Wishful Thinking

Working at the Magic Kingdom, your sense of holidays and seasons becomes drastically blurred. You literally spend months celebrating the same holiday 3-4 times a week.  So when Christmas Day actually comes, it's kinda lost its charm.  But luckily you have friends and family who work outside of Disney and will let you know when it's ACTUALLY Christmas.  This was my second year spent in Florida for the holidays, and I spent it working (just like last year).  But honestly, it's much better to be at work my with my friends than at home by myself.  So I just wanted to say a quick thank you to all of my wonderful co-workers and friends that have made the holidays special.  

With the new year just around the corner, I've been considering what kind of changes I want for 2015.  There's always resolutions like "lose weight and stop eating multiple cheeseburgers in one sitting" and "get a different job where I don't have to yell at foreigners for violating my taped-off viewing areas", but I want to instead focus things I want to do in the coming year.  Since I obviously love theme parks, I want to try and visit some parks that I've never been to before.  

For this entry, I want to just focus on domestic parks.  Realistically, I may be able to visit a few of these parks in the coming year, but I definitely don't have the resources to try and hit up any international parks.  I plan on making an additional post to discuss my international theme park wishlist, so be on the lookout for that in the coming weeks.  The parks on this list, however, are all right here in the United States.

Numero 5 - Carowinds, South Carolina

Carowinds is part of Cedar Fair Entertainment, the same company that operates parks such as Cedar Point and Kings Island.  This park is just a few hours away from Atlanta, GA, which is also home to a Six Flags park:  Six Flags Over Goergia.  I visited SFOG as a child, but never had the chance to go to Carowinds.  I only live about 9 hours from this park, so a weekend or three-day weekend trip up there is actually somewhat plausible.  

Carowinds is a pretty solid park with lots of coasters and flat rides.  I've heard a lot about some it's headliner attractions like Intimidator and Nighthawk, but I'm also very drawn to its upcoming attraction.  In 2015, Carowinds will be opening a new mega coaster called Fury 325.  It's been a long time since anyone has built something this big, and it's exciting to see parks that still want to build big, expensive rides instead of short, gimmicky coasters. According to Carowinds' website, Fury 325 will stand at 325 feet tall and reach speeds of 95 mph.  Additionally, it will have a ride time of 3 1/2 minutes, which is almost unheard of nowadays.  With Carowinds not too far away, I hope to be able to take a trip up there sometime next year.  

Number 4 - Holiday World, Indiana

I know it sounds crazy to want to go to a place called Santa Claus, Indiana where it's literally Christmas all-year round (especially after my opening paragraph), but Holiday World just has way too much to offer to turn it down.  Many of you reading this have probably never heard of this theme park, since it's not park of a major chain like Six Flags or Cedar Fair.  Admittedly, I myself know very little about this park.  But Holiday World is home to some very interesting and very appealing rides.  

As far as wooden coasters go, The Voyage is one of the top rated rides on coaster polls every single year.  It boasts all kinds of airtime and speed while zooming through a beautiful forest.  I'm a sucker for a good woodie (don't take that out of context) and so The Voyage is definitely on my list of must-dos.  Holiday World also has a huge water park with some of the wildest and longest water rides in the country such as The Mammoth and Wildebeest.  

Like Carowinds, HW will also be opening up a new coaster in 2015: Thunderbird.  This coaster will actually be the first steel coaster built at this park and will be the first of its kind, too.  The ride itself is a B&M wing coaster like X-Flight and Gatekeeper, but it will feature a launch to start the ride, which hasn't been used on any wing coasters thus far.  I'm really excited to see how this ride plays out, resulting in me now following the ride's construction via Twitter @HolidayWorld #orangeisthenewtrack

Three - Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Virginia

I've been to Busch Gardens Tampa a couple times, but I really want to head farther north to check out their Virginia park.  Unlike it's Florida counterpart, this park is in a more forested area and is more themed to North American and European nature.  BGW features rides such as Apollo's Chariot, Alpengeist, and Loch Ness Monster.  Like Holiday World,  I don't really know a whole lot about this park, except that I really want to go see it.  I've also heard a lot of great reviews about one of their newer coasters called Verbolten.  I don't fully understand how the ride actually do, but it's a coaster that goes fast and that's enough for me.  BGW used to have a suspended coaster called Big Bad Wolf that was very highly praised, but it was demolished to make room for Verbolten years ago.  

