Dec. 18 – Sorry I missed an update last weekend, so today to make up for it I present two new sections added to the Disneyland canon. The photographs are still kind of fuzzy, but the criticism is getting even sharper. That may or may not be a good thing, depending on your perspective. Also a minor side note, for anyone wondering where Splash Mountain and Critter County are: seemingly all of the water-based rides save Pirates were closed the week this trip happened, so I’ve skipped them for now. As I’ve said in a previous, I hope to return one day to expand, revise, and reconsider the opinions in these articles. There’s some good stuff in the weeks ahead.
Dec. 4 – Slowly but surely I manage to whittle away these reviews with the little free time I have during the week, and I hope my analysis/criticism of two Disneyland iconic classics will say a few new things that haven’t already been said in their 40+ year history. In two weeks I’ll be able to pick up the pace of updates precipitously.
Nov. 26 – Loyal fans of Disney’s Jungle Cruise and Indiana Jones Adventure attractions might wish to avoid today’s critical analysis, which delves into the topics of hyperrealism and narrative as found in these classic Adventureland rides, respectively. The next update on New Orleans Square dark rides will be considerably more positive in tone. Just a note, the photos in this update are very sparse and low quality. My hope is that these will become “living reviews” that I update and augment over time as I’m given more chances to return.
Nov. 21 – When I first started this website, my original project was to define an aesthetic for the traditional roller coaster such that the experiences could be as appreciated as a work of art. Since that time I’ve had the chance to travel to numerous big Theme Parks where the focus wasn’t on the coasters but on the themed environments. Thus started a second major thesis that I would begin to develop on this website in regards to the hyperreal aesthetics found in places like Disneyland. While I am very optimistic about the prospects of roller coasters, I am far more pessimistic about the validity of themed environments as (potential) works of art.
Today’s update further explores the latter topic. The introduction for Disneyland gives a good overview of my feelings towards theme parks and where I perceive some of the basic problems and limitation to be within the aesthetic domain. The second article is a philosophical paper which goes much deeper into the subject-object perceptual relationship within a theme park, and makes an argument for why I think themed hyperreality is fundamentally incapable of ever being classified as art. Don’t worry, future updates will be far more optimistic (well, some of them), and there are even a few attractions that I’ll describe using the M-word: “Masterpiece”.
Nov. 12 – My apologies for missing last weekend. I was almost ready to publish but couldn’t quite finish, and then got caught up in hectic activities all week. I do think the complete set of California Adventure reviews are some of the better critical writing of a complete park I’ve done for this website, however, so be sure to read part three below (as well as parts one and two if you haven’t already done so). I’ll try my hardest to make next weekend’s update extra sweet to make up for the lost time last week.
Oct. 30 – In today’s news, Disney has trouble finding original stories with causally connected events and motivated by character development! And tomorrow’s top story: No one bothered to read yesterday’s news!
Oct. 23 – Despite only one ride being properly reviewed in this article, Disney California Adventure (Part One) ended up longer than I anticipated and I had to postpone publishing part two until sometime later this week. After you read the review below, please see the new photo sets from a visit last weekend to some favorite traditional parks: Kennywood, Knoebels, and Conneaut Lake, plus a look at the remains of Geauga Lake.
Oct. 13 – Jeremy vs. Silver Bullet: 1-0, my win. Next time you see me here I’ll be facing off against the Mouse. Don’t worry, I’ll be starting at the “other” park so I should have a slight upper hand. Mark your calendars for the weekend of the 22nd, as I’ve got a brief end-of-season road trip penciled in for this upcoming weekend.
Oct. 3 – There, I finally did what I said I was going to do. Two reviews for next weekend. (Bearing in mind that when I said that the last update, I meant that I write the reviews over the weekend so they’re ready to go for everyone Monday morning). Knott’s Berry Farm Uno and Adventure City are online. Clicky the linky below.
Sept. 25 – I just cannot get with the program, can I? Another two weeks later, Six Flags Magic Mountain Part 3 is finished, taking a full month to report on a two day visit. I guess it’s just super-senior year of university, just getting back from touring the world and not really all that certain where I’ll be a year from now, it’s all a bit hard to focus. (Never minding a few health concerns…) I feel like I’m starting to get some energy and motivation back, however, so I’m really going to try my hardest to get caught up with two reviews by next weekend.
Sept. 10 – I seem to recall sometime in the not too distance past that I predicted an update period of no longer than once a week, and that was nearly two weeks ago with no update in the intervening time. One of these days I’ll finally guilt myself into making good on my own promises, until then I’ll just use as my excuse being in Wisconsin all labor day weekend to add even more to the pileup of future review material.
