Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom to Offer Free Goats

In what amusement industry insiders say is an attempt to compete against rival park Holiday World, Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom announced today that it would be offering free goats to any of its paying customers. This is believed to be a first for an American amusement park.

"Everone likes to get something for free, especially if they're accustomed to paying for it when they should not have to," said a SFKK spokesman. "We always like to look out for what's best for our customers. At any other amusement park, if a patron forgot their goat, they would be stuck. But here we will provide the free goats."

The spokesman noted that customers could actually get unlimited goats, but only the small ones. The full size and special souvenir goats would still be the usual price.

Holiday World, which offers free drinks, parking, and suntan lotion, but not free goats, refused to comment to ARN&R on the matter.

--JCK

Be Politically Active



You might not quite be able to read that, but it says "Don't blame me, I voted for Raven."

You can get the fancy organic two-sided one here (the back says "Vote Raven/Legend in 2008") or the cheapo one-sided one here ($9.99 -- hey, that's less than $10, so long as you ignore shipping!).

These shirts will be the must-have items next year. Heck, we've already gotten orders from America's Next Top Model.

Though we think they might have bought them to use to tie off before shooting up.

We're Still Here

As many as two or three of our valued readers out there may have noticed that the updates have not been as fast and furious at ARN&R as usual. Fear not, friends. We have not abandoned you. Nor have we run out of story ideas, and we haven't spent the last week absentmindedly plucking at our scrotums while looking at pictures of Thunderhead. Not much, anyway. The main reason for the slower schedule has been the relocation of one of the editors to a new apartment, where the combination of lugging boxes and cleaning while also not missing any work has occupied pretty much every minute of his free time.

Also he had to set his fantasy football lineups.

But don't fret, little campers, your trusty co-editor is sort of moved in, and is ready to provide you with all the juiciest true facts about your favorite amusement parks in the upcoming days. Assuming he's in the mood, anyway. He can get pretty ornery.

And keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming major announcement from ARN&R regarding an exciting new business venture for the website. We promise you'll love it.

--JCK

Surviving IAAPA: A Guide for Enthusiasts

Hey enthusiasts, it is FMB rappin' at ya with the latest in IAAPA "do's and don'ts."  I know you have been wondering what to wear, what to say and how to shake your groove thing while on the show floor.  All I can say is don't worry, we've got you covered.  Delve into some of these great pointers and soon you and Claude Mabillard will be on the friendship tip.

5) Marathon

Those rides out back are set up for enthusiasts -- for you.  Be sure to spend a lot of time riding and re-riding each piece of equipment to make sure you can post how much fun they were or how much they sucked.  Don't forget to tell the guy stuck working in the Florida sun whether or not you like the ride; his company will appreciate your input.  Afterwards, feel free to pleasure yourself on the diamond plating.

4) Interview For Your Website

Your site on Earthlink is arguably the finest source of coaster information out there.  It doesn't matter that you still list the "New For '01" coasters, people come to you because you are the enthusiast with brains. Don't feel bad about cornering Werner Stengel for a half-hour to talk about Millennium Force.  He loves talking to someone as smart as you.  Make sure he leaves with one of the business cards you printed up at home.  Yes, soon the Steng-dog will be dropping coastr_stud435@aol.com an email asking design advice.

3) Sport a Mullet

Nothing says "professional" like a mullet.  This tells people that you are business in the front, party in the back and one hardcore coaster-marathoning motherf*cker.  When you roll up with the t-tops down in the hot Florida sun and your feathered mullet blowing in the wind, heads will turn and everyone will know a high-roller has just stepped onto the show floor.  Don't be embarrassed by how successful you are -- embrace it.

2) No Stress Dress

This is your only vacation from being shift manager at McDonald's, so enjoy life!  Don't be afraid to weather that black Mamba t-shirt that is a few sizes too small.  No one will even notice your gut with that foxy Beast belt buckle.  Ride manufacturers always enjoy it when you hang around their booth in a t-shirt that has their coaster on it.  In fact, if you see customers having to wait to talk to a representative, don't be afraid, start telling them why Manufacturer X "rocks."

