Citing the "evolving restrictions and guidance of the CDC and state and local governments in response to the coronavirus pandemic," Legoland New York has decided to delay their grand opening until sometime in 2021. The new theme park was scheduled to open for the first time on July 4th, 2020, and will reveal their exact new opening date at a later time.
With the country on pause, we've seen all the big theme park players continue to keep their parks closed indefinitely, and the regional players have all moved target reopening dates until the middle of May. Legoland New York would have come online another six weeks after that, but considering the economic impact the virus will have on the world, it looks like they wanted to rethink that regardless of if the virus subsides in time.
The park has been under construction for some time now, the aerial is from quite a bit ago when buildings were just starting to go vertical.
In recent months, Legoland New York has been sharing photos of the park's rides being installed, such as a family roller coaster seen above. With an original opening date about 3 months from now the park must be in a pretty finished condition, but now they can take a long pause and probably restart finishing construction later on. Hopefully the greater situation will be better in 2021 for the park to have a successful grand opening.
For now, the park is offering a full FAQ on their website since many day, season, and vacation tickets have already been purchased.
A great many moons ago I was a Cedar Fair unit holder, starting from before I could even legally hold the units on my own. I haven't been in some time (all those dividends and growth helped us get a house!), but back in the day the company would send out a special offer for unit holders each year.
In 2005, the focus was on Cedar Fair's resorts and accommodations. They had some pretty good offers, sadly I don't think I ever took advantage of them. Here we see the focus on Cedar Point's offerings, which included Hotel Breakers' 100th anniversary (pre-renovations though) and also take note of Sandcastle Suites - rest in piece.
Cedar Point has long had many different hotels either on property or adjacent to it, and that list has continued to grow in the 15 years since this was sent out. Lighthouse Point has been expanded even more, and Castaway Bay is undergoing a renovation currently. The coupons generally offered two nights for the price of one, of course with restrictions on dates.
Cedar Point properties were not the only ones being advertised here though, as Cedar Fair has resorts at many of its parks. The Knott's Berry Farm Resort Hotel came with the purchase of the park in 1997, and offers a selection of amenities along with Snoopy themed rooms. Next up is the Geauga Lake Hotel, which is now just a part of history along with Geauga Lake.
Cedar Fair made a big push on adding camper villages at many of its parks and one of the first to go up outside of Cedar Point was the World of Fun Village. It was new when this was sent out, so a drawing of the expansion is included along with a really oddly drawn Mamba roller coaster. The Village is still operating today, though the company's plan to open more camper areas from the ground up never really moved forward much after this development (several did come along with the Paramount Park purchase, however).
1982 was a wonderful year, but I may be biased because that's the year I came into being. But it was also the year that Dorney Park debuted a brand new log flume attraction named Thunder Creek Mountain. Happily, the ride is still entertaining guests at the park today - not a small feat since many log flumes of that era have already been retired.
It's been ages since we had the time to feature park memorabilia like this brochure but suddenly there seems to be a lot more hours in the day! Granted life will eventually go back to some sort of normal but for now while there is time let's dig in!
Dorney Park in the early '80s still was all about Alfundo, and you can see the park's famous mascot clown in the lower left of this image. And yeah, he's pretty scary as far as clowns go, but we still love him. Zoorama was still at the park, which is why you see a tiger's face (not something you would associate with modern day Dorney Park!) and there's even a photo of a Fish and Chips stand, something I didn't know was at the park but suddenly miss!
Several goodies can be found in this photo montage, and I don't mean those hunky country folk singers at the bottom! Two of the park's long gone dark rides, the Bucket O' Blood and Journey to the Center of the Earth are prominently featured here - and rightfully so. There's also newer (for the time) rides such as the Sea Dragon and the Flying Dutchman coaster.
Another batch of eye candy can be found here. This panel shows that variety of offerings that Dorney Park had, not only rides but also live entertainment and goats! Thunderhawk, just called The Coaster at the time, shows up here as well, along with the splash section of Journey to the Center of the Earth, the park's classic bumper cars and even the new log flume, which was record breaking when it opened.
I truly love older amusement park maps, and I'm so grateful that many of Dorney's old brochures feature these beauties. From the rainbow colored umbrellas that dotted Totspot to the newish Roaring 20s Midway, there's a lot of interesting items on here for fans of the park. Not all rides are labeled on the map, which almost makes it a bit more fun to try to find them and recall what they all were.
