A connoisseur's view of theme parks
Archive for September, 2009
Halloween Screams
Sep 30th
Disneyland has a new halloween show that looks simply amazing. The master of ceremonies is Jack Skellington.
View the vide of it at http://www.viddler.com/simple/c9a665bf/
Official Disney Blog
Sep 29th
Disney is launching an official blog for it’s US parks. It looks like they are trying to bring some of the traffic in from the Disney blog and Mouse Planet.
Star Tours II video
Sep 28th
Disney has released a video trailer for the new Star Tours update. It’s from the pod race in Epidsode 1, which is perfect for this type of ride.
Six Flags opens after flooding
Sep 28th
I’m surprised with how quickly the employees were able to get everything going, but they opened on time with all major rides running.
since Halloween is an important season, I knew they would not want the floods to hurt their ticket sales, but it’s impressive how much cleanup they did to get the park ready, although it does seem the media focused on the bad, and not how much of the park wasn’t affected by flooding. In this satellite photo, you can see that most of the park was unaffected by the floods.
Six Flags over Georgia Floods
Sep 22nd
Six flags over Georgia is trying to imitate New Orleans with floodwaters literally submerging many of the rides.
it’s been a while since I was at Six Flags in Georgia, but that looks to be the Great American Scream Machine.
Robocoaster video
Sep 19th
I had heard that the new Harry Potter ride was going to be a robocoaster and wondered just what a robocoaster was, so I turned to my trusty friend google and found this video from their manufacturer. From the descriptions I’ve seen on the ride, the G3 would be the type they are installing.
Xcelerator Accident
Sep 19th
Here’s video footage from where a cable snapped during launch of the Xcelerator roller coaster. The 12 year old in the front had minor scratches from it and the Dad was in a panic. It sounds like this was the same thing that happened to Top Thrill Dragster a couple of years ago. Hopefully this wasn’t caused by a lack of inspections, which is what I seem to remember being the cause of that one. I’m amazed they released this video footage of the accident.
And here’s a still shot of some of the debris.
Wizarding World of Harry Potter walkthrough
Sep 16th
Universal has released a virtual walkthrough of the wizarding world of Harry Potter. It’s looking really interesting and I can’t wait for it to open. This video takes a while to watch, but it’s worth it.
The NY Times also has an article worth reading about this.
Myrtle Beach renames Hard Rock Parkway
Sep 14th
Horry county officials are changing the name of the road leading to the former hard rock park from the ‘Hard Rock Parkway’ to ‘Fantasy Harbour Boulevard. This actually makes a lot of sense since the area had been known as Fantasy harbour for years. Last time I drove through myrtle beach, I got a chuckle out of having to take the Hard Rock Parkway to get to Freestyle music park.
Best Amusement Park – 2009
Sep 13th
Amusement today named Cedar Point the best amusement park in the world for the 12th consecutive year. Several other Cedar Fair parks also won awards. Kings Island got an award for the best childrens’ area and Worlds of Fun got the best new ride of 2009 award for the Prowler.
I agree with Cedar Point as the best park for roller coasters, but my vote for the best new ride of 2009 would go to SeaWorld’s Manta.
Magic Kingdom upgrade
Sep 12th
The Orlando Sentinel reports that Disney is planning a major update for the Fantasyland portion of the Magic Kingdom at DisneyWorld. They are doubling the capacity of Dumbo by adding a second copy of it, which is great since that ride consistently has long lines. They are adding a ride based on the Little Mermaid, and they are finally going to update Star Tours with all new video in 3-D. The new & improved Star Tours is expected to be finished in 2011, with the Fantasyland update not being finished until 2013. Below are the concept pictures and blueprints that Disney released.
Concept art for the updated section
Blue prints for the new Fantasyland.
Now Hiring Disney Moms
Sep 10th
Disney is looking to hire 10 people to answer questions on their web forums. The drawback is no weekly paycheck. They do, however, send you to DisneyWorld for four days of training, so you essentially get a free vacation out of it. Not a bad deal at all, if I do say so myself.
Applications are being accepted beginning this morning at 10 AM and they stop taking applications when they hit 20,000. If you are interested, you would need to apply real quick.
http://disneyworldforum.disney.go.com/recruiting/about_the_program.aspx