1) Interrupt

If I have learned one thing, it is that IAAPA is for enthusiasts.  Make sure you interrupt when ride people are talking about products, especially when they are going over final contract points.  You paid to get in and therefore you are just as important to Vekoma as Marty Skelar.  Trust me, they will be so impressed when you tell them how to improve their rides!

Well folks, I will see you down in the Sunshine State.  Just look for the handy-dandy neon yellow ARN&R press pass.  I can't wait to discuss the best seat on TTD with you at Denny's.

--FMB

Surviving IAAPA: A Guide for Industry Buyers

For decades Absolutely Reliable News & Rumors has been the voice of the amusement industry and in 2004 we are proud to step up our IAAPA coverage to unprecedented levels. For months, industry leaders, CEOs and even Mickey himself have come to us wanting to know how to “work” the show floor.  Here are what we consider the five most important tips to making the most out of your time as a buyer for your park, carnival, FEC, or fictional Pittsburgh-area amusement park/entertainment complex.

5)  Chicks in Bikinis

Almost every year a few booths set up with hot chicks in bikinis that do not speak English.  Be sure to stop by them often.  Your wife probably has a “mom ass” by now and knows you very well -- but not these women. They barely understand a word you say as you drool over their tight bodies.  When they ask “U vant Laser Tag?” you should not respond; just continue to stare at their chests.

4)  Free Food

The show floor is big and you will get hungry.  Be sure to take advantage of the delicious tiny morsels of Dippin’ Dots, Noble Roman’s Pizza and Steve’s Sausage you get to wait in line an hour for.  Don’t bother with the great restaurants mere steps away (e.g. Peabody) -- you only have eight hours each day to see the five people you made appointments with!

3)  Hotel Porn

If the person that handles expense accounts is an old woman unwilling to talk about sex (or just stupid) then take advantage of the many movie choices offered by your hotel.  “Secretary Sluts Five,” “Asian Delights” or even “Sex Wars Episode Two: Boning the Clones” will be sure to get the job done.  If your employer has the nerve to ask you about buying beat material tell them to simply look at the receipt.  All it says is “movie.”  What are they going to do about it?  Fire you?

2)  Indoor SCAD Tower: Not a Good Idea

This is pretty self explanatory.  The SCAD tower set up inside drops you into a net.  The same net the company forgot to set up for one child.  Simply put, don’t ride it.  This is also something to think about when considering attractions for your park.

1)  Drink Heavily

It is called an expense account for a reason, so use the damn thing.  Don’t be afraid to buy a drink for that pretty lady at the bar who might be a hooker. It is easy to hide $20 in drinks and even easier to feed a dead prostitute to Shamu.  Go for it!  After all, you’re on vacation.

--FMB

Old Town Opens Shakira

To battle the new Busch Gardens Tampa investment SheiKra, Old Town in Kissimmee, Florida has promised Shakira for the 2005 season. PR Director Steve Stern said, “Sure that park has a multi-million dollar investment, but we have Shakira.”

For hours worthless enthusiast boards buzzed about what the new attraction could be. Was it a hyper coaster? Was it a gigantic flume? Was it a Vegas-style revue featuring the ass-shaking singer herself?

“We looked at every exciting ride on the market today and bought a Vekoma SLC,” said Stern. “It will be there ‘Whenever, Wherever,’ get it, just like her song. Jesus, I'm clever.”

Walking with Stern we saw where Old Town plans to put the new ride. We also asked some locals about their thoughts on naming a ride after the two-hit wonder. Most had never heard of the singer, but one enthusiastic man in a Florida Coaster Club t-shirt lit up when her name was mentioned.

“Yeah, I LOVE Shakira,” said 28 year-old Timothy Stubbins of Tampa. “I pleasured myself to that song of hers during Robb Alvey’s coaster video,” the disturbing man continued.

