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The newly combined Six Flags company is now cutting costs right and left. There's basically no more competition for them, so they may as well shave the parks down to the bare bones I guess. Lots of old rides will get the axe soon unfortunately.

Frontier City is not one of their owned properties, but I don't think it's a great source of revenue for them, so there's a possibility they won't continue the operating agreement in the near future. The only reason they "need" FC is to keep competition out of the OKC market and help funnel people down to SFOT with the dual pass sales.

Supposedly the property has had foreclosure motions filed against it in court. The two companies that previously filed liens are now looking to force a sale to get payment. Mansion needs to figure this out yesterday. The lien apparently had a clause that charged interest DAILY.

I will have to look into that. It might have been a feature that got turned off during the upgrade. It looks like all the old attachments are throwing errors... Maybe they got rid of that functionality?

I will also look into adding more features such as the Like button.

Didn't get a chance yet to play with the theme - will try to get to that this week. Might end up changing the base theme again just so I can get something that I'm actually able to update.

Just made it back from the annual ACE Coaster Christmas event. Nothing major this year, but it was good to hear Brad talk about the resort and hint heavily to the group that the years following the resort opening will be packed with new additions. He seemed to hint at a new roller coaster in the next few years. He implied that the resort area and the park would become more connected over time.

Speaking of the resort, they are already moving quickly on the earth moving. You can see it as you drive past, but it's hard to get a photo unless you are quick and in a passenger seat. I stopped at the entrance (it was Sunday, so no one going in or out) and took a couple shots that I posted on our FB page, but you can't see much from that angle. Basically it's just a hill of dirt at this point, but you can tell it's a huge area and will take a lot of earth moving.

Inside the park, the new employee lounge looks great. I only saw it from peaking through the gate next to Brown's. Looks like they made it a lot more presentable from the outside - a possible indication that they intend on using the "second entrance" more often in the future.

Really noticed how much painting they've done around the park lately. Unfortunately, it was more noticeable to me because I started realizing how plain so much of the park looks now. They've gotten rid of so much of the old signage and the antique stuff that used to be scattered everywhere. I understand a lot of that stuff breaks down over time and finding replacements at this point is not easy. Still, the ambiance is certainly changing... The park is filling up with "employee signs" now, but the rest of the theming is quickly disappearing and not being replaced. Hopefully one of these years they'll have another initiative to add more theme items back again.

https://tulsaworld.com/news/local/business/2-5-billion-vinita-theme-park-to-be-delayed-years-but-developers-say-they-are/article_79447acc-8b47-11ef-899e-5bfe02a623f0.html?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR08SZc5vcchdefBVZ35JnaYXvKkWXqs7t4s6piynbSHe79PlXYTnD5p4Co_aem_xM4ODIjhO2GrN4MqyN55Tg

Just in case you guys didn't see: they have now formally stated that the park will indeed take a few years longer to bring to reality than originally stated. To the surprise of absolutely no one, lol.

Very little chance this project survives. They need the OK legislature to approve a stupidly specific bill that will help them pay for infrastructure and off-site utilities to support this development. That involves things like upsizing the Vinita sewage plant, upsizing their water distribution system, and presumably increasing HWY 60 to a 4-lane up to the park.

They apparently had no plan for any of this and assumed that as soon as they announced the project, the state would just do it all for them. Between that and apparently not understanding their own RV park plans before STARTING CONSTRUCTION, one has to assume that they are unqualified to get this done - to say the least.

The founder of Mansion is currently 92 years old and is still the driving force behind this apparently. I predict this project will die one of two ways: either the founder passes away first and the project team disbands due to the project being unsustainable without his money, or the OK legislature doesn't approve public funds for the infrastructure they need in Vinita.

I'll be messing around with the look of the forums on Friday most likely. I tried messing with it some tonight, but this current theme is a bit more complex than I am used to and I am out of practice. This theme actually generates style sheets on the fly rather than using a fixed css file, so that's kind of a pain.

I will eventually make this place look "rustic" again. You know we love our theming around here, lol.

I was just thinking about this project today. The website is still active, but nothing new since 2020. I sent them a message to see if the project is still alive. We'll see if I hear anything back. I check the county assessor maps and the land is still owned by an entity connected to Imagine Resorts.

