Best Ride Tournament - Disney Needs Your Help!

[bigwig30]

Theme Park Insiders’ 2009 Best Ride In North America Tournament continues on Monday, March 30, and your votes are needed.

Main site: Theme Park Insider

Disneyland will be represented by three rides on Monday as listed below:

Pirates of the Caribbean versus Revenge of the Mummy (Universal Studios Orlando)
Space Mountain versus Griffon (Busch Gardens Europe)
Haunted Mansion versus Apollo’s Chariot (Busch Gardens Europe)

The final contest of the day will be between two Cedar Fair coasters:

Maverick (Cedar Point) versus The Beast (King’s Island) – in case you have not ridden either one, vote for The Beast, it is a 30-year-old wooden masterpiece that needs your support!

The Disney attractions listed above are facing some pretty stiff competition, so if you want your favorites to advance, you will need to take a minute and vote!

Incidentally, Cedar Point’s Maverick bested The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror on Friday simply because none of the Disney fans showed up to help out. Imagine that, a Disney masterpiece beat by an unthemed roller coaster. How pathetic.

Please take a minute to vote (no registration is needed, just a willingness to click a button!) – Disney fans need your to help make a difference! We don't want to see any more Disney masterpieces beaten by inferior attractions!

For details and a PDF bracket visit: www.themeparkinsider.com/best-ride-tournament/

Thank you in advance for your help!

[Kritter]

I'm lost on how to vote...

[bigwig30]

I'm lost on how to vote...

Sorry...I guess I wasn't real clear on that. That's what I get for being a Newbie!

Tomorrow morning - maybe around 9 AM, there will be a new entry on the main page of Theme Park Insider. It will detail the match ups and also have a radio dial button you can click to indicate your vote. Once you make your selection, you will click a "VOTE" button and voila, your entry will be recorded.

You can only vote once per IP Address, and you do not need to be a registered member of the site to vote or to comment (however comments from non-members are reviewed before being posted).

Hope that clears it up. I will update this thread tomorrow morning once the voting begins.

Thank you for your interest and your help. Cedar Fair brought about 2000 votes to the party....I hope Disney can double or triple that amount!

PS If you all have suggestions on how I can get this info out to more people, I would sure love to hear them. I sent emails to Disney and Universal (although I am sure they won't care), and added entries to several fan sites. I even emailed people like Ricky Brigante, Len Testa, Matt Hochberg, Al Lutz, and Kevin Yee. I want the best ride to win, and I also want the vote to be even on both sides. I hate being completely outnumbered!

[vfire]

Don't bother voting in those polls (on any site, including CNN, etc.), there's a lot of funny business going on with shill voting. Anyone who knows how to use a dynamic IP address can vote multiple, even unlimited, times. You're just wasting your time but that's up to you of course...

[bigwig30]

I've been posting on themeparkinsider.com for a long time, and the voting is intensely moderated by Robert Niles, the fella who runs the site. He will actually stop the voting if things are not on the up and up. And in general the numbers of voters have been pretty consistent. If there is any cheating going on, it is minimal at best.

You can trust themeparkinsider.com....in fact, last year when Orlando's Twilight Zone Tower of Terror won the tournament, Eric Jacobson, head of Imagineering for DHS, sent out a press release acknowledging the award and thanking the voters. In previous years when Mythos restaurant (at Universal's IOA) has won the themeparkinsider.com award for best theme park restaurant, they hung a banner over the door of the restaurant noting the victory. This site and tournament are legit and credible.

Check out the site, read up on it, but please, don't just pass it off as a waste of time. Your fellow Disney fans are counting on your support. I urge you to participate...

Heck, even if you are not a Disney fan, I urge you to participate...the more the merrier, they say!

[bigwig30]

The first two match ups of today's ballot are in place. You may begin voting for your favorites rides!

2009 Best Ride in America Tournament: Mummy, Pirates, Griffon and Space

Thanks again for participating!

[Deedlebug]

I just voted and found that Disney is getting hammered. I have never been on the competitor's attractions and have no way of knowing whether or not they deserve to win. But I am forever loyal to all things Disney!!! Get out the vote!

[Brer Stefan]

I voted, and it's true, Disney is getting pounded. People, people we need your votes!

[bigwig30]

I just voted and found that Disney is getting hammered. I have never been on the competitor's attractions and have no way of knowing whether or not they deserve to win. But I am forever loyal to all things Disney!!! Get out the vote!

Yep...Cedar Fair has shown up again. And Disney has not. The Mummy is a great ride, but it is not a classic. Cedar Fair does not want to face Disney in the finals....but Disney fans just don't care. It is a real shame.

[sediment]

Meh.
Big deal.
As if.
Puh-lease.

[rokketride]

I wouldnt say "pounded".

Total votes 585. That means Pirates is like 60-65 votes back. Easy pickup for this site.

[vfire]

The other day over 3,000 votes were cast for a Cedar Fair ride, and the next day the polling dropped over 2,000 voters. That makes no sense unless there is vote shilling occurring that is not being picked up on. To prove the point to myself, I used an dynamic IP address in a blow-out match up (so it wouldn't affect the outcome) to see if I could easily get away with it. All the IPs were sent from the same European country within a manner of minutes, they were counted by the poll, and no one caught it. I'm not the smartest bear, and if I can do it, then anyone can... and it doesn't even take someone with that much free time on his hands. Only registered users should vote in polls, isn't that the way it is on MiceChat? Otherwise, there's no guarantee of any measure of integrity, and then there's no reason to care about the result.

In short, don't waste your time voting or caring about a crooked poll.

[sediment]

In short, don't waste your time voting or caring about a crooked poll.

I think I already said as much in my post.

[bigwig30]

In short, don't waste your time voting or caring about a crooked poll.

If people are cheating, the poll is not crooked, the voters are. However, the reason there was such a large jump in votes is because the Official Cedar Point website linked in and told their fans to vote. The count dropped back to normal levels the next day because there were no Cedar Point interests represented in the vote.

I did not say you could not cheat, but I don't think there is any cheating going on. If there is, I hope Robert Niles will catch it. And if a wave of votes just shot in from nowhere, I am guessing he would catch on.

Anyway, Pirates got within 6% before it faltered. Oh well, I guess it is just difficult to get the juggernaut that is Disney motivated for a fight.

Thanks for trying.

[tyler2cfhs]

I've voted for every round and was truly saddened when Tower of Terror lost to the Maverick. There is no way that an unthemed coaster can beat a masterpiece of a ride. Everyone come and vote- right now Pirates is losing miserably to, your head is going to spin when I say this, Revenge of the Mummy. Don't let the best ride EVER created lose to a pathetic example of a themed ride.