Aug. 27 – The first of what will be a very long series of 2011 reports is now published. Yes, these were from a trip in January. Yes, it is nearly September. Yes, it will probably be a very long time until you get to read my thoughts on Tokyo DisneySea. Yes, I will do everything in my power to increase the update frequency to at least once a week, if not more often. In the meantime, there are two reports waiting, as well as a new chapter index for California 2011 to give you an idea of what’s to come in the near future, plus a refreshed About page.
Aug. 6 – This is neither the first major update I wanted to produce after a long hiatus, nor am I presenting it in a timely manner, so I must apologize. To provide some back story, before I started this website in 2009 I had been writing a series of reviews about a large 2008 trip to Pennsylvania and New Jersey for CoasterSims.com. I didn’t quite get to finish with the series before the site unexpectedly went offline one day never to return, so I took what I had and started writing new content from 2009 and launched this site. The only problem was, I didn’t have a physical copy on my computer of every review I had written. I had some, but still about 7 1/2 were missing (stupid of me, I know). Well I figured eventually I’d be in contact with the owners again so I could get them off the hard drive if they didn’t decide to revive the site itself, but it was hard to get a definite answer and the weeks turned to months turned to years and I still had dead links under the 2008 review tab. Once I got back from Asia I decided I needed to either get the reviews back or rid of those links so I tried indirectly getting in contact once more. The reply relayed back was that all the forum information had by now been lost, so I was out of luck. Well, I decided that if I ever wanted to re-write the reviews for a bunch of deserving small parks, I’d better do it now before starting on the next novel of 2011 travels. So I did.
That brings us to today’s update, which at least is as big as I promised. Kennywood (Part 1), Idlewild Park, Kennywood (Part 2), DelGrosso’s Amusement Park, Ocean City NJ Parks, Clementon Park, Dutch Wonderland, and a significantly revised and expanded Dorney Park review are finally online, filling a long-gaping hole that has been pestering me since Roller Coaster Philosophy first went online. With few exceptions they’re pretty simple, straight-forward trip reports, but I daresay the quality is better now than they were when I wrote them not quite three years ago. I promise I won’t take as long to get the Six Flags Magic Mountain stuff published next, although I am taking summer classes one of which is a creative writing course that are zapping a bit more free time away from writing for this website than I had at this time last year. Thank you for continuing to read my work even though it’s not of the most timely nature anymore, and I think it’s safe to say that the best of RCP is still to come.
July 6 – I’m back from Asia and ready to once again begin irritating the English speaking world! I’ll start by skipping all of the exciting material I’ve been collecting for the past five months and posting an outdated review from 2008 for a now-defunct park no one ever cared about when it was open: Fun Spot. I will continue by requiring to click multiple links to my off-site Flickr account to view the 6000-some photos I’ve collected from the month of June alone in China, Korea and Japan. Lastly, just to make sure even my most loyal readers are made to feel completely alienated, I will direct you to hit the refresh button at the top of your page so you can see all the new RCP heading banners I’ve thrown into the randomized mix. (Can you identify all twenty-five?) Now that you’ve finished, aren’t you glad that I’m back?
(P.S. Also, the next update might require a bit more waiting. But when it arrives it will be big.)
May 28 – Here it is: the last European update from 2010. It’s been a long time coming but I finally got Oakwood (plus an appendix to the whole series) finished. This also brings the total word count for the whole saga to roughly 203,500… which is a mere 8000 words short of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment! Needless to say I’m as glad as anyone else to be done after overlong delays and moving on. The ‘next thing’ is already even posted in the form of a screenplay I wrote for a film class this semester based on a short story by Sartre, the idea being to take a very European philosophy and reinterpreting it with a very American form of story-telling, revising conventional western-genre tropes in the process. A lot of good material for one update!
Sadly, this will be the last update on this website until early July at the soonest. In a few days I depart for the final (and by far most adventurous) portion of my Asian travels in the form of a month-long backpacking journey through Shanghai, Korea and Japan. This is also just after getting back from a few days in Shenzhen at Happy Valley, Window of the World and Knight Valley. Being right across the border from Hong Kong these were parks I should have visited a long time ago had I not been eagerly awaiting some high profile 2011 attractions to begin operations… and, well, you can see from the pictures how that when. Oh well, there’s still much for me to look forward to in the upcoming weeks. Adieu, and until next time…
May 19 – Here’s a fast story for the World Travels folder as I look to finally finally finally wind down the 2010 updates with only one more to go. Of more interest to those here just for the coasters is a large photo collection from an eleven day tour of Taiwan, which I hope will explain why this update was also tardy.
