Demon DropWe’ve been hearing a lot prior to this off season about the removal of Demon Drop, a first generation Intamin freefall at Cedar Point. The ride was poised to be moved to Knotts Berry Farm in California but that plan seems to have fallen through considering a recent twist of sorts. News Plus Notes reported in late November about a “mystery ride” sitting in the parking lot at Dorney Park in Allentown, PA. This mystery ride has now been confirmed as the Point’s old Demon Drop!

According to an LA Times article, the ride will retain the same name and logos but may undergo a color scheme change. The ride will be located around where Steel Force’s helix is and the Krazy Kars hover bumper car ride may be removed to accommodate the ride. Good thing I shot video of Krazy Kars this past season…

Personally, I really like this news as those first gen freefall rides are hard to come by now. Six Flags Great Adventure used to have one called Stuntman’s Freefall and it was a real fun ride in all its old school glory. Some people have been raising the point that Dorney does already have a large drop tower attraction called Dominator and that the addition of Demon Drop wouldn’t make much sense. It’s a valid point but I think those old first gens give a very different ride from the newer counterparts. Like they both drop riders but Demon Drop does it in a very mechanized and almost Rube Goldberg-like fashion. Just check out this video of it in action by SerraGS:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmFhNPecAl8

Video: Apollo at Dorney Park

Posted by on December 4, 2009 | Add a Comment

Apollo is a flatride at Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom in Allentown, PA. The ride is a Soriani & Moser manufactured ‘Apollo 2000’ ride which is basically a total knockoff of the Huss Swing Around. The two rides are nearly identical with the only visual difference being that the Apollo has a globe ornament in the center while the Swing Around has nothing at all. The ride itself is like an updated and higher capacity version of Saturn 6 or a Hurricane ride.

By the way, this reminds me that I still have a Dorney Park trip report to write up! It’s only been, oh, about a month since I went there!

Enjoy the video folks!

Apollo at Dorney Park from The DoD3 on Vimeo.

The song is ‘Forever’ by Seba.

Lead Ticket Awards 2009 Results

Posted by on November 24, 2009 | 1 comment

The Lead Ticket Awards 2009Well…the Lead Ticket Awards were a good idea I thought, but alas they seemed to go over about as well as Friday the 13th VIII: Jason Take Manhattan. Although, the lack of promotion by a few other sites didn’t help too much as well as my own dwindling interest as the awards sort of flopped.

While there weren’t many who took the survey, there still were enough to get a result…a kind of skewed one, but a result nonetheless. So here we go, the results for the 2009 Lead Ticket Awards!

Park Categories

Park with the Worst Food for the Value

Mmmm...Theme parks are kind of hit or miss in terms of food. There’s typically a huge selection of greasy foods to choose from, but sometimes the burgers are rubbery and have those disgusting hard pieces of fat in them while the hot dogs are mushy inside. On top of that, your rubbery burger might cost in upwards of $7 bucks! As chosen by you, the park with the worst culinary fare is…

Cedar Point! I’ve never been there myself but perhaps their budget for coasters has  diminished their budget for fine foodstuffs.

Rudest Staff

Let’s face it, some staff are rude. I’ve worked at an amusement park myself and I have to admit that I’ve barked at a few guests; six hours solo operating the Scrambler on a disgustingly hot and busy day will do that to you. However sometimes you’ll just be inundated with rude staff on some days! The park with the rudest staff has been selected, and it is…

Six Flag Great Adventure! I’ve run into a few baddies there as well, however my personal choice was Dorney Park by a slim margin.

Grossest Bathrooms

BathroomEver walk into a theme park bathroom and see a big brown streak on the floor? Be glad if you haven’t! The park with the worst bathrooms is…

Boardwalk Parks! While not a single park, there is truth to this. After all, down in Wildwood, NJ is where I saw Mr. Hanky in the middle of the floor.

Most Overpriced Admission

Some parks just don’t fit the bill with an exorbitant admission for their lackluster selection of attractions. The park with the most overpriced admission is…

Busch Gardens Europe! At $61.95, it does indeed seem kind of steep. The place is nice and has decent rides, but is it really worth $62 bucks?

Worst Themeing

They all can’t be Disney but they can at least put some effort into it! The park that likes to theme their western ride with a few wagon wheels, a fake cactus and some horseshoes is…

Cedar Point! Being a Cedar Fair park, this place really doesn’t have a theme at all; rides are kind of compartmentalized into separate themes with rides such as Top Thrill Dragster having some sparse racing paraphernalia and Millennium Force having…I don’t know actually.

Worst Overall Park

Simple, the park that compounds all of the above into a nice little ball of junk. This dubious the award goes to…

Cedar Point! After all, they did take two of the categories above as well as showed up in every category in the results to some extent.

The list continues with the Roller Coaster Categories up next in the full article!

