and certain attractions which are similar between the two. Kinda felt like it was in the middle of nowhere, so its funny in the car park seeing a big B&M looper just rising from the trees. The park was started as a small historical village type thing to entertain people visiting the Marvel Cave, and over time grew into a theme park. So @djrappa its Dollywood with a cave, so therefore you should go Though maybe Dollywood have a fraction more polish, and the coasters were a nose in front too, but they are both great parks. The other main difference is that SDC has more young people working there compared the senior average age at Dollywood. Free parking too! As was a running theme on this trip, the place wasn’t very busy. The main entrance to the place seems quite small considering the attendance: Lots of old buildings demonstrating everything from making baseball bats to ironwork. The first coaster I did was down in the Grand Exposition area, which was an area of Zamperla flat rides with ornate 1800s industrial revolution type styling. Basically it’s supposed to be a like a World’s Fair sort of thing demonstrating new machines and Technology. Like the Country Fair at Dollywood, it was a way of making an area of ordinary flat rides look good. I just did a lap on the Grand Exposition coaster, which was a bog standard Zamperla Kiddy. Spongebob at SW is still better I then continued around having a quick look in the new Fireman’s landing area (Herschend love fire fighting themes!), which again was more flat rides, but more kiddie sized ones, as well as a really cool fire station themed ball play area with heaps of thematic details like hose drying racks, old fire engines and so forth. A smaller model S&S space shot was there too. I got a few pics before any families or kids were in the area, before moving on, headed for Outlaw Run. I got there....not open yet. I’ll touch on now perhaps the only bad thing about SDC, but the park layout is not a “loop” like most, but lots of little dead ends. I guess it’s maybe unavoidable due to the terrain (or maybe they could build connecting pathways, but that probably would interfere with some BOH areas), but you’ll do a lot of backtracking. So the next one to try was Wildfire, a B&M sitdown looper. It was a very standard affair. Immellmann, loop, cobra roll, corkscrew, helix. It ticks the boxes, but it did feel a bit generic in terms of layout. What did make this one cool was being right on the edge of a hillside, with views for miles. It’s a quick and too the point ride. The theming was fun, basically a crazy inventors workshop, but the style of theming felt a bit cartoony and plastic compared to the look and feel of the rest of the park, and the ride building. I really liked the huge viewing deck for the ride. Powder keg is right next door. A family launched coaster, but actually pretty intense. It’s not as intense as Superman, but its up there with Jet Rescue for example. The launch system is a horizontal version of the spaceshot system, but instead of moving a gondola, its moving a launch catapult and hook. The side effect of this is that the launch catapult continues to crazily “bounce” back and forth (just like a spaceshot!) along the launch track after the train has long left and going through the course, rather than gently travelling back like on hydraulic launch coasters with their winch system. The ride has some good air on the hills and maintains a decent speed through the turns. The other interesting gimmick is the way the train slides sideways up to the launch track ona transfer. This one is tough to get good pictures of. The ride that was previously here was a premier rides water coaster and when that ride become too expensive maintain they demolished most of it, and connected this new coaster to bits of the remaining track. It is a bit weird that they bothered to do this, because all it is this big long sweeping turn (Like Macks Storm Coaster, I guess the Premier version cant do tight turns either) and then a lift hill. And then after the lift hill its basically one helix and a drop and youre done. It’s cool but odd. The highlight was watching someones phone fly up on the first hill, then get caught by the rider on the way back down. Store those loose items kids! The one thing I’ll deduct points for is that a lot of the concrete troughs and infrastructure for the rides previous life as a waster coaster is still all there, which looks a bit fugly and old with puddles of water and weeds in empty concrete troughs. Nearby was Fire in the Hole. It was incredibly similar to Blazing Fury at Dollywood, and my exact same thoughts apply on this one (Scroll up if you care about my opinions ) The bad guys that start the fire are called "Baldknobbers" lololollololo I did the Lost River of the Ozarks up next, which was a rapids ride that got me bad, so I was walking around wet for much of the day. It was odd because it had an indoor queue, and a strange feeling station with skylights. Most of the ride was outdoors, but you entered a building for the last part. From Google Earth it looked pretty sizable, so I was expecting a bit of a dark ride bit, but there was nothing. It was literally just rooms with rockery and washed over with coloured lights. Missed opportunity considering how much show buildings cost. Flooded Mine was a better effort. I’m guessing it was a slow boat ride, and they added laser targets and remarketed it with the interactive aspect at some point in the past. You sit in a long line of boats that are dispatched, and you gently float through a mine, with various prisoners caught in situations due to the rising waters….You know how in thunder river in the tunnel there is that scene with the two miners? It’s basically a