Weekly Behemoth Update

© Denis/CWMania

This thread at Themeparkreview has links to a bunch of new photos, like the one above. Half of the turnaround, or hammerhead, is completed.

The official construction gallery on Canada's Wonderland's site has also been updated.

Last but not least, the park got a big new sign that reflects their Cedar Fair ownership:

It's pretty nice - but generally speaking it's soooo Cedar Fair. The design/shape on the top part of the sign was used on all the entrance signs at Kings Dominion. Perhaps that's what they're going to use for all the former Paramount Parks?

Huss King Kong Ride Video

Screamscape has posted a video on YouTube of the model of the new Huss King Kong ride.




This ride looks cool! Maybe there's not that much of a point to it but the animatronics and such sure look awesome.

The first of these rides will open at Bobbejaanland in 2008.

Screamscape's page for the ride/park.

More Holiday World New For 2008

Today Holiday World announced the rest of their additions for the 2008 season. First up is the Star Spangled Carousel - a worthy addition to the park which oddly lacked a carousel until now.

Secondly, the park will add Reindeer Games, which appears to be a children's ride, like a Frog Hopper but I'm not sure of the manuf. and such. (there's so many on the market these days)

The park updated their website and also put out an announcement video on YouTube.

Toy Story Mania Website

Disney has produced a new website devoted to their upcoming attraction, Toy Story (Midway) Mania.

Here's the link. There's some cool stuff like a video and some photos - and a snappy song in the background.

Voodoo Webcam is Live

The webcam on Dorney Park's official Voodoo webpage has gone live.

Above is a shot of the image that is provided via the cam. It's pretty far away, and makes it hard to see exactly what they're up to, but it will provide a nice view when steel starts to go up.

Check it out.

Latest Geauga Lake Photos

© 2007 Rollercoasterfreak

Rollercoasterfreak has some new photos of the deconstruction of Geauga Lake. As you can see above, they're ripping out bricks and such from around the fountain by the entrance. Could this mean the area is going to be razed soon?

Or are bricks worth something?

Check out Rollercoasterfreak for the photos.

Indiana Beach Announces Steel Hawg

Today Indiana Beach announced a new roller coaster for 2008, Steel Hawg. I just googled Hawg, and got a college sports team, lots of Harley stuff, and a seafood restaurant. Weird.

The ride is an S&S Worldwide ride, which looks like a 2nd generation Screamin' Squirrel. That means riders will probably spend a lot of time awkwardly hanging upside down wondering what's going on.

The 4, 4 passenger trains will traverse a 120 degree first drop, a 96 ft. lift, 3 inversions, and a top speed of 41 m.p.h.

The above picture is not specifically of the Hawg, but a general one of the type of ride from S&S's website. It gives a good idea of what we're talking about.

Here's the park's press release and little fact sheet.

Six Flags Discovery Kingdom Holiday Photos 2

Theme Park Village has some new photos of the Holiday in the Park event going on for the holidays.

And that's a big ice skate!

Click here to check out the photos.

Darien Lake 1996 Press Kit

1996 was a big year for Darien Lake amusement park. The $10 million expansion the park saw for the 1996 season was part of former owner, Premier Parks, tendency to spend huge amounts on its parks all at once.

And look Michael Bolton is on the cover of the press kit! He totally makes me star struck ... snicker.

So $10 million bought the park the Nightmare indoor coaster, an entire new children's area in the park, changes to the park's concert venue, and Hook's Lagoon, a water playhouse.

Here's the park facts section. All day admission was $18 and a season pass was $30 - what a steal! Now admission is $35 and a season pass is still a total steal at $45.

A specific breakdown of the new attractions for 1996. I'm noticing that they say that Nightmare went 60 m.p.h. Uhh, okay, sure. Nightmare was a Schwarzkopf Jet Star, like this:

... and according to rcdb.com Jet Star's hit a blazing speed of 31 m.p.h. I think that doubling your ride's max speed in press stuff is a bit much, no?

Anyway - here's the actual press release for the new stuff as well. You can read it if you like. Poor Geauga Lake's logo is on there too.




And to finish things off, here's the park map from that year. A lot has changed, I mean the kids area they had is now the waterpark, no Superman, no Mind Eraser, etc.

That's all! Hope you enjoyed.

Behemoth Tour Photos

© CWMania 2007

CWMania was lucky enough to have a tour of the Behemoth construction site, and were able to find out tons of good info about the ride.

Check it out on CWMania, start here for info and then check out the photos.