This reporter encourages all IAAPA attendees to get down to Old Town ASAP so they can get “underneath the restraints” of the new coaster.

Shakira could not be reached for comment.

--FMB

Sweet, Sticky Dreams

Steve Hallinski had a problem. Well, to most people, he has several problems, but Hallinski doesn't consider "backne" or a penchant for Dirty Sanchezes things to take issue with. No, the recent trouble was that the ACEr didn't know how he would split his time at the "ACE Lost Weekend in Las Vegas." The issue was simple: Hallinski loves to ride coasters (he owns a "We Ride All Year Shirt" despite not being a member of the Florida Coaster Club), but he also likes to eat.

"The buffets call to me like sweet sirens of love," the fat man sighed. "I didn't know how I would be able to ride without them." Fortunately for members like Hallinski, ACE created a new solution just in time for the event.

"We call it the ACE Feedbag," said ACE Queen of Thunder Carole Sanderson. "They are cute and personalized. You can sew patches on, put your Disney pin collection on the side or even give it a mullet. I call mine Mr. Twinkles."

When the big day in Vegas came Hallinski was ready. At seven in the morning he had Cocoa Puffs and milk strapped into the bag while rolling back and forth on the Stratosphere's X-Scream attraction. The plump enthusiast had chosen to decorate his feedbag with patches of Kennyood's Phantom's Revenge because the logo was just "that f*cking cool." When talking about the Vegas event, Hallinski said the following with reverence: "There is nothing like looking out over the Vegas strip as sweet chocolaty goodness sloshes around in your mouth." Wiping back a tear he continued, "It is a beautiful thing, I owe Jesus one."

--FMB

Welcome to Hell

Yaaaaaaiiiikes!!!!!

Just in case you didn't get a good enough scare on Halloween this year, we strongly urge you to visit our Site O' the Weak, Boils the Clown's Fun House. Be sure to crank the volume and sit through the entirety of the perhaps most garish, Flash-crazed, obnoxious intro ever devised for a website. And then, if you haven't suffered a violent seizure, have a gander at the main page...if there were a monetary prize awarded for having the most annoying flashing gizmos, unnecessary sounds, animated cursors, and eye-searing color combinations, Boils would not only win hands down, but would likely have the award named after him, as well. And don't forget to waste a few precious moments of your life playing the site's games and riding its rides, all of which suck worse than you could possibly imagine.

Incidentally, studies have shown that viewing Boils the Clown's Fun House directly can actually cause retinal scarring, so we have found that it is best to treat the site as one would a solar eclipse...view it only indirectly, using incredibly expensive NASA-approved Mylar or aluminum-coasted safety goggles, or, as a cheaper alternative, projecting the images through a pinhole onto a sheet of paper.

--JCK

Irritation: A Comparative Study

Irritation. It's an emotion we commonly experience, both when we read grammatically suspect Coasterbuzz posts and when we go about our daily lives. But what causes that unwelcome feeling to flare up the most violently? A day at a Six Flags park? Waiting in line at the supermarket? Or something else entirely? In the interest of science, ARN&R managed to coax one of its writers out of his home and persuaded him to visit several potentially obnoxious venues where he would be exposed to asinine, obnoxious, stupid, and annoying people in massive numbers. Below are his comments on each potentially irritating venue, in reverse order of how much being at each one pissed the hell out of him:

5. Metallica Concert

Fears of having every possible human bodily fluid falling, dripping or violently projecting itself upon me by other audience members were not realized. Expected to be trapped in group of moshers or between combatants in fistfight, but proved not to happen. Expected the absolute dregs of human evolution to be in attendance, but generally this was not the case at all. Only major issues: the fat lady with the greasy hair next to me who kept singing loud and out of tune and with wrong lyrics; tremendous amounts of smoking in blatant disregard for city ordinances (which would have been forgivable depending on whether the smoke had given me a contact buzz, but, disappointingly, was almost entirely of the Marlboro variety); and large groups of fans leaving for a beer or sitting down when Metallica performed Creeping Death or The Four Horsemen immediately after jumping around and screaming for anything written since the Black Album. Mildly vexing for sure, but, all things considered, a far better experience with throngs of humanity than expected. Shockingly, this venue definitely had the fewest assholes of any of those sampled.

