Cedar Point to open Steel Vengeance coaster in 2018

Cedar Point to open Steel Vengeance coaster in 2018

SANDUSKY, OHIO

Cedar Point’s FrontierTown will be transformed when Steel Vengeance – the tallest, fastest and longest hybrid roller coaster in the world – opens in the spring of 2018.

At more than 200 feet tall, the new hybrid design combines a steel running track on a massive wooden structure that provides a smooth and comfortable ride while enabling the coaster’s trains to perform maneuvers previously unheard of on a wooden roller coaster.

Steel Vengeance will offer riders unmatched intensity through a relentless series of dynamic movements on this innovative coaster. Riders will board one of three trains and climb 205 feet above FrontierTown. Once they crest the lift hill, they’ll be staring straight down a 90-degree initial drop and a 200-foot fall. Multiple airtime hills follow, including the world’s fastest airtime hill ever created on a hybrid roller coaster and a 116-foot-tall outer-banked hill placing riders on an outward tilt while moving forward.

Steel Vengeance also will debut the first-of-its-kind “Twisted Snake Dive.” In this new maneuver, the coaster’s train will enter a half-barrel roll, hang upside-down for a brief moment and then turn back in the direction of travel, not completing a full roll. The entire ride will last approximately 2 minutes, 30 seconds.

AKC, Museum of the Dog will move

NEW YORK

The American Kennel Club, the world’s largest purebred dog registry and leading advocate for dogs, and the AKC Museum of the Dog are announcing their new tenancy in the Kalikow Building at 101 Park Ave. in New York City.

The combined leases allot for a total of 60,000 square feet for both entities. The headquarters will begin its tenancy in early fall 2018. The museum will occupy its space in early 2019.

“The AKC Museum of the Dog houses one of the largest collections of dog art in the world,” says Candy Caciolo, President of the AKC Museum of the Dog Board. “This new space gives us an opportunity to bring this collection to the culture loving audience of New York City and its many visitors from around the world.”

Public to be allowed to visit temple near Washington, D.C.

KENSINGTON, MD.

For anyone who drives around the Capital Beltway, the soaring white spires are a familiar sight – and yet a complete mystery to most.

Maryland children have grown up believing the fairytale building was Disneyland, or heaven itself. Drivers sitting in maddening Interstate 495 traffic have likened the building to the Emerald City so often that pranksters started writing “Surrender Dorothy” on the nearby bridge.

Finally, for the first time since the 1970s, all those curious onlookers will finally have their chance to peek inside.

It’s not heaven or Oz; it’s the temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Kensington. The Mormon Church allows only members inside its 156 working temples. So, since this one opened in 1974, only the Washington area’s approximately 40,000 Mormons have had access.

But the church will be renovating the Kensington temple, starting in March 2018. And that means, as Bethesda Magazine noted recently, there will be a brief window, when the renovations are complete and before the rededication, when the temple will not yet be dedicated and thus will be open to non-Mormons.

Mark your calendars for 2020. That’s when the public will get to take a tour.

Combined dispatches