Dorney Park Fun Facts #18

Happy Thanksgiving!

When Steel Force opened late, Dorney Park wanted to make sure everyone knew the massive attraction was finally thrilling passengers.

To aid in that, they ran this in the local papers:

Don't eat too much today!

Six Flags Discovery Kingdom Holiday Photos

© Theme Park Village 2007

Theme Park Village has some photos up from the preview night of Holiday in the Park at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom.

The park looks nice! And that tree is huge... Click here for all the photos.

Adventureland 2008 Plans

Adventureland has announced "Adventure Island" for 2008. Replacing the current circus tent, the attraction will be a water play area - of sorts.

It sounds like they're adding a water play structure like that which can be found in most water parks, along with some other play pools, support buildings, a lounge chair area, all contained in 1.5 acres.

You can read more in this news article.

New Voodoo Photos

Dorney Park's official website for Voodoo has been updated with a bunch of new photos.

There's lots of new photos of the yellow track up close - and also a couple of the newly painted trains/seats - as seen above. Cool colors!

Check it out here.

California's Great America 1997 Map

Here's the park map to go with the scans of the 1997 brochure from California's Great America.

Be warned, it's like 1.2 mb.

Geauga Lake For Sale

Well they're certainly not keeping much room to expand Wildwater Kingdom. I had no idea the park owned some of the parcels in the area that are so huge - like that 150 acres beyond the Wildwater Kingdom parking lot.

Sad, sad sad.

Here's a link to the .pdf from Colliers Int. for the land sale.

Some Dark Knight Details

The Republican ran an article yesterday that details some of Six Flags New England's plans for their new Dark Knight roller coaster for 2008.

The ride is going through approval process and so some details of the ride are leaking out.

The 12,245 sq. ft., 65 ft. tall building containing the ride will be placed in the spot of the former stunt show arena in the park's D.C. Comics area.

As for the outside of the building, here's what it is described as:

"The plans also state that the exterior of the building will be designed to appear like smaller city buildings, mimicking the fictional Gotham City of Batman fame. The drawings on file in the Planning and Community Development office show Gotham City Hall, Gotham Police, and the Wayne Industries tower. A billboard proclaims "Harvey Dent for Mayor," which references Gotham's new district attorney."

Sounds pretty cool if done well!

Bigger and Bigger ... its Behemoth

© coasterguy77

That 2nd hill looks less 'pointy' than other B&M hypers, maybe that's just me though. The ride stands out so amazingly in the area around the park.

Be sure to check out coasterguy77's photos on CWMania to see the rest, including some that show exactly how huge the ride looks from farther away.

California's Great America 2009

I know it's not amazing quality, I only gave a few minutes of effort to make it, but here's an idea of how California's Great America's new wooden coaster will fit into the park in 2009.

I like how they positioned it by the park's entrance, the way that Cedar Fair has said that they like to position a "signature" ride. I left the IMAX theater in there for reference as well.

California's Great America 1997 Brochure

Here is the 1997 brochure for the now named California's Great America theme park. This is from the period when Paramount owned the property.

New for 1997 was the Special Effects IMAX movie, Lost In Cyberspace, a 'multimedia show', and Xtreme Skyflyer, a Skycoaster.

Family attractions, and thrill rides. What more could you want?

... well how about more rides and attractions?

I'm excited to see what (probably) uninspired names Cedar Fair picks for rides like Top Gun and such next year. I believe they're going to start the renaming in 2008.

IAAPA Coverage

I wish that I was able to jet down to Florida to provide coverage of my own, alas, no cash for that. Instead, I'd like to at least provide some links I've come across that have good coverage going on.

Coastercrew has a ton of photos as well as podcasts from the show. There's lot of high quality photos of things like California's Great America's new wooden coaster, X's new trains, the model of the Huss Kong ride, and tons more - but you'll have to sift through the gallery to find those gems.

Screamscape is also visiting the event, and reporting their photos and findings as well. They're set up is more straight forward with descriptions of what they've uncovered.

The Sun News has a blog going, titled A Whole New Whirled, that's covering the event as well - and they do have a focus on items related to the new Hard Rock Park.

Thorpe Park 2009

Thorpe Park, outside London, England, has submitted plans for a new roller coaster for their 2009 season.

It looks like a Gerstlauer Eurofighter, themed pretty well, with an unusually large loading station building that may contain some sort of show or pre-show even - and some of the coaster track in there as well.

Here's the general plan for the ride. You can see how huge the loading building is compared to the ride and such - and there's a good sized outdoor queue as well. The ride has a vertical lift and a couple inversions at least.

