 A couple of weeks ago, the Scooby-Doo! Spooky Coaster reopened after being closed for nearly three years. During the closure, extensive upgrades were made to the roller coaster to improve the design and functionality. Scoobster96 from the ScoobyAddicts forum had the amazing opportunity to go visit the new coaster! He took quite a few pictures of all the different upgrades, which he very kindly shared with me to post for you all on the blog! From looking at the pictures, the updates are so much cooler and more extensive than what was reported in the news. Through looking at Scoobster96's pictures, I thought it would be fun to do a more in-depth post about the upgrades that were made to the coaster these past three years.
The main Spooky Coaster sign was brought back to its original design. I did a side-by-side comparison featuring a picture I found in this Reddit community. The previous design used the movie poster's font. During the upgrades, the main sign was changed to the traditional Scooby-Doo logo. The bloody letters were refurbished and changed back to how it used to look when the park originally opened.    Here's are a couple images of some of the advertisements for the roller coaster as you're coming into the park, as well as a side view of the coaster entrance. So just how long were the lines to ride the coaster during opening week? Scoobster96 said the lines were super long! The waiting area is divided into three sections. There were some upgrades made to the waiting areas to make it shadier on hot days. See the lines for yourself:  To expedite the process once people get to the front of the line, a test car has been added midway through the line section. This allows ride attendants to see if people are the correct size for the lap bars to safely secure them inside the cars. Here's what the test seat looks like. You can also see they repainted the castle walls. Previously, the castle walls had been plain gray, but now the gray paint has purple highlights. The purple highlights were a part of the original design of the coaster, but were changed during the previous upgrade in 2018.  One of the major updates made was adding an handicap-accessible ride entry. Notice that it's written in the same font as the main sign on the front entrance.  Here are some images of the second part of the waiting queue! Lights were added to the suit of armor, and there have been some animatronics added to make it look like the suit of armor's eyes are watching your every move. The inside wall detailing was also repainted. There's also a screen that plays the entire 2002 live-action movie. Scoobster96 noticed that they cut off the end credits and added in an advertisement for HBO Max. In the third and final section of the waiting area, ridegoers wait in a small hallway that leads to the boarding station. Besides being repainted, Scoobster96 said that most of this part of the area has not changed at all. There were some minor changes to the signs so that it used a font similar to the movie poster. Here's another slideshow of the third section: Obviously, no pictures could be taken on the ride, but Scoobster96 shared that the animation quality of the screens throughout the ride has significantly improved. The screens included a recreation of the buffet from the film, the area where Velma first runs into N' Goo Tuana, and an old animatronic Scooby. The latter two of those features were reintroduced from the original ride. Many changes that were made during the 2018 upgrade were reverted back to the classic version of the ride. The only thing Scoobster96 noticed was removed was the laser lights. On your way out, there is a recreation of the tiki bar from the film. Customers can order from the bar, which has a "spooky" menu of drinks based on the film. Drinks are served in the recreations of the red skull cups shown in the film. Here's a couple images of the tiki bar and its menu!   A huge thank you to Scoobster96 for sharing his pics of the ride for the blog. It was so fun to see all the different upgrades that have been made to the ride over these past three years! Be sure to check out his full review of the ride on the ScoobyAddicts forum.
Unless by some chance we get news today or tomorrow, this will be the last post of the year. Wishing everybody all the best in the new year! See you in 2026!
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 Before their appearance in The New Scooby-Doo Movies, there was a full Laurel and Hardy television series produced by Hanna-Barbera. The show ran from 1966-1967 and produced 156 total shorts. The series was developed by Larry Harmon, who voiced Laurel on the show. The series was originally conceived in 1961 when Laurel was still alive; however, Larry Harmon and Jim MacGeorge provided the voices for them due to Laurel and Hardy both passing away by the time the series was greenlit.
Outside of this series and The New Scooby-Doo Movies, MacGeorge and Harmon would go on to voice their characters one more time. This ironically has another parallel to a different New Scooby-Doo Movies guest star! Their only other voice role for these characters was in Get Smart, which starred Don Adams as the lead actor. 
Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays, and has a great last few days of this year! I've been rewatching Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated this weekend after getting one of the DVD sets for the series that I didn't previously own as a gift. Given my rewatch, I felt inspired to do a poll about one of my favorite Mystery Incorporated episodes as our final weekly poll of the year!