Number Two - Hershey Park, Pennsylvania

Since I'm a roller coaster junkie, Hershey Park has always had a strong appeal to me.  This park has lots of great coasters, including some very unique ride types.  As a kid, I remember first learning about Hershey Park through the Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 video game.  For whatever reason, RTC3 decided to partner with Hershey Park to have their unique ride designs and attractions featured in their game.  So when I was able to see and virtually experience rides such as Storm Runner, it fostered a desire to go see that ride in-person.  

Out of all the parks on this list, Hershey Park is the one i'll end up most likely visiting in 2015.  A very good friend of mine lives close to this park, and he's already invited me to head up there in the spring to check it out for a few days.  Needless to say, I'm more than excited to take him up on his offer.  

Numbah Won - Disneyland & California Adventure (duh)

Okay so i'll probably get lynched for this but I've never actually been to Disneyland before. I've been to Six Flags Magic Mountain many times and even Universal Studios Hollywood once, but I've never made it all the way into Disneyland.  We once even drove to Downtown Disney in Anaheim late at night, but failed to even get a glimpse of the parks.  But in my defense, I wasn't a huge fan of Disney Parks at the time.  Disneyland always seemed to be like a smaller, more disappointing version of Disney World.  Since I had already visited Disney World a couple times, I figured Disneyland wasn't really worth it.  It wasn't until I started working at Disney World that I realized how wrong I actually was.

I feel like the odd-man out here in Disney World whenever people start to talk about Anaheim and the great Mecca of Disney Parks.  They talk about how magical that park truly is, and how the atmosphere is so much different than the extremely crowded and overrun Florida parks.  They talk about how the rides are more detailed, more well-kept, and more unique.   They talk about how Disneyland's version of a certain ride is so much better than Disney World's version.  They talk about how the presence of Walt can be felt.   And after all this talk, all I want to do is jump on a plane and fly out there for a week.  And so that's what I'm going to do.

I've already got about 10 days of approved vacation time in September 2015, and I sincerely plan on making a trip to California during that time.  I'll probably make stops at Magic Mountain and maybe even Universal Studios, but my main goal is to finally experience Disneyland and California Adventure for myself.  I suspect that all-in-all I will still end up liking Disney World more, but I desperately want to see what the original park has to offer. Oh yeah and California Adventure, too because of Cars and stuff.

So those are the Top 5 Parks I want to visit in the near future.  If you've been to any of those parks, I'd love to hear your opinions on them, whether good or bad.  Be on the lookout for my Top 5 International Parks Wishlist coming soon.  Thanks for reading!

Grim, Grinning Goliath

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to return to Six Flags Great America.  For those of you who don't know, I participated in an HR internship at that park back in 2012 before finishing my senior year of college.  Great America is near and dear to my heart, since working there solidified my desire to make a career in the theme park industry.  It was good to see old friends again and check out the new additions to the park.

During this time of year, Six Flags parks host their Fright Fest event.  The parks become fully decorated with all kinds of corpses, ghouls, and ghosts.  Many of the rides and areas also get morbid makeovers, as seen in the pictures below.  Most parks also have a variety of haunted experiences, usually at an upcharge.  Great America had some pretty cool haunted houses and themed areas, but it wasn't exactly terrifying.  But for those who live nearby and want to try it out, it's worth a shot.

Over the summer, Great America also opened a brand new attraction: Goliath.  This ride is now the new record holder for the world's tallest, fastest, and steepest wooden coaster (180 ft, 85 degree drop, 72 mph).  As impressive at that sounds, you really don't get the full effect until you've actually ridden it.  It's a non-stop thrill as you fly down the first drop, up into huge banked turns, and then into some pretty awesome inversions.  Goliath also features a new type of ride element called a zero-gravity stall or zero-g stall. Although it may be a little hard to tell from this picture, the track piece immediately to the right of this text would place the train completely upside down for a few seconds.  It's a crazy ride experience, since you basically just hang out of your seat until you finally twist upright again.  