whole ride of that, with more moving bits and pieces like mine carts on tracks and so forth. I did a lap on the Frisco Silver Dollar Line. The locos are the smaller type since it's narrow gague (No behemoths like at Dollywood) On the way you stop for a bit for your typical bumbling train robbery sequence. Things weren’t looking promising at Outlaw Run! There was a cherry picker and guys working on the track. Perhaps my luck in getting on Lightning Rod meant missing outlaw run haha! Tom n Hucks RiverBlast looked cool, but too wet for me at that point. I stopped and grabbed a bit of lunch, having a skillet with beans, chicken and rice. Heading up the hill I grabbed a ride on the other remaining operating coaster in the park, Thunderation. This was a bit like the mine train at Kings Island in that it started at the top of the hill and went down, with a lift hill at the end. This was a bit better paced than most mine trains because it just got faster and faster, and a nice hilly setting too. What set this one apart from the KI mine train is that it didn’t end abruptly at the top of the final lift hill….There was one more drop back down the hill before coming up again and finally hitting the brakes. I then did the Marvel Cave tour. They run every 30 mins, included with admission, and 50 people per tour. This struck me as odd. Means only a fraction of visitors can do it per day, and it did mean a bit of a wait if you missed being counted into a tour group and have to wait for the next one. You wait in a queueing area off to the side of the main department store at the entrance. They entrance to the queue is a wooden cut out shape that is the same size as the narrowest bit you have to go through. You can see in the pic above the scale of the place relative to the lift tower on the left. It’s a great attraction. You head down through a hole in the ground, sown some steps on a tower built into the huge cathedral cave, and then down deeper as you work your way from the top of a big pile of rock. It was strange because they played the Dr Who theme booming through the cavern as you worked your way down these initial steps. WTF? There’s some interesting formations like the sentinel. Down there they have those photo-takeyourpictureandchargeyouheapstoretriveitlater-graphers. Things progressively get tighter/steeper/narrower as you go. A lot of these pics are too blurry for the gallery, but give you a sense of what it was like. Well worth the wait. To get back to the top you ride a funicular railway back to the top. I headed back over to Outlaw Run. Still shut, so I did more rides on Powder Keg and Wildfire. Then it started to rain, which meant everything else shut..Except for Grandather’s mansion. This one is a crooked house, with tilted floors, wacky mirrors, pool balls rolling uphill. I love these sort of things…Young Einsteins homestead I can still remember quite vividly for example, despite only being four when I rode it. I think I bummed around while the storm passed....Miked the cow and cranked the frogs and watched them watering the bitumen. I downloaded the wait time app and kept and eye on what rides were opening,. Giant Barn Swing was one of the first. Yay, fun, like all of these Screamin Swings. Then I noticed that Outlaw Run had changed its status from being “technical delays” to “weather delays”…I might be in luck? I asked a staff member (Who was kind enough to phone a supervisor when I didn’t even ask!) . They confirmed they were indeed going to try to re-open, even though it was only 90 mins till closing time. Service! So I planted myself at the entrance, and then finally about 15 mins later we were in business. I tried various seats over the course of about an hour… There was no wait to speak of other than the time taken to get around from the exit back to the entrance. No train went out full. I guess most people left during the storm, so it was just a few hold outs who had discovered the ride was open. All seats were awesome. Admittedly having ridden both Twisted Collossus and Lighting Rod days before this one probably overshadowed this one a bit, but it's a fantastic ride by any measure. Very fast paced. I’ts got the typical “its so steep I’m gonna die” first drop. It’s got the crazy zero g stall that twists all over the place. One bit I liked was about halfway through where you go through the lift structure and do this sudden twist, which put the transitions on Maverick and Jet Rescue to shame. Really cool. The barrel rolls at the end are surprisingly dizzying. So, everything went better than expected, and it topped off the day well. I headed for the exit, but had just enough time for a lap on Powder Keg, and the last train of the day on Wildfire. The main exit store had funny religious T shirts because this is America. Dissapointed I didn't see the computer game theme ones like "Call of Duty Ulimate Sacrifice". They did have 'Jesusman' ones though. I was feeling lazy, and went against all my beliefs and took a shuttle back to the car rather than walking. For dinner I ticked off another American chain…Steak n Shake. “Famous for Steakburgers” apparently, but I couldn’t see how it differed from a normal burger Heading out of Branson, I drove down the main strip, which is indeed like Las Vegas, if It were run by Ned Flanders, as the Simpsons have taught us. Music theatres and mini golf courses as far as the eye can see. WhiteWater Branson is SDCs water park, located a few Ks away, but it looked pretty standard to me. Overall I enjoyed SDC. It has a nice leafy setting, and a good variety of fun things to do. Just wish the coasters were easier to photograph. They just need to keep doing what they have done, though a modern dark ride of some description wouldn’t hurt.