4. Orchestra Concert

You'd think going to the symphony would give you some respite from all the jackasses running around the streets these days. But apparently my refuge and temple, my sanctuary from having to deal with the unwashed Plebeians, my place to experience works of culture, has been invaded by the barbarian hordes. During a single concert, I was assailed by not less than seven old ladies slowly crinkling and unwrapping hard candies, taking over three excruciating minutes each time; four screeching babies who should not have been allowed in the hall in the first place, should have been immediately taken outside even if the parents were rude enough to bring them in the first place, and which, incidentally, were obviously being stabbed with sewing needles by their parents in order to maintain that sort of volume and length of ear-piercing obnoxiousness; two people allowing cell phones to ring, then picking them up, and then carrying on full-voiced conversations for several minutes; as many as a dozen dickheads in our section alone talking with each other in voices loud enough to drown out the music from the stage; and a group of sixteen that came in twenty minutes late being allowed and helped by the ushers to plow past us on the way to their seats, distracting me from a particularly favorite moment in one piece. What was this, a f*cking football game?

3. Grocery Store

Eight different screaming, filthy children crashed into me at one point or another. Was checking overpriced item in aisle at same time as someone else was checking something else directly across from me. This old lady came up and saw the aisle blocked, and instead of waiting three seconds as I very obviously started to nicely move my cart out of the way, she rammed as hard as she could into my shins with her cart two or three times and didn't even claim to be sorry. Bitch. And then I got to wait in a line to pay. Of course, since it was Saturday afternoon, and everyone in the free world was here specifically to annoy me, we had exactly one cashier and no one bagging groceries. After about three hours, was driven completely insane by woman in front of me, who waited until the entire six hundred items she had were rung up before asking to pay one third with her credit card (which she was then unable to run through the reader on her first fourteen tries), one third with a check drawn from the First National Bank of East Finland, and one third with pennies that she counted out one by one. She also waited until after all of this transpired to produce forty-five coupons, requiring everything to be done all over. All I have in my house is ketchup, tap water, and a seven-year-old can of Spam, but I'll happily live off that for the next month if it means I don't have to go back to this hellhole.

2. Movie Theater

The two seats my girlfriend and I occupied for a 9PM flick were obviously the only oasis available in a desert of stupid f*cks. We probably actually were able to both view and clearly hear approximately seven minutes of the entire movie. I see that movie theaters are not the place to come if you want to see movies. However, if you'd like to yell on your cell phone, run up and down the aisles, make drug deals, throw ice and popcorn at other people, and scream at the top of your voice to your little asshole friends all over the theater, then you'd probably have fun at Showcase North Haven. Although one can get a smug sense of satisfaction knowing that one has an IQ greater than every other cretin in this dump and their parents combined, it's actually not that much fun to be the civilization amongst the savages I'm never going to the movies again. My DVD player and TV may not be all that great, but at least I won't have to pay ten of my hard-earned dollars to watch films in the presence of the great unwashed scum of the Earth.

