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Topics - Coaster

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31
SDC Memories/ Park History / Your Worst SDC experience
« on: March 10, 2008, 09:01:57 PM »
As I was reading the 'Your most Memorable SDC Trip' thread I started thinking about what everyone else's worst experience was.

My worst experience was probably when I got peed on by the goat when I was younger or when we went at Christmastime and it was FREEZING. Everything was shut down and we were all miserable. But we did get free hot chocolate.

32
General Silver Dollar City Talk / Young Christian's Weekend
« on: February 21, 2008, 04:41:53 PM »
Hey, does anyone know if SDC is doing Young Christian's Weekend this year? My family would like to go. It doesn't say anything about it on SDC's website though. If any one of you can get me information that would be good.

33
Random Talk / The Inside Track Issue.
« on: January 30, 2008, 06:34:01 PM »
I have the Inside Track blog in my bookmarks and when I clicked on it the site it wouldn't work. Is that happening with anyone else? I'm sure it'll get fixed soon. Conductor Sam hasn't updated since December 1! There's not much he can post right now anyway I guess.

34
General Silver Dollar City Talk / The January Debate (A little Late)
« on: January 16, 2008, 06:20:15 PM »
Well I figure it's time to start these up again. It's been a while I know. High school wears me out. Anyways, as requested I will make a new thread for each new debate which instead of making a new debate every two weeks it'll be every month. So here we go....


Debates to Date
Sep. 1-Sep. 15:    Where is your favorite place to relax at Silver Dollar City? Debate Closed. Debate ended on Page 4.
Sep. 15-Sep. 30:   What is your favorite smell at SDC? Debate Closed. Debate ended on Page 4.
Oct. 1-Oct. 16:  What will we really see at Silver Dollar City in 2008? Debate Closed. Debate ended on Page 6.
Oct. 17-Jan. 16:  Should Celebration City be open during Christmas? Debate Closed. Debate ended in other thread.

New Debate: What is the real possibility that Celebration City will become Wild Adventures?

New Debate: Would it be in Silver Dollar City's best interest to add a huge wooden roller coaster or a coaster like Mystery Mine, in 2009, and make it appear to go through a cave? Which would be more successful?

35
Other Parks / Schlitterbahn Vacation Village Groundbreaking
« on: September 19, 2007, 10:27:42 PM »
Clicky

I don't know about any of you but I am excited for this. I think if will tremendously hurt Oceans of Fun and I think it will have a slight impact on White Water. Which who knows, maybe that is why they purchased the outlet mall?? But this place looks awesome. It'd be awesome if in 2009 this park opens AND we get a SDC woodie! Man that's exciting!!

36
Random Talk / NFL Pick 'em Week 3 Standings/Make picks for Week 4
« on: September 08, 2007, 04:40:31 PM »
I kinda am making this thread on a short notice. Why you ask? The season started on Thursday, whoops ::). The Colts beat the Saints, so we'll just kind of ignore that game. But here's the game, each week I will post the matchups and you guys can pick who you think will win. Whoever has the most wins at the end of the year, will win the 2007 NFL Pick 'em Contest here on the SDCFan forums. And maybe a prize?  ;)

Here are Week Four's matchups:
Houston Texans @ Atlanta Falcons
Baltimore Ravens @ Cleveland Browns
Oakland Raiders @ Miami Dolphins
Chicago Bears @ Detroit Lions
New York Jets @ Buffalo Bills
Green Bay Packers @ Minnesota Vikings
St. Louis Rams @ Dallas Cowboys
Seattle Seahawks @ San Fransisco 49ers
Tampa Bay Buccaneers @ Carolina Panthers
Kansas City Chiefs @ San Diego Chargers
Denver Broncos @ Indianapolis Colts
Pittsburgh Steelers @ Arizona Cardinals
Philadelphia Eagles @ New York Giants
New England Patriots @ Cincinnatti Bengals

Teams on Bye Week: Jacksonville, New Orleans, Tennessee, Washington

Week Three Standings
Coaster-             28-18
Tinaalsgirl-          25-21
Shavethewhales-  19-27

Weekly Standings
Coaster-                 10-6
Tinaalsgirl-               9-7
Shavethewhales-      8-8

Now, if you miss this week you can join the next week. Even if you miss the first 10 weeks, you can join the competition during the 11th week. Just know that it could hurt you in the standings.

I also know that some of you here might not like football or watch it. But you can make a guess each week for the team and it'd make me happy. And PLUS, if you make good guesses you might win something at the end of the year.

Good luck!!

37
General Silver Dollar City Talk / 2007 Golden Ticket Awards!!
« on: September 05, 2007, 07:26:09 PM »
Coaster bringing you the news here....

