Topics

211

General Silver Dollar City Talk / One more reason to love SDC

« on: April 03, 2008, 06:48:24 PM »

Take a look at this topic over at the 1Branson forums -> http://www.1branson.com/forum/showthread.php?p=319892&posted=1#post319892

Apparently, SDC has been phoning various people about their experience at the park on opening day, when twice the expected amount of people showed up. They're actually spending the time and money to look into the issue and see what can be done to correct it.

Now, not to bash on other parks, but how many other parks give a rat's ass about their customers waiting in line? It's only a problem to them if they get too many complaints. As for SDC, their integrity and commitment to excellence just keep showing.

212

Construction/Rumors / Future Wet Rides

« on: March 27, 2008, 11:11:55 PM »

So I was just browsing through some photos of the River Battle's opening at DW, and I was thinking about the possibility of such an attraction coming to SDC in the near future. It could be a serious possibility, seeing as the what works well at one park always ends up at the other, and the River Battle seems to be a hit at DW.  Besides, it's a solid family/kid-friendly ride that the GP loves.

 The only beef I have with it is that the theming on DW's model is really plastic looking, and it really kinda clashes with the Mystery Mine. In fact, I would go as far as saying that it destroys the atmosphere of that area of the park, and I hope they go back over it in the future and make more of a transition between MM and RB.

That's what worries me about one coming to SDC. As the park grows more and more into a basic theme park, it would be very tempting for the management not to just plop one of these by Geyser Gulch somewhere and just throw in a bunch of the same plastic theming. It would kinda work because that area is already getting off the theme of the rest of the park, but it would start a serious trend of apathy from keeping the park set in one solid feel...

Meh, I just hope that if we get one of these, they theme it a little more realistically than RB. If they went with it, one of these could fit in marvelously at SDC, just so long as they don't cheap out.

213

Branson Talk / What happened to Pinnacle Falls?

« on: March 22, 2008, 07:43:47 PM »

Back in 2006, it was announced that a massive new $600 million dollar resort was being built just to the west of Celebration City called Pinnacle Falls, to open in 2008 - but now it's 2008, and there's no sign of it. What happened? After all the hoax Disney rumors, I kinda forgot about it until now, but the artwork for it looked amazing, and I really think it would have pumped a lot of interest into Celebration City.

214

Announcements / Check Out The New Site

« on: March 18, 2008, 10:29:30 PM »

...Or at least what it will look like - sort of.

This is subject to a whole lot of change, but here's the general template for the new site - http://www.sdcfans.com/test_index.html

The empty top area will be partially filled with some sort of GIF image of either a coaster track piece or SDC's sign. The top nav will hold a drop down containing everything currently situated in the right-hand nav on the current site. Also, I'm not sure about the 'Latest Posts' box, I may switch it to 'Latest Articles' for one of the features I mentioned in another thread.

It may take a few days to get this on the CMS that I built though, I thought I would have it up faster, but I had to go back and re-build a bunch of sloppy CSS. I knew I should have just built it myself...

Anyhow, if anyone has any complaints/suggestions, they had better hedge them now 'cause once I get it hooked up, it'll be hard convincing me to change it.

215

Construction/Rumors / New Construction Photos

« on: March 10, 2008, 08:40:14 PM »

In case anyone hasn't been watching the home page, Copper sent in another round of photos today, showing off construction and some general park improvements.

The Culinary Arts School is actually a lot farther behind than I thought it would be. I thought they had all the ground stuff done a long time ago, so vertical construction has been going on for a few months... Then again, it is a special kind of building.

Glad to see some love being given to Flooded Mine, especially when it brings back retro theming.

Here's the link -> http://www.sdcfans.com/galleries/sdc_mar_08/sdc_mar_08.php

216

General Silver Dollar City Talk / Off-Season SDC Photos

« on: January 14, 2008, 07:10:10 PM »

In case any of you aren't monitoring the home page, Copper has once again sent in a batch of photos from beyond what the general public can see. This time, we're getting a glimpse of what SDC looks like for the 3 months it's not operating.

http://www.sdcfans.com/galleries/sdc_winter_08/sdc_winter_08.php

I thought it was interesting to see the Flooded Mine cars laying all over the pathway - I always assumed they had a storage area or something where those were hauled off to for winter re-builds.

217

Announcements / SDCFans Shop Coming Soon

« on: December 12, 2007, 07:21:18 PM »

Maybe a little late for Christmas, but I'll be opening a Cafe' press shop with a few t-shirt designs and a few assorted gimmicks soon. If Joy allows, some of the T-shirts will feature the design she came up with a while back, while the others will have a basic scrawly-text logo.

It's not like I need to raise money from the site or anything, I just thought it would be cool for us to have some threads so that one day, we just might see each other at the parks and recognize each other.

218

General Silver Dollar City Talk / SDC Food Prices Rise, While Quality Diminishes

« on: November 28, 2007, 09:08:14 PM »

During my recent visit to SDC, I stopped by what was once one of my favorite places to eat in the entire world. I got my traditional favorite dish of a pulled pork brisket sandwich, with fries and a small drink all for a whopping $9.50 thanks to the season pass discount. I usually don't mind the high price so much, because the food is usually very good - this time, however, it tasted like a cheap church dinner. Seriously, the fries were good but the meat reminded me of a high school cafeteria dish.

