BigDipper 80

Up in Cleveland (and pretty much everywhere else in the Midwest I've seen them other than Cincinnati) they're usually just referred to by whatever their name is, which is usually "Dairy _____". I don't even think we called them "soft serve stands" or anything, there just wasn't a generic term for a shack you buy soft serve out of up in NEO. Creamy Whip must be to Cincinnati what treelawn is to Cleveland.

They ran the rail along the curb in an attempt to boost the economic development along the line is the reasoning I've heard. Seeing as most of Woodward is 9+ lanes wide, I would think they could always re-stripe the lanes as bus/train only in the future as they see fit. What I didn't realize is that over half of the route is off-wire. That's kind of interesting.

^That's actually kind of great to hear and exactly how successful regionalism is supposed to start, in theory anyway. I wish more of Ohio cities' leaders were willing to borrow and steal ideas from other cities for import back here.

I haven't popped into this thread in a while and just saw the renderings for that new hotel... that's pretty awesome!

Heck, they should go ahead an add esplanades to every arterial road in the city, or at least give a chunk of ROW back to one side of the street or the other. It's not like there's anything along 90% of them that would prohibit an across-the-board major road diet/straight-up lane removal.

It would be interesting if they built a big building around/over that midblock parking garage, but I would assume it's probably cheaper to tear it down and start from scratch.

^the project directly above this one is in fact a rails to trails project, and Dayton has already done multiple rails to trails. I probably should have stuck a carat and a winky face on the other post but posting via cell phone makes things hard!

Meanwhile, Cincinnati can barely get a half mile of bike trail built in an affluent neighborhood.

Heinen's or maybe the old courthouse and City Hall would probably be cool to them. Hunting down and looking at the few remaining Millionaire's Row mansions might also be interesting.

Five years for some plastic seats and a Cedar Point style useless non-canopy? :-o

Yeah now I'm curious how Dayton got away with annexing their airport, since it is a true exclave of the city and not connected by any narrow strip, at least according to both Wikipedia and Google Maps. Come to think of it, Riverside and Trotwood are both non-contiguous cities, so I wonder if annexation rules are at the county level.

^^^ is that just a Cincinnati thing, re. annexing only adjacent land? Dayton annexed the land their airport is on but it isn't contiguous with the city.

Cop + rich Oakwood people = fancy, good donuts, hopefully.

Yeah, I might have mentioned it upthread, but there was never really a moment where I felt overwhelmed by crowds in Tokyo. That contrast between those side streets and busy intersections is everywhere, and perhaps most notable right around Harajuku Station where you have mass amounts of teenagers and shoppers on one side of the street, and then you cross the street into Meiji Shrine and it's basically completely silent and peaceful. Heck, even on the "busy" side of the street it's really not that noisy, especially compared to other megacities. I think the Japanese are all well aware of the fact that they live on top of one another so they go out of their way to be respectful of other people's space even in the public realm. Honestly, the biggest adjustment for me was the shockingly small volume of beverages served with meals. The small food portion sizes I could deal with, but the Dixie cup's worth of tea or juice took a week to adjust to.

Yeah for as massive and influential as Tokyo is, is definitely very much a monoculture with very little outside influence or tourism. I feel like the plane flight's length/cost tends to keep a lot of Westerners away. Ironically, the language barrier wasn't even an issue at all, since everything that any outsider would use either is listed in English or has a picture or pictogram explaining it. Apparently the Brits and Aussies tend to cluster in the Roppongi clubs when they visit (Roppongi also has a large African population, at least by Japanese standards), and there's a sizable American expat quarter in Nakameguro, but there really aren't a lot of American tourists anywhere.

Hey, don't hate on Disney World, they've got better mass transit than most American cities! Rail, monorail, ferry, boat, even dedicated bus lanes! They actually do urbanism reasonably well, once you're actually on the property.

I know Rob and Dave personally and I really do think they care about doing the right thing for Clifton. The apartments they built on Whitfield where my house used to stand are pretty good material-wise even if the siting isn't the most urban, and it's better than most everything else being built in uptown, especially seeing as that was their first go-around with new construction. This lot is basically across from their leasing office, so hopefully they'll want to put up something nice since they'll have to look at it every single day!

^ I still give the slightest "coolness" edge to Dayton's own NAD Century Flyers for the Art Deco styling and the buzz bars, but seeing as Millennium Flyers are essentially spiritual successors to the Century Flyers and the Prior and Church design and actually ride amazingly well, I have to say that they're definitely more successful and "useful". If people haven't picked up on it, Ohio actually was/is a huge hotbed of roller coaster design. Pretty much every company that builds wood coasters today can be traced back to Charlie Dinn, King Island's head engineer who built The Beast. ... I think I'm having a relapse into my theme park forum posting days, I might be getting a bit too into the nerdy technical weeds... haha.

Seeing as it was built in-house and not by an outdoor engineering firm, plus the fact that it was the 70s, the lurches don't surprise me haha. Also, all of these old wooden coasters run very heavy PTC trains, which "steer" only when the train slams into a curve and the weight of the train causes the bar-linked wheels to turn into the curve, which coupled with the weight of the trains leads to a tendency to "shuffle" around turns and degrades the smoothness of the track relatively quickly. Modern wood coaster trains tend to have articulated bogies so they're able to actually steer through the turns, which is a big factor on why these newer rides stay smoother and require less maintenance.

Kings Dominion brought back their Eagles (KI did too but put them in Planet Snoopy), but these new models just aren't as good as the old ones. The only "old school" one I ever went on was at the now-gone Erieview Park on Geveva-on-the-Lake's "famous resort strip". Erieview also had a great classic Pretzel dark ride that was unfortunately lost to time like the rest of the place. The most offensive part is that Indiana has FIVE Custom Coasters International wooden coasters (some of their best work too), and Ohio has zero... and CCI was headquartered here!

The magnetic brakes kill that ride. That said, The Beast at night during Halloween Haunt is unlike anything else, especially if it's raining a little bit and the track is extra slick. I've never been as genuinely scared on a roller coaster as I was riding it a few years ago under those exact conditions. We rocketed way further up the second lift than where the train usually engages the chain, and the helix was extra hellacious. For each of Ohio's terrible wood coasters, PA has two or three good/great ones. It's unfair that that state gets Ravine Flyer and Phoenix and Jack Rabbit and Thunderbolt and Lightning Racer (hell even Flying Turns and Leap the Dips are at least unique) while we have Fairly Odd Coaster and other "meh" rides. All of our interesting woodies were at Euclid Beach and Idora and pre-1960s Cedar Point.

^The Mine Train at that same park (Ocean Park) has an equally spectacular location on the side of a mountain. It's probably got one of the coolest locations of any amusement park on the planet. Iron Rattler at Fiesta Texas is another ride that makes pretty good use of a cliff face, or a the edge of a quarry if you want to get particular about it.

It's Cedar Fair. If people honestly expected anything interesting to actually happen in the shed then they clearly know nothing about Cedar Fair, who couldn't properly theme a ride if their lives depended on it.

Now that the POV's have been leaking out, Mystic Timbers' pacing doesn't look as terrible and bland as it did in the original rendered video (never judge something by a rendering!), it looks like a pretty solid Prowler-esque ride even if the whole shed thing was a tad overhyped. Still one of the better final brake runs though! :laugh:

I seriously can't keep up with the changes any more. It's a completely different neighborhood now, and it's crazy that there's still so much to go.