Clicky

At the bottom of that page where it says, download blah blah blah, click there and you can view the complete list of winners. Silver Dollar City and Dollywood both ranked in things. It's pretty interesting.

38
Other Parks / What parks have you been to??
« on: September 02, 2007, 08:49:41 PM »
This is the thread to post all the parks you've been to.

I've been to:

  • Silver Dollar City
  • White Water
  • Walt Disney World
  • Disneyland
  • Universal Studios Hollywood
  • Universal Stuidos Orlando
  • Universal's Islands of Adventure
  • Seaworld San Antonio
  • Seaworld San Diego
  • Worlds of Fun
  • Oceans of Fun
  • Six Flags St. Louis
  • Hersheypark

That totals 20 parks for me.
Where have you been?

39
Construction/Rumors / Buzzsaw Falls - Remake?
« on: September 02, 2007, 02:23:53 PM »
Quote from: coaster
I kinda had this crazy idea as I re-read this topic today. What if SDC brought back a Buzz Saw Falls type ride?? This ride was very popular at the park. It was made as a prototype and I think it was very successful. I know BSF had it's problems though. But now the park knows what to do differently. I loved the ride and it'd be awesome to see a similar ride return.

*This was kinda just a dream post made by me because I seriously doubt there will ever be another ride like BSF make a return to SDC. But I'm just kinda wondering, what if?*

As I said earlier, the BSF thing was kinda a dream post...

I'm not saying this will happen, but would anyone else here like to see a return of the ride??

[Admin Note: I split this from another topic after a discussion built up around it.]

40
Welcome to the overly anticpated (by me) debate thread!! This is the place where you get to argue with fellow members! (Don't get too testy!) Follow all basic forum rules, and don't bring this conversation into any thread. If you must take it to the OOTT. (Official Off Topic Thread). All debates will be Silver Dollar City, Celebration City, OR White Water related.

You probably skimmed through the above paragraph because you just want to see the first debate. The first debate is.....

(Drum roll please)

Debates to Date
Sep. 1-Sep. 15:    Where is your favorite place to relax at Silver Dollar City? Debate Closed. Debate ended on Page 4.
Sep. 15-Sep. 30:   What is your favorite smell at SDC? Debate Closed. Debate ended on Page 4.
Oct. 1-Oct. 16:  What will we really see at Silver Dollar City in 2008? Debate Closed. Debate ended on Page 6.

Debate Number Four:

Should Celebration City stay open for the Christmas season?


You debate....You decide.

This debate will end on October 31. A new debate will be posted on November 1.

41
General Silver Dollar City Talk / Cooking School
« on: August 18, 2007, 09:56:00 PM »
We all figured this was coming for the '08 season but it looks like it's here for the Southern Gospel Picnic.

Click Here!

42
Random Talk / The SDCFans Lounge
« on: August 18, 2007, 02:03:14 PM »
I got this idea from another forum...

This is the place where you can relax from all your great Silver Dollar City conversations with others and you can just talk about anything you want!! What you did today, what's going on in your life, anything! We don't care!!



I start my high school career on Tuesday. I got my schedule and I've found out I don't have any classes with four of some of my best friends. Quite sad really.

43
General Silver Dollar City Talk / Silver Dollars and Simple Prayers
« on: July 25, 2007, 06:07:33 PM »
I posted this on the RCT3 forums and absolutely no one responded. Maybe you guys will have more appreciation for it here:

Whenever I was at church yesterday they always give us a magazine called the Pentecostal Evangel. It's a magazine with inspiring stories about Christians or just news about people doing good things in the world--stuff like that. Well whenever I picked up the magazine I was stunned to see an article about Silver Dollar City and it's owners Jack and Peter Herschend. This article really does show why Silver Dollar City is so great and why it's so important to me.

So, I decided I'd show you the article so here it is......

Disclaimer: Remember this was not written by me.


Silver Dollars and Simple Prayers
By Ken Horn


A shiny silver dollar sailed into the heavy Missouri air.
"Heads! a voice called, and two young men stared intently as the coin nestled gently into the dust at their feet.
"I win!" Jack cried. "You preach."
Jack Herschend and his brother, Peter, conducted heir business behind the rough-hewn, rustic log building that served as a house of worship called the Wilderness Church. It was time for the Sunday morning staff worship service at Silver Dollar City, and , as happened from time to time, the visiting preacher didn't show. So Jack and Pete hastily called a meeting to decide the small congregation's fate. The loser would preach; the winner got to ring the bell.

"I think Jack had a two-headed coin," Peter opines, "because I remember doing a lot more sermons than he did."
The bell would bring the entire staff And if the scheduled guest preacher didn't make it, the workers heard an extemporaneous message from a Herschend.
"When we first started," Peter says, "everything was so small; we were doing services for staff---well staff was only 20 people then. Everybody would come to church for 30 minutes and then we would all go back and the guests would come in."

