[RollerBee]

http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20 ... /100504016

I say let the park go, the horse is dying. Let it die a peaceful death.

[KenB]

This is why we can't have nice things...

[PhantomCat]

Is that Maggie Valley, where the cowboys have shootouts,
home of the Red Devil roller coaster,
where the support wall went crashing down the mountain earlier this year and theme park owners say it isn't their fault???

[RollerBee]

Is that Maggie Valley, where the cowboys have shootouts,
home of the Red Devil roller coaster,
where the support wall went crashing down the mountain earlier this year and theme park owners say it isn't their fault???

The very same park, although I agree that the retaining wall wasn't their fault. The retaining had been rebuilt twice recently, so I believe it was an act of nature and gravity.

[PhantomCat]

I once really desired to visit that park but after seeing the same commercial year after year and paying close attention to it, I realized the Red Devil coaster isn't all that, and I've probably outgrown the park as well if that old commercial showed all they have to offer. The way you market your theme park (or anything) is very important and your park must keep growing and evolving if you want people to keep coming back. Tweetsy Rail Road, the park that thrilled me so as a kid, isn't all that to me anymore either.

On a different note:
While visiting the Grand Canyon and oohing and ahhing for about 20 minutes, the thrill was over for me. (Yellowstone National Park held my attention longer because I was exploring as well as spotting wildlife, and yes, Ole Faithful really does shoot off steaming hot water every hour.) The same with Mount Rushmore. After I saw the president's extremely large heads carved in the mountain and awed for about 15 minutes, after seeing the film in the Visitor's Center--how the artist did it with the aid of dynamite--I was ready to go. I learned something about myself during that extensive "Go West Young Man" vacation. I am a doer. I'm like my amazon parrot when it comes to my vacations, I need to be stimulated with hands on experience, I need to be in the action, doing something. I don't just want to look at things, I want to play as well. Instead of the Grand Canyon, give me a theme park. Instead of Mount Rushmore, let's explore caves and caverns. It's okay to plan a beach trip, just make sure the hotel has at least one pool. I'm freer and have more fun there and I don't have to keep an eye out for sharks.

I also visited The Devil's Tower, the main focus in the UFO film "Close Encounters of the third Kind." While the rock structure isn't hollow or housing a secret military base for communicating with aliens inside as the movie suggest, it is available for rock climbing and they were certainly all over the Tower that day. When I found out many rock climbers lose their lives on the tower each year because of falls, I was ready to leave. I didn't want to be splattered. Amazing how words can take you from peace to worry or to fear or to anger, etc. if you let them.

[Jonathan]

The Red Devil/Cliffhanger definitely isn't all that (although I haven't actually been on it), but Ghost Town is a pretty cool park. Even the most standard rides there (like the drop tower and the wave swinger) become awesome when they are on the edge of that mountain.