Next week marks the end of the theme park off season for many US locales and with that a new an exciting season awaits; for theme parks and this website alike! So with theme parks opening, carnivals comeing to town and the influx of trip reports on the horizon, I think it’s time to put a close to the Crapstravaganza. I actually went through most of the maps and brochures that I have  these past 20 weeks; only a few remain and most are recently acquired maps. Anyway, for the final week I’ll showcase the remaining Six Flags Great Adventure maps that I have, comparing them year by year…

As always, the map images are pretty big. I made them all under 400k but some of them are really wide. You might want to right click and choose “open in new tab/window.” That way they won’t pop up in the image frame which makes it tough to navigate around large images.

Six Flags 1999 cover
First we have SFGAdv in 1999, back when Medusa was their newest attraction. Some might be asking “what the hell is Medusa?” Well, that was Bizarro’s original name when it debuted in 1999. It was only in 2009 when the ride was revamped with the new super-villain theme and got the added effects like the flamethrowers and auger prop.

Medusa was one of 25 new rides in 1999 as part of their “war on lines” promotion. The kicker is that most of these added rides were removed and by 2009 the park was practically devoid of family and thrill non-coaster rides. The park did start adding more non-coaster rides soon after and as of 2018, the park has a pretty good lineup of family and thrill flat rides.

Six Flags 1999 map
And heres the map! Great Adventure was pretty different in 1999; aside from many of the bigger coasters not being built yet, the park also had a myriad of flatrides. Some things to notice are:

  • Coasters not present as of 1999 include: Kingda Ka, El Toro, Nitro, Superman: Ultimate Flight, and The Dark Knight, among others.
  • Viper (#78 on the map) and Batman & Robin: the Chiller (#41) were both still standing in 1999. Chiller was only 3 years old at the time with 2 years of operation under its belt. Viper had been cracking heads for 4 years prior to this season.
  • Bugs Bunny Land (the yellow section), GAdv’s original kids section, was still operating. This area is now part of Golden Kingdom.
  • Looney Toons Seaport (upper right), another kids section, opened in 1999. This section replaced Adventure Rivers and the Riptide log flume (50) and Congo Rapids (46) were absorbed into the new section. Riptide eventually closed in 2006 and Congo Rapids is still kicking.

Six Flags 2004 cover
Next we jump to 2004. The cover of this map shows Nitro, a B&M hypercoaster built in 2001. Daffy Duck looks like he’s about to jump in front of the train; he obviously can’t stand being a Looney Tunes bit character.

Six Flags 2004 map
Hmm, there’s some noticeable differences here…let’s inspect:

  • Nitro (63) and Superman: Ultimate Flight (91) now graze the park.
  • Flatride additions include Eruption (55), an upcharge Slingshot type attraction with seats that can tip forwards and backwards.
  • Flatride removals include:
    • Centrifuge G Force (a Scrambler)
    • Pendulum (Huss Frisbee)
    • Jumpin’ Jack Flash (Huss Jump)
    • Spinnaker (a Polyp ride)
    • Pirate’s Flight (modified Balloon Race type ride)
    • Time Warp (Chance Inverter)
    • El Sombrero (Mack Hully Gully)
    • Evolution (Nauta Bussink Evolution) even though its existence wasn’t noted on the previous map.
  • Riptide was removed at the end of 2006 and replaced with absolutely nothing.
  • The Batman side of Chiller (59) apparently navigates a hairpin turn just after the 70mph launch.
  • Batman the Ride (62) is now yellow with dark blue supports, true to real life.

Six Flags 2007 cover
In 2007 the map changed to a horizontal layout. The front displays El Toro, the Six Flags 45 Year logo, and Bugs Bunny running from something off image.

Six Flags 2007 map
This map looks a lot more sparse than the previous two; they apparently clear cut most of the trees from the park since 2004.

  • Kingda Ka (pretty hard to miss on the left), and El Toro (the wooden coaster just above KK) have finally been built in 2005 and 2006 respectively.
  • the lone flatride addition is Tango, which is that unmarked doodad next to El Toro. Six Flags didn’t even care to denote flatrides on this map…shows how much they cared about them!
  • Flatride removals include: Spinmeister (a vintage Schwarzkopf Enterprise) and Chaos (one of those Chance spinning rides.)
  • Space Shuttle, right in front of Great American Scream Machine (bottom right of Kingda Ka) is depicted looking less like an Intamin Space Shuttle ride and more like a Chance Space Shuttle ride!
  • Bugs Bunny Land was removed during Kingda Ka construction to make room for Golden Kingdom, which consists of a large kiddie ride area, a theater, and of course…Kingda Ka.
  • Bugs Bunny National Park, yet another kiddie area, was built to the right of the Log Flume in the upper right of the map. This area used to be part of the Lakefront and had a little theater and McDonalds if I remember correctly.

