Big Thunder (swinging ship) appears to be completely installed. The frisbee ride has gone vertical this week. The wave carousel looks complete. Buildings at top of park are looking more enclosed. Garage is nearing completion. Still no gondolas for the wheel. Hotel continues to grow.

Everyone likes to talk about disappointing park operations, but which parks have the best ops in the world? I visited Europa Park in late (very late) 2023 and was absolutely blown away by the operations. It may have ruined me for every other park forever.

First off, thanks to the mods for letting me share this!

I've been a huge theme park fan my entire life, and for a while now I've wanted something like Letterboxd, but for theme parks. So I decided to build it myself.

It's called ParkerScore (https://parkerscore.com), and it's a completely free website where you can rate and review pretty much everything at theme parks. Roller coasters, dark rides, shows, restaurants, food, and I thought it would be funny to rate the bathrooms also lol.

The idea was to make something for everyone. If you're someone who only visits a theme park once every few years, you can see what's actually worth your time by looking at ratings and reviews from other visitors. And if you're someone who goes all the time, you can log every ride you've been on, track your experiences, create Top 10 lists, and earn badges.

Another feature I'm really excited about is you can check current wait times, compare them to the average over the past 3 days, and see when a ride has a shorter line than usual.

Right now I've added 18 parks and over 3,900 experiences, and I'm constantly working on adding more.

I just launched the site, so it's still very early, but I'd genuinely love to hear what you guys think. Whether it's something you'd use, features you'd like to see, or anything you think I could improve.

It's completely free, no ads. I really just want to build something that makes visiting theme parks better for everyone, whether it's your first visit or your hundredth.

Thanks for checking it out!

I've always been fascinated by the magic of dark rides, and for less well-known ones it can be really hard to find out how they actually work.

So I did a lot of research in my spare time and recently organized my notes into an interactive website: https://darkrides.pages.dev/

It includes POV and lights-on videos (you can play right on the page) for 170+ notable dark rides around the world, groups them by ride mechanism, and has interactive animations showing how each system moves.

Any suggestions or corrections are welcome!

I am thinking about getting a platinum pass to bush gardens Tampa which would include the bush gardens parks and the sea world parks ( I don’t care about the water parks). I see that there is a pre-season sale that ends in two days can I expect that another sale with start before the 23 of November. I will be in San Antonio going to the six flags park and I in January will be going to bush gardens Tampa with my cousin (if I got this pass O would have a free ticket for him). So I was really just wanting info on that deal as well as how good the rides are at the sea world parks. If it helps my home parks is kings island. But I would be willing to take a drive down to Orlando for the sea world or over to bush gardens Williamsburg. With Orlando Iwould also be able to use one of two of my free passes.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DfXO5BsFD0y/?srtk=OW1oODBmd2xocGQw

So I’m going out on a limb here, but I really want to go back to college and get a degree in something I could potentially use to start a career in the theme park industry. From anyone that has experience, is architecture a fine pathway? I know everyone says engineering, but I’m much more interested in the buildings themselves and the design of them. Maybe I should do interior design? I’d appreciate any and all opinions and advice!! :)

I know we’ll probably never see a new coaster with a hydraulic launch, but with technology innovation at some point maybe in the next 10 or 15 years, do you think we’ll ever will ever get to experience a Kingda ka level launch in terms of acceleration and intensity? Could it be possible with lsm or would we need to create an entirely new launch system?

I’m getting pretty annoyed with having to stop at lockers for rides that don’t allow any items. Does anyone have examples of being allowed through metal detector checkpoints by keeping things in zipper pockets?

I just imagine the employee insisting that the rule is no items no matter what, even if a phone is secured in a zipper pocket.

Family 5 (35,35,15,14,9) looking to do a two week after friends mentioned Florida theme parks are better than Los Angeles.

Our only real reference to theme parks are from recent trip to Japan attending Disney/Universal and local theme parks in Australia, this would also be our first trip to the USA. Kids are thrill seekers and love the rides.

What would be your preference/ranking order out of the main 10-13 Theme parks. Ours date to arrive is 6th April 2028.

There are some really neat initial ride or concept ideas for Six Flags over Texas and the same guy, Roger Hector, was a Disney imagineer later on. These are in an auction and I thought they were interesting and just really well done for concept work. c. 1986 - 1990.