WOW. Not just a resort, but a ten year building boom. They emphasized connecting the park and resort.

My initial reaction to the resort is that the architecture looks pretty bland. It doesn't evoke anything that reminds me of SDC in any way. Just a generic white resort building. Oh well, I'm sure it will be very nice, and it looks like they are going all out with the landscaping and park features behind it. It's seven stories tall, but only 260 rooms. You can tell they did indeed leave plenty of room for an expansion however. With 1200 acres, they can expand a few times, lol.

Glad this has FINALLY come to fruition after years of waiting.

Somehow I doubt there will be a resort entrance for the first few years. Seems like a long way to go to put in access back there. I'm sure they will eventually move that way though. The maintenance area will probably slowly shift north over the next decade or two so they can fit more in there in the small amount of flat space they have to work with.

^I don't think they'll be going that far. The train is pretty established, lol. Would be a hell of a job to build a new route at this point. That would be a major reconstruction of half the park. Will be interesting to see what they do next with it though. The rumor about the new train station was always a bit off, but it makes sense for them to do something in that regard because of the overcrowding at the current station. I know at one point they seemed to be looking at redeveloping the existing train station and the Flooded Mine area in one swoop. Could still happen someday I guess.


Anyway though, we are finally on the eve of the resort announcement. Any last minute guesses as to how many rooms and what else could be included? I am guessing this will be a first phase, especially considering how much work it will take to grade the site and bring in utilities. Probably just a "starter" resort with standard amenities and around 250 rooms. I'm expecting a smaller Dreammore, essentially. I think they will do it in a way that makes it easy to add onto though.

Well, I finally figured out how to push an upgrade through. Still playing with things obviously. Will be awhile before I get everything back to looking anything like before. At least the site isn't nearly as broken anymore.

They'll never go back to the 'Disney' music for sure, but there's still room for improvement. The bigger issue is that they lost a lot of their best performers. It's still a timeless show and story, but they will have to keep working at it to get close to where they were back in the glory days.

Looking at satellite maps, it looks like they have room to double the plaza area from what currently exists, but that would require bumping out to the road. Looks like they'll also have to lose a few more trees...

The big announcement is only a week away. One has to assume part of the reason behind the plaza enhancement is to make more room for the bigger and bigger crowds that will come as SDC turns into a multi-day resort destination. I'm almost surprised there wasn't more announced in this regard. In recent years, they have made a number of big redevelopments of areas of the park to accommodate larger crowds. The areas around Time Traveler, Mystic River, and the furniture factory are all unrecognizable from a decade ago. I guess without really bulldozing the rest of the park there aren't many other pinch points left to "fix" other than the entrance itself. Surprised that Ozark Marketplace and the Hospitality House are still sticking around, but I would be surprised if they are still here in five years.

Another thing not mentioned in this year's announcements: anything related to the old FITH space...

The plaza is an expansion of the existing pumpkin-event area behind FITH/Grand Expo. This will make it the main space for big events such as the mentioned fireworks and drone show. The main square is no longer big enough for anything that draws a crowd. It's been dangerous for years during the "tree lighting" since you can't get out of the park unless they have the back gate open by the candy shop - even getting to that can be a challenge!

I just hope it won't still feel like a parking lot when it is done.

It's great that they are finally adding the second tree back there too. We speculated about that when they first opened that space up years ago. Hopefully that will help spread crowds a bit.

I'm a little perturbed about them cutting the bluegrass and gospel/country music festivals short. The new spring fest sounds weak. I think they are spending their performers budget this year on Rhonda Vincent coming in for Christmas. To be fair, that sounds like it will be awesome.

SDC is teasing an announcement tomorrow. I assume it is about passes being on sale. Typically the time that passes go on sale is when they also announce new things for next year, but we've got the big reveal coming on the 17th, so I expect the announcements coming tomorrow will be about festivals, special events, etc.

The updates aren't installing correctly for some reason. I think I am out of options at this point with the current forum. The last thing I am going to try to save it is to replace all the current files with the most recent version from SMF. Hopefully it will still connect to the database and work for everyone. If not, we may have to kill it and switch to an entirely new forum.

Sorry to those who have been trying to register and can't at the moment.  I had to disable the registration using a BS anti-spam question because the bots were taking over the site due to our old anti-bot plugin no longer working.