Six Flags 2008 cover
Finally, here’s the cover for the 2008 map complete with crazy Asian man saying “more flags, more fun.” I never really got why they used an Asian guy who spoke in a somewhat ‘Engrish’ manner in the commercial. Eh, whatever…

Six Flags 2008 map
One year later, but there’s a few marked changes on this map.

  • Chiller? Gone! Batman & Robin: the Chiller was removed and The Dark Knight took its place. Dark Knight is a Mack made Wild Mouse themed to Batman: Dark Knight.
  • Old Country? Gonzo! On the map, Old Country (which was just below the Fantasy Forest icon) simply vanished and left behind a neat little meadow with some trees. In actuality the section was simply closed off and somewhat hidden from view. The two rides that remained in the area were left to rot.
  • Along with Chiller, Movietown Water Effect, a small splash boat ride, got the axe to make room for Dark Knight.
  • Flatride removals include: Space Shuttle, Musik Express, and Autobahn.

Looks like that wraps it up for multi-week Crapstravaganza series! Throughout the season I’ll probably have more park map/brochure write ups from time to time, so there might be more to come. But for now…let’s all get ready for the theme park season to begin!

The Ride to End All Rides

Posted by on March 26, 2009 | Add a Comment

Scary Ride!I stumbled across an article that engineers at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom are researching the ability to give riders an individualized ride based on their fear/boredom levels during the ride. Like the way it would work is that the ride op sees that you’re getting bored on the ride, so they would raise the intensity to make it more exciting! The opposite is true as well, if you’re too scared, the ride gets less intense!

Doesn’t it sound great? A customized ride? Well no…not if they do it that way at least! Let’s be honest, how many ride ops have you seen that take their job with pride? Maybe some of the independent ride operators who travel around with flatrides do, but you’d be damned to find one at Six Flags or a Cedar Fair owned park! Most of them are just kids who do it so they can make enough to buy a new video game or get a custom made muffler that makes their car sound like it’s farting through an aluminum tube! I was like that when I worked at an amusement park as well (actually at first I did it because I liked rides, then once I found out it sucked, I did it for the money…or cents…)

Someone who commented on the article brought up a better solution; instead of the ride op controlling it, have the rider control it! That’s much more appropriate I think. I mean, who knows you better than yourself and the people who listen to your wiretapped conversations?

There’s another good reason to do this as well. Indifferent ride operators aside, what if the sensor malfunctions and the person whose scared shitless registers as being bored? The ride op (the one whose running it correctly and with extreme pride!) would push up the ‘excitement’ slider and give the mislabeled person a heart attack! And then knowing that, what if some psycho ride operator hears about the incident and decides to do it just for kicks?! It would be a total debacle! A complete travesty! Amusement parks would close! People would revolt! Oh the humanity!

The real kicker is that there’s already a ride that applies this concept somewhat. An Italian ride manufacturer named Technical Park has a ride available called Flying Fury where riders can control the ride motions. They can make the car stay in one position, or they can make it flip and spin wildly as it navigates a 360 degree loop; I think riders can even control the speed of the rotating boom for a 100% customized ride experience.

Here’s a Youtube video Flying Fury being tested at LunaPark in Milan, Italy.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6gQfUr5O0c

So I think the engineers at University of Nottingham should stop this research and look into engineering better and more useful things…like engineering a new harness for Top Spin rides that doesn’t crush your jewels! 🙂

Whew! Twenty weeks have gone by since the first Crapstravaganza! With park opening dates rapidly approaching, the Crapstravaganza series will be coming to a close next week in favor of trip reports and the like. Now after several weeks of Disney park maps, let’s switch gears to a more homey park, in this case Hersheypark. While the park is certainly corporate owned, the place does have a small park feel to it; at least I thought so. I haven’t been to the park in 10 years now (which without a doubt will change this season) so it may have gotten more cut and dry.

All right, let’s see what we’ve got here…

Hershey 99 1

Featured on the cover is Great Bear, Hersheypark’s most recent ‘big’ addition as of 1999. Great Bear is a B&M inverted coaster with a nice sprawling type of layout, unlike most B&M loopers that are fairly contained into one area. The coaster features four inversions and a helix before the initial drop as well. The coaster also has some wild ass support structures due to the fact that no footers could be placed into the stream that the ride was built around.