I think a park themed to just Australian things would work. Dollywood is pretty much just themed to American things right?

The much higher and more sudden rate of acceleration on Superman would not be tolerable or safe for necks in reverse.

Like I said earlier, methods for avoiding damage and disruption like that are well understood. eg look at this: https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-27.6360119,152.9743954,3a,31.3y,92.35h,88.88t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s7H2952gTAT0H4zlcFx3dDw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 The toll gantry is at risk of being hit at 100kmh by a truck. The concrete footing the gantry sits on would be good enough to wreck any car whilst leaving the gantry unscathed, but on top of that, to be doubly sure, they put in an NJ barrier. Obviously the measures implemented depend on the risk involved...A shopping center car park with low speed traffic would have less stringent measures than a motorway with high speed traffic for example. It's a non issue.

Id typically call that a Night Blue / Violet Blue if I were speccing colours. Layout btw. The drop slide is just a tight u turn.

Yes but how is that any different to any other roadside infrastructure such as signage gantries and bridges which may collapse and cause injury if they were crashed into. The risks of things like this are well understood by Engineers and there are plenty of methods to mitigate it. I think Australia figured out the importance of this in the wake of the Granville rail disaster

I agree with earlier posts that it could be a starflyer type ride..... there's one of those in Australia on the traveling circuit, and many more in the Northern hemisphere.

Yeah but many coasters have supports half in half out the fenceline: http://www.parkz.com.au/photo/8411-Leviathan/gallery/sort/newest/location/ride-1742/offset/2