And of course since these interwebs didn't exist back in 1982 people had to rely on paper (yes paper!) to know when the park was going to be open and how much it would cost to get in. The park opened in late April, earlier than they do now, but was closed for the season already by the middle of September. While an all day ride pass would set you back $8.50 you could hit the park after 6 pm and only pay $6.00 for everything!
Fans of Indiana Beach have been looking for even a glimmer of hope since it was announced that Apex Parks had closed the park for good. While current times are making all park openings and reopenings difficult, the say the least, there were two recent good items related to Indiana Beach that came out.
First, local government officials came together to create a $3 million incentive package to help make the sale of the park more attractive to potential buyers. The money (which includes no taxpayer dollars) would only be given to a new owner after the sale is complete, and the county can add stipulations to the incentive as well. The hope is to preserve the large economic impact that the park has on White County, not only through to the park itself but through associated businesses in the area as well.
Another recent headline states that it is possible that the park can reopen as soon as 2020. Apex Parks has stated that they are in talks with potential buyers of the park, though no further details are being offered. We will have to take their word for it, but hopefully the discussions are real and maybe a buyer can be found.
If so, a 2020 reopening may not be realistic depending on how the pandemic plays out in North America - but even a 2021 reopening for Indiana Beach would be better than never!
The current COVID-19 pandemic has thrown the world for a loop, and not in the fun way that we ride-lovers enjoy. At this moment almost every amusement facility in the country is closed, with only a few exceptions still operating. And that's what is needed now as we all do our part to stop the spread of the virus. We are all understandably looking forward to later in the year when we can all visit our favorite amusements parks, a bit of hope for park fans indeed.
To that end the chain of Cedar Fair parks, which originally closed operating parks and pushed off opening days for a couple weeks, has updated us once again. The operator is now updatingthatparkswillopenorreopenforthe2020 season in Mid-May, or as soon as they can thereafter. Both Valleyfair and Michigan's Adventure open for the year in that time period, so they have not been affected as of now.
There's still a lot of uncertainty about how this will all play out, so as the weeks go by there probably will be further updates - especially from other operators like Disney, Universal, SeaWorld and Six Flags. We have seen some parks in China start to reopen in the past few days, which is another hopeful sign. The time period of the parks being closed in China, assuming they all start to reopen soon, does generally match a mid-May or early June opening for parks in America. However, that's a giant guesstimate and the health of the population is far more important at this time. Hang in there!
Finding myself with plenty of time on my hands, it seemed like a good day to go check out Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom's Seaside Splashworks construction. Luckily the work site is easily visible from many businesses across the street, so it doesn't take too much effort to get photos like these!
Above is a photo of a big section of the structure for Seaside Splashworks, if one thing is for sure it is that the addition is adding a lot of color to this part of the park!
Zooming in a bit further we can see a lot more detail. The large 317 gallon tipping bucket is towering over the structure, ready to pour down over the blue roof below. You can also spot a lot of tipping bukets and other interactive features. There's also brown posts that will be capped with faux palm trees later on in the construction process. Seaside Splashworks carries a general beach theme, which is becoming more and more evident as new signs and decorations are being installed.
The further end of the structure features a nice entrance sign along with some smaller slides for kids. You can kind of see an enclosed green slide in the lower left of this photo. There will also be a two-lane yellow kids slide installed, that piece could still be seen laying in the parking lot awaiting its turn to go up.
The opposite end is where the slightly larger water slides are found. The body slides feature two open routes (orange and teal) and one enclosed slide (blue). This photo also features the backside of the giant tipping bucket with a Seaside Splashworks sign at its top.
A Note: Things might be a bit quite in the industry... and the entire world... right now due to the Coronavirus. While nearly every park around the globe has shuttered for a couple weeks, we'll still look for stories to cover here. We take the virus quite seriously, but we also know we all need a distraction here and there.
Gilroy Gardens Family Theme Park, a non-profit park which is owned by the city of Gilroy, California, and operated by Cedar Fair, is currently looking at possible ways to expand and grow their attendance base over the next decade.
The plan was actually formed a few years ago, but the city of Gilroy is once again actively debating what the best move forward is for the park. In recent years the family theme park, which was originally known an Bonfante Gardens, has added two family water play areas that have been a huge success for the park.