As we head towards 2026, it looks like the majority think that Future is the scariest...the ghost of Christmas Future, that is, lol. Here are the full results for last week's holiday poll: Who is your favorite ghost of Christmas from "Scroogey Doo"? Ghost of Christmas Future - 22 Ghost of Christmas Past - 15 Ghost of Christmas Present - 8 Ghost of Jacob Marley - 6  Merry Christmas! Tony Cervone gave Scooby fans a surprise holiday gift today that no one was expecting. On Instagram, Tony shared that a song from Scoob! Holiday Haunt was secretly released years ago. Even though the film was written off, The Linda Lindas decided to release the song they'd written for the film separately. The song, "Groovy Xmas," can be listened to on Spotify.
 "The Nutcracker Scoob" pays brief homage to another Dickens novel besides A Christmas Carol. In 1839 (four years before writing A Christmas Carol), Dickens published a novel called Nicholas Nickelby, which Mr. Nickelby's surname is a reference to.
Happy holidays, everyone! Hope all who are celebrating enjoy the festive season! 
Happy holidays! To celebrate the festive season, both the weekly poll and the fun fact this week will be holiday-themed! This wasn't one of the three episodes I originally planned to do a poll for, but it felt like one that would be fun and timely to do given the season!
It's great to see two iconic villains get their flowers in last week's poll results! The poltergeists and Fireplace Fiend were pretty close, but the poltergeists pulled off a couple of vote lead! I'm really surprised about how many votes the Ghost Ship Painting got! The statue getting no votes also really surprises me. Here are the full results: What is your favorite villain from "Scoobygeist"? Poltergeists - 12 Fireplace Fiend - 10 Ghost Ship Painting - 7 Skeleton - 3 Animal Trophy Heads - 1 Stone Statue - 0  Quite a bit has happened with the WB-Netflix merger these past couple of weeks! I wasn't sure when to report on it, since it appeared things would be in flux for a while and I didn't want to get too into political stuff. With continuing updates regularly, it seems like enough has happened that it's worth recapping it!
After WB and Netflix announced their merger on December 5, Paramount attempted to submit a hostile takeover bid, even going to the White House to claim Netflix's bid was problematic. Warner Brothers put out a statement this week saying that Paramount's bid represented a significant risk for shareholders. They confirmed that they would be going with Netflix's bid, due to feeling Paramount continually ignored key concerns that WB communicated to them. Warner Brothers was also open in expressing that Paramount's hostile takeover bid had a "litigious posture" to it. Although the Netflix-WB bid seems like it's moving ahead now, Paramount may still choose to challenge the merger legally. The merger still has to be approved by the government before it can be finalized, so the merger isn't 100% official. The Hollywood Reporter also mentions it's possible that Paramount may choose to keep submitting bids to stop the merger. Thanks to Becker for sharing this news!
 Besides Daphne and Velma's cameos, there are only five episodes featuring female characters in the entire Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue series. With the exception of a couple background characters that don't have speaking roles, every other character in the series is a male. The female characters in the show are:
 In 2002, Warner Brothers Movie World in Australia designed the Scooby-Doo! Spooky Coaster, a roller coaster based off of the first Scooby-Doo live-action film. The Spooky Coaster is one of WB Movie World's most popular attractions.
The roller coaster has been a staple at WB Movie World since the live-action film first came out. It originally opened on June 17, 2002, three days after the first live-action film. The Spooky Coaster remained open for 16 years, but shut down briefly in 2018 for a minor refurbishment. The updated version of the roller coaster was coined Scooby-Doo! Spooky Coaster: The Next Generation. In 2023, the roller coaster shut down for its first major refurbishment. The updates included an updated design, a new control system, redesigning the original 14 cars and adding two to make 16, raising entrance gates, and other mechanical and structural updates to optimize performance. Nearly three years later, the Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster is now opening again, according to AULeisure! Beginning today, Aussie Scooby fans and those traveling to the park can once again experience the ride, just in time for summer starting in Australia. You can check out a detailed account of the refurbishments they did on this ThemeParksAU article. 
This week's poll features a more obscure episode! That said, it's one of my favorite post-New Scooby-Doo Movies episodes to use the "multiple monsters" trope, so I wanted to be sure we did a poll on it!
I figured the Phantom Virus would be our winner for last week's poll, and based on the results, there was absolutely no doubt of him winning lol. Here are the full results for last week's poll: What is your favorite villain from Cyber Chase? Phantom Virus - 38 Iron Face - 5 Gator Ghoul - 3 Tar Monster - 3 Jaguaro - 2 Lion - 2 Samurai - 2 Moon Men - 1 Skeleton Gladiators - 1 The Creeper - 1 0 votes: Dragon, Giant Bug, Mummy and Pharaoh |
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