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Steven Spielberg Keeps His Two Percent Of Universal Studios Ticket Sales
We were pretty eager to see if Steven Spielberg and Mickey Mouse would actually come together to create some kind of super theme park. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen, and we’ll just have to settle for separate parks with separate rides. At the end of the summer it seemed that Spielberg might be getting out of his lucrative theme park consulting contract, but instead, he’s just extending it.
He agreed to delay a buyout option in his consulting contact with NBC Universal, which means he’ll be getting a fat paycheck until 2017. He’ll probably get to throw his two cents in when it comes to designing new attractions in Singapore and Dubai, so we might need to put those new parks on our theme park wish list. Maybe he’ll even tell Harry Potter how to do things the Spielberg way down in Florida. We kind of figured that his deal was too good to drop, especially because Disney probably wouldn’t have wanted to share that much cash with anyone.
Tags: 2009-Halloween-Theme-Park-Map / 2009 Halloween Theme Park Scare Guide / Halloween Travel / Scary Travel / Theme Parks / Canada Travel / Roller Coasters / → All Tags
2009 Halloween Theme Park Scare Guide: Canada's Halloween Haunt
Our neighbors to the north love to celebrate Halloween as well, even if their spooky day is after Thanksgiving. For those in and around the Toronto area, the best place to get some thrills is at Canada’s Wonderland. Cedar Fair owns the place, the same theme park experts responsible for HalloWeekends at Cedar Point. It might not be as crazy spooky as things in Ohio, but they definitely get the job done.
Halloween Haunt at Canada’s Wonderland dares visitors to explore their way through the park while attempting to avoid possessed woodland creatures and vampires. All the major rides will be running, but it’s up to you to make your way to the coasters without being frightened out of the park.
Mazes are the big thing here, and there’s plenty of returning favorites as well as some new ones. The park seems especially excited about Club Blood. Visitors are led to believe that it is just a nightclub to celebrate the season, but unfortunately vampires run it. Just try to avoid being invited back into the VIP lounge; that’s where the vampires do their thing.
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2009 Halloween Theme Park Scare Guide: HalloWeekends
If you're so over the usual haunted houses and Scream masks jumping out at you, you'd still better brace yourself for Cedar Point's haunted toy factory, "Cornstalker" scare maze which only opens after dark, and much more. Cedar Point's HalloWeekends veers away from the family-friendly fun in favor of the macabre and truly frightening.
The haunting has already begun at this amusement park, located on a peninsula in Lake Erie nearest to Sandusky, Ohio. During the summer season, the steep drops from some of the world's highest and fastest roller coasters, surrounded by sparkling water of the lake, is perhaps the scariest thing. But on September 18 through November 1, the park transforms every nook and cranny into a pants-wetting scream zone with 4 haunted houses, 5 scare zones, and 9 live shows.
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October Brings HalloWeekends To Cedar Point Theme Park
Welcome to October—it started today if you weren’t paying attention—and that means it’s time to really focus on the spookiest season of them all. Theme parks have been doing their best to get ready for Halloween, and one of those coaster kingdoms is Cedar Point. The coaster capital of the world has installed some orange light bulbs, added some pumpkins, and transformed the park into a scary adventure. HalloWeekends is yours to enjoy through November 1, and if you missed their rides during the summer, this is your last chance until 2010.
This is the 13th year that HalloWeekends have taken over the park, and it looks like they’ve really upped the scare quotient for this year. There’s two new haunted houses including Happy Jack’s Toy Factory. It sounds too creepy to us, we prefer when our toys don’t come alive. Along with the usual rides there will be plenty of scare zones between the different attractions in the park. Just pay attention and you’ll be safe, otherwise you may never make it to the park’s giga-coaster, Millennium Force.
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Cedar Point Wins Best Amusement Park Award
Thrill-seekers, get ready to have your stomach turned inside out. The 2009 Golden Ticket Award winners were recently named by Amusement Today newspaper, with the powerhouse Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, snagging the "Best Amusement Park in the World" title for the 12th consecutive year.
As the best amusement park ever, Cedar Point of course has to have the sickest rides. Three placed in the top-ten "Best Steel Roller Coaster" category, with the 310-foot-tall Millennium Force at No. 2, the 20-year-old Magnum XL-200 at No. 9 and the 42-story-tall Top Thrill Dragster at No. 10. But Cedar Point's awards aren't the only thing that lend it coaster cred. Built in 1870, it's the second-oldest amusement park in North America—behind only Lake Compounce in Bristol, Conn. Plus, it has more rides and roller coasters than any park in the world, with 75 rides, including 17 coasters.
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Weeks Later, There's Already Another Dale Earnhardt Coaster
The Intimidator has already risen again. Just a few weeks after the announcement of a new record setting Dale Earnhardt themed coaster, another theme park in the south wants a piece of the NASCAR action. Carowinds, just outside of Charlotte, has revealed the details on their biggest and baddest roller coaster yet.