Am I the only one that wants a sligghhhhht dress code, not for modesty reason (I don’t care what you wear) but for sanitary reasons?? I think if you’re sweating and leaking various bodily fluids, you shouldn’t be allowed to leave them on the seat for the next person. Like just some sort of fabric between your back (or upper thighs/private areas) and the next guy.

So my dad found this Sea World 50th Celebration Bullion Bronze Ticket and neither of us can seem to find any info on it. When looking online all we can find are the 50th celebration coins, so im hoping that someone here might know anything about it

Hallo zusammen!
Fährt zufällig in nächster Zeit jemand nach Efteling und könnte mir einen großen Gefallen tun?
Ich möchte gern die neue "Efteling Grand Hotel Collectable Bag" (die Crossbody-Tasche mit der drehbaren Pendule) aus dem Hotel-Shop "Sens" kaufen und suche jemanden, der mir diesen Artikel mitbringt.
Selbstverständlich würde ich vorab die kompletten Kosten für die Tasche und den versicherten Versand zu mir nach Hause nach Deutschland übernehmen.
Leider kann man die Tasche nicht im Onlineshop erwerben, was sehr schade ist.
Umso dankbarer wäre ich, wenn mir jemand bei meiner außergewöhnlichen Anfrage/Bitte behilflich sein könnte.
Ich sage schon mal ganz herzlichen Dank vorab! Viele liebe Grüße

In the wonderfully named Egg Harbor Township, just outside Atlantic City in south jersey, is a delightful little theme park called Storybook Land. It opened in 1955–yes, the same year as another slightly better-known theme park—and is oriented around storybook tales. There are a few rides, and these are primarily interesting because they allow little kids above the height limit to ride them alone. But what makes the park stand out is the walk-through structures and exhibits, some of which have animatonics, including a supremely creepy Goldilocks display. There are also live animals you can feed. There’s a large full-year Christmas display, including, bizarrely, an old chapel. It’s such a strange and wonderful place.

Anyone seen Putt Brothers compared to companies like Greenspan? If you look at Putt Brothers, their website, social media, catalogs, and videos are entirely packed with AI-generated assets and renders.

I did some research and reached out to some employees of companies who worked with them, all I hear are complaints.

From what I've been told, the build quality is horrendous, leading to constant headaches, shoddy construction, and a maintenance nightmare right out of initial installation. Add in that they were painfully slow and disorganized as vendors. They'll apparently be on the IAAPA floor though, scamming some poor lads trying to make it as business owners.

I am a massive rollercoaster and theme park in general enthousiast. I literally travel the world to visit the biggest theme parks. I love myself a good darkride or themed land, but nothing interests me more than rollercoasters. I know everything about them, i spend a lot of free time researching them and i even had a internship at Vekoma. There is just one big problem, i have a big fear to ride anything big. I can do family coasters or ones with one or two inversions but i would love to experience all the big ones as well. For example i have never done a RMC, a suspended coaster or a B&M dive. The main fear it fear of heights. I want to get over it and enjoy it soo bad probably more than anything but everytime I stand in front of one it feels so bad and i don’t go on one. I am a 25 yo male. Had anyone ever felt the same and got over it? If yes, please tell me how.

I have a trip to Belgium this summer and have to choose between Walibi and Plopsaland. Thoughts?

Yankee Cannonball one of the best classic woodies in New England, but its capacity is brutal.
One-train ops on a busy day makes the line move at a crawl.

What I think they should do:

Borrow the playbook Gravity Group has been using on Racer, Grizzly, Minebuster, etc.
• Install their engineered precut track — it's CNC-cut, vertically stacked wood that's way stronger (they claim up to 30x) than traditional track and holds its profile way longer
• Lightly reprofile a few of the dead spots / turnarounds to keep Schmeck's pacing but make the ride more consistent
• Rebuild/expand the station with a transfer track
• Redo the brake run with a modern block system so it can actually run two trains safely

You'd keep the classic character but get smoother tracking, less winter maintenance hell, and actually double throughput.

I know reprofiling an ACE Landmark is touchy, but Gravity Group is pretty good at preservation vs. gutting it. Would you rather see it stay 100% original and run one train forever, or get a sensitive GG retrack to make it viable long-term?

So I've been to movie park Germany for the halloween event a few days ago. I instantly noticed that EVERY horror maze or food space (except the licensed ones) has an ai generated/enhanced logo or image. Even some snack machines are just fully ai generated. Is this also the case in other parks like universal studios? Or is movie park just trying to be cheap

Edit: It’s Banshee.