Someone asked about the lady on the plane…Basically she dropped a whole fried chicken meal box, coleslaw etc onto the carpet, and then the attendants confiscated the box. Kek. * * * * * * * * * * * * * So, back to our scheduled programming. After my day at Carowinds I flew to Kansas City, Missouri the next morning to start my next leg of parks, the first being Worlds of Fun. http://www.parkz.com.au/search/photos/location/park-186-Worlds_Of_Fun I was thinking of squeezing in two parks that, namely checking out Schlitterbahn, a water park which otherwise looked pretty bland apart from Verruckt, the worlds tallest water slide. But literally a couple of days before my visit a boy was killed on the slide, so the closure of the park of course meant not doing that. I got there around 1pm, the place wasn’t busy, so I got it done fairly easily in about 4-5 hours. The park has areas themed to different countries, but nowhere near as themed as Busch Gardens for example. It’s basically a few token bits of theming and textures on buildings, though to their credit rides tend to pretty much match the themed area (Eg Prowler is in the African bit, Patriot is in the American bit, Spinning Dragons is in the Oriental bit. For the most park, it felt like most Cedar Fair parks, tidy, but a bit bland. (It was nice and leafy though!) I have to give honourable mention to the African shooting gallery. I thought you'd get to shoot elephants and lions like that dentist who got publicly shamed, but it turned out to be a standard off the shelf western gallery. I remember from one of Noxegons trip reports that you can see this park from miles away, and it’s true! Basically on the interstate from the airport its kind of just open and mostly flat (Well, a continuous gentle slope down to the park) so the navigation was saying a solid 15 mins away, yet you could clearly see the park on the horizon. When I got in I grabbed some soft chicken tacos and started off with Spinning Dragons, the Gerstlauer spinning coaster. It has the same layout as the rest of them, so basically mouse turns, helices, then a big wavy turn around a big circle (Funny that not a single park puts a flat ride in the middle of this bit ) then a couple of mouse style dips and the brakes. I got fairly balanced ride so it rotated very slowly and only got spins on the brake run lol. Patriot was broken down so I pressed on. Continuing around the park the Timber Wolf wooden coaster wasn’t open for the day at all (First missed coaster of the trip!), ...So that meant the next one up was Cosmic Coaster…A wacky worm. For me, bug run at Aussie world will always be the best Wacky Worm Next one along was Mamba, the parks Hypercoaster. This was very similar to Steel Force at Dorney Park, which is a good thing. Morgan built hyper coasters give good amounts of air, and this one was really cool in the helix at the far end of the ride because you go under several a frame supports from the part above, and they get very low, until they are right on the threshold of the clearance envelope. The return hills lifted you up and slammed you down a bit, but not too painfully. The weather was quite warm so I tried out Fury of the Nile, the parks rapids ride. The queue and station area was a bit unpleasant, no shade at all (Why do so many American parks do this where they don’t shade the queues! I mean they’re only open in the summer time so what’s the excuse. The structure in the middle of the turntable is like a microscopic version of the roof that was over Snowy River Rampages station at Wonderland. The course itself wasn’t too soaking, with a single geyser on the way and some moderate waves about the size of the ones on Thunder River (So the chance to get a bit wet is there, but for the most part you’ll go through unscathed. From memory it also had a wave pool section, which a lot of parks have deactivated right? Next up was Boomerang, which was in the African section….Aboriginal Culture, African Culture, it’s all the same right? The most notable thing on this ride was that we stopped for about 15 mins on the 2nd lift hill, which got a bit hot. Was amusing, about 30 seconds after we stopped at the top we heard the ride op shouting “it’s ok, we’re going to get you down”….I was hoping we’d get to walk down the lift hill or something. The bonus of this technical delay was that the touch of nausuea you get on the first pass had time to go away before we were finally released for the return trip. Upon disembarking we were given cups of water and a manager on duty at the exit ramp apologising. Prowler was next. Basically it’s a GCI with a big curling drop, then a long out and back section which is just heaps of s turns and small hills that you belt through because the drop is big but the rest is low, so maintains its speed. Cool concept! It’s not a new GCI so it was a bit rough (I’ve come to the conclusion that Six Flags are better at maintaining GCIs than Cedar Fair) Coming into the Europa section I noticed they had a Rotor style ride called Finnish Fling. Looked a bit neutered compared to the one in Sydney, because the floor dropped probably about 30cm, whereas I remember the one in Sydney you slide down a good meter or so, which was a great gimmick! The last coaster was back up and running and turned out to be the best…Patriot. It’s not the biggest B&M invert, but it still felt big, with lots of changes in level (tall inversions, a huge looping turn, airtime hill over the station etc and well paced. Kinda stuck out in an empty field compared to the rest of the park, but meh, it was a good ride. Next to it was SteelHawk, a windseeker style ride. Always found the story of this one odd. It was removed from Knotts because it was unreliable, but relocating it makes it miraculously reliable again? As always, these provide an enjoyable way to get a nice view, and don’t really bring on much vertigo as you might think…Too bad you can’t take a camera on! I finished my visit with a lap on the train and the ferris wheel to get photos, and one last lap on Mamba, Prowler and Patriot respectively. The park also has a large water park called Oceans of Fun, and in fact had a direct clone of the whitewater west drop slide/ raft slide complex I’d ridden the previous day at Carowinds. I didn’t go in, instead opting to head into downtown Kansas City for a stickybeak. Overall, Worlds of Fun is nice, but not really outstanding in any particular field. It does its job of being a decent park for the Kansas City area. In terms of improvements, it’s hard to say…Just keep building stuff? Maybe a dark ride would balance the place out well, there’s no shortage of flats, and there is plenty of options if they wanted to put a coaster in.

Demon at SFGaM ran alternate trains with VR....It is still very slow.

I think what DjRappa was saying is that SRQ is a solution to the wait time for some guests, but not everyone.

Did they have the Singles line when you were there? Basically you could get on straight away, but you weren't allowed to use VR.