… Lead Ticket Awards 2009 Results

Dead Man's PartySo here it is, the final Six Flags Great Adventure trip report of the season. Now considering that I’ve recently posted two other Great Adventure trip reports, I think it would be boring to do another in a similar style to the others. Instead, this one will be composed of one or two sentence descriptions along with linked photos (pic) to go along with some of them. All right, let’s go!

I arrived at Great Adventure at around 6:00pm. A little more crowded than usual, but it didn’t look too bad…uh, I actually don’t have a picture for this…yeah, this is starting off great.

As soon as I entered, I heard the thumping music from Dead Man’s Party playing (pic), so I ran over to check out the show. I’m not really a show person but it was pretty good!

The fireworks near the end scared the hell out of me though (pic).

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Went over to Nitro next, which had a line starting at the end of the switchbacks…ugh. I waited about 25 minutes before boarding (pic). Sat in the back with the lapbar down loosely; now that’s a rush!

I checked out Batman next, but that had a line extending out of the building, so I passed. It probably would have been a 25 minute wait as well, but most of that time would be spent in Batman’s dingy, chewing gum plastered, unventilated stairway; no…thanks…

Headed for Skull Mountain next which had a station wait, which is good because any longer wait for Skullie would be a complete debacle on ice. Sat in the back and enjoyed the super airtime drop.

Next I watched the Wheel of Fright show where people eat weird stuff for a season pass or day ticket to Six Flags. This particular woman (pic) ate a concoction of just about every condiment possible mixed into a delectable ‘shit shake.’

It was quite the scene (pic): she almost puked; the head ghoul looked on urging her to vomit; and the maid encouraged her on while looking oddly hot.

Fantasy Fling

Fantasy Fling spin cycle

Next I hopped aboard Fantasy Fling (pic). It was a fun ride, and even more fun to watch the group of kids get yelled at by the ride op for random on-ride antics.

Then I stopped to check out a band playing at the Lakefront Stage (pic). They had a female vocalist, a male metal/rapping vocalist, lots of power chords being played and an equally abundant amount of ring outs…they sounded so generic (video)…

Freebie Terror Trail was next. Some ghoul outside was singing opera outside the gates (pic), it was pretty awesome.

Hey look, the Ghoul Master (pic)!

Next I walked over to Bizarro…oh, well look at this (pic)…guess I’ll be riding it next year!

I traversed the bridge and headed over to El Toro…only to encounter another full queue line…damn.

Out of sheer curiosity I walked over to Kingda Ka to see the line…must have been an hour wait…pfft.

Oh boy, this has shaped up to be a trip lacking in rides. I decided to head on over to my ol’ buddy Great American Scream Machine (pic), which never fails to greet me with a nice short line.

I walked through the entrance of Scream Machine and happily made my way down the vacant queue lines while watching the trains fly around the course. Ah, it feels good to find a ride with no line tonigh……………………………………………………….(video)! WHAT IN THE HELL IS THIS (pic)?!??!

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It was actually running today!

So I waited! I waited about 15 minutes to ride Scream Machine; a 20 year old looping coaster. It was great though! The coaster that is…

I didn’t even check Superman: Ultimate Flight’s line; if Scream Machine had a line then Superman would certainly have one that could make a Saw trap (pic) look like a better option.

I decided to ride Elvira’s Superstition, a theater based simulator ride for Fright Fest. I waited about a half an hour (pic)…blah.

It was kind of cheesy but a lot more fun that Mach 1 Adventure, Dino Island, and Fly Me to the Moon…but about on par with Spongebob 3D.

My final ride were the Enchanted Teacups (pic), where I attempted to spin myself silly (pic). If the cup had some more grease on the bearings, I probably would have hurt myself.

Before leaving, I raided a gift shop and bought one Scream Machine glass, a Scream Machine double shooter, and a Kingda Ka shooter. Check em’ out! (pic)

I left at around 10:30pm. Until next year!

Coney Island in 2008Thor Equities and developer Joe Sitt have finally released their grip on some of Coney Island’s prime beach front real estate, namely the former Astroland site and some boardwalk property. According to city officials, the purchase of approximately 7 acres cost the city $95.6 million. The city had originally inquired about purchasing 11 acres from Sitt, however the asking price was “well over $100 million.” The purchase is a step closer to mayor Micheal Bloomberg’s plan to preserve Coney Island’s amusement district as well as add year round attractions to the area.

According to Newsday, the city now owns 92% of the land needed for the proposed 12 acre amusement district. However, according to Juan Rivero of the Save Coney Island organization, the city still  needs to purchase a bit more of land from Sitt or the project may be stymied indefinately. Rivero states that the current property owned by the city is  “squeezed in by a proposed multi-story entertainment mall and blocked off by a wall of proposed high-rise hotels.” So while the saga of Coney Island’s land dispute continues, we may very well have reached the climax of this particular story with these recent events.

Source: Newsday: Developer sells 7 acres of Coney Island to NYC

You can also read the press release and watch a 30 minute video of the press conference with Bloomberg and Sitt at the NYC.gov site. For anyone interested in seeing what Sitt has to say, he appears at around 20:30 in the video.

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