Panic Strikes Industry

Executives throughout the amusement park industry have reportedly been shaken to the core as they learn the plans for the State Showcase Funpark [sic] to be based on 700 to 1700 mostly-roofed acres in Ohio.

While ARN&R plans extensive team coverage of SSF in the coming weeks, we'd like to start out with some brief quotes from those in the industry and others:

• PKI's Executive Vice President In Charge Of Competition Evaluation Edward McLaughlin: "Well, the enigmatic JL57 says he will bury us here at PKI, and he took off his shoe and banged in on a table, so I'm compelled to conclude that he is the reincarnated Nikita Kruschev. I'm not going to screw with him; we're shutting down the park immediately."
  
  
• Six Flags Associate Vice President of Research Will Kiplinger: "He appears to have approximately $200 to invest in the park, which makes it so he has $9,134,130,020.00 more than we have on hand. And did you see that website? We're dead."
  
  
• Cleveland Go-Kartz Owner Bud Holly: "We thought we had a good little operation here until we learned of his devious plans for the operation of the go-karts: 'The guest(s) will leave the station determined by the light signalling located in front of the cars either green to go or red to remain in the stop position.' Shit, why didn't we think of that? I must have lost thirty operators to drivers smashing into their legs, and I've got kids out there who have been riding for days."
  
  
• ACE Chief Executive Diner, Line Cook, and Fryer Carole Sanderson: "Buffets are good."
  
  
• Local Parent Martha Doyle: "A chance to drop my kids off somewhere that's constantly playing Village People music? Sign me up!"
  

More on this critical story to come. For now, it's the Site O' the Weak.

New Park Rumored to be Under Development

A source who asked to remain confidential has forwarded some intriguing information to ARN&R: a new U.S. park appears to be in the later planning stages. The source sent a number of corporate memos and some pre-production artwork from the amusement industry planning company Imaginatrix to support this news.

Groundbreaking should begin on Freelance Classical Musician Land as early as August of this year, with a targeted opening date of Spring, 2007. The information sent to us did not have the location of this planned park, but did provide some tantalizing hints at what it would hold. Amongst the attractions we know are slated for the park, subject to change, are the following:

Revenge of the Musicians: The Decimation

This appears to be a heavily themed Sally dark ride where patrons can shoot at annoying people. For example, killing a target that asks the rider when they plan to get a "real job" will be 100 points; killing one that sees the rider play an exceptionally difficult concerto the best they've ever played it and then says they think "Devil Went Down to Georgia" is harder will be 200 points; and killing one that says Josh Groban is a great musical artist will be 1,000,000,000 points.

Tax Time Stunt Show

In this exciting outdoor stunt venue, park visitors will experience the full fury of tax preparation by simulated classical musicians. Visitors will feel the thrilling agony of spending seventeen full days collecting 12 W-2's, 24 1099's, and bags of miscellaneous checks, teaching fees, and deductions; at the completion of this task, they will either owe money despite making 10,000 dollars the previous year, or, in certain versions of the show, receive a crisp refund check for one dollar from the State of Connecticut. Currently, the show is planned to run the entire seventeen days for "realism," but logistics may force it to a more manageable length.

Extreme Orchestra Management Anal Violator

In this motion simulation attraction, guests will feel what it is like to negotiate a new contract with the management of a regional orchestra. Among the thrills will be points where the management cuts the pay of the musicians while raising the salary of its chief executive by 20,000 dollars; insists on maintaining an attendance policy that allows no missed services, even in the case of repetitive stress injuries or car wrecks; not fixing a faulty door backstage that severed the finger of one musician and slashed another in the face; and telling the musicians, with a straight face, that their group, which pays about 3000 bucks a year and offers no benefits, should be the chief source of the musicians' income and primary place of loyalty, so they really shouldn't be performing with any other groups and wearing themselves out for this one. Practical concerns dictate that this simulator ride not last two full years as in reality, so an alternate plan has the park guests just sitting down and having a gigantic cattle prod rammed up their ass really hard.