1. Visit to Six Flags New England

Good Lord, this place was full of assholes. No wonder I had a season pass and still only came here four times the whole season. Loved the teenagers fighting with each other who crashed into me. Shoved them off and they threatened to "get their boys and come f*ck me up." Charming. Six rednecks drinking bottles of malt liquor in line for Cyclone yelled disgusting things at young women and then tried to grab their asses. Two ACE members spotted me and followed me around for three hours, not taking hints that I hated them. Actively insulted them, and they still refused to leave me alone. Eventually I tired of their stupid top ten lists and general braying like donkeys about reride policies and their coaster button collections and told them I had to take a big shit. They followed me into bathroom anyway. Naturally I did not need to take a shit, but I entered stall and began making tremendous and disgusting farting and splatting sounds on my arm, encouraging them to think I was incredibly ill. After one hour of this, they finally realized their need for twenty rides on Superman was in jeopardy and left. Every coaster ride featured both a disgustingly muddy seat where some jerk stepped on it when getting out and a girl screaming as piercingly as possible in attempt to piss off other passengers during the ride itself. Line breaking occurred exactly 654 times during the day, generally right in front of security. More teenagers spat on people riding on T-bolt below their hang-out spot on the ride's exit ramp. Smoking occurred in line exactly 436 times without comment from nearby security guards. More teenagers threw rocks from roller coaster while in motion. Security promised to "look into it." Kids splashed in mud puddles trying to soil everyone else nearby. Parents of kids laughed merrily instead of beating the shit out of them as they deserved. Single train operation on all rides increased exposure to loud, smoking, line-cutting assholes to extraordinary lengths of time. Halfway through day, told self "oh, f*ck this. I'm going home."

We have a winner. I have never been this irritated in my entire life. Not even when I see George Bush on TV.

--JCK

[Editor's Note: The original posting of this story unfortunately implied that JCK's girlfriend was incredibly fat ("...the two seats my girlfriend occupied..."). The author, of course, meant to say "the two seats my girlfriend and I occupied..." The author also wishes to state, for the record, out of fear of having his ass kicked by said girlfriend, that said girlfriend actually is quite tiny and occupies approximately one third of one seat, not two full ones. We extend our thanks to an alert reader who made us aware of this error, and therefore assisted the author in averting a potential ass-whupping.]

Enthusiast Harasses Tourist Bureau

With the news of the demise of the popular “flyers” ride at Paramount’s King’s Island, reaction ranging from outrage, to tears, to bed wetting permeated the enthusiast community. Many coaster enthusiasts were moved to pick their large rear ends off the couch to call the park and beg and plead for the flyers to stay for that outside chance that their parents might drive them across 5 states to the park to ride an attraction that is available at many local parks. While most of these calls were met with stiff resistance (and gut-busting laughter) one enthusiast managed to draw the ire of an entire country.

Ken Myers has been banned from traveling to the country of Australia after incessantly calling the “King Island” tourism department, located in Tasmania, Australia. According to reports from the beleaguered tourism officials, Myers’ original call was very confusing to the clerk who had the misfortune of answering the phone.

After informing Mr. Myers that she had no idea what “flyers” were, and that this was the King Island tourism center, Linda Biron tried to deal with the situation amicably.

“Mr. Myers became enraged, screaming about BRD, or ERP, something like that. Maybe it was ERT. He kept saying he deserved extra time to ‘ride the flyers’ because of his impressive ‘track record’. I told him my boyfriend also has an impressive ‘track record’ to try and get this creep off my phone and this seemed to calm him down. But he seemed to take an odd interest in my boyfriend when I said that, and asked just how long his ‘track record’ was. At that point, I hung up on him and reported the incident to my manager.”

The King Island tourism center received no less than eight calls from Mr. Myers. According to reports, Mr. Myers became more and more belligerent with every call, threatening boycotts, vandalism and even “nasty messages on Coasterbuzz, whatever the hell that means” according to another clerk, Mr. Ted Gorfy. After the eighth call, the issue was brought up to Australian Police, as this was an international call. Mr. Myers was warned to stop calling under penalty of International Law, to never visit the country of Australia, and to possibly “get a life.”

Mr. Myers was unavailable for comment, but his mother had this to say: “All I have to say is he better get off that damnable internet and work some more hours at the convenience store to help pay this phone bill! Between the eating and now this, his father and I are about ready to kick him out of the house. It has been 32 years you know. On second thought, maybe just the eating is enough …”

--BS