Safeco Field, Seattle

Posted by James Turnbull, Monday, 16th May 2005

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Home of the Seattle Mariners baseball club, the Safeco field has a retractable roof, which was open on the day of this photo. Just to the north is Qwest Field, a football stadium home to the Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Sounders.

The two fields were built to replace the Kingdome, which was demolished in the world’s largest implosion of a single concrete structure on March 26th, 2000.

Safeco

Thanks: Braz & many others

Kennywood Park

Posted by Alex Turnbull, Monday, 16th May 2005

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Kennywood Park is Southwest Pennsylvania’s amusement park, and was known as the “Roller Coaster Capital of the World” in the 1970s for its collection of excellent wooden coasters. Scott Ventura (who seems to know quite a bit about this park!) gives us the guided tour:

Due to Pittsburgh’s hilly terrain, two of the coasters are able to drop into valleys without first ascending a lift chain. When built in the early 1990s, the Steel Phantom had to longest drop in the world at 220 feet, topping out at 80 mph. The drop passed through the supports of another coaster in the same valley: the Thunderbolt. Phantom was reworked a few years ago to remove the inversions and make it a hypercoaster: The Phantom’s Revenge. Phantom (green track) and the T-bolt (white track) are at the northwest end of the park. Notice the shadows for the Phantom’s supports. At the other end of the park, the brownish-red track is the Racer, one of only a handful of “Moebius” racing coasters in the world. Leave the station in the car on the left, return to the station in the car on the right. Just south of it is the Jack Rabbit, featuring a double-dip. The track levels out halfway down the longest hill, providing tremendous airtime.

Our picture is of the Phantom, which looks very cool. Thanks Scott :-)

Kennywood Park