2023 Early Entry

Tony just announced:

Millennium Force joins the Early Entry lineup daily, beginning tomorrow.

Cedar Point Resorts guests, Platinum, Prestige & Prestige+ Passholders all enjoy this benefit.

Do you suppose this change of heart was prompted by an unusually high number of complaints? Or maybe this was part of the original plan.

I lean toward the latter. Staffing wasn’t there initially.

Yep, under-promise, over-deliver.

The Station Wait dude put the screws into Tony, and forced his hand. Now THAT'S how you conduct an interview! It's not iffy anymore!

That is not the example I'd use for how to conduct an interview.

Also, Tony is a saint.

That whole interview was weird, kudos to Tony for what he has to deal with.

That was hard to watch. Agree, Kudos to Tony.

You mean its not a good idea to open an interview with the words "suck it"? I thought it was a nice intro to set the tone for the interview, just to show Tony he means business ;)

I think Tony realized how this was gonna go, but he had to have his game face on for the public. You can totally read his body language though, he was irritated.

Does that guy ever make any videos that aren’t pure cancer? Like he was the one who made the “Everyone is wrong about Dragster (and I can prove it video” where he spends 22 minutes waffling and then objectively does not “prove” that anyone is wrong about anything. Dude is complete clown and I’m actually legitimately flabbergasted Tony granted him an interview at all.

YouTube has been such a great opportunity to surface really interesting things, but unfortunately has also been a source of worthless and ephemeral time wasters.

Was everyone paying attention to when Tony said “this is obviously not 180 MPH” while pointing at Wild Mouse?

2024 TTD 2.0 - 180 MPH confirmed.

Plague on Wheels:

Now THAT'S how you conduct an interview! It's not iffy anymore!

What? Tony didn’t divulge anything that he didn’t want to. It was also a completely unprofessional and cringe interview - not sure if you’re being sarcastic or not…

If anything, that interview is a really good way to make sure you're not invited to Media Day again...

One of the reasons why I’m an enthusiast in disguise.

Wow. That was... something. Seriously, what did this guy accomplish by doing things this way? Makes me realize why parks don't like to work with "influencers" that often.

I have had a little YT channel for 12 years. Never really shilled it anywhere, only have 4.5k subscribers, barely make $100 every 2-3 months off it, and after visiting Hollywood Studios last week and Waldameer this past Saturday, I don't think I really am into it anymore as I had a far better time just sitting back and having fun rather than sitting for 5 minutes in front of a ride waiting for it to run so I can film it from a slightly different angle than I did the past several years. Not to mention, there's already hundreds of amusement park channels of varying quality and having yet another walk around a park or a dark ride POV really isn't going to bring new eyes to the channel. So I'll snap a few pics or even a quick video clip every now and then, but I think my days of trying to be an active YouTuber are long gone.

Same goes for concerts. I went to see Muse in Toronto back in March and it was absolutely epic. I took a few video clips of sections where I knew ahead of time something cool was going to happen (they used a TON of confetti), but I don't see how people just go and stand with their phone for 90 minutes+ to get the show recorded. Showing my age here, but I miss when we'd just go to a concert and enjoy the band(s). But that's just Old Man Ray talking. If people enjoy filming an entire show, more power to them. But when I'm paying $200 for a ticket, I'd rather enjoy the show than concentrate on looking at it through the phone screen, especially when the show was as cool as Muse's with huge set pieces, flames, shape-shifting lights, and more.

I guess the moral of my senior rant here can be summed up in one word. Sucks. :)

Ha, concerts... I went to Cleveland to see Tears For Fears about a year ago. Later in the week, looked for clips from the show, and the first one includes the back of my head for eight minutes.

Before YouTube put up the minimums for rev share, and really before anyone really talked about "channels," I put up a bunch of coaster stuff on my personal account. Made a couple hundred bucks a year on tens of thousands of views until they changed it. Eventually started a CoasterBuzz channel and uploaded the same videos, but for some reason the algorithm still puts my personal account first.

For some reason, the thing to do now is post thumbnails of you with your mouth open and some stupid click bait phase, and that works for awhile. But the big makers and science people don't beg for "like and subscribe," and they've all complained about the algorithm hustle. The best things still rise to the top by reputation, but only sometimes because they have to compete with noise to breakout.

But I watch the Mark Rober and Veritasium and Simone Giertz and MKBHD and the late night shows. You take the good with the bad.

Jeff, your comment about the people with their mouths open, photoshopped in front of a picture really cracked me up. My “suggested for you” page probably has about 75% of the videos on there with that kind of thumbnail. My favorite is this one dude who reviews cars. He uses the same picture of him pointing in EVERY thumbnail. Not sure of it’s a bit or not, but it must be working as he has hundreds of thousands of subscribers 🤷🏻‍♂️.

On a similar note, I have watched some UK Funfair folks on YT and a few of them film the entire video with the camera focused on their face. I’d much rather see the park and rides around them than seeing their face close up while they incessantly ramble. I’ve never understood why the “vlog” format has become so popular. Maybe that’s why my channel never took off. I always thought I was doing people a favor though by not appearing on camera!

And one last thing, great choice with TFF. I wasn’t in town when they were here, so I missed out 😞. Guess there’s always the YouTube videos though!

That's just it... people want to be the story instead of tell stories.I suppose reality TV kind of set this expectation, and now legions of people decided that they can do the same thing without the understanding that reality TV wasn't real, and people were cast to (hopefully) be interesting. I came to realize this when I recently started a documentary. I'm not that interesting, but there are topics and people who are.

Also, I had two take-downs today, Walt had one. Taking a bunch of video that you didn't make and talking over it isn't creating anything, it's stealing. Buy the equipment, do the travel, make the video yourself.