May 1 – Today’s update is deeply, deeply indebted to the work of Samuel Beckett. Please read.
Apr. 24 – Wasn’t it just two updates ago that I said I don’t like the long gap between a continuous story? Yet here I am nearly a month after the first part was published finally presenting part two. Whatever. For one thing, I was busy these past weeks including a visit to Chengdu, with stops at their Happy Valley theme park and the absolutely breathtaking Jiuzhaigou National Park. For another, this is the longest and most detailed report in the entire European series yet. Lastly, while I had some writer’s block on this report I was able to get nearly half of the next one written so that shouldn’t take longer than next weekend to publish. I promise.
Mar. 27 – Here it is, the update many have been waiting for: part one of my Alton Towers reviews is now online. According to my word count this is so far the longest written review for any of the European parks, so make sure you’ve not got anything you need to do in the next half hour before clicking that link. Part two may be a bit more delayed because I have midterms over the next two weeks, and I strategically planted an excursion to Chengdu for the upcoming weekend so I won’t have much time for waxing poetic over Nemesis and Thirteen.
Mar. 16 – Yeah, that took longer than I wanted, but I’ve been busy these past weeks, what with Chimelong Paradise, Supersonic Odyssey, Universal Studios Singapore and all. The next update will be part one of Alton Towers, which by my estimates will probably only be read by my mom and one or two other people. I may delay it slightly more so that I can have the second part ready within a week after the first is published because I don’t like the long gap between what should be a continuous story. While you’re all sitting around waiting for that, I’ll be sitting around waiting for GCI’s Mountain Flyer to open up. “New Texas What“?
Feb. 25 – The first half of Blackpool Pleasure Beach is posted online. So too is a photo set from this week’s escapades in Hong Kong Disneyland. The next update will bring tidings of Big One, Grand National, Valhalla, Nanhu Park, Chimelong Paradise and more (if it’s really late). Too much excitement at once, in my opinion.
Feb. 12 – Both of today’s updates come from Scotland, the first an unequivocally positive experience, the second I shall call an educational experience. Continue checking my Flickr pages for updates from Hong Kong like Lantau Island and Macau. The light at the end of the European review pipeline is glowing brighter.
Feb. 2 – Fun Fact: Today’s update was written in parts between Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and over the Kamchatka Peninsula. This is the time when progress on the site is far more exciting on my end than it is on yours. I’ve already gathered material all around Southern California and more recently at Ocean Park in Hong Kong. I’ll direct you to those photo pages now because it will be the better half of a year before you read any written prose about them. That’s the primary drawback of writing so many detailed written reviews, timeliness starts to fly out the window; the content is more timeless anyway. While I’ll probably spend the rest of the busy spring finishing up UK reporting and not get to anything else until I’m back on American soil in July, I may push some of the more exciting 2011 projects to the front of the queue when freshness is an important factor; it’ll depend on how I feel. I’ll try to shorten the time frame until next update(s) but the Chinese New Year starts tomorrow and I’ve still got a lot more life to be lived that does not involve my computer screen.
Jan. 12 – I had to take a few days off because the three reviews in as many days wore me out. But I’m back with a report of Flamingo Land ready just as I’m packing my bags to leave for the start of even more “field research”. Expect to see the pace of updates to slow down again compared to what it had been the last couple of weeks over winter break, though with luck I’ll have enough time to fritter away on the side a Lightwater Valley report much sooner rather than later. I have thoughts to share on the Ultimate.
Jan. 8 – This is a boring report about boredom in the butthole of Britain. Don’t read it. Now that I’ve said that you probably are unless you’ve got better things to do anyway. You do, don’t you?
Jan. 7 – I began today with a blank page and finished the night (morning) with a complete article on two parks. God damn I need a life. If it starts getting a bit hoity-toity in the last three paragraphs or so that’s because I’ve been reading Kundera recently as well.
Jan. 6 – A shorter review for today on a small park, Pleasurewood Hills. The two that follow will also be brief so I’m going to try and have them out on the 7th and 8th. After that my aim is to finish Flamingoland and Lightwater Valley before I’ll be packing my bags for sunny California (and after that Hong Kong) on the 14th.
Jan. 4 – The review which is not really a review but something a bit different, Adventure Island is now posted.
Jan. 1 – Ringing in the new year with what might be one of the better reviews on this site so far. Thorpe Park will be a bit of a long read but there’s laughter, tears and a few thoughts to keep you entertained.
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