I'm not saying all the food around the park was this bad, but it certainly seemed like a little less was put into everything. Maybe it was the fact that the place was so crowded that particular weekend, but it had never been like this before.

What's with the high prices though? I understand that they have more expenses with their restaurants than your average fast food joint, but $10 for a fairly small meal is pretty bad. I could get a better meal at Rib Crib for $7.

I'm not the only one who's complained about this either, but luckily SDC takes this kind of thing pretty seriously, so I'm sure things will shape back up again soon. I will say that even in its low point, the food at SDC is astounding better than what you could get at any other park.

219

General Silver Dollar City Talk / Steve's Christmas 07 SDC Trip

« on: November 25, 2007, 08:14:07 PM »

I just got back from SDC, and I have about 120 photos to go through and get up on the site. That'll take awhile though, so I'll give you the story now.

As we drove in, I saw them clearing land for the new road re-direct, and I finally got to see for the first time the cleared-out gully where the new parking lot will be. I never thought it was that  huge, but it sure is needed - we had to park way back down the road in JD lot, which is a gravel lot past Deer Run.

Being Black Friday, the park was pretty packed, but I still managed to have a great time. As usual, crowd levels started to drop after the first parade, but it was just too cold for it to be really worth it. In fact, it was cold enough to shut down even Wildfire; I believe it got to around the mid-twenties.

I got one ride in on PK and Electro Spin, several on TGS and FiTH, and quite a few on both Wildfire and ThuNderaTion - and everything was running fantastically. The coasters were rattling just a little due to the cold, but they were still all very smooth. I would have ridden PK more, but the line was 30+ mins long, and I was sure it was going to shut down any minute.

The lights were better than ever, especially on the main square. The new tree complete with the new light syncs was awesome, though there wasn't as much light syncing on the rest of the square as I thought there would be. Still, the new tree was extremely bright and very cool looking.

I got tired of riding marathon riding Wildfire, so I started marathon riding ThuNderaTion Sat. night while the temps were at about 33 degrees. It was... cold, but definitely worth-while. 

Yeah, I can't really think of much else to report on, but here's a short list of things I noticed:
the train added an emergency-stop cord sometime since my last visit this summer (did something cause this?); Grandpa's Mansion had it's effects tuned up and fixed; the tree house looked the same as ever; and they weren't saying anything about either the parking lot or the new craft house. Oh yeah, I looked at their back lot (from atop TGS), but I didn't see anything.

220

Announcements / A photo request

« on: November 13, 2007, 11:02:32 PM »

In making an image for the site, I accidentally deleted one of my more widely-used photos of SDC's main signage out on Indian Point Road. I need a good photo of this sign for a logo thingamajig that will be used on a new site template.

So, if anyone has a good photo of the main SDC sign, or is planning on taking a trip to the park soon and can get one, then I'd be much appreciative if I could use it. 

Thanks.

221

Other Parks / Favorite Park and Why

« on: November 01, 2007, 10:26:16 PM »

So as JBOnline was saying in the other thread, there's definitely an array of viewpoints out there from which one determines which park is the best.
I, obviously, find SDC to be the best park out there, and that is because I value the nostalgia, the atmosphere, the charm, and the general fun all around feel of the place over the number and size of their thrill rides. Now many others, on the other hand, find that other parks (like SFStL) are better because of their thrill offerings, or for any other number of reasons.

Which park do you find to be the best, and why?

222

General Silver Dollar City Talk / New Craft Barn

« on: October 31, 2007, 08:48:55 PM »

It sounds like a huge new craft workshop is being built at SDC that will be choc-full of demonstrations and workshops. It's exactly the kind of thing the park needs, so I'm happy to see it coming. I just wonder where it will be, and how much of this makes up the 2008 improvements.

223

Announcements / More major upgrades ahead

« on: October 27, 2007, 01:41:57 PM »

Sometime in early to mid November, I'm going to roll out a new layout along with some new features. I'll be upgrading the photo galleries to run on Lightbox, fixing up the comment system (hopefully adding a log-in feature, rather than letting everyone come in and post), adding a couple of new pages, and maybe throwing in a few other special features as well.

I'm much better prepared for this round of upgrades than the last, so this time things will go much more smoothly and the outcome will be much better. I've already done a lot of it, I really just need to finish the layout/design.

Btw, this upgrade package will probably be the last before I go completely all-out and re-do the entire site in a way that will really set us apart, but that will take awhile.

224

General Silver Dollar City Talk / Conductor Sam Has A New Daughter!

« on: October 23, 2007, 08:31:54 PM »

According to the latest SDC blog post, Conductor Sam's daughter was born last week. -> http://silverdollarcity.blogspot.com/2007/10/girl-conductors.html

Congratulations, Sam!


On a side note, it sounds like the big 08' announcement is well on the way.

225

Construction/Rumors / Did the Herschends Buy Sidewinder?

« on: October 23, 2007, 06:25:07 PM »

It's been reported by some that the Herschends have bought the Sidewinder from the defunct Wild West World amusement park in Wichita. The Sidewinder is the Moser version of a frisbee. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the Herschends did buy it, as it would fit in at any of their parks. Hell, last year SDC almost got a frisbee, albeit it was going to be a Huss model.

CC already has a frisbee, but it wouldn't technically look that bad if SDC got one... then again, SDC would do better with a full Huss model. This'll probably go to WA if the Herschends have indeed bought it.

Anyone know more?