This new thriller is different than the initial Earnhardt ride, so coaster fans from across the country will have a couple new things to test out for the 2010 season. This ride will climb to 232 feet tall, and then pretty much drop you right back down, as the first drop is 211 feet towards the ground. Of course after that they’ll be plenty of twists, turns, and drops that will make anyone regret that corn dog that they had before boarding. Although not quite racecar speeds, the coaster will hit 75 MPH, which is not too shabby.
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Smells, Speedos, And Sweat Banned At Theme Parks Across The Pond
The rules at British theme parks are starting to get pretty stern. No longer can you assume that it’s fine to just wake up and head out to ride roller coasters without ensuring you are neatly and freshly groomed, especially now that Rihanna might be your seatmate. Officials want to make sure everyone is comfortable, so they are cracking down on the less enjoyable aspects of the amusement park experience.
At Thorpe Park signs are going up to remind visitors to keep their arms down on the rides. In case people don’t quite grasp what they are referencing, the text of the signs makes it pretty clear—“Say No To BO.” Temperatures have been warm lately and they just don’t want smelly pits to make the park’s roller coasters unpleasant. This is no joke either; those who don’t follow the new smell prevention mandate will be escorted from the park.
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Could Steven Spielberg Bounce From Universal Studios To Disney World?
We are already quite aware of the roller coaster delays at Universal Studios in Orlando, but at least we know it’s coming sooner than later. However, that might not be the case for those of us who love the rides from Steven Spielberg movies. See, the movie director extraordinaire is re-negotiating his contract with park officials—he’s got quite the lucrative consulting contract.
Right now, Spielberg gets a flat fee and a percentage of the cash brought in for attractions at the park. He signed the deal about 20 years ago, so you can imagine that his annual check has probably increased significantly. They never set an expiration date to the agreement, but as of June 2010, he does have the right to cut things off.
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Dale Earnhardt To Rise Again In Roller Coaster Form
Over the last few weeks, little tidbits of information have been trickling in regarding a new coaster set to hit the scene at Kings Dominion, outside of Richmond, Virginia. Finally the cat is out of the bag, and the park is looking to cozy up to the NASCAR crowd with their brand new Dale Earnhardt-themed coaster. Park officials are hoping to give visitors a taste of racecar speed as the new ride will hit 92 mph as it twists and turns along its steel track.
The Intimidator 305, as it will be known, is already being promoted as the tallest and fastest gravity-driven coaster on the country’s east coast (even though they're wrong, that title will stay with the 456-foot, 128-mph Kingda Ka at Six Flags Great Adventure in NJ). With a height of 305 feet and almost a mile of track, this is definitely going to be on the must-do list in 2010 for coaster crazies. We just need to get over the fact that the first drop sends riders barreling towards the earth at an 85-degree angle.
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Florida's Summer Is Sunny Skies With Chance Of Roller Coaster Delays
We’ve been trying to plan a trip to check out Universal Studios' latest coaster at their Florida park for a while, but constant delays have left us less than thrilled. The summer is definitely approaching its end and we haven’t heard too much about this new roller coaster’s grand opening. Originally the thing was supposed to be thrilling folks around the Memorial Day weekend, but maybe Labor Day will be when we can welcome it into the world.
Apparently there’s been some issues with the lift, and the cars haven’t been making it all the way through the track. We love a little thrill, but we’d rather not be stuck upside down on a lift hill—so we say keep up the tests!
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How Do You Say 'Giant Wooden Roller Coaster' In Chinese?
What are you doing on August 8? Since it won't be 08-08-08 like last year, we're going to assume that you're not either getting married or attending a wedding, so why not hop to the opening of China's largest theme park? The Happy Valley park, just outside of Shanghai in Sheshan, the 900,000 square-meter (that's 9,687,520 square feet!) park will have discounted admission through mid-September, so it's alright if you don't rush on opening day.
For adrenaline junkies, the Happy Valley park will have a mine coaster, a diving coaster, and China's first wooden coaster—they're still making these things?— called the "Fireball," which we'd hope never ends up as an actual fireball. That's it there in the picture above.
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Disneyland Is Already Thinking About Pumpkins And Candy
With Independence Day barely in the rear view mirror, another theme park is already prepping their offerings for Halloween. Hoping to build the excitement for the autumn amusement season, Disneyland in California has announced its plans for the spookiest of all holidays. Halloween Time will run from September 25 through November 1, just in time to take down all the pumpkins and put up all the Christmas trees.
Space Mountain will be getting a special holiday-themed overlay to spice things up for those looking to celebrate all things black and orange. The Ghost Galaxy idea premiered at Hong Kong Disneyland, but the folks in Anaheim will borrow this concept to add some new music and ghostly images to the walls of the roller coaster—sounds spooky awesome.