The image has also been mucked around with a bit. The image shows Great Bear’s zero-G roll, but it’s been turned on it’s end and compressed to make it look like some sort of death spiral. Perhaps an element that could be found on a coaster at Un-PC Park!

Hershey 99 2
This is the back page (right) and one of the middle pages (left.) The page on the left has a brief story of the Hershey company and Hersheypark. It tells about how the park was built in 1907 and how the town thrived from the park. The moral of the story is that there’s international notoriety and big bucks from making people fat!

On the bottom is a little blurb about Hershey’s Halloween festivities and on the right is another paragraph about their Christmas happenings. Hershey has got to be the only park this far north that actually has some rides (albeit kiddie rides) running in the Winter.

Hershey 3 99
Here’s the show listings for Hersheypark circa 1999. Anyone else see those singing Hershey Kisses as being a knock-off of the California Raisins?

Hershey 99 4
This is the first set of three pages that make up the safety and tips portion. I’ve omitted the other two sets of pages because, frankly, there’s nothing to see.

On the left is a few paragraphs supposedly written by Senior VP at the time Franklin R Shearer. He thanks you for visiting the park and then immediately switches gears to promote their new Hersheypark Fair section. Also promoted within the write up is Great Bear, which is passed off as an “astronomical experience.” I’m not sure how many people get that correlation, but Great Bear is actually the English name for the constellation Ursa Major; a constellation known for containing the Big Dipper asterism.

The page also features a couple of kids hugging a Hershey Kiss; well he ain’t no Mickey, that’s for sure! Also, listed at the bottom of the safety and security rules, is a “no loitering” rule. The definition of loiter is to “To proceed slowly or with many stops;” so technically doesn’t everyone break this rule while in the park?

Hershey 99 map
Aaaaand here’s the map! There’s quite a few changes from 1999, some of them I may not even know, but the major ones are:

  • The area to the northwest of Wildcat is now home to Lightning Racer; a giant racing wooden coaster.
  • Canyon River Rapids near Wildcat is gone, replaced by a small waterpark type of area for 2009.
  • Storm Runner was plopped down into Pioneer Frontier in 2004.
  • Fahrenheit was added in 2008 to the spot just north of the Hershey Stadium.
  • The Claw was added where Cyclops, a Huss Enterprise, was located (again just above the stadium.)
  • Conestoga, a modified Huss Rainbow, was removed and replaced with The Howler, a Wisdom Tornado ride.
  • Giant Wheel, an awesome Intamin double claw wheel, was removed and replaced by some flatride that can never replace the incredible-ness of the Intamin wheel. (FYI, there’s like no Intamin double/triple wheels left in the world.) Here’s a neat little page that has some info and photos of the Hersheypark Giant Wheel.

Some other things to note are:

  • Newer maps omit Hersheypark Stadium even though the complex is still there.
  • Holy early 90s Batman! Check out the clothing styles in the lower left inlay! That image was just begging for an update…
  • Notice that some rides are depicted without guard rails and such, most notably the Giant Wheel. Wouldn’t it be interesting if they built rides like that? Like in this case the wheel would simply lower right onto the main path, people would scatter in fear, people walking by would dash into a car, etc.

The map to the left is cut from the original file (aka a huge ass image.) If you’d like to see the original map image then click here. It’s big, so you might want to ‘right click’ and select ‘open in new tab/window.’

Micky!As a lot of people know by now, Disneyland and DisneyWorld are holding a promotion where you can get free admission on your birthday in 2009. Since this offer isn’t attractive to season passholders at all, California’s Disneyland Resort decided to give those customers a $69 gift card on their birthday, which is the cost of admission to Disneyland (damn that’s a lot!) However, as reported in a recent LA Times editorial piece, there’s apparently numerous ‘blackout dates’ in which season passholders will simply get the shaft!

The LA Times editorial actually had the blackout dates listed, and I have to say that it basically knocks out the entire summer, weekends, and weeks leading up to holidays. Why even promise a gift card to passholders if it can’t be redeemed half the time? On the flip side, in these economic times, maybe Disney should have just drew the line for season passholders. I mean, I have a season pass to another park and I milk that thing to death…and I’m sure Disneyland passholders do the same!

