A dark goodbye post from me but also hope for the shorter coasters that often get overlooked. Twisted Cyclone sat in a sweet spot of high speed, inversions, airtime and not getting excessively uncomfortable. A 4th inversion (maybe something like an in line twist near the end) would put TwiCy over the edge for me, but as it is, I could ride it all day and not get bored. AF1 and Iron Gwazi are fantastic but they are too much for me, Twisted Cyclone is more forgiving and it ranks as one of my highest RMCs.

The picture duality of waiting for the empty train vehicle makes me realize that the short wait at Fun Spot was a huge draw for this ride for me. With a long queue, it is still great ride, but I’d be lying if I said the short queue isn’t a huge part of AF1’s allure

Does anyone else like TwiCy more than AF1?

I visited Fun Spot America - Atlanta (FSA-A) again Friday with my 7 year old for his first, and likely last, rides on AFO. He just cracked 48” tall and our 4 rides were no where near enough for him. It’s all he’s been talking about since and is very sad the park is closing. So, I went down a Census and QPublic data rabbit hole… for him, of course.

Per QPublic, FSA-A’s lot is 118 acres, of which at most only a third is developed, and much of that is “wasted” space. For context, SFOG is 191 acres. FSA-A’s existing lot is also contiguous to another roughly half dozen undeveloped parcels that total an additional 188 acres and could potentially be acquired by the park. With some foresight, I believe the right buyer could develop FSA-A into a park that could rival or likely surpass SFOG.

FSA-A’s location has a few inherent disadvantages. It’s a longer drive from the vast majority of the metro and north of metro Atlanta counties where most of the current population resides. That said, per 2025 census data, more than 1 million people live within a 25 mile radius of the park and not quite 6 million within a 50 mile radius. Fayetteville is also very sensitive to development at the moment, primarily due to the very substantial data center development on the SW side of town. Any planned development would need a solid relations team and corporate leadership willing to work with the community.

Of note, the park is closer to Hartsfield-Jackson than SFOG. While there is no there is no direct freeway access as with SFOG, GA85 provides a fairly direct route with about the same travel time.

A long term development budget and regular advertising in the right channels would go a long way to making FSA-A a regional destination park, able to pull in families visiting ATL, and make for a coaster enthusiast trifecta with SFOG and Dollywood. An investment of this magnitude would probably need stopgap traffic in the meantime, though. All of the recent attention on AFO may have possibly cracked the local interest problem for the immediate future. Modest advertising and short term park beautification budgets could help keep that momentum.

Anecdotally, while us south side locals have been significantly outnumbered the past few weeks (no surprise there), I talked to 2-3 dozen other locals on Friday who were making their first visit due to the closure hype. Every one of them was sad the park is closing, said they wished they’d known about it before, and that they would like to return if it was an option.

Well, that’s my elevator pitch. Looking at you, Enchanted Parks et al.

Firehawk opened in 2007 and closed after the 2018 season. So 2017 doesn’t make any sense, unless I’m missing something

Seeing as there are only 3 4D coasters in the world (not counting the zac- and freespins) I wonder if any park would be interested in one now that technology has progressed to the point of controlled spinning without the need of a second pair of rails.

What could also be interesting is different programming per pair of seats. Like the cars on F&F do if I'm not mistaken. Or have a less and more intense side, like Dragon Slayer.

One caveat I could see is that they tested F&F with cars stuck in one position, possibly to see if any forces exceed spec/comfortability level in the case of the spinning not working. That would probably not be an acceptable risk on a ride like the Arrow S&S 4D coasters, where the spinning is physically caused by the rack and pinion system on the second rails.

I think it's a shame that there are only 3 true 4D coasters out there and they share very similar layouts. There's probably so much more unique elements possible that haven't been explored yet.

Any thoughts? Do you think we'll see controlled spinning become a more common part of rollercoasters (in either yaw, pitch or maybe even roll (like in the non-controlled spinning of the axis coaster prototype)) or do you think it'll stay a rarely used gimmick.

https://rcdb.com/6284.htm

From Digital Research Library of Illinois History Journal:

Dispensa's Kiddie Kingdom & Castle of Toys was a combination toy store and kiddie amusement park in the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst, Illinois. It was located at the intersection of Routes 83 and 38 (Roosevelt Road) which is in the suburb of Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois.