Moose Assault

Visitors will board a Toyota Corolla with far too many miles on it already. Simulating the life of a freelance musician, this attraction will force its riders to play 8 AM kiddie concerts in northern Vermont, drive to eastern Connecticut for night rehearsals, and then drive back for the next day's kiddie concerts, every day and night for exactly one week, all in a desperate effort to pay the electric bill on time. During one of the nights, selected at random, the car will be directed, for some unknown reason, by police straight into the exploded remains of a moose that someone else has just hit, spraying chunks of moose bones, brains, entrails, and scrotum all over the Corolla at speeds approaching 70 mph. The moose remains will be specially formulated to smell precisely as if Satan has taken a spicy burrito shit on the car, and several power washings will fail to remove all the red gore from the chassis. As with the previous attraction, the current plan calls for the entire seven-day experience to take place in real time, but it could eventually be scaled back to having patrons sit in a chair and then be beaten with baseball bats and have moose guts blasted into them via air cannon.

--JCK

Enthusiast Seeks Vekoma's Wisdom

A coaster enthusiast recently put to rest the controversy over the inversion count for Vekoma's Flying Dutchmen-style rides by contacting Vekoma itself. The enthusiast, who admitted to being "awfully confused by inversion counts," went straight to the almighty temple of truth, wisdom, and justice- Vekoma itself- for an answer to her ills.

"Our Flying Dutchman (1018 meters) has 7 inversions," read the email response from the company, which experts say has no interest whatsoever in inflating anything about its rides in order to sell more of them.

"Thank God," said the enthusiast. "Vekoma really was the obvious place to check for honest information about their own rides. I have beheld the mighty fountain of truth that is emailed information from Vekoma, and it is wondrous. Thank goodness this wasn't a waste of my valuable time."

In other news, the American Coaster Enthusiasts have just announced that they have organized a seance to ask John Allen if PKI Racer should count as one or two coasters.

--LSN/JCK

Blow Us, Six Flags

Our Site O' the Weak this week is a little unusual: it's the Six Flags Season Pass Renewal Page. And while the page itself is the garish blast of sparkly colors that is the hallmark of any page on the Six Flags site, that isn't why it's the Site O' the Weak. No, there's more afoot here. And really, it isn't all the webpage's fault; unfortunately, since we can't make the Six Flags corporate structure or a wide array of moronic customer service people a Site O' the Weak, the stupid season pass renewal webpage is going to have to take one for the team.

It all began a couple weeks ago when we decided to get around to buying our Six Flags pass. This was still before the prices really got jacked, and we'd finally decided we'd make just enough use of a pass to make a purchase worthwhile. So we went to this season pass renewal webpage and filled in the number of our previous year's pass; doing this allegedly would result in Six Flags taking our credit card payment and then a ready-to-use renewed pass would appear in our mailbox so we could avoid waiting in line with the scum of the Earth for five hours for processing on our first visit.

Note that we say "allegedly." What happened in this case was that the webpage then said "Unable to process request at this time. Please try again in ten minutes." Well, these things happen. We tried again in ten minutes, and then several more times over the next few days, all with the same result. We tried disabling pop-up blocker and secondary firewall, we tried two different internet browsers, we used a friend's computer, we tried anything we could think of, all to no avail. And it's not like these were ancient computers; ours is almost exactly one year old, and we know enough about it that we've reinstalled the operating system, installed and reconfigured hardware, and massively streamlined the way our software runs and even loads at start-up. In other words, we are far from being brilliant computer specialists, but we aren't the kind of morons who would think the DVD drive is a cup holder or not figure out how to order a damn season pass correctly.

And now that we think about it, we ordered our renewal on the same site using the same frickin' computer last season!

In desperation, we called the online support number. That's where an irritating experience became truly piss-off worthy. When we described the issue, the helpful Six Flags employee said, and we quote, "the system used by Six Flags to process renewals does frequently cause problems with some types of computers, primarily those made by Apple or those running Windows."

