Welcome to Amusement Park Authority Online Day 2010!

**Austin** · #1 07-27-2010, 01:57 PM

Welcome to Online Day 2010! I know I may have gotten this post off a little late but its an all-day event. We're happy to have everyone here so lets make this event a great one! Remember you should read this entire post, it has lots of information and news about the next things for the site.

I have already released our two quizzes. One is a quiz over the history of the site. It does have a minor error. When I was making it I had initially projected we would have 303 but I got the chance to even it out at 300 exactly. That said the correct answer is 303.

You can access both quizzes here: http://amusementparkauthority.com/forums/quiz.php

Nitro's quiz is based on mostly amusement park awards and is slightly harder than mine.

And a quick word on the prize, at the end of the day we will look at who took the quiz and hand the birthday pin out to anyone who took it.

Remember this is your prize:

I also am happy to announce the Arcade is well on its way to reaching its next milestone; 400 games. I envisioned a arcade expansion from 200 to 400 way back in January but we only added 33 games due to the closing of Kentucky Kingdom and getting the site a new working theme. I have added about 67 games since the 19th and we are now sitting at 300! It's continually getting more and more games. Once I reach 400 with it I will added between one and ten games a week or a month to keep it on top and with the best games.

You can find and play these new games and more here: http://amusementparkauthority.com/forums/arcade.php.

And a side note for the arcade, I'm planning another arcade event. It will probably be set up differently than it was last year. So be on the lookout for that in the future!

Another major addition done in the past eight days has been the addition of two more features to the index pages and the countless errors found and repaired. I added a link to ticket information and a fan website for every park possible. About 90% of the parks had some link for ticket information or prices so most parks have that but there was significantly less that had a fan site. I added this to International Parks, Water Parks, Defunct Parks and of course American Parks. Another major upgrade was the changing out of a lot of International Park's official website link to a English version of the site if one was available. So now instead of clicking aimlessly or trying to find a English version of a park from Japan you can now read the site in your native (well most of us I assume) language. I also fixed around 60 link errors and park page errors so we now have a mostly bug free Index.

Just for fun lets give a break down of all the features a page is able to have. To do this lets start with Cedar Point: http://amusementparkauthority.com/in...eid=cedarpoint

As a quick note, it does look very unorganized and I plan to change that in the future.

Right at the beginning you get the park address and telephone number. Those are essential parts of any index. Reading on below that is Mapquest, Bing Satellite, and Weather. For the first time on any major index that I know of you are now able to get a link to get directions as a standard feature, see a park and its surrounding area in bird's eye view, and get the weather forecast for the area around the park.

Recently Mapquest just underwent a massive update allowing for newer features, shorter links, and more accurate maps. This will be used in the 198 parks to be added this year. The Weather Channel also got some work done. They are testing a feature called TruPoint. It gives you the weather details for a specific location instead of a city or a zip code. This will be used in the future parks also so we can provide the most accurate information possible.

Beyond Weather you also get the official website of the park and its ticket information. The official website is another essential parts of index's but I believe we are the first to give you direct access to ticket information so you can better plan your expenses on a trip or to buy tickets ahead of your trip to save you time from waiting in lines.

After this you get a link to a fan website, News Plus Notes articles, and its Screamscape page. The fan website allows you to stay up to date with the latest news and happenings at a park. I only used the websites that had good visuals, and were active. News Plus Notes gives you a option to read articles about the parks history and the latest news from the park. The Screamscape page allows you to get the latest on news and rumors and other information on the park.

After this some parks have a time line link. Most of the parks that do have one are outdated by five years but it hasn't become a major issue for us yet and we will begin looking for newer time lines in the latter portion of 2010.

Following this block of critical information you get Trip Reports from our members, roller coaster stats and pictures, park maps and brochures. I know you all have issues with us having no ride pages but we are working on changing that. Our pages will include stats when available, and an assortment of pictures. They will be for both flat rides and coasters. Which I believe is another first for our index. Others I have seen only show roller coasters and even there they only give you pictures.

All in all we have a very promising index with a lot of innovative features and a few firsts. As for the next steps for the Index we will finish adding parks and then put the ride pages in full swing. When we finish that we will look at re-organizing the pages so they are easier to use and more informative than ever.

To check out the index click here to go to the hub: http://amusementparkauthority.com/in...ageid=indexhub

Be on the lookout for my WDW PTR. I'm posting part one today but we have 5 to 6 parts in store for you all! Here's part 1: http://amusementparkauthority.com/fo...read.php?t=650

Another thing is we just recently revised our navigation bar. We added a link to contact us and removed the quiz link. More changes might be coming to this area of the site since it is becoming sort of crammed.

The last thing I want to bring attention to you guys is the new rule regarding spelling and grammar. Please take the time and proofread for errors. A typo is alright but multiple times in posts make it hard to read some posts at times. We have a new rule on the way that we think is very fair. Its sort of like TPR's but modified to fit us. It does however provide means to enforce this rule but also gives you help finding ways to check your posts.

Oh and we had planned to have two things for today, wallpapers and a game we began working on recently. I worked very hard to try to get wallpapers here for today but the entire plan I had in mind wouldn't work so they were abandoned from the plans for today. We will work to bring them to the site in the future though. And our game is in the final stages of development. We hope to have it out to you guys in the next week or so.

Dont forget our chat event starts tonight at 8:00 PM EST! You can get to the chat room here: http://amusementparkauthority.com/fo.../flashchat.php

Have a great time here at Amusement Park Authority's Online Day 2010!

-Austin, Shayne and the rest of the staff.

**nitrofan** · #2 07-27-2010, 08:00 PM

Our chat session is starting! Please join us in the chat room!

**Austin** · #3 07-28-2010, 09:59 AM

Thanks to everyone who participated yesterday!

palmer · #4 07-28-2010, 11:59 AM

Damn it, I missed it!

**Austin** · #5 07-28-2010, 12:11 PM

Not completely. All you missed was my quiz and the chat event basically. The rest of the "events" were basically major site additions and my trip report. You can still get the award by doing Nitro's quiz.