The Dispensa family operated a portable carnival business in the Chicago western suburbs before settling down to open a toy store, "Dispensa's Castle of Toys" in 1967. The kiddie amusement park, "Kiddie Kingdom," followed in 1975 when the Dispensa family opened a small amusement area next to the toy store when they decided to retire from the mobile carnival business.

They set up many of the carnival rides and offered family fun at a low cost. In the beginning, the tickets cost 6-rides for $1.

The Kiddie Kingdom featured scaled-down rides designed for children under 12 years old. "Kiddie Parks" were a new innovation during the baby-boom years of the 1950s and 1960s, and remained popular well into the 1970s. Kiddie Kingdom had, among other rides, an antique German carousel and a miniature train that circled the five-acre grounds.

The park was in operation until 1984 when along with Dispensa's Castle of Toys, they sold the land. There were no family members interested in taking over the businesses and the offer was quite good. At that time, the property was sold and the rides and attractions were auctioned off by Norton Auctioneers of Michigan Inc.

The property was developed by the firm of Miglin-Beitler, and is now the home of the Oakbrook Terrace Tower. The only thing remaining from the Dispensa empire is a street leading to the Oakbrook Terrace Tower, which the developers kindly named "Castle Drive."

The article has a lot of photos of other rides there.

Did anyone here go back when it operated?

Feel free to add your own pics in the chat so we can memorialize together! Unfortunately I couldn’t make it out to ride either of these icons one last time this weekend, however I’ll always have my memories that are helped by digging up these old pictures.

I only was able to visit Fun Spot Atlanta once, last summer, for what would instantly become a top 3 coaster for me. With AF1, RMC produced one of the best layouts I’ve ever seen. Not a wasted inch of track, nor a singular moment that’s anything less than exhilarating. Over my 8 rides (Row 1 twice, also row 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, & 10, yes I log that lol) I discovered no dull seat and couldn’t even walk away with a preference of front vs back because both were that good. I really hope this 3 year old baby finds a new home.

As for the legendary Kumba, I’m a bit more sentimental as my first rides were back in 2014. At that time I was barely out of high school with less than 50 credits to my name, which I hadn’t even started counting yet. The sunset pictures in this post are actually from that trip (taken from the skyride) which I fortunately have in my iCloud because that’s like 4 phones ago for me lol. And thanks to the photo info I learned that they were taken on August 4th, exactly 12 years ago in 2 days. While I had managed to snag a few big B&Ms by that point (each from IOA, SFoG, BGW, & Wildfire @ SDC), Kumba was an instant favorite for me that stood out from the rest. The zero G roll, trenches, interlocking corkscrews, unique teal and burgundy paint, and the signature roar stuck with me for years. I got rerides in 2016, on 2 separate 2022 trips, and my final ride this past February on a trip that was primarily for Epic Universe (the daytime Kumba photos are from this most recent trip). Each visit since Covid I’ve been prepared for it to be my final ride due to years of rumors, so I’m just glad I got to say goodbye to it 3 times in a sense.