Yes, that's right. Their season pass renewal system admittedly doesn't always work with Mac, nor does it necessarily work with PC's running Windows. How convenient! Only 97% of all computer users may experience some trouble on this website! Glad all those Linux people have full access to a season pass for those filthy parks, at least.

The experience continued, over the course of several days, with various transfers to various departments, various unfilled promises to "check on the problem and get back to you," and, finally, some worthless guest services rep telling us that we would have to go to the park in person since they won't do renewals by email or over the phone, and, more importantly, that the price had now gone up substantially, so she didn't "see much point getting a pass at this point."

You know what? Now that we think about it, she was absolutely right. F*ck you, Six Flags. You just lost a customer for the entire season. We're too busy for this nonsense.

--JCK

Theme Park Website Announces Required Reading List

The Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Affairs at Theme Park Critic has just announced the required reading materials for any coaster enthusiasts who enroll at the website in the future, stating that "education is a year-round goal."

Those who are admitted to the website, beginning immediately, will be required to read the Concise English Handbook, Chicago Manual of Style, Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, and Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.

"Bad grammar is a widespread problem in our field," said the Assistant Dean. "With this reading requirement, we are hoping our new posters will be able to express themselves in a competent way. Although we frankly find much of the posting on these forums to be appalling, we feel that taking a preemptive correctional approach like this is far better than just suspending people for typos."

However, the Assistant Dean then added, "If these boneheads can't tell the difference between 'its' as a possessive and 'it's' as a contraction after all that required reading, I will not only suspend them, I will strangle them with my bare hands," although he did request that this statement be considered off the record.

--JCK

Enthusiast Told What He Already Knows

Tom Williams of Indianapolis, Indiana was recently told by Match.com that he is incompatible with their selection of individuals.

Dejected, Williams said, "Yeah. I got this e-mail that was really cheery and said 'We're sorry, but it happens that there is no one within the Match.com database that fits you at this time. We will continue to screen our hundreds of thousands of applicants and will notify you when someone fitting your likes and dislikes applies. Have a great day!' Dude, that sucked."

Williams, a 27 year-old Best Buy employee and member of the Southwest Ohio Amusement Park Historical Society isn’t quite sure why no one out there is a match. "Come on, I know I am little bit nerdy, but seriously, there have to be some women out there that enjoy talking about Revenge of the Sith and Holiday World."

Match.com representative Donna Billings said that although they try to find compatibility for everyone, for some people companionship, love, or even mere friendship just isn’t in the cards. Donna, who only agreed to speak with me off the record in order to keep a good corporate face on the online dating company, said (a bit sarcastically), "Let’s face it. There are just some real f*$#ing losers out there. Yeah, there are a lot of women into Rush, roller coasters and Play Station games where you get to be a storm trooper. The girls just melt for men like that. Hey, when does this interview begin?" At that point this ARN&R reporter left the room.

Our dejected hero has vowed to fight on, determined to find the woman of his dreams. Williams noted, "I know there has to be a woman turned on by my ability to quote the statistics of every coaster in Indiana and the fact that I can name every Sith. Ladies, lets get it on!"

--FMB

Hershey Park Announces Massive Renovations

In response to a coaster enthusiast's comment that Hershey Park has too many hills, executives announced today that the park will undergo one of the most extensive renovations ever attempted.

The comment appeared at Coasterbuzz in a trip report about the park, where the poster claimed, "I could have done without the steep hills, but the park does a good job of marking them on the maps and also with park signage."

"Hershey Park will be closed for the season as of this Monday," stated a park rep. "After that, the huge renovation will begin. First, we will remove each and every ride, especially the ones built to take advantage of that hilly terrain. Then we will bring in hundreds of gigantic earth movers and other heavy construction equipment in order to level the entirety of Hershey Park. When we finish the project, sometime around 2011, we will reopen with a new look: a flat little square of pavement with some rides on it."

The rep also announced that the park would offer rickshaws, hovercraft, and moving sidewalks that will help cart lazy-ass enthusiasts to any point they wish within the new park, preventing them from having to move their feet, legs, or buttocks in any way whatsoever.

