Dorney Park Fun Facts #4

Back in the day Dorney had Dorney Park Dollars, not the general Cedar Fair ones used for the past several years. I do not remember what year these were started. This one is from the year 2000. Anyone know?

Remember this advertising for Dominator in 1999? It was totally from Knott's Berry Farm when they opened Supreme Scream. It was cute though. I remember after Cedar Fair acquired Knott's they used some other advertising from the park. Like I remember drawings like this of people on water slides and such. I wonder if patterns like this will start to show up again now that they've got the Paramount Parks?

Walt Disney World 1979

My family took a trip to good old Orlando to see the sights in the summer of 1979. During some cleaning a while ago I became the lucky recipient of all the brochures and such from that trip. I thought I'd share. I only have two things now, but there's more (darn the busy holiday season).

Here she is, a map of the entire resort from the summer of '79. I left the image really big so detail can be seen. Where are all the other theme parks, resorts, water parks, shopping districts, night life areas, and hotels?! It's strange to see the resort with only ONE theme park. There's some promotional materials for EPCOT, but it's obviously not even on the map yet as it didn't open until October of 1982.

Here's the map of the Magic Kingdom. It's it pretty? Ehhh, well it's interesting at least! Quite different from the beautiful maps they have these days. Look at all the classics that are on there: "If You Had Wings", Circle Vision 360, Mission to Mars, the Skyway - and that's only Tomorrowland! The lovely 20,000 Leagues is still around, along with Mickey Mouse Revue (isn't that still playing in Tokyo?), and notice that the Tiki Room was called "Tropical Serenade." I never knew that.

This was also still the time of Tickets for attractions. I find it very interesting to see what was what, if you will:

E Tickets:
Jungle Cruise
Pirates of the Caribbean
Country Bear Jamboree
Hall of Presidents
Haunted Mansion
It's a Small World
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Space Mountain

D Tickets:
Tropical Serenade
Tom Sawyer Island
Liberty Square Riverboats
Mickey Mouse Review
Skyway
Mission to Mars
StarJets
WEDway PeopleMover

The rest are the smaller attractions. Some of these make sense to me as the big ticket attractions (Pirates, Mansion, etc), but some don't. Why was StarJets a D ticket? Capacity, popularity? Hmm. And you can imagine trying to pull off the Hall of Presidents as an E ticket today? I don't mean technologically speaking, just as far as subject matter. Oh my, how times have changed.

More soon!

Steel Force Construction Diary #3

Merry Christmas!!!

Where were we?

Oh yeah, they were building Steel Force ten years ago. Let's continue!

March, 1997. The supports for the 2nd hill are now complete. Work on the parking lot continues are dirt is pushed neatly into piles. Also take notice of all the houses that were still standing along the entrance road to the park. They all bit the dust during this off season.

Also March, 1997. The supports for the lift hill and drop are almost complete. I just noticed that you can see the Sky Ride in these photos! Aww, remember the Sky Ride? Good times.

Poof! I just finished the lift hill supports! This was like 2 days after the above photos. I know it's not a big deal, but it was when we all first got the full idea of how tall this ride was.

And here we are, March 12th, 1997 - the coaster has now topped out. Not sure if you can see it in the large version of the photo, but yes, the American flag is perched up there at the top. Yes, god bless the U.S.A.

Next time we've got lots of track placement and other goodies!

Dorney 2008

I've haven't seen the Morning Call be this interested in what Dorney is up to in years. Back in the day they would have articles about most everything the park was up to, in the past five years they've covered almost nothing.

I remember that even the Hydra announcement got a weird article in the business section. When Talon and Steel force were announced/being built, both rides had double full page graphics and photos, it was awesome.

Anyway, the paper seems to have taken an interest once more, as they have published a rather large article about the possibility of the park adding a wooden coaster in 2008.

It's a nice read, not really full of any information or facts we didn't already know, but still. Maybe they'll continue to follow this story through the rest of '07.

Also, please note, the link above for the article probably will only last so long, after that, tough cookies!

I miss...

Alien Encouter.

I was in the Stitch atrocity in October. It was sad. Very sad.

MGM Grand Ride Pictures

Just a quick find: R&R Creative Design (the company that did the theming and such for Grand Canyon Rapids, Deep Earth Exploration, and the Backlot River Tour) is still going strong and has a website. I actually thought that the company might have gone under, as I hadn't heard of them in a while.

The Themed Entertainment Association still has a member list and I found them on there. And I'm glad I did.

So R&R Creative has a few photos and a video of the rides they did for MGM Grand Adventures. Since I'm not into stealing photos, I'm going to just give links.

This page has a video montage of many of the rides the company designed. They have on there some AWESOME footage of both Grand Canyon Rapids, and the Backlot River Tour! They even have footage of the swamp monsters, inside the Temple, and of the helicopter that was in BRT. Also, I'm not sure but I believe that the image on the left is the loading area of Deep Earth Exploration.

Here's a photo sampler (too small, but still) dedicated just to Grand Canyon Rapids.

A few years back when I first started obsessing over this park R&R Creative had a different web page that had more concept art for these rides, but sadly I cannot locate them on their current site.


Edit: I found this before but kept forgetting to share it - it's some great info on Deep Earth Exploration, which really was the first simulator-on-wheels ride!