Total ride time on Goliath isn't very long (about a minute), but the intensity and creativity of the ride make up for it.  Great America also had a fairly limited amount of room to build this attraction, and I feel like they capitalized on the land available without removing other nearby attractions.  There actually used to be a different coaster in this spot, but that ride was disassembled and moved to another Six Flags park a few years ago.  Yay for recycling!  

If you get the opportunity to visit Great America, definitely check out Goliath.  Wait times were a little harsh during the day, but the night proved much less crowded, especially as people went to the haunted houses.  Six Flags has also started implementing a single rider line, although they haven't exactly figured out the best way to do it yet.  So if you want to avoid waiting, maybe try single rider.  I'll also a post a ride POV video from the SFGAm Youtube Channel for those of you who realistically may not get a chance to visit the Chicago area any time soon :)

Heigh Ho!

As promised, I want to do a quick write-up about the new Seven Dwarfs Mine Train at the Magic Kingdom.  Yes, I know it opened like 4 months ago, but in the Disney "World", attractions are considered new for up to four years.  That's because the average guest will only visit once every four years, and so attractions built anywhere in that time period will be new to them when they visit. You can most likely expect to see "New" Fantasyland promoted for at least another two years.

The Mine Train took over the space previously used for the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Submarine Voyage ride.  I never had a chance to experience this attraction since it closed down in 1994.  However, it seemed to be a fairly immersive attraction with some pretty interesting ride technology.  It was also a very large attraction and so it's a little confusing as to why Disney waited 20 years before finally turning that precious, unused space into something useful again.



New Fantasyland opened in phases over the past few years, with Enchanted Tales with Belle, the Be Our Guest Restaurant, and Under the Sea - Journey of the Little Mermaid as some of the earlier offerings.  In 2013, the Princess Fairytale Hall opened as a new permanent location to meet lots of Disney princesses.  On any given day, you could meet Snow White and Cinderella or Aurora and Rapunzel.  All of that changed when the fire nation attacked, I mean, once Anna and Elsa took over. Several of the princesses were relocated to outdoor locations where they are free to stand in the sun with all their admirers while the popular newcomers enjoy the blessings of AC.  Oh yeah, and then this happened:

The final phase for New Fantasyland was the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.  The ride area itself is very well detailed with lots of foliage, rock structures, and cottage/mine-like buildings. The ride vehicles are also very detailed, and they even sway from side to side.  Like its predecessor, it takes up more land than anything else in the area and must be circumnavigated to reach the other attractions.







Despite the multi-year process of landscaping and ride construction, the Mine Train only has a ride time of about 50 seconds, discounting the indoor dark-ride portion.  For many enthusiasts, this was a major disappointment after waiting so long for it to open.  Although it is a roller coaster, it has a very low thrill threshold and is easily outdone by Big Thunder Mountain on the other side of the park.  Don't get me wrong, the ride is fun and I do enjoy it, but it's just not what I was expecting it to be.  For what it's worth, the animatronics are very impressive and accurately capture the look and feel of the classic film.




If you are visiting Magic Kingdom, expect wait times for this attraction to run between 40-70 minutes on average.  Personally, I would never wait more than an hour for this ride.  For kids that are looking to try something that's a step up from the Barnstormer, this would be a good option.  Regardless of the actual thrill-level of the ride, it is a beautiful addition to the park and obviously fits right in with Fantasyland's theme.  Don't forget to keep your eyes peeled at the end of the ride for a few surprises!

Went for the Rides, Stayed for the Rays

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to finally visit Sea World Orlando.  For nearly the past year, I lived about 5 minutes away from this park, but somehow never found the time to go.  I even made a trek down to Tampa to visit it's cousin Busch Gardens at one point.  Regardless, I had a really good time at Sea World and just want to share a little bit about the park with y'all.  Thanks again to Kaylee for hooking me up with tickets to go!

The park ended up being a lot bigger than I had expected.  I had driven by it quite a bit, but I guess it just seemed a lot bigger on foot.  Unlike Disney or Six Flags parks, I didn't really get the feeling that I was moving from one themed area to the next, but rather that the whole park was just one giant aquarium  There might have been park areas on the map, but I didn't really pay attention to it.  There wasn't any signage, as far as I remember, about different areas.  Instead, I guess you could divvy up the park according to the landmark attractions or shows in that section.