^I quite like Flight deck at CGA...Its not a big invert, but its forceful, and gets to the point without mucking around. The sort of coaster that is fun to reride. ********* I’m actually going to break order a bit and fast foward to the last park on the very last day of my trip, Universal Studios Hollywood. Partly because it’s still a fairly new attraction so it makes sense to be topical , and partly because I went to several “amusement parks” in a row after Carowinds, so i’ll break it up a bit better by doing a themed one. I haven’t been to Universal Hollywood for about 9 years, and a lot has changed, and some stuff was a bit hazy from my memory, so it was good to reacquaint myself. I think new for me were. -Transformers -Harry Potter -The modified SFX show. -Numerous changes to the studio tour such as Fast and the Furious and King Kong -Despicable Me -Springfield / The Simpsons ride Not bad… The previous day was a travel day from San Antonio to my parents place in Visalia near Fresno, with a lengthy stopover in Salt Lake City (Sadly not long enough to get to Lagoon though) The highlight of the flights was this lady. We got in late, but it was up again around 6:30 for the 3h drive down to LA. The park opened Harry Potter early at 8:00, but we didn’t arrive till 10, which was absolutely fine, with no queue longer than about 10 mins. They really have been busy here...The new multi level car parks are enormous! I took Mum along for the day (Dad had to work), and we had a great day! Wasn’t sure about how much she’d do, but we went on everything. Heading in it was straight towards the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Just like the one in Florida, there is immense attention to detail, plenty of fun foods to try and expensive souvenirs to buy. I do find it odd with both here and Orlando they went for the snowcapped village look, which feels strange since both parks are in warm climates. So, onto Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, initially riding alone via the single rider queue. If you want a run through of the queue theming, check out the galleries. The ride is a definite improvement on the Orlando version. More detailed, better lit sets, particularly in the chamber of secrets, brighter, sharper projectors in 3d, seemingly more arm movement, and better dementor movements. Basically, I think the issue with the orlando one is that the projectors are low power flight simiulator ones, and the rest of the scenes are also dark to match. The dementors on that one also just moved a bit like they were something you’d see in a ghost train. Onto the ride. For those unfamiliar, it’s a robocoaster on a track, which is basically a robotic arm with seats that can flip you around in any direction. This means they can really move you around in the scenes, have you on your back, and have motion simulator type sequences where you are in front of a screen being tilted around slightly. The robotic arm is deliberately well hidden….The station has a long slot in the back wall that allows the seats to poke through, with the arm hidden behind. The cars move through continuously, and you board via a moving walkway. Once you are seated an operator with an armful of 3d glasses hands you a pair, and another op checks your harness and uses an RFID band to tap your car to signify you have been checked. Those ops must get a lot of exercise effectively being on a treadmill. From the station you are lifted up, Hermione dusts you with floo power, and in a puff of green smoke you travel up a chimney to the astronomy tower in the castle past a projection wall. (Another change to the orlando one, you are basically just floating through a green vortex, rather than the brick chimney on the old one…didn’t like it as much, a bit out of focus) You then emerge in the astronomy tower, floating from side to side, and eventually fly out the window into the first projector bit, where ron and harry are flying on their brooms next to you. A dragon comes along and gives chase, culminating in it breathing a fireball right at you in 3d. At that point you peel away into a real life set and float through a charred section of the castle with the dragon clawing around the outside. The dragon attacks again, this time an animatronic that breathes a cloud of steam at you. The issue of the disjointed storyline still stands. All of a sudden you are down in the forbidden forest, with spiders dropping down around you. Next you flip onto your back and a huge animatronic whomping willow swats very close to you (looked like it had rubber skin a bit like a dinosaur animatronic) From there, you fly sideways into the middle of quidditch match on a projector dome. Dementors decide to swarm in and chase you and harry,and eventually you and harry are knocked down a ravine into the secret entrance of the chamber of secrets. This is the main place that seemed better than the original. The dementors moved a lot more realistically, the sets were more detailed, with more depth (vaults and arches continuing into the distance etc) The main thing missing is the bit with the fog screen and the photo of your face floating away when a dementor tries to suck your soul out. The finale of the ride is another projector dome, where the chamber begins to collapse, with you dodging bits of falling rock. You then escape the cave, and fly quickly across the lake to the great hall of the castle (why the rush though? Odd storytelling) You peel away from the screen seamlessly into the great hall, with crowds of students and