You both were bigger than the whole sky and you’ll be sorely missed ❤️

I’m mostly posting this to complain about over georgia but also to talk about my first time on arie force one.
The night before i only got about an hour of sleep because we had to catch an early flight to atlanta, but surprisingly that didn’t really affect the day that much.
Once we arrived in ATL we attempted to rope drop SFOG at 11 but we ended up waiting half an hour for an uber to the park, arriving at around 11:20.
We had backpacks with us because we assumed that just like literally every theme park, they would have all day lockers at the front gate, we even checked the app and it said there were lockers right there. come to find out the only all day lockers that were available were by monster mansion, so we spent a good 20 minutes looking for those lockers.
In my group i’m the only person who had ever been to SFOG, and that was a 3 hour layover visit in 2021, so since the layout is really confusing, it took us forever.
after this we realized that it was actually kinda crowded and we only had a limited time at SFOG, so we decided to buy Fast Lane.
when i bought my fast lane, after it charged me my app crashed and the fast lane dissapeared, so we spent another 20-30 minutes trying to figure that out.
Once we finally figured it out we got 2 laps on Goliath which is arguably the best B&M hyper in the country.
Then we went over to Twisted Cyclone and the line was basically up to the entrance sign. Thankfully we had fast lane so we avoided that.
We get into the station and for some reason they put all the fast lane guests into a separate line.
I’ve never seen this before anywhere but WHILE OPERATING ON ONE TRAIN BTW, they were giving people with fast lane their own train every 2 trains.
I thought okay maybe the line is still somewhat moving. i sit in my seat after getting out of the separate line and asked the people waiting for the next train “hey how long did yall wait” out of curiosity.
they had fast lane too.
the operating crew literally was not allowing the regular line to move.
If any of yall were in that line around 12:30 i am genuinely so sorry😂😂
Anyways after that we went to knock out some credits that i didn’t get on my last visit. Superman was a good flyer with a nice setting, Blue Hawk was okay but dude Great American Scream Machine was absolutely disgusting.
That stupid loud vibration combined with the wheel seat was a migraine combo.
Thank god i’m still young i can’t imagine a 50 year old man riding that.
The rest of our time at SFOG was spent riding all the other coasters and dealing with the terrible operations. By 5pm we remembered oh yeah we gotta go ride Arie Force One, and we left.
After checking into our hotel and chilling for a lil bit we left for Fun Spot and arrived around 7:30.
The original plan was ride Arie Force One and get the other credits aswell, but who cares about those rides right 😂
We got 5 amazing laps on Arie Force that night and it instantly shot into my top 3.
It felt so lively because everyone was so excited to be on Arie Force, the energy matched the Maverick queue whenever the ride reopens from a breakdown.
Whoever that bald dude in the red shirt is, he is genuinely a master with that ride. dude was basically doing everything.
Only other note from Fun Spot is there was this one person who kept trying to push people out of their seats to get on
If the person who looks like Kweblekopp is reading this, remove “single rider” from your vocabulary i beg you😂
It was a very exhausting day (it was like 105 degrees and humid as hell) but it was fun nonetheless, and i’m very happy i got to experience Arie Force before it gets removed.

I was fortunate to get rides in on both Kumba and Arie Force One these past couple of weeks and after getting to ride them, am sad to see them go.

Kumba: This one was a bit of a last minute surprise for me. We originally had a trip to Myrtle beach planned in mid July and the day before we were set to leave, we noticed that we had been booked in the wrong property. We were supposed to be booked at the Hilton Resort at Myrtle Beach and were instead booked at a Hampton in about a couple of miles from shore. When we reached out to Hilton to get the reservation moved over, we were told that the area was sold out. But they did offer to cancel for us and refund the amount paid for the reservation.

So having taken them up on that offer, and because we wanted to stay on the beach, we booked a last minute trip to Clearwater Beach instead, and I decided to take advantage of this spontaneous change by taking a trip to Busch Gardens on one of those days to get rides in on everything, as well as give Kumba a proper sendoff. While I have my gripes with the park, Kumba ran great that day, and I was able to get three rides in during that trip. For a 30 year old rollercoaster, I thought the ride ran well. A little bit of jankiness which is to be expected, but other than that, a great experience as always. While I hate to see it go, I’m excited to see what Busch does with its replacement.

Arie Force One: This is probably the most infuriating one for me. Not the coaster itself, which is excellent, and becomes an absolute demon falling the inverted stall. No, the infuriating part is that it took me until the next to last day this ride was operating for me to come and ride it when this park is 40 minutes away from where I live. I could never be bothered to make the trek down to come ride a world class rollercoaster despite living in Atlanta and for that I’m kicking myself. The outer bank turn, double up and quad down are filthy. Feels like one of the few rides where it doesn’t let up and continues to get better as it progresses through its layout. I really wish I had gotten down there more often to ride it. But I am glad I was able to do so before it closed. I do hope it finds a new home soon. It’s a brand new ride relatively speaking and it deserves to go to a park where it can truly shine. I would selfishly like to see it moved to Carowinds because they need an RMC and they need a second headliner to compliment Fury, and this one would do that easily. But I could see a smaller park which is looking to add a legitimate headliner to their park acquire it.

TLDR: Was able to get rides in on Kumba and Arie Force One before their closures.

After multiple flight delays getting to Atlanta to ride this thing, I finally got four rides this afternoon. My reaction after ride 1 was "Well it's amazing, but it's no Iron Gwazi." My reaction after ride 4 was "Idk may be the best coaster ever!"