Part of the original expansion plan was to build an adventure park on the undeveloped hillside adjacent to the park - seen above. The park has also toyed with further expanding their water park attractions to further grow their attendance base.
Per this recent story, the park is still operating profitably, however with very thin margins. The Board of Directors for the park want the city to give them a plan for the future, which includes new additions. Since 2011 the park has only invested $8 million in new attractions.
The most recent additions made a big improvement for the park's numbers, with attendance of 457k in 2018, up 50k over 2017, and 410k in 2019.
A recent analysis of the park, published last November, said that if both the expanded water park and the adventure park were built the park could draw 400k more visitors, gaining some additional $25 million in revenues.
While no firm commitment on expanding has been reached, it would be nice to see this small, community based park thrive in the future.
For those of you who have been checking in on Dorney Park's live webcam, you've probably noticed that the park has made mega-progress on Seaside Splashworks in the past two weeks. Wildwater Kingdom's new-for-2020 family water fun house play area is a colorful, modern and huge replacement for the water park's former Island Water Works. Featuring multiple levels of play and tons of interactive features it will keep visitors busy for hours this summer.
And speaking of the park's webcam, I noticed that workers are diligently adding more to the structure even on the weekend, with new sections going up each time I check in. You can keep tabs on the work via this link.
Dorney Park shared two panoramic views of Seaside Splashworks' progress on social media. The pictures speak for themselves, but you can get a good idea for how large the structure is. As shown in the original concept art, Seaside Splashworks has one taller section with the dumping bucket and three slides coming off of it, but then extends outward for quite a distance to make full use of the island's layout.
This means that much more of the island will be utilized by the addition than the attraction it replaces. You can also see in the webcam that the park has installed many poles to have large shade structures installed throughout the island, which will be a great plus for families. The island has long been many visitor's favorite home base due to its relaxing nature... that might be just a bit busier come this summer!
The 2020 season at Cedar Point is sure to be one remembered for decades to come. The park is planning a celebration like no other to honor their 150th anniversary, and on top of a mega-sized list of special events and new goodies, the park has now revealed even more.
Aimed at fans of the park while also giving a major nod to their history, the park will be holding a Just For Fun Weekend on May 2nd and 3rd. A full week before the park opens guests will be able to visit from noon to 6 pm each day to get their first look at the park's 2020 season. There will be no admission fee to enter the park, but a RSVP is required, and wrist bands to enjoy rides will only cost $20.20.
The park's Main and Lakeside midways will be open, and their big rides too - such as GateKeeper, Valravn, Blue Streak and Raptor. Guests can also "try a delicious treat from the new French Quarter Confections, say hello
to the PEANUTS™ gang, see a special film celebrating Cedar Point's
history in the Jack Aldrich Theatre, pick up limited-edition 150th
anniversary merchandise at Celebration Central and be among the first to
collect and trade Anniversary buttons."
If interested just be sure to RSVP online and also you must purchase ride wrist bands online ahead of time as well.
2020 will also see the start of the Gold Pass in use at the park, but as a special treat to Platinum Pass holders the park is holding Anniversary Platinum Preview Nights from 4 to 8 pm on May 6th and 7th.
While the park will have selected rides and attractions open for the event, the big draw will be the first chance to experience the new Snake River Expedition. Platinum Passholders can register for a boarding time to experience the new ride, and of course then they have bragging rights that they rode it first!
The park will also have free food offerings at several locations, and special merchandise celebrating the park's anniversary. As with the Just For Fun Weekend event, interested parties must register online ahead of the event.
Exciting news out of Kennywood this week for fans of classic dark ride attractions - the park has revealed that for the 2020 season they will refurbish their Old Mill attraction to its former glory, removing all traces of Garfield theming.
The ride, which dates back to 1901 and is known as the oldest operating Old Mill or Tunnel of Love style of ride, was most recently themed as Garfield's Nightmare in 2004. The ride gained a reputation over time as a nightmare of its own, mostly from guests who knew the former versions of the ride and enjoyed them much more than the bright 3-D Garfield theming.
The idea to turn the ride back into an Old Mill style ride has been around a while, like a decade really. Way back in 2009 when we visited the park a representative told us that they planned to redo the attraction within a couple seasons, bringing it back as the Old Mill. Obviously that didn't happen then but good things come to those who wait, indeed!