Hole in the Ground
It had started with a hole in the ground. As far back as 1894 visitors to the Ozarks of southwest Missouri were taking guided tours of the subterranean Marvel Cave. In 1950, the Herschend family moved from Chicago and took over the attraction. When Hugo Herschend died suddenly in 1955, Mary and her two sons, Jack and Peter, had a decision to make.
They decided to stay.
By 1960 a small theme park was situated atop the cave. Silver Dollar City, the attraction that helped jumpstart the incredible Branson boom, was in operation, giving silver dollars in change.
Nearly half a century later Silver Dollar City is the flaship of an entertainment empire.
Herschend Family Entertainment Corporation numbers 17 properties in seven states. A second Silver Dollar City, in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., became Dollywood when Dolly Parton became a partner there. Other HFE attractions include the Showboat Branson Belle, Branson's Celebration City, and Stone Mountain Park in Atlanta. Visit the Herschends' Web site and you will find a page listing the "Core Values" for all of the HFE properties. At the end of the section is the family's undergirding principle:


Everything is done "in a manner consistent with Christian values and ethics."


Tough goal...even in a church. But in a business? In an entertainment business?
"How do you do that?" I wanted to ask the owners.
It's a gray spring afternoon as I wait for Jack and Peter Herschend and their wives, Sherry and JoDee, to join me in the spiritual hub of Silver Dollar City's 52-acre throwback to the Ozarks of the 1880's.
The owners are with a Christian group that will be using the theme park for an upcoming convention. The pace seldom slackens here, and Christian organizations love to avail themselves of Silver Dollar City's Christian- and family friendly atmosphere.
We sit chatting on the Spartan benches that serve as pews. Behind the pulpit, a large picture window spills the green of the Ozarks into the bucolic sanctuary.
"We want to be a Christ-centered company," Peter Herschend says bluntly. Every other part of the interview will revolve around that statement.
Peter, who puts you instantly at ease explains that a sentiment attributed to St. Francis says it well:

"'Preach the gospel always, using words when necessary.' We strive to do that"

Both brothers confess this doesn't always happen. After all, people are human. But Jack finds encouragement even in the times when it doesn't happen.
"Occasionally a member of the corporate family will come up to me and say, 'Let me tell you what just happened'...and it's not consistent with Christian values and ethics. Then you know it's working," says Jack, "because people remember it and they hold themselves and everyone else to that high standard."
More often it does work. And there is lots of evidence.
One day as Jack ambled through the park, he spied one of the groundskeepers, Luke Standlee, kneeling on the ground in front of a developmentally desabed chid in a stroller. Her parents stolld by with rear-moistened eyes.
Later, Luke explained to Jack: "Whenever I see youngsters who have had a hard road, I try to get them to smile. Then I ask them to make their mom and dad happy, and to please the Lord." He ended each encounter by giving the child a bright silver dollar---from his own pocket. Turns out he had been doing this several times a day. "We provided the silver dollars after that," Jack says.

Best Friends
As youngsters, Jack and Peter didn't really pal around much. They had their own interests and their own friends. But two things would unite them, and the brothers would become best friends, each utilizing his own particular giftings.
Peter describes Jack as the "left brain, logical thinker" and himself as the "right brain visionary."
The two things that brought them closer together? Silver Dollar City and a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Jack had married Sherry Nickel, a Christian raised in the Assemblies of God. He came to the Lord at 28 through the persistent witness of a traveling hardware salesman named John Shanahan.
"As soon as I accepted the Lord into my life, it was like a dam bursting," says Jack. "I felt like a new man."
Peter was a believer when he met JoDee Remien in a Silver Dollar City skit in 1963. He played a Hatfield; she was a McCoy. Three years later the family feud was over when Peter and JoDee married.
The pair found their lives changed when they both received the baptism in the Holy Spirit through the ministry of Spirit-filled Episcopal priest Dennis Bennett. "It was like going from black and white to Technicolor," JoDee says. "It was the most amazing change."
Peter agrees. "It changed my life forever," he says.