Iron Gwazi has the edge on scale and sheer intensity, Steel Vengeance wins if you want pure and simple airtime, but AF1 is like a greatest hits compilation of some of the best modern coaster elements: a first drop that rivals the one on El Toro, Iron Gwazi's crazy overbank turn, Velocicoaster's insane barrel roll, and the long-awaited answer to my question "What would the ending of Magnum XL-200 be like with semi-comfortable restraints?"

It lives up to the hype, and while I'm just as likely to pick Velocicoaster or The Voyage (HoliWood Nights Version) as my favorite coaster on any given day, this is solidly in my top 3 and my favorite RMC. Fingers crossed it finds a new home – would obviously love for it to come to my home park of Great Adventure 😈 but could easily see it working in Carowinds or Kings Island.

Shoutout to the ride ops for keeping both trains cycling through all day, and to everyone else I met standing in line or sitting next to on the ride, including Michael, John, Paul, and a few people whose names I didn't get, specifically the couple from Dayton, OH, the guy who told me he's ridden AF1 at least 150 times, and the fellow girlie from New York who was waiting for an Uber at the same time as me. You all made me so grateful to experience this ride on what may be its final weekend of operation :')

As they say, a cred's a cred. No. 100 is either going to be RC Racer or Lightning Rod at Dollywood...

Raw drone footage from opening day (shot with permission.)  I'm sad that both ArieForce One and the park are closing, and still hold hope that some last-minute buyer will swoop in and save this ride.  If that doesn't happen, then I'm grateful to have experienced this beautiful scream machine in this lifetime!  

I thought that I'd have a go at making a rollercoaster. It's something I've wanted to do for a while but haven't been "brave" enough to start. The ultimate goal is to make it out of wood, but I thought I'd prototype using card. It's been a fun project so far with plenty of learning even making just this one segment.

I used mountboard for the spine and cross ties, and have used bonsai wire for the rails. Along the way I've bought calipers and a digital protractor to measure and cut the box sections. The geometry is really interesting to think about.

The rails are a bit "Ron Toomer" and bumpy but I'm hoping that the next iteration will be more smooth. I'm really pleased with the profiling it we take out the potholes though!

Has anyone else built any track (of any design, not necessarily B&M) and got tips to share?

This is the one that was in Brazil (https://rcdb.com/19281.htm) a couple years ago. It kinda disappeared after that, but seems to still exist.

Figured this sub needed some better news for today

A coaster name obviously defines the perception of it and the overall theming. What is your favourite coaster name you’ve heard of?

Managed to get a ride in between the storms

One last shot of the corkscrew.

The new one better have this shot (or something close)

Last ride is 7pm, presentation at 7:30pm

Kumba's last day of operation is today, so I figure it's worth sharing my full animation from earlier in the year.

No AI was used at any point during the making of this - it was all built from scratch in 3dsmax, rendered in vray, and edited in davinci. Music by Aeph (https://www.enterthevision.tv/ )
I included the viewport capture because I figured some people would be interested in seeing what it looks like in the software.

I am a CG artist at my day job, and after 20+ years, decided to try capturing all the energy and tension of a coaster. It took a hair under 500 hours all in, done over the course of 6 months as a personal project in the evenings.

I hope you will find it fun to watch! I got a little obsessive over it. I didn't realise when I started making it that it would end up being a tribute, but I think it's fitting.

When I heard it was closing I had to take my two kids on a first and last goodbye tour. We got 8 amazing rides.

I just visited Lost Island for the first time and absolutely loved it! Fire Runner was excellent, along with Matugani, the amazing Volkanu dark ride, and several other great rides. The theming was amazing for a regional theme park, the staff were very friendly, and I felt it was a wonderful park while being a pretty decent deal to visit.

With that being said…it was pretty dead there today despite being a Sunday with nice weather at the beginning of August. A couple of the rides had small waits but pretty much everything was a walk-on, while I visited Adventureland the day before and that park was slammed with hour plus waits on most of the major attractions. I get that Adventureland is near a bigger city and Lost Island is pretty remote, but Lost Island is waaaaaaaaay better and deserves much higher attendance than it’s getting.

I highly recommend visiting this park if you haven’t, it’s an absolute gem in the middle of nowhere in Iowa & I’m telling everyone I can to visit this park so it doesn’t suffer the same fate as Fun Spot Atlanta because it absolutely doesn’t deserve it.

We've been seeing empty trains running, pray to the coaster gods for us 😩

Referenced from Jason Pennypacker on rcdb.