Above is a great video that Kennywood created to announce the renovations to the Old Mill. The ride will return to a "retro Western" style themed attraction, filled with mild spookiness that is sure to delight a new generation of riders. The Western theming was featured in the ride (which has had many names and themes throughout its nearly 120 year history) prior to the Garfield renovation, and many modern day guests still remember those gags. To that end the park will be able to bring back a definite sense of nostalgia for park fans.
The Old Mill will reopen at Kennywood as soon as the park has the work completed, which they hope will be close to the park's opening in early May.
Praise the roller coaster gods! Iron Gwazi, one of the most anticipated new for 2020 roller coasters, has started testing at Busch Gardens Tampa.
As expected, the trains on this Rocky Mountain Construction creation are absolutely flying through the course, powered by a 91 degree, 206 foot tall drop that pushes trains at 76 miles per hour.
It was just a few days ago that the theme park shared news that the ride's final pieces of purple track were installed. The last pieces appear to have been at the base of the towering first drop, which allowed construction vehicles to access the interior of the ride's layout.
The park has been working on the ride's station, transfer and brake programming for some time now, so they were ready to go when the course was complete. Just yesterday the ride started running, and thankfully the park shared video below!
No opening date has been announced yet (outside of "spring"), but it shouldn't be long until we hear more on that topic.
California's Great America has already announced a massive transformation of their water park into South Bay Shores for Summer 2020, but the park has now announced more special events and festivals to fill the whole year with fun.
As with several other Cedar Fair parks, these limited time special events are large scale productions that are meant to entice visitors to the park before they miss out. California's Great America has packed their year with a ton of limited run events, giving something new to explore each visit.
Starting off this Spring, the park will hold Spring Fiesta, a brand new event that honors Hispanic culture. From April 25-26, May 2-3 and May 9-10 the park's Hometown Square will transform into La Plaza, filled with authentic food and drink, dance and live entertainment.
Also in May the park's greatly transformed South Bay Shores water park will open to guests for the first time.
Monster Jam: Thunder Alley will also roar its way into California's Great America starting June 20th and running until July 12th. The popular event was at three Cedar Fair parks last year, and will be traveling to three new parks in 2020. Experiences at the event include riding in a real monster truck, interactive displays, play areas, retail offerings and more.
Also running on weekends from June 27th through July 12th is the return of Red, White and Brews. The event features a "hometown celebration of Americana food and fun." Located in Hometown Square, Red, White and Brews features delicious treats, plenty of everyone's favorite beers, family activities, entertainment and fireworks.
This year California's Great America has stepped up their game by making their existing New Orleans style event bigger than ever. Now known as Carnivale at Orleans Place, the event will be home to the Spectacle of Color Parade, already a hit at many Cedar Fair parks.
The event will take place every day from July 28th through August 2nd. There will be plenty of authentic New Orleans style food to try, live entertainment at every corner and even fireworks on select nights.
The Fall will user in the return of Halloween Haunt for adults and The Great Pumpkin Fest for kids, with Winterfest not far after celebrating the holidays.
Exciting times over at Six Flags Great Adventure! The park's new for 2020 single rail Rocky Mountain Construction ride, the Jersey Devil Coaster, has gone vertical in the past week. The park shared some photos of the first supports that have been put in place, and the park got quite a few of them installed quickly!
You can see in the photo above that both smaller supports for the station/brake/transfer area went in, but there's also some taller ones that look like they will support one of the Jersey Devil Coaster's many air-time hills. Since RMC's single rail roller coasters do not use a lot of supports for the monorail-style track, that means that they go up pretty fast. Lots of progress is sure to be just around the corner!
The theme park also debuted their third construction update video this week, and along with great shots of the ride's trains and a wonderful explanation of the Jersey Devil folklore, the park also showed some aerial views of the worksite. A still from the video can be seen above, and it should help everyone understand exactly how the new coaster will fit into the park's property. Much of the ride will exist next to the park's children's area, but a big portion of it also extends out into the forested area behind the river rapids ride.
The park is doing an amazing job keeping us all updated as they work toward a Summer 2020 opening for the Jersey Devil Coaster. Make sure to watch the latest update video below for much more information!