dumbledore congratulating you, and then go through another fireplace to get back to the station. Odd storyline aside, it’s a great, very immersive ride, with impressive technology and sets. Between this and Transformers, it’s the best 1-2 punch of dark rides in the world. Next I did a lap on Flight of the hippogriff, which is a mack family coaster. If you tell the attendant at the entrance you are a single rider you get sent up the VIP queue, so no wait if you just want to try the coaster. Mack make great family coasters, very smooth and comfortable, and a touch more zip than a vekoma family coaster. The layout is very similar to roadrunner, except that the first drop is downhill all the way, and the helices seemed a bit steeper. Visually, its just as much of a treat as the main area. We grabbed one of those lovely frozen butterbeers and poked around a couple of the shops (So many interesting interiors!) before heading down the starway to the lower lot. Half the park is at the bottom of a big hill, so there are several banks of escalators (Imagine about double the rise as when you are coming out of Parliament in Melbourne or KX in Sydney, except it’s a ballache because nobody stands to the side, so you just have to ride at escalator speed for several minutes. At the bottom Mum and I worked through the rides in level of intensity, starting with Jurassic Park. I think I wrote about this one in my old trip report. Basically you ride in big boats past some nice tropical dinosaur scenes, but go off course into a back of house area where dinos have escaped. For those familiar with the ride, the dropping car effect is gone L You then head into the water treatment plant, go up the lift hill inside, and at the top a giant t rex lurches his head at you, but you drop underneath and down the main drop to the splashdown. It’s still a good ride, but I reckon they could plus the ride by replacing the dinos with more modern animatronics. Overall however, its one of the best boat rides out there. They had the nice feature of a kids play area next to the ride, which more parks should put next to major rides IMO. Next was revenge of the mummy. Again, a good ride, and I reckon people are too harsh on it in terms of it supposedly being bad compared to the Orlando and Singapore versions. Quick and to the point, but again, with current projection mapping tech they could surley replace those cardboard cutout elements in the main coaster section. Basically the first section is a slow ride through a tomb, with skeleton arms clawing from the ceiling, a big projection of some sort of sand god raging at you. From the tomb you are launched into the ‘underworld’, just a few quick turns in the dark, with some cheesy cardboard cutouts of underworld gods. You come to an abrupt stop against a brick wall, where projections of beetles swarm around, coupled with leg ticklers under the seats. You then launch backwards through a bit more track, and then come to a stop on a turntable. Shrouded in CO2 fog, and a bang, a door opens and you are back in the station. It was onto another favourite of mine, which mum described as “awesome”….Transformers. Its neck and neck between this and Potter for the worlds best dark ride. A queue line through the halls of a military base, with a cool aesthetic and plenty of monitors and techno shit leads you to the loading station where you grab some 3d goggles, and board the rotating, motion based vehicles. The story goes that Decepticons are attacking earth trying to get the allspark, and you have to help the Autobots move it to safety by riding in the newest member of the team, evac. Perhaps the one thing I missed from the Singaporean version was the bilingual aspect of the queue videos (Basically the would alternate between English and Chinese, subtitled in the opposing language, so the Chinese one would have a few unique jokes….anyways) The ride keeps the blowtorch on the whole time, with quick progression between scenes and nonstop action. It is to dark rides what hypers are to roller coasters. You’re just being dragged along for the ride. Like potter, it’s a tracked ride running through a combination of real life scenes and immersive 3d projected sequences, with the transitions between scenes done quite cleverly. For instance, one part has you being chased under a bridge on screen, but you reverse out, and as you move out from the projector screen you pass under the same bridge in real life that you passed under in the footage. Highlights include a bit where Grindor chases you into a rail tunnel, but is decapitated by a passing train. Theres another great bit where you get picked up by Starscreams grapple hook, and are towed wildly through the air around skyscrapers, eventually fishtailing and smashing through into a level of an office building, hitting computers and filing cabinets. There’s great attention to detail, like a hole that gets blown in a concrete wall, and as you pass through the hole, the tips of the exposed reo bars glow red hot but fade as they cool down. Love that kinda stuff. I was hoping to try the Energon drink they apparently sell in the area…It has been discontinued We then headed up the hill and got lunch at Cletus’ Chicken Shack in Springfield. Being adventurous we tried the waffle chicken sandwich, which had fried chicken, tomato, lettuce and I think some sort of maple mayo…on waffles. It was odd, but kinda nice. Normally I’m good at not missing stuff at theme parks, but I admit I dropped the ball here, and forgot to try a Flaming Moe at