Hershey had all of us going during this off season with a “viral” marketing campaign to advertise their new ride and to give us hints about to what it would be. This was done by a series of games and puzzles. Since that time they have announced and built the coaster. They are now in the testing stages and it will be opening in about a month.

But Hershey has not finished with the games just yet. The photos Jake posted yesterday at number 1-14. We received 4 of the pictures. A few other sites/people also received pictures. Each of the images have a letter hidden somewhere in it. Theme Park Review has put the collection together here. If you can figure out what it says, please let us know. My bet is that is something to do with the 2009 addition.

California’s Great America opened it’s season up yesterday. There were a lot of new things to see in the park, especially the ride signage for all of the name changes that have taken place.

Surprisingly I don’t hate Top Guns err Flight Deck’s new sign, I just hate the name. It has the military style lettering which makes it look decent. Drop Tower on the other hand is awful. Everything from the name to the sign is bad. Under the sign they even have a Six Flags-esque “Scream Zone.” What is that?

Did Cedar Fair’s creative team just run out of ideas? I don’t want to be too harsh, because there is enough of that going around, but really, it looks like minimal effort was put forward with some of this stuff. In other news Firefall is still under construction and it looks like they have a fair amount of work to do. Thanks to ezeiza of Flickr for the photos and you can see more of them here.

As if I didn’t post enough “amusement parks in the snow” pictures, Cedar Point provided some great new pictures today. I don’t know what it is, but I love looking at coasters covered in snow. I guess if they are going to be closed down all winter, they should at least be covered in snow.

I was checking out the Voodoo webcam today and saw that a lot had been done since I last looked. The station (building and track) is going up very quickly. It was only two weeks ago that they started vertical construction. The thing that I find most interesting is that Fahrenheit started vertical construction right around time and it is obviously a much bigger coaster. It looks like the ride will really be going vertical soon.

Two new Intiman’s for PA and I’m about 40 minutes from both (sorry couldn’t hold the excitement in)!

The past week or so has been a good one for amusement industry websites. Firstly, The Coaster Critic has updated his site, and I have to say that it looks really nice. The layout is very organized and visually appealing. The rotating banner graphic also makes a nice impression. Check out The Coaster Critic’s Blog and see what I’m talking about.

The other big news is that Coaster Radio is back! They released a show the other day and have two more on the way before switching formats to something not totally amusement industry based. They also changed their site to be in a blog format. Every few days they post a new topic and you can discuss it in the forums. It’s good to hear the guys back together and I can’t wait to see what they have in store for us.