There’s also an interesting aside in the editorial linked above; after seeing round after round of guest service personnel, the writer interjected that even though it was evident that it was his wife’s birthday, none of the cast members wished her a happy birthday. When he brought this point up to one of them, the employee said “I’m not going to be forced to wish her a happy birthday.”As that oddly alluring woman in the Progressive insurance commercial once said: “Oh, that’s cold…”

Now I know some people from Disney and heard though an unnamed informant that they’re actually going to start a new perk for those whose birthday’s fall on a blackout date. Apparently the song and dance they got from guest relations didn’t go over very well so they’re going to have characters actually perform a song and dance when the occasion arises. The song will apparently change depending on the day and it will attempt to let jilted guests down in a cheery way! The informant even shared part of the song’s lyrics:

“Hey there guest, you’re simply the best!
We wish you a happy birth-day!
But to our distress, we must confess!
That on this sun-ny Thursday!
There is no gift! You just been stiffed!
The Mouse says you’re out of luck…
Mickey: Haha, that’s right!”

Beautiful, just beautiful…

These past four Crapstravaganza’s have all dealt with Disney theme parks. If you count past Crapstravaganza’s, we’ve essentially covered every other Disney theme park and waterpark except for MGM Studios, now known as Disney’s Hollywood Studios. I guess it’s high time for that park to step into the limelight…

Before continuing, this post was written in 2009, so lot’s of things are outdated.

MGM 2003 1

Firstly, we have the cover of MGM’s 2003 guide map. Underneath the logo then modestly proclaim, “where showbiz is.” The image below the logo shows Tower of Terror BURSTING OUT OF THE BUILDING WITH LIGHTNING BOLTS, WITH A CAR FULL OF HELPLESS PEOPLE ABOUT TO SLAM INTO THE GROUND AT A HUNDRED MILES PER HOUR. This doesn’t happen on the ride…needless to say. It’s worth nothing that Rock n’ Rollercoaster was new this year, but they still felt to feature Tower of Terror. 

MGM 2003 2

Skipping a FastPass page, we come to a page promoting Pal Mickey and Fantasmic. Pal Mickey is a stuffed Mickey toy that spews out information when you walk past certain areas. A friend of my sister lent us one for the trip. What happens is when you walk past, let’s say Tower of Terror, Pal Mickey will begin to vibrate meaning that he’s anxious to say something. I think you squeeze it’s hand or something and Mickey will say his random fact or statement about Tower of Terror. What it says is usually presented in a Disney ‘kayfabed’ fashion as to not destroy the ‘magic.’ Pal Mickeys have been discontinued as of 2008 – sad.

Fantasmic on the other hand is a show that the park put on every night, and is basically their alternative to the fireworks show that Magic Kingdom and Epoct have. Fantasmic takes place in a giant outdoor amphitheater, and runs for 26 minutes. It shows a lot of scenes from different Disney movies using water screens, actors, props and fireworks and culminates with Mickey battling a giant dragon with great fire and water effects. Here’s the video on YouTube if you want to check it out. (There’s three parts to the video by the way.)

MGM 2003 3

For the sake of completion, here’s a page showing all of the eating places around MGM as well as information and another Kodak ad.

In the Tips and Info section, the guide tells us “anytime you see someone with a Disney name tag, just ask!” It’s kind of open ended; I guess we can can ask anything from “where is The Great Movie Ride” to “how many lock nuts are on Rock n’ Roller Coaster.” Then again, it’s so open ended that I guess we can ask anything! “How far away is the sun?”; “What do you think about Universal Studios?”; “Where can I find a good strip club?”

MGM 2003 4

Again, this page is added for the sake of completion; it shows all of the shopping venues in MGM. It also has Timon and Pumbaa telling us some park safety rules such as “no stampeding” and to “keep your tails on the seat.”

MGM 2003 map

Giant image alert! You might want to right click and choose “open in new window/tab”

Finally we have the park map. MGM/Disney Hollywood Studios hasn’t exactly changed a whole heck of a lot since 2003. Some of the changes are:

  • The Making of The Haunted Mansion Movie was renovated in 2005 into “Journey into Narnia: Creating the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” This was again changed in 2008 to “Journey into Narnia: Prince Caspian.” The building is basically relegated to housing a vehicle for different Disney movies.
  • Who Wants to be a Millionaire: Play it, is gone. I remember seeing the show in 2003 and it was actually kind of cool. The set for the show was interesting as it was basically a bowl shaped structure sitting in the middle of a large sound stage; on TV it looks like a full building.
  • Disney Stars and Motor Cars Parade changed to Block Party Bash in 2008.
  • Sounds Dangerous turned into a seasonal attraction.
  • Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show was added in 2005, taking out a section of the Backlot Tour to fit the attraction in. (Thanks for the info Bob!)

Also added, without taking anything out, were:

  • The American Idol Experience in 2009
  • Toy Story Midway Mania! added in 2008
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