Here are some views of the station exteriors so you can get a grip on the ride's designed theming:

The oversized gears by the lift is totally Mystery Mine-ish - but still, it's a cool design in my book. Plus the Eurofighters looks fun regardless of theme and such.

American Disney Parks Holiday Castle Photos

© Laughingplace

Laughingplace has some beautiful photos of the two American Disney castles all dressed up for the holidays.

Above is the photo of the castle at the Magic Kingdom in Florida.

Below, a press photo of the castle at Disneyland in California.

© Disney

I like the changes they've made for this year!

Knott's Pony Express: $10 Million?

This post on the LA Times's travel blog lists Pony Express at Knott's Berry Farm as a $10 million investment.

That seems high to me - then again I think Knott's has had a long history of including overall renovation projects in the cost of new rides, inflating things overall.

I know the images hit a few days ago, but Screamscape has the ride's layout in addition to the image above, from the LA Times.

I'm excited to see if Mr. Decker got any significant cash to work on theming for the ride...

Heard of Decades Music Theme Park?

A group of individuals have some big plans for some land in between Tuscon and Phoenix, in Arizona. They want to build the Decades Music Theme Park in that spot, and have even gone to the extent of creating a website to gather support.

That's where I found this, a rough concept for the park:

The theme park would have a Main Street area, and lands themed to the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s in the first phase of the park to open.

Side note: why do new parks still try to have "phase 1 and phase 2" when so often the 2nd one is never built?

Anyway, the whole place would be music themed, not unlike Hard Rock Park which is being built in Myrtle Beach. (Another note, Hard Rock Park officials are already scouting locations in CA for a 2nd themer)

I guess the developers needs some changes made to Arizona state legislation (create park specific sales tax to finance bonds to raise cash) to move forward with their project.

You can check out their site here to learn more, and even see ways to help support the park's progress.

Six Flags Magic Mountain Slimming Down

Bye bye rides!

According to this blog on the L.A. Times website, a bunch of rides, including the above photoed Freefall, will be removed from Six Flags Magic Mountain in the near future.

Also leaving, Sierra Twist, Circus Wheel, Spin-Out, and Granny Grand Prix.

Deja Vu, Superman the Escape, and Colossus are safe, despite rumors, the park says.

Oh, and they'd love to have a Tonk Hawk coaster or a Batman Dark Knight one too, so watch out 2009.

Tower of Terror Paris + Placemaking

© 2007 Disneytheque

The picture above speaks for itself, I think. The 2nd little Disney Park in France is finally starting to shape up. Those are new buildings that went up as part of the placemaking project going on at the park in the front of the photo.

Disneytheque has a whole slew of Tower photos as well as placemaking photos.

Yak and Yeti at Animal Kingdom

© MouseSteps 2007

I know it's not earth-shaking news, but as a fan of Animal Kingdom and it's fantastic theming I wanted to point out that the park's new Yak and Yeti restaurant has opened.

The structure is fantastically themed, and has both a full service restaurant and walk up service contained within.

It's located in the Asia section of the park and has theming that links the building to both Kali River Rapids and Everest.

MouseSteps has a review and tons of photos if you would like to check them out.

Dorney Park Voodoo 11.14.07 Update

Thanks again to our reader modernphoenixv2, we AGAIN have new photos of what's going on with the construction of Voodoo at Dorney Park.

More track has been moved to the parking lot this week.

The weather was pretty miserable today, that you can tell for sure in this photo.

Here is a close up of the new track. Some of them look straight with a slight curve at the end.

It's starting to bug me that we still do not know the support color!

Another view of the track pieces in the parking lot so far.

Thanks again to modernphoenixv2!

Geauga's Big Dipper Gets Some Press

The Sandusky Register and the Plain Dealer both ran articles today about the efforts and ideas of coaster enthusiasts to save the Big Dipper from Geauga Lake.

Both articles focus on the idea that the ride could remain where it is if the area immediately around it is developed as a mixed-use property.

That means they could add outdoor shops and restaurants and other entertainment around the ride and make the area worth while in the eyes of real estate developers.

A couple of folks from ACE even expressed interest in placing the long-time-coming Roller Coaster Museam in the development.

Everyone points to developments like Kemah Boardwalk and Belmont Park as successful mixed-use developments that feature rides.

Of course Cedar Fair won't comment at all and did say that bids for the property are due at the end of March.

It sounds like a cool idea - the true test is whether or not these folks can find anyone to put the money down to get the land and develop it.