"We have heard the complaints from the enthusiasts," said the rep in conclusion. "and we have listened."

--JCK

FlatRides.com Creator Still Working On Identifying Spy Kids 2 Rides

For detailed and accurate information about flat rides, enthusiasts and other losers know there's just one place to go: FlatRides.com, also known as the Flat Joint, with the "joint" presumably referring to a product to mitigate the nausea engendered by the subject matter.

But there's still one set of flats that FlatRides.com has utterly failed to identify and catalog -- those appearing in the Spy Kids 2's opening sequence's "Troublemaker Park." ARN&R sat down for an exclusive interview with the site's reclusive and, some say, completely insane creator.

"I'm having real trouble with the Juggler in particular," said Mr. Flatty, as he insisted he be called in print. "It's got some of the ride action of the old Saturn 6s, but the tossing motion is pure Zamperla. Those restraints, though, look like the crappy work of Moser, and there's a moment at 7 minutes and 23 seconds, between frames 12 and 14 where I swear you can see a Wisdom logo."

Flatty has spent countless hours poring over screen captures from the Robert Rodriguez movie, screaming obscenities with frustration. "Rodriguez totally screwed up the background shots, so there's no way to tell what park it's at, so I can't call the park and ask. And some of these rides have got to be from the more obscure German circuits, since I've never seen them here. And Bill Paxton [who plays the park's owner] for some reason won't return my calls. Prick."

American Coaster Enthusiasts Create New "All-Star" Division

As the needs of its members and buffet tables change and grow, the American Coaster Enthusiasts continue to evolve. Among the latest of ACE's innovations is the new designation of "ACE All-Star," bestowed upon individuals who meet special criteria that places them a cut above the standard coaster enthusiast.

"We've found ways of recognizing coasters that are run in the manner they were intended to be run, with the ACE Coaster Classic plaque," said ACE President, Viceroy, and Guardian of the Sacred Skid Brake Carole Sanderson. "And we've more recently begun to acknowledge influential rides, or at least rides we've gotten some ERT on, with the Roller Coaster Landmark plaque. But we haven't done nearly enough to reward the most important cog in the theme park machine: the humble coaster enthusiast. Our new "ACE All-Star" designation is intended to rectify that situation."

"ACE All-Stars are selected each year," continued Sanderson. "Criteria will include number of total coasters ridden, number of times a single coaster has been ridden, and the number of times an enthusiast has brought shame upon the club by demanding special perks from park PR reps or tucking their shirt accidentally into their underwear."

In addition to receiving a plaque of their own, suitable for framing, winners of the new award will be featured on the new ACE All-Stars website. (Note that, during the current Beta test phase, only Alabama ACE members are being featured on the new website, although all winners will be added once the design is finalized.)

One controversy has already arisen regarding the seemingly innocuous new award. The ACE Alumni page seems to feature photos only of the club's more attractive members, leading to speculation that uglier ACE All-Stars are being left off the site unfairly. ACE denies that this is the case, merely claiming that "some of the pictures must have gotten misplaced."

--JCK

What'd You Spend on That? About a Buck-Fifty?

Our new Site O' the Weak is the website of an actual professional company in the amusement park field. We feel the need to state this up front, as it would not be obvious from a quick glance that Top Fun's official site is anything more than young, fairly stupid child's personal homepage.

Ripping the poor English grammar of this site, since it's an Italian company and all, might seem like a cheap shot. But then again, if you want to sell anything in a foreign country, you should make your information comprehensible instead of just using a free online translator program or relying on what you remember from the class you failed back in high school, correct? Plus, paragraphs like the following are too amusing not to point out:

Thanks to a Worldwide organisation Top Fun is able to offer to You a large number of used rides. And not only! Each of them have been checked and guaranteed by Top Fun. Choose the one You need!

And even if one were to be nice and forgive any language issues on the site, surely no one can possibly forgive the awful web design. Lobotomized chimps could do a better job. A frickin' Tripod template would look pretty good in comparison, for the love of God!

The Top Fun website. Within it you will find a new definition of pain and suffering.

--JCK