
goatdan
Members-
Posts
340 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Everything posted by goatdan
-
What's your favorite Theme Park Souvenir?
goatdan replied to bert425's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
Depends on what you consider a souvenir, I guess... I own a lot of weird stuff thanks to my past. A lot of this I didn't pay for, but got as more or less 'gifts'. Here are some of my favorites: - Part tags for track and support assembly on a ride. - Protective shipping bolts for parts on a different ride. - Used brake pad from a different ride. - Piece of track from Son of Beast (one of the plaques they sold) - Alien Encounter (WDW) seats and harnesses (six of each) - TONS of books (250+) on parks, mostly Disney ones - Park music, again mostly Disney but I have a couple unique discs that were never sold from their respective parks Finally, my favorite thing is I collect things for the Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland like crazy. I'm actually oddly particular about exactly what I'll get, but I own a lot of really unique stuff from that ride. Amongst them: - Large ride poster, *supposedly* the one that they used to unveil the ride with (in this picture - http://albums.mouseplanet.com/DLIndyJonesProcessed/IndyPoster.jpg - I'm not quite so sure I believe that, but size matches and I've never seen another quite like it - it's definitely NOT one of the limited edition posters they sold, and I was told it was from that ceremony only after I purchased it, which I think gives it a bit more weight, but hey, I just think it's cool even if it's not ) - Original Press Kit for the ride - Ride logo watch (limited to 250) - Unused Indiana Jones Adventure commemorative tickets - I own two of these, one that is framed with an official Indiana Jones matte and stamp on it - again, never seen another - and the other is number 000013, the 13th issued, which just so happens to also be my favorite number. Of course, almost none of this was actually purchased in the parks as souvenirs, but they are definitely my favorite stuff -
"Out of Fashion" Ride Styles
goatdan replied to josephcissell's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
I think we will. Remember, the most recent 'new' one was just last year with Apocalypse. And yeah, I know it was Iron Wolf before, but they could have converted it to a sitting ride if they didn't find the standing worth it. Before that, we had Chang's move. There is a limited market for them, but the fact that neither of these were converted means I think the concept still has legs. -
Worst Coaster Layout
goatdan replied to SingleRiderCam's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
I've managed to not yet hit a Manta, do you consider it far better than Tatsu? -
A lot of Ace members, or people in general that really enjoy a local theme park, would love to help that park fix their stuff and grow. This gives the park an opportunity to get good pub, gives those people a chance to be able to say, "Yeah, I helped them open!" and gets them free labor, it's really win-win. I wouldn't put any stock into this being a huge money thing. Wouldn't you love to be able to say that you helped your childhood park reopen?
-
Worst Coaster Layout
goatdan replied to SingleRiderCam's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
I'm not surprised that someone suggested this first. This is the dullest, silliest layout ever, and I don't care for the pretzel loop at all, so it makes the entire ride horrible to me. You hang like a piece of meat and do boring stuff. I thought Air was far cooler because the surrounding at least makes it far more fun. Sky Scrapper looks amazing, and I wish that something like that was built (I wasn't a huge fan of Tatsu either) around here. -
"Out of Fashion" Ride Styles
goatdan replied to josephcissell's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
I'd love to see suspended rides make a comeback of some sort. Even a bad suspended ride is still a unique, fun, and generally very smooth experience. I also think more parks should get mine trains. They are a trifecta - reliable, good for all ages, and capacity monsters. And shoot, I'll add in pretty cheap too. I know that there still have been some built, but the last established park that I can think of that added one was probably King's Island in 91. Put a little theming on it, and you can really market it as a family ride. -
I actually really like the Arrow coasters that don't beat the stuff out of you, and I find that a lot of them really don't, at least not in the same way that people equate roughness to other rides. Arrow's 'roughness' comes from jarring transitions because they didn't know how to really connect elements (all their rides seem like they could be recreated nearly perfectly in roller coaster tycoon), but I don't find their roughness from washboarding or general horribleness like I find in some other rides. Viper at Magic Mountain and Vortex at King's Island I still find to be super fun rides. Having said that, because of that I don't think that an upgrade of the track alone would solve it. On nearly every corkscrew Arrow ever made, you enter it by leaning toward the right, and then proceed through the corkscrews in a righthand manner. This means when the guide wheels kick in and start moving the train up and over, your head gets a jolt because the forces are being applies laterally to move the train. On B&M designs, this was actually a huge thing that they fixed - their designs put the pressure down on the wheels that run on top of the track, and therefore also your butt, instead of the side. Compare: Corkscrew @ MI Adventure: http://www.themeparkcritic.com/Uploads/6673/Corkscrew%20%28MA%29%20%284%29.jpg Kumba corkscrews - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Kumbas_vertical_loop_3.jpg You can see how on Corkscrew, you're already basically on your side before the ride sends you into the corkscrew. To fix that, you would need to overbank the turn, pull out of it putting some positive Gs on your butt, and then the motion would make it so that you would want the corkscrews to turn the other way entirely. If things like that were fixed - you also have mid course break run 'snaps' where the ride is banked comfortably but snaps into horizontal position to brake it, Shockwave was perhaps the most notorious for this - I think the rides could be really awesome. I for one would love to see three forcefull loops back to back like the Mega Loopers had (is Viper the ONLY ride in the world to feature this now!?), and I miss some of the other sort of strange things Arrow did mostly due to their own design restrictions. Having Vortex with so many elements so far above the ground is really unique. I love the Corkscrews that feel like they are in the middle of no where. I'd love to see it. Edit - Oh, and B&M did not design Drachen Fire and pass it off - if they had completed the design but then left it to focus on the invert concept, why wouldn't they have just had it fabricated and erected? The entire thing that B&M does is *design* rides, fabrication and construction are farmed out, and neither of those would have been impacted by it. Or at least so says some random guy on the internet (me)
-
B&M Wing Rider Coasters - Love or Hate?