Mickey Mouse finally has his own dark ride dedicated to him in a Disney Park with the grand opening today of Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida. The unique dark ride features a zany experience in the world of modern Mickey cartoon shorts as passengers head on a trip to the park in a train led by Goofy with Mickey and Minnie nearby in their roadster.
As one might expect, the simple trip to the park goes awry pretty quickly, and that's where the 'zany' aspect of the ride begins. The train that you ride in breaks apart and the trackless ride vehicles head through scenes such as a stampede, a fun fair, over a waterfall and underwater, through busy city streets and more. Eventually Mickey & Minnie get riders back on track, pun intended, but not without quite the adventure having taken place.
No 3-D glasses are required for the experience, which features practical sets along with animatronics and a serious ton of projection mapping that can change scenes completely in the blink of an eye.
The trackless vehicles, when we've longed for in U.S. Disney Parks for some time are put to great use here. They move about so that the train cars are in different orders throughout the ride, giving riders a unique perspective of each towering scene. It also means that by sitting in a different car each ride the experience is different; the attraction is highly repeatable.
Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway is also set to debut at Disneyland in California in 2022.
For now if you want a spoiler filled point of view trip on the attraction, check out the video below from Attractions Magazine.
Luna Park had previously announced a large expansion for its 10th anniversary in 2020, including a new flume ride, family roller coaster, elaborate ropes course, new park and gathering spaces, and the first instillation of a Big WaveZ, a new water ride from Zamperla.
The park had welldocumented all the expansion along the way, and all the new rides look like they will be a great addition to the growing park. The Big WaveZ, the first of its kind in the world, seemed very interesting but a bit of a mystery as well.
Initially the park said that the new water ride was interactive and will bring "King Neptune to life as riders interact with motion
sensors and watch an interactive video screen. Their actual behavior and
motions will change the experience of the ride. Each ride will be
different, however it will always be wet. There will be a viewing
platform so non-riders can enjoy the thrills as well."
Sounds interesting but at the same time... confusing. I totally missed the concept art for Big WaveZ that the park released, which can be seen here, complete with its aquatic theming around Neptune. At first glance it looks like some kind of water ride free fall... unique indeed but still curious.
Luckily there is more information on the ride out there, including video of the prototype in action. Worldsteel Association did an interview with Zamperla about their rides... which are made of steel of course, and buried in the article and video is some great Big WaveZ footage.
Granted these are of the prototype so it's not finished, but the ride appears to have a passenger car in the center that will seat riders facing outward in two rows. As the center car moves upward huge amounts of water pour out from under it, making quite a spectacle. At the top the riders take part in the interactive component of the ride, which according to Zamperla determines the ride patterns. There will be a large video screen on the back of the oval sign that can be seen in the concept art up top.
At some point the passenger car does exactly what I hoped, either a true free fall or a controlled one I can't be sure, but it looks to drop rapidly then slow as the base of the car extends down into a pool of water to slow the fall. The image above is after the car goes all the way down and the water starts to erupt out around it.
A second later there is a gigantic explosion of water from under the ride vehicle, which looks to cover an impressive area. Obviously this is better seen in the video, but it certainly looks like Zamperla's promise of everyone being soaked will come true!
Some details still remain on the Big WaveZ, but it looks like a visually impressive ride that takes up very little space. Most water rides require a large plot of land to do their magic, so the Big WaveZ seems to offer an innovative alternative to those.
Here's the whole video from Worldsteel Association, the Big WaveZ footage starts at 1:42.
Pantheon, Busch Garden Williamsburg's latest multi-launch roller coaster is getting closer to opening with two recent major milestones.
First, seen above, the park announced that the last track piece for Pantheon was put into place, meaning the ride is now full circuit. Pantheon features 3,328 feet of track with two launch sections, featuring a top speed of 73 miles per hour.
The coaster's trains also have arrived and already have been installed on the track, and don't they look pretty! Pantheon will utilize two trains, each with 5 cars of 4 passengers each. The trains feature a colorful front piece that fits with the ride's theme within the Fiesta Italia section of the park.
The trains feature over the head restraints that do not block the riders' views at all, instead fitting snugly over their lap. Pantheon features some extreme elements such as a large top hat, a heavily outward banked turn, a dive stall and a wave turn.
NewsPlusNotes is a blog dedicated to the coverage of the amusement
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was founded in 2006, when Mike made the pivotal decision to share his
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