coasterbill

Whenever a theme park company has a bad quarter, people fall over eachother to explain that the reason for the bad quarter is whatever they don't personally like about the company to validate themselves. The reality though, is that 99% of these complaints would have applied for years even in times where they were making tons and tons of money. When you're trying to figure out why this year sucks compared to last year, the easiest place to start looking is wherever there has been an actual change between this year and last year. The main differences: 1) They raised prices dramatically, ended very popular programs, cut special events and cut hours so they're offering less for more. 2) Strong economic headwinds are impacting the entire industry to some extent. Most companies are weathering the storm, so the majority of the problem is likely #1, though #2 isn't helping.

No problem. Sorry I didn’t have better news. The one good thing is that Sunday’s generally aren’t all that crazy. They’re definitely your best bet. Saturdays will be a zoo, even with Fastlane.

Go on the weekends if you want all of the coasters to be open, but prepare for unimaginably large crowds and get there early.

I cleaned up this thread a bit. You can all disagree without personal insults. Debate is good, but no more of that crap. Also (once again), people are taking this way too seriously. Be civil. This is the last warning.

I can’t even make sense of what’s going on here, but everyone chill out. It’s not that serious.

I firmly believe that Corkscrew will run basically forever. This has nothing to do with it's historical significance (which is overblown anyway because it's at Cedar Point), I'm positive that they don't actually care about that. I believe this just because there's no reason to remove it from a practicality standpoint. Corkscrew's entire ride path is over midways and and an employee storage and parking area other than the station and first turnaround other than two tiny slivers of track that hug a perimeter fence and a midway. It takes up no room at all. In addition, it has about as low of a staffing requirement as a Cedar Point coaster can have, there's no shortage of spare parts, it's popular enough, it looks great, it never breaks, it can run in almost anything and it probably does way better ridership numbers than it has any right to. I really think the best we can hope for in that spot is a flat ride, restaurant or hopefully a bathroom that's not an absolute disgrace. I could be wrong, but I really don't see this ride leaving.

Busch Gardens Tampa has (by my count) 2 flat rides that aren't kiddy rides and nobody cares. Cedar Point has somewhere between 15-20. I wouldn't say no to another flat ride, but they're fine in that department. Really they're fine in every department besides indoor rides, non-drenching water rides and food places that don't serve exclusively fried shit or BBQ, though if they want to add more of really anything I'm cool with it.

I think this is a net positive. I'd take a Wild Mouse, a nice refresh and an upper deck bar with views of the lake over Wicked Twister any day. For me, I'm definitely most excited for the pavillion. That upper deck bar really ticks all the boxes for me. As for the mouse, I'm almost surprised that it's not CGAs.

Yeah, I don't have high hopes for this.

It pretty much has to be Candymonium or Lightning Racer. Lightning Racer has shorter lines and a shorter season, but if it's filling trains it's doing up to 48 riders per dispatch.

Yeah, Valleyfair will “answer” this the same way they’ve “answered” every other new addition by Adventureland in the last decade.

In a way, this does feel different. Everyone hates Bob Chapek for various reasons but Disney is still selling out of reservations on a daily basis despite all of the complaints. People complain about it, but as I look now every single ride that sells Individual Lightning Lane sold out of them today so they really don’t care. Cedar Fair made stupid decision after stupid decision last year but people still showed up and a lot of those stupid decisions actually benefited the consumer. Not all, but many did. Six Flags is doing things that people don’t like and absolutely nobody is going to their parks. They actually are getting blowback for it, but for whatever reason they’re doubling down and raising prices some more. The fact that there’s no indication of any self awareness on their part is alarming.

Honestly, last year they had a great year and did lots of things right. This year, it’s like the chains entirely switched places. I really think the issue was the price hikes, not anything they did last year.

I don't think the issue is "long term appeal", I think the issue is that every coaster in the park has surprisingly terrible capacity other than the three that you just mentioned (assuming Tornado has 2 trains running). Wild Eagle has short lines, but it also has the highest capacity of any coaster in the park by far.

I'll admit that I immediately thought of Ice Breaker when I saw this. I haven't been closely following this project so at first I thought it was a Premier. The colors have a lot to do with that. The level of theming does also.

Yeah, I just really don't like the direction that the park has been going in aesthetically lately. They've cut down tons of trees, they removed the cave thing for a giant path with nothing on it, they never replaced the exposed and ugly Mystery Mine supports and then left the unused track just sitting there, Wildwood Grove is ugly, etc. I'm trying not to judge this thing from a rendering but I feel like this is kind-of more of the same. The ride itself seems fine, I just wish it wasn't a bright orange unthemed coaster sitting in an empty field. I don't expect Disney quality here, just Dollywood-10-years-ago quality.

"Hey, people really like Firechaser Express but it has low capacity. Let's build another one but budget cut the theming." I mean, it's fine. It seems redundant and it's in an open field but it adds capacity and has an ultra-low height requirement so that's never a bad thing.

I get what you're saying but this isn't a Top Thrill Dragster fan-fiction thread. Most people (hopefully) are operating under the assumption that we're all living in reality. I assume that most of the insane ideas posted here that aren't framed as a crazy fantasy ideas are 100% serious, and even if they're not other people will assume they are and run with them because coaster enthusiasts are mostly insane.

... and it's at Hersheypark

Since we're all talking about things that don't make any sense and wouldn't fix anything that had anything to do with the accident, what about a twisted vertical lift hill all the way up the tower that just drops you over the other side. ... think about it.

^^ This is basically a Six Flags Diamond Membership It's really interesting that Cedar Fair is moving towards knockoff Six Flags memberships just as Six Flags is getting rid of memberships.

Yeah, CP Rundown has a post showing an absolute crap-ton of markings everywhere.

How good am I? NJ.com - American Dream fails to make $8.8M interest payment on $290M in N.J.-backed bonds

To have Fedex come in and look at it so they could give them a quote on moving it to Ohio.