"Welcome to the mine...welcome to the trouble, 'neath the earth and soil.  You'll sweat a little water, you'll sweat a little blood, and you might get out, if the mine don't flood!"

Ooooh, flashback! 

To increase ride capacity by making it shorter.

True. I recall hour-long lines for FItH, with zig-zag queues snaking through the firemen's cemetery and back around the corner. Of course, it was the only coaster-type ride in the park at the time, and it was very popular.

These days, when it's more of an iconic/cult classic ride, and there are much more exciting rides for the coaster fans, it makes sense to restore it to how it used to be. Complete with the full soak splashdown for everyone in the third row on back. 

The National Treasure movies are great thriller/suspense movies, and I also hope they revive interest in history... so that people will learn how utterly full of cow patties the movies were! 

We spent the weekend watching the HBO series "John Adams" on DVD. I really enjoyed how the heroes' flaws aren't masked. The founding fathers had lumps, bumps, and warts -- there's nothing wrong with admitting it. They shouldn't be cleansed of their sins for having founded this nation, nor should they be burned at the stake for being less than perfect. They were what they were, and I appreciate that they left us something better than themselves.

As Dr. Franklin famously said, "...a republic, madam, if you can keep it."

I fear we've already lost it, but I continue to fight for it.

Redirects can be a pain.

I always enter the forum here:

http://sdcfans.com/forums/index.php?action=unread

That's the standard SMF way of displaying new, unread posts. I realize I don't see the main page content at sdcfans.com, but I figure that if there's anything there I need to see, someone will link to it from within the forum. I subscribe to several other SMF-based forums that are wrapped within a website or wiki (and I even own/administrate one), and that's how they work best.

And by the way... thank you, thank you, thank you for choosing SMF instead of phpBB or vBulletin!

Lockers are a great idea for guests' peace of mind, but there's no reason for them to be 50 cents. The mechanism works just as well with a single quarter as with two, and I've been to places (spas in Europe) where they don't take any coins at all -- just turn the key and take it, and your stuff is secure until you return.

Lockers aren't a high-dollar item. They can certainly be covered by the cost of admission.

The tower is definitely strange and out of place. I was reminded of Oral Roberts' "prayer tower".

It's a shame about the road, but it did need to be done. I remember traffic backed up for miles as people tried to turn left, and the local folks with stickers on their front bumpers: "I'm a native, I'll help you turn left! <-----"

Dad had a rule of only turning right except at stoplights (there were only a couple of them back then), which helped a lot. We usually stayed at Kimberling City, so we had a right turn into SDC, then turned right to get to SotH.