Along the Track

05/30/2026

Spending a little time visiting my Grandma this morning. She worked at Coney Island in the 1950s and looks back fondly on those days. She turned 90 in January!

Picked this up at a local Half Price Books a few months ago.

05/24/2026

Roller Coaster Tycoon 2, anyone?

05/14/2026

For today’s , we have this 1999 Paramount’s Kings Island map.

Highlights of the season included the opening of the all-new Paramount Action Zone featuring Drop Zone and Face/Off, as well as the 20th anniversary of The Beast.

05/10/2026

Firehawk lives on 🎢

05/09/2026

The former Dinosaurs Alive! area at Carowinds, now abandoned and overgrown. I took this shot from the queue line of Afterburn during my visit in August 2023.

Dinosaurs Alive! operated at Carowinds from 2013-2019. It also existed at Canada’s Wonderland (2012-2018), Cedar Point (2012-2018), Dorney Park (2012-2018), Kings Dominion (2012-2018), Kings Island (2011-2017), Valleyfair (2013-2019), and Worlds of Fun (2013-2019).

04/30/2026

For today’s we have my friend and I (left) at Cedar Point in August 2007. The heyday of the baggy shorts era.

03/09/2026

Have you ever noticed this lake at the south end of Magic Kingdom’s parking lot?

This location was the former site of the Walt Disney World Speedway. Opened in 1995, it hosted Indy Racing League and NASCAR Craftsman Truck events as well as the Richard Petty Driving experience, which allowed the public to test real racing machines. The track was nicknamed “The Mickyard” by several media outlets.

The track was closed in August 2015, and part of the land was later used for expansion of the Magic Kingdom parking lot. This man made lake was later constructed on most of the remaining site.

02/12/2026

So we had a movie called Face/Off that inspired a coaster of the same name. Then the name of that coaster was changed to Invertigo. And now we have a movie inspired by coasters called Invertigo 🤯😱

First reported by Deadline, 'Obsession’ & ‘Superman & Lois’ star Inde Navarrette is set to star in Invertigo, the latest thriller from Fall and Obsession producers Capstone and Tea Shop.

The plot of the movie is described as "A group of reckless teens who convince a young park worker to sneak them onto a roller coaster before its debut opening. However a system failure traps them hundreds of feet in the air, forcing them to fight for survival as buried traumas and hidden tensions erupt into chaos."

Filming is set to take place across Thailand, the U.S., and the UK.

"Invertigo is a film about fear—both the immediate, visceral kind and the deeper fears we carry with us,” explained director Matthias Hoene. “Setting the story high above the ground allowed us to push the tension to an extreme, but it’s the emotional pressure between these characters that truly drives the film. Inde brings an incredible intensity and vulnerability to the role, and I’m thrilled to begin this journey with such a talented cast and crew.”

Your thoughts?

02/01/2026

Farewell to Dinosaur, one of my favorite Disney attractions. I grew up watching Dinosaur on VHS as a kid (one of Disney’s more underrated and forgotten movies), and it was awesome to finally be able to experience the ride for the first time in 2022. It will be missed!

01/15/2026

Did you know there is still one Paramount movie-based ride still operating at Kings Island? Congo Falls, the Intamin shoot-the-chute ride, was in fact named after the 1995 movie Congo. The ride originally opened in 1988 as Amazon Falls. Prior to the 1999 season, it was renamed to Congo Falls as part of the conversion of Adventure Village to Paramount Action Zone.

Despite the sale to Cedar Fair in 2006 and the removal of the Paramount themes, Congo Falls still operates under its movie-based name. Most guests are unaware of the movie connection, especially since Congo was a forgettable film that did poorly at the box office three decades ago.

Congo was released in June 1995 and was based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. Crichton is best known for writing the original Jurassic Park novel in 1990.