On a recent trip over Thanksgiving week to SeaWorld San Antonio we experienced the Shark Tour. If you’re a platinum pass holder this is one of the tours you can select for your “free animal tour” benefit and regular guests can get this tour for as little as $10 (potentially discounted further with a season pass). It’s a chance to go “behind the scenes” of SeaWorld and see how the park creates an immersive animal experience and actually touch a shark!
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While wooden roller coasters generally cost less to build, they generally require more maintenance compared to steel coasters. A park generally wants to keep a wooden ride in good condition so to avoid customer complaints of the ride becoming uncomfortably rough and potentially even unsafe. A major wood coaster is going to be $5-$10 million while a major steel coaster is probably going to be between $10 – $25 million. However, with wooden roller coasters the maintenance is greater with reports of some requiring $500,000 annually and costly rebuilds of well over $1 million. So it’s the classic case of lower capital cost with higher operating cost with wooden coasters versus the inverse with steel coasters. For places like Dollywood, maintaining Lightning Rod and Thunderhead is just a part of doing business, but for places like Alabama’s Adventure, large annual maintenance costs on their wooden coaster Rampage are a tension they’re actively grappling with today.
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We’re about a month away from the opening of Galacticoaster at LEGOLAND Florida and LEGOLAND California. Galacticoaster is an indoor launch roller coaster and these projects represent a $90 million investment by Merlin Entertainment. It was only April of last year that we were reporting on the ride building in Florida being enclosed and now we are less than a month away from opening day. Merlin Entertainment has recently begun to tease more of the details of the rides now both with media construction tours, website updates and advertisements in their LEGO magazine for kids. LEGOLAND is still finishing construction, but from what they’ve released this “family” attraction has some pretty cool specs and features that will appeal to guests of all ages.
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At IAAPA 2025 I had the chance to experience Wingz by Zamperla. Wingz offers passengers the ability to “Fly Like a Bird” by flapping their arms to make the gondola rise and fall as the central tower slowly rotates. Wingz is THE interactive family ride. In addition to the unique interactive feature, it’s designed to be fully accessible and has a specialized gondola that allows wheelchairs or scooters. It’s part of Zamperla’s ALL ACCESS and inclusive lineup of attractions.
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After years of rumors, Pokémon is finally coming to Universal theme parks. It was announced on January 22, 2026 that the Pokémon IP will debut in Japan, but is then “Universal Destinations & Experiences will deliver unique Pokémon experiences across the company’s global footprint”. There were no dates, rides or attractions announced and this is probably a couple years out in Japan and probably 2029 or later in the United States. The release was very simple and vague, but it got the point across that Pokémon is coming!
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On January 19th Dolly Parton celebrated her 80th birthday. Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, TN takes its name from Dolly and the theme park is jointly owned by Herschend Family Entertainment and Dolly Parton. The park was known by several other names previously, but this arrangement came about in 1986, marking 40 years of the park being known as Dollywood. Although she is famous for not riding the rides, Dolly’s fingerprints are all over the park and it even features museum areas about her music, career and wardrobe.
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Super Bowl LX is scheduled for February 8, 2026 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, the home of the San Francisco 49ers. This stadium is literally right next door to California’s Great America, a Six Flags park. When you’re watching the game on Super Bowl Sunday and you see some of the aerial shots of the stadium you might just catch a glimpse of a roller coaster, but the park will unfortunately be closed. Is this a lost opportunity for Six Flags? Perhaps, but even if the theme park gates are closed that weekend they’ll still make some money because of their parking lot. The park is also probably somewhat responsible for the buzz related to the neighboring electrical substation potentially contributing to player injuries due to its large power draw, but we’ll leave that one alone.
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Wild Adventures in Valdosta, Georgia always seems to be doing things to help their local community. This continued last month with Wild Adventures collecting more than $12,000 worth of children’s toys for Toys for Tots. The toys were donated during Wild Adventures Christmas Wild & Bright in Nov. and Dec., when guests who brought a new, unwrapped toy valued at $10 or more could purchase a single-day admission ticket for $19.99. The park has also done food drives and teaching water safety. If we look at just the toy donation, if the average gift was $12 that means 1,000 kids in south Georgia had a better Christmas because of the actions of the park.
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Back in November of 2024 there was a lot of excitement about the announcement that Melin Entertainment (the company behind Legoland and Alton Towers) was going to be building Minecraft attractions. These immersive areas will be built in collaboration with Minecraft developer Mojang and be built in existing Merlin locations in 2026 or 2027 in a collaboraton named, “Adventures Made Real”. It’s now 2026 and the promo video says 2026, but there’s still no further news related to Minecraft. Also, the Merlin parks have mostly announced other new attractions for 2026 such as Legoland Florida/California getting the Galacticoaster, Alton Towers getting the Bluey Coaster and Lego Billund getting the Minifigure Speedway Coaster. Therefore it looks like 2027 will be the year of Minecraft.
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Happy New Year! It’s now 2026 and parks in Georgia have begun announcing their opening date for the new year. Most parks (with the exception of Fun Spot Atlanta) close for a few months in the winter before reopening in spring. Six Flags Over Georgia actually just moved its opening date two weeks earlier than previously announced the March 14th! Here are the announced dates so far:
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BGT Safari 