Uhh, What About Dorney's Halloweekends?

Here's an ad that's in the Amusement Today 2007 Golden Ticket Awards. Predictable as they come, I always glance at these to see the advertisements that all the parks purchase for the 'bonus section' the magazine has the awards in.

Cedar Fair has their usual one showing off their awards, but also has this Halloween themed one.

Notice anything? Look at the bottom where it talks about the other Cedar Fair parks and lists their Halloween events. Dorney Park is oddly missing from the list.

At first I thought, well, only parks with "Halloween Haunt" events are listed. Then no, because Cedar Point's Halloweekends are.

That list is literally every Cedar Fair park with a Halloween event aside from Dorney! Geauga Lake and Michigan's Adventure have no event, Great America has a kids one and this year will have one Haunted House.

But Dorney Park has several attractions and entertainment and was ignored from the list. What could it all mean?

Scarowinds 2007

Scarowinds' Halloween Haunt is bigger and more scary than ever before this fall. The Scarowinds website just went live today.

If you can keep up with all these elaborate Halloween events and want to know more about the 6 Haunted Houses, live shows, and other spooks that Scarowinds has cooked up, well, check out their site.

Remember Islands of Adventure Ads?

The original advertising campaign for Islands of Adventure took a lot of flack after the park opened for not making it clear enough that the new attraction was a theme park.

Well, I really liked those ads! They were a bit overly dramatic, but they were different and not all bubbly like Disney ads.

Anyway, I came across the one above and wanted to throw it on here.

Busch Gardens Africa 2007 Howl-O-Scream

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd like to introduce to you the Death Jockey:


He will be your host at Busch Gardens Africa's 2007 Howl-O-Scream event. I wrote earlier that Busch Gardens was ramping up their event - and I wasn't kidding.

This year will feature six Haunted Houses, five Scare Zones, and three live shows. New Haunted Houses at the scare-fest include Catch Your Breath, Taste of Blood, and Radiation Alert 3-D!

Still want more info? Busch Gardens Africa made DeathJockey.com live today. It's got the complete details - and even a few scares.

Boardwalk Bullet Opens at Kemah's

© 2007 Melissa Phillip / Houston Chronicle

The Boardwalk Bullet opened at Kemah's this weekend to some mixed reviews from enthusiasts, but from very negative reviews from the owners of that house in the above photo.

Apparently, the owners would not sell to Kemah's and the city has no zoning restrictions, so there was no problem in building right by the house like that. The Houston Chronicle has a story about this and a hilarious video about the matter. You can see it here.

The owners were probably offered a ton of cash for that property and knew what was coming so I'm not sure I feel bad for them at all.

For reference the Bullet is a Gravity Group ride that's 92' tall and stretches over 3,200' of very twisted track.

Great America 1996 Brochure

Paramount's Great America's big new attraction for 1996 was the Drop Zone Stunt Tower. One of the type of freefall towers that have been getting quite a bit of attention lately.

I wanted to share this brochure as a throw back to the Paramount years, and how they did things. So here we go.






I didn't know that Great America's Drop Zone was the tallest in the world the year it opened. Ya gotta love the images of people with their hair all flying up and stuff.

One thing that Cedar Fair did right when taking over these parks was bringing back their ice skating show. Here you can see that they were promoting their Paramount on Ice: Blockbusters! ice show.

Here is a little treat. A press image thing the park had for promoting Drop Zone. It compares their former drop ride, The Edge, to the new Drop Zone. Pretty cool. It gives some pretty detailed statistics for the ride as well. Intamin freefall lover rejoice.