Let's start with what you see when you first walk in:  Manta.  This coaster is a B&M Flying-type that is themed around the manta ray sea creature.  In case you didn't know, manta rays are like stingrays but they have no barb or stinger and are usually much larger than stingrays.  The Manta's track dominates most of the entry area of the park.  The queue for Manta takes you through several different exhibits featuring a variety of rays and other fishes, and it was much cooler than the outside heat.  Since it is the down season right now, we didn't really have to wait to board the attraction, but it's nice that those visiting in the summer would be able to wait indoors.

The ride also has two loading areas that merge for the lift hill, a brilliant way to reduce wait times for any coaster.  I've never seen it used on a flying coaster, but it works just like any other double loader.  Of course, only one area was being used when we were there.  The ride was very smooth and provided lots of great thrills.  It also had several in-line twists that kept you spinning through the air.  At one point it takes you down to the water for a "splash zone" effect, resulting in some of the riders getting a little wet.  All in all, Manta has great themeing and proved to be the best flying coaster I've ever been on.  Definitely check it out when you visit.

In conjunction with the Manta queue aquariums, there is a separate post-ride area you can go into with a lot of unique sea creatures such as giant starfish, sea dragons, and a very cool overhead tank, allowing rays to fly over the top of you.  There is also a ray tank around the corner, but I'll talk more about that later on.

The next area of the park features dolphins, including the Blue Horizons show.  This show was my favorite of the four taking place that day.  Since the trainers were able to be in the water with the animals for this one, they took full advantage of interacting as much as possible with them.  The most impressive stunt was the underwater corkscrew swimming as the divers spun with a dolphin propelling each leg.  The show also had birds and divers and stuff, but the dolphin segment is what you go for.  You can usually tell how much I like a show by the number of pictures I take, with less pictures meaning more interest.  I was definitely focused on the show itself and didn't want to waste time trying to get a good picture.  Here's one of the stadium though:

Towards the back of the park you will find a fantasy-like area, featuring the Journey to Atlantis and Kraken.  I was really excited to ride the Atlantis attraction (almost to the point of annoying my friends about it) since I had never been on an official water coaster.  Water coasters are kind of like mixtures of log flumes and coaster track.  The vehicles transition smoothly from water-filled areas into winding coaster segments.  Atlantis was an interesting ride.  It was obviously somewhat dated, and it had this goofy vibe to its storytelling.  At the beginning, some random guy whips out a magical sea horse to guide you through Atlantis, but you never see him, or the seahorse, again.  As expected, things go south when some Medusa-style water witch shows up to curse you.  The indoor portions of the ride weren't bad, but it was hard to take it all seriously.  Nonetheless, there were several drops and curves throughout the ride that actually made it fairly thrilling and overall fun.  You do end up getting wet, too.  

Kraken is a floorless coaster, like Superman Krypton Coaster at Six Flags Fiesta Texas or SCREAM at Magic Mountain.  It was a pretty good ride, with all the kinds of inversions you expect from these kind of rides.  The themeing was okay, but obviously they didn't have a kraken in a tank to look at it line, since, well, they're not real.  But they did have eels in the giftshop!  

Across from those two rides is the newest attraction area:  Antartica.  This ride opened up just last year and featured a ride-exhibit combo with penguins.  The area also had a quick-service restaurant and Coke Freestyle machines with a special vanilla sprite mix.  I'm not really a huge fan of vanilla-flavored sodas, but it was nice and cold.  Speaking of cold, the indoor queue areas for Empire of the Penguins are kept at near-freezing temperatures.  For hot, sweaty guests popping in for the ride, it's a huge relief from the outdoor weather.  The team members, however, were decked out in winter gear to keep them warm.

The ride is very well put together and features ride technology never used before.  Each ride vehicle fits eight people and is shaped like a giant hockey puck.  The vehicles seemingly have a mind of their own as they slide and spin across the ice.  Supposedly it is very unlikely that they would ever run into each other, but sometimes the other pucks got a little too close for comfort.  As a quick aside, the ride actually has two settings: Wild and Mild.  The mild option results in a fairly linear path with no spinning or bobbing.

