Park Updates Sept 17th

[Ilovthevu']

Instead of just a trip report, I'll do an update thing.

A bunch of the lights on the left side of the park are already in. I seen a lot of lights being either green or purple. There must have been more though - where they change the color of the lamp-posts lights. They also had the flickering lights near a bridge (by Iron Wolf), flickering lights across from Rue Le Dodge. For Mardi Gras, they had some clown faces, a luggage machine thing you find at the airport (They store the luggage on it to transfer it from the plane to where people pick it up) in which they themed to carnival like, near the bridge next to Hometown Fun Machine they put some barrels (toxic).

I said this before, but V2 time in order for it to go has to be something like 60 seconds instead of 90. It just seems a lot faster. I should have timed it.

For Batman the Ride, on the lift hill; it was going slow like anything. I could crawl faster than the speed it was going. I don't know what's up with that. Is the motor on it's last legs or something? Also, in the line they have this new brown paint on some of the railings which hopefully means they are going to repaint stuff.

For Superman Ultimate Flight, it really looks like they painted all the railings for the line up to the station -the neon blue color. Though, on the return back, they didn't touch them. There was a blue SkyWhirl cage right in back of the station.

For Iron Wolf, the track is still there, but it looks like they are working on a couple footers. They also moved the mini engine (& 2 cars) on another track in order to get to the Iron Wolf area. You call the mini-engine a switcher.

I mentioned this before, but I will say it again. For Condor letters, on one side of course there is no N, and on that same side the O (from dOr), it doesn't light up yellow. It only lights up red. On the other side, the C is half lit yellow.

I apologize for saying that there might be 20 antique cars. I counted, and it's about 30.

I'm really happy they are at least making an effort to make the park look better with them painting stuff.

[onyxhotel08]

I hope AE has some landscape work done eventually. Those overgrown shrubs in that dark soily area are not very nice. Cut those back, plant some low grow bushes/plants, do some paint near the entrance and the ride will thank you for it. I also never understood why Eagle always had such a long entryway. Why couldn't it be designed with just ONE staircase or a simple straight path? It makes for a good walk to get from the CF entrance all the way up the Eagle station.

[BP317]

Before Wiggles World was built the entrance area consisted of a straight path (with a giant queue house under the tent for overflow queue), a staircase that led up over the service road, then back down on the other end of the service road to where it is now. The whole zig zag thing leading around daredevil dive then back behind the tent was added when Wiggles was built because the service road is still there and there is no other way to get the queue over it.

[tribar]

I always thought it was stupid to go up than down than back up. But if they just recently built the zigzag AE path than how come the part where it zigzags upwards at the beginning looks so old. The concrete looks old. Was this used for something else??

[BP317]

It's probably not power sprayed very often. Concrete can only take so much coke spills and other general abuse before it starts to look like crap.

Eagle's queue may be silly, but it's nowhere near as excessive as it was before.



...to think back in the 80's it constantly filled this while running 6 trains

[DejaVu2001]

The zig-zags at the beginning of Eagle's queue were originally for Dive. The stairs that Dive has now were added in 2007. Although I don't know for sure, it wouldn't surprise me if those zig-zags were originally used as the queue for Big Top (Ricochet when it was on Dive's platform 1977-1995).

[Ilovthevu']

Yes, those zigzags going up were used for Big Top. They have been there a long time. The platform where Dare Devil is, was really Big Top platform. In my opinion, it was a much better location than where it is now. Think of it as elevating the swings in the air, but it's the Huss Swing Around, and not the swings.

Big Top used to look more like this instead of Ricochet which has a lot of I guess you call it fiberglass on it.
http://www.flatrides.com/Ride%20Index/H ... tsmall.jpg

They added the line from Dare Devil Dive to the bridge. For the American Eagle line before, when it was really packed, they had tons of lines setup in that tent, but I don't think I ever went through the back and forths in that tent. It was ridiculous how many lines they had. Instead later on, it was just you went straight through to the end of the tent, and than you went up the bridge. I'll call it a bridge, but it's the part that goes over the road.

[SfGaMownz]

This is the best picture of Big Top I could find which was apparently in late 1985 or early 1986 after the park was done with the 1985 season, as Splashwater Falls was being constructed and you can clearly tell with Sky Whirl and Big Top being down for the season.

http://www.greatamericaparks.com/images ... img386.jpg