during my visit You could also get enormous doughnuts that were the size of a Whopper burger. The whole Springfield area looks great, with places like the DMV, police station, duff brewery. This could totally be fleshed out into an area of scale of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, for example with walkthroughs through the Simpson House or Springfield Elementary. They could even have rides, like bumper cars themed to Crazy Vaclavs Place of Automobiles, where the little cars could be themed to Zagragev Minzlotnyk Diev, and you have to put them in H on a single tank of kerosene. After lunch we went on the Studio Tour. All the usual stuff is there like the Psycho house, Wysteria Lane, Whoville, Jaws, the Earthquake subway etc, so some things don’t change. They have deleted the dancing cars on robotic arms in an old Fast and the Furious scene (Which has since been replaced by another F&F sequence ill get to) . I think there used to be a mummy themed scene with a spinning tunnel. Even without any filming going on, the multiple staged scenes make it quite fleshed out. The two new additions are two enclosed sections that have 3d projection tunnels and motion bases that your vehicle parks on. The first is King Kong, where you are basically in a fight between Kong and some Dinosaurs, with you being jostled around, and even falling off a ravine but landing in some big vines. The other is a Fast and the Furious one which was utterly confusing because I only ever saw the first one. Basically theres some shit about a deal and secret agents, and I couldn’t tell who was good or who was bad or why we were in trouble or why we had been brought to a party in an abandoned warehouse. But it comes good in the final scene, where your tram is being towed by two very powerful tow trucks along a freeway, with cars and shooting happening around you, culminating in a big jump across a half built bridge, in true hollywood style. So what else? The Simpsons ride. It’s a big simulator with a giant dome screen and multiple motion bases that replaced back to the future. My only criticism would be they animated it in Simpsons hit and run style (Or like that Treehouse of horrors where Homer was trapped in 3d world) with smooth edges, rather than the way they do newer episodes and Futurama (Still 3D animated, but with the black outlines) A few laughs, the humour seemed a bit more like early 2000s episodes than newer ones. The other simulator is Despicable Me: minion mayhem. Same sort of idea as the Simpsons, but on a smaller scale, without a dome screen, but it is in 3D! I was expecting to be meh about this one because Facebook ruined minions (apparently adding a picture of a minion to a meme makes it relatable) But it was actually funny! Basically you are shrunk to minion size and sent on a training course, so it feels like you are in a computer game level, with minions falling over a d being knocked over by obstacles. The exit of the ride is a random disco room where you can party with the minions. Nearby is the newly opened Walking Dead attraction. Universal used to have the “Universal House of Horrors” which was a great permanent maze, quite dark with good scares. This has replaced it, and has well detailed sets, and a few more theme parky type features like animatronics and the like. But its fully lit, not dark like a true horror maze, and the scarers just come charging through. And it feels a bit odd because there are staff in medical uniforms as minders all the way through. So its middle of the road….technically well presented with good sets, but not particularly scary or stressing. We went back into Wizarding World and mum conquered Forbidden Journey and loved it. I did another lap on single rider, and on Flight of the Hipogriff because I actually liked it. We sat in Three Broomsticks and tried a few more things, including the Fish n Chips (Decent), the postmix version of Butterbeer (Better than I remembered, would get again!), and Pumpkin Juice (Doesn’t really taste of Pumpkin, it was more a spiced drink that tasted of Cinnamon…if you like Ginger ale etc you’d like Pumpkin Juice. The last attraction we did was the SFX show. This was quite entertaining, with plenty of techniques shown…A man on fire, miniature models, foley sound effects (yes, guests still cant get their cues right!), motion capture, flying rigs, makeup, fake blood knives. The theatre was a full house and nobody left early so can’t question its popularity. They also mixed a bit of theatrics and humor into it, rather than it being a dry demonstration. Eg the flying rig sequence all “went wrong” with the guy on the rig being tossed and tumbled all over the place. We rounded out the day with another go on transformers, and Potter before calling it a day around 5ish. It’s a great park, and has made some definite improvements, with a really solid line up of attractions. It wasn’t too much of an effort to get everything done. (We skipped Waterworld…seen it, and Shrek 4D was skipped for the same reason) I think the main thing the park needs is a signature roller coaster. Japan has Hollywood Dream and Flying Dinosaur, Orlando has Rip Ride Rocket, IOA has Hulk. Singapore has Battlestar. I reckon the park could also do with a family dark ride, like the ET or sesame st ones at the other universal parks. So, that concludes this diversion, and Ill return to chronological trip reports for the rest of this topic.

A lot of the CF/SF parks have both a big and a small one of those chairswings. Different age groups I guess.