The ride ends with you unloading at the penguin exhibit.  The exhibit was expansive and had multiple levels for viewing.  Again, it's a nice break from the heat.  After about 20 minutes of ride and exhibit, you may start to feel a bit chilly.

On our way to see One Ocean, we made a few detours.  At Pacific Point, we tried feeding the sea lions with fish, but my fish got jacked by a bird mid-toss.  There used to be a show in that area, but it's currently closed down.  A new show is supposed to be introduced next year, but the details are not yet known.

Shark Encounter is an impressive aquarium with all kinds of sharks, shark information, and even a restaurant and bar.  As part of the experience, you travel on a moving sidewalk that positions you beneath the shark tank, allowing for some creepy encounters.

Shamu Stadium is the largest theater and features One Ocean, a show with killer whales.  The show was fun, but it got a little stale with the whales just splashing the audience for a third of the performance.  I know the show used to feature a lot more interaction with the trainers, but recent law suits due to accidents involving the whales have done away with that.  This area of the park will also be getting a major overhaul once they start building new (and much larger) whale enclosures in the coming years.    

 

Against the better judgment of those that had actually been on the ride, we decided to try out Wild Arctic.  This ride is a simulator like Star Tours or something you might have found in your local mall 20 years ago.  The simulator was actually huge, and clunky, and smelly.  Seriously though, it just had that old, motion simulator smell (you know the one).  The ride was very jerky and actually made me somewhat dizzy.  While it's not something I would necessarily look forward to, I would still probably do it again given the opportunity.  At the end of the ride, however, you get to see a very detailed exhibit for walruses.  So yeah, that was cool (GET IT?!!?).

Happy Harbor is the kids area behind Shamu Stadium.  We had a little time to spare so we swung by here to ride Shamu Express.  It's your typical kiddie-coaster, with these neat little whale-shaped trains.  

The last two shows we saw were Alure - Call of the Ocean and Pets Ahoy.  Alure had a cirque-style feel with tumblers, dancers, and acrobats.  Although fairly small in scale, I was impressed by the talent in the show and their stunts.  Pets Ahoy is an animal actor show with lots of critters.  Sea World also stated that all the animals used in this show are actually rescues from shelters, which is pretty cool.  Both shows are also indoors, for those looking to visit anytime between February and December.  

One of the last attractions we checked out was Turle Trek.  This journey gives you an up-close view at sea turtles and manatees, combined with lots of great messages about protecting these animals.  You also go into a 3D dome theater and get to see life from the perspective of a sea turtle.  The dome effect was cool, and I've never seen another theme park try to replicate something like it.  The turtle in the lower right photo is called Grandma because, well, she looks really old.  She is actually missing her lower jaw and so the trainers hand feed her every day.  

Sea World has lots of fun rides and shows, but the animal encounters are probably the best thing about the park.  Early in the day, we stopped by the ray tank where you can pet and feed stingrays.  You may not know this but I actually highly dislike fish and sea creatures in general, mostly because they freak me out.  I didn't really want to reach into the tank and pet a ray, but I ended up just doing it.  At first I barely touched them and then pulled back since they felt slimy.  It was okay, but we left to go do other things. 

 On the way out of the park, we decided to swing by the rays again.  This time, however, we tried feeding them fish.  The proper technique for this was to place your hand flat on the bottom of the tank with a small fish sticking up between your fingers.  Then the rays would swim over and suck it up.  Again, I was like heeeeeck nawwwww but decided to just man up and do it.  The first ray kinda missed the fish and sucked on my hand so I freaked out, let go of the fish, and then got splashed by another ray that jumped in to steal to the food.  But I decided to keep going at it.  We got to the point where we were just petting and feeding rays non-stop.  We even started naming some of the rays that were repeat customers.  My favorite was Hoppy.  He would kinda poke his head out of the water as he "hopped" over to see you.  In the end, playing with the rays was the most enjoyable thing we did.  

In the coming weeks I plan on making another trip to Busch Gardens to check out Falcon's Fury.  They ended up just opening the attraction instead of trying to have a grand opening date since it was already several months behind schedule.  I definitely want to experience it for myself.   Also, I'll have a special blog post in October about something I've been wanting to do for a couple years now.  Some of you may know what I'm planning, but I don't have all the details figured out yet.  Thanks for taking time to check out this post!