Serving Others
One of the Herschends' core values is: "We serve others...by being patient, kind, humble, respectful, selfless, forgiving, honest, and committed." The statement is part and parcel of the servant-leadership emphasis at the park.
Talk to anyone who has visited Silver Dollar City---this writer included---and they will tell you it is one of the warmest, friendliest places on earth. Christians appreciate the Christian-friendly atmosphere.
"Here folks are totally free to express their faith in tasteful ways," says Jack. "People pray with guests when it's appropriate and they witness.
Christmastime visitors find a powerful presentation of the gospel tucked into the middle of a Silver Dollar City train ride---right where mock robbers hold up the train during the rest of the year.
"It wasn't our idea," explains Jack, "It comes from a climate that says this is a place where you are free to share your faith in ways that are tasteful."
But the witnessing-in-good-taste approach is not without its risks. The Herschends have been sued twice. "We have had a few negative letters," Peter says, "but for every negative letter we get hundreds of positive letters. People want to believe there are still folks who believe in Jesus Christ. The servant-leadership program is simply the leadership style Jesus Christ gave us."
You take a stand for something or you stand for nothing---pure and simple," adds Jack. "We stand for Christ."
The attitude extends to the other properties as well.

Take my starter
It's 10 o'clock at night and a maintenance mechanic is cutting across the parking lot of Dollywood on his way home when he encounters four people standing around a car with its hood up, staring into the engine.
Climbing into the drivers seat, he cranks the engine. "Defective starter for sure," he tells the distressed tourists. "I'll be right back."
Five minutes later he returns with some tools, removes the starter from his own car (same make as theirs), and replaces the faulty one on theirs. It starts right up and the grateful group drives off.
A few weeks later the management received a letter of thanks for the selfless act. They wouldn't have known if they hadn't received the letter.
Sometimes people receive the ultimate gift. For more than 30 years, Christian conunselors-to-be have worked at Silver Dollar City alongside about 300 other young men and women who hold summer jobs.
"The surprise of their life," Peter says with delight, "is many of those young people will go home born-again Christians."

Ride...and pray
Some of the Silver Dollar City rides have a tendency to encourage prayer---like Wildifire, a looping roller coaster that plummets 15 stories; and the new-in-'07 Giant Swing, which launches riders through a barn door at 45 mph, tossing them seven stories in the air, swinging them from one side of the barn to the other. Every precaution is taken to keep everyone---staff and guests---safe. In 1969, JoDee and Sherry Herschend prayed over every inch of the property. "We gave Jesus ownership over every building," JoDee says. "We went building by building."

Other Ministries
God has blessed the Herschends, and they have responded to the blessing by giving back. Jack characteristically downplays his own involvement. "I just love the way God guides us. My brother's been involved in big ministries and so have JoDee and Sherry. I'm called to little ministries."
Jack enjoys touching young lives with hands-on ministries. He weeps easily as he talks about lives that have been changed. He also chairs a ministry called National Institute of Marriage, which rescues rmarriages that are in deep trouble.
Sherry is heavily involved in Nazareth Village of Israel, which was recently featured in the movie The Nativity. Prior to that, all of her ministries were family, marriage, and small groups. Nazareth Village is a first-century farm and village that recreates the life of Jesus, right in Nazareth where He actually stood.
Peter spends a lot of time on public education, focusing on the implementation of the statewide "Character Counts" program. He also is inolved with JoDee's ministry, The Caring People, that trains and encourages Christians to minister in significant ways to single mothers.

Still Preaching
The interview over, Peter walks with me to my car. Silver Dollar City is closed today. Workers are scattered throughout the acreage getting the park ready for tomorrow's inevitable crowds. I have been here many times, but have never seen it so empty.
Tomorrow, the turnstiles will reverberate with the sounds of guests entering, looking for good, wholesome fun. They will find the fun...and they will find something else. They will find the love of Jesus.
Jack and Peter no longer flip a coin behind the Wilderness Church to see who will preach on Sunday. There are three services each Sunday now, and no Herschend sermons.
But Jack and Peter still preach. And when necessary they use words.

44
SDC Memories/ Park History / Your Most Memorable SDC Trip
« on: July 25, 2007, 05:58:37 PM »
What is your most memorable trip to Silver Dollar City?

Mine was four or five years ago when we took my great grandma up to Silver Dollar City. She was in her early 80s or late 70s at the time. It was her only trip to a park like this and to Branson for that matter. She loved looking at all the old things in Silver Dollar City, (the church, school, all the old things on the edge of the sidewalk, the music, and the friendly folk). All the old men working in the park loved her to death. All the craftsmen would stop what they were working on just to talk to her. I have a ton of pictures of her with the Silver Dollar City employees. She also loved riding the train!! We also got her to ride Lost River of the Ozarks. The only reason we got her on that was because we told her she wouldn't get wet and it was a very slow ride. She ended up getting soaked...

At the time my sister was too young to ride Wildfire so her and my great grandma watched us from the observation deck. She loved seeing the expression on our faces.

She passed away in 2005 at the age of 85. I've been to Silver Dollar City with my best friends, my parent's friends, church friends, family, family reunion type trips. None of those trips mean as much to me as the memories I made with my great grandma on that weekend. It was such a fun trip.

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