goatdan replied to jfruge's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
For all the complaining about Wing Riders, I would take any Wing Rider I've been on over any flying coaster I've been on. I always feel like I'm hung like a piece of meat about to fall out of the flying coasters (knowing full well I won't, but I just don't find it comfortable at all), while even with the boa constrictor restraints on the Wing Riders, it's doing a lot of the same tricks as a flying coaster, just a lot more comfortably in my opinion. As for why they are getting built - because it's far easier to market a totally different looking ride then it is to market the same thing that you've already got even if the new one is way cooler. -
First, fun debate While I agree with what you're saying, in this particular case A + B doesn't = C. With what you described, A is that they wouldn't open without being profitable. I totally agree with that. So, let's say for the ease of explanation, 5,000 people is where they break even, so any day they expect more then that they'll make money. Any day the park will have more than 5,000 people, it's open! Profit! The problem is that with B, profit doesn't move on a straight line. There is a BIG curve to it. Let's say that there are 6,000 people projected to come. To run Batman, you need three employees. They can run one train, no problem. If they need to, they could even run two. Now, let's say that 12,000 people come. Batman does not suddenly need 6 people to run. The more you go up, the more crazy it sounds - a 30k attendance day, which would happen sometimes, you would then guess that they would need 18 people to run Batman. Can you imagine that? It would be crazy. They do, of course, staff up food and store locations, but again the rate of doing so isn't so dramatic. If one employee is enough to keep a store's doors open at 6,000 people, maybe they get 2 at 12,000, but that means that they still have one employee if the day has 11,000 people at it, so they would make more money at 11,000 people than 6,000. Which actually means that in fact just because Magic Mountain is open does not in any way equate to them making a larger operating *profit* than any other park. For easy math, if Magic Mountain is open 250 days and draws 2.5 million guests, that is an average of 10,000 per day. If Great Adventure is open for 180 days and draws 2 million guests, then Great Adventure is drawing 11,111 / day on average, which actually makes it *easier* for Great Adventure to profit. So again, that is why that number - about the profit - sticks out at me as being so weird. Revenue-wise, if SFMM is the most attended in the chain, they should automatically win the revenue battle. Profit-wise however, a park like Great America or Great Adventure, which handles a larger average crowd, should actually theoretically profit more. Hope that makes sense. Amusement park math is fun
-
This is a direct result of the fact that they're open every day combined with inflation. No, they aren't only talking about revenue. Read the part in quotes right above that. Profits aren't revenue - they are the actual money *made*, which is where my bafflement comes from. If they were just talking about revenue, it wouldn't have stuck out at me like a sort thumb.
-
However, that doesn't work either. The most recent released attendance figures of Magic Mountain yearly I could find was from another post on here in 2012 when they claimed 2,808,000 to lead all Six Flags parks. But, as you mentioned, they have 20%+ more operating days than say, Great Adventure or Great America. But here's the thing - when you end up with more people at a park, you don't end up with that many more employees. For most parks, running one or two trains on a roller coaster is the exact same number of operators. If a park has 10,000 guests versus 40,000 guests, it isn't like the park needs four times as many people to run the rides on the busier days, or for that matter run the stores, food locations, or whatever else. Based on that logic, SFMM is at a *disadvantage* by staying open year round unless you're specifically talking revenue for staying open year round unless we believe that parks like Great Adventure and Great America are drawing less than 2 million a year - by having a compressed schedule, it makes earning profit (which is what is claimed, not revenue) for the park more difficult. I agree that the way the second one is worded about guest spending, it could not be per capita related and instead be gross receipts, but unless that first one about the highest profits in the company ever are just comparing Magic Mountain to Magic Mountain, as an outside observer who kind of sort of understands the working of these sorts of things, it simply doesn't make sense. Again, more power to Magic Mountain if this is true, but it just seems to defy logic - based specifically on their extended operating calendar and attendance.
-
Perhaps I'm wrong, but unless there is some financial wizardry going on there (like a few huge, expensive buy out or something) I simply don't understand it. Magic Mountain has *always* catered to the teenage crowd that is NOT the crowd likely to go buy souvenirs or eat much in the parks. Based on that, how Magic Mountain would gain the highest total guest spending the the company is completely beyond me. I don't claim to know much, but I also know this would be a H-U-G-E turn around from just a few years ago, and nothing that I have read or seen about the park since then suggests to me Disney-like numbers on operating days with tons of people free-spending for meals and whatnot. For the record, I've argued before that Magic Mountain does everything right in a market dominated by Disney, Knotts and Universal to create a different brand altogether, and I think they are very solid because of that. This isn't me bashing them, just absolutely floored if the park was suddenly selling more YOLO shirts to teens than say Fiesta Texas (or really, any other property) is selling Bugs Bunny merch to families.
-
S&S Sansei Discussion Thread
goatdan replied to Coaster Joe's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
I think they just did. While its usually tough to say what the reliability of a coaster will be when its a prototype, I think the lack of classic 4D gear components will make this more reliable simply because it has less parts that could fail, but that's my guess. Similarly, I think capacity on these will probably be similar to X2/Eejanaika/Dinoconda potential capacities, perhaps slightly higher. Well, right - I mean a controllable 4D coaster. Like I said, the sensation of going down the first big drop head first only to be pulled at seemingly the last moment is really unique, and I'm definitely a person who likes ride systems that can control the "story" so to speak like that. This, while definitely unique and looking rather similar, is really a wholly different system. Cool, but I don't think it could ever be quite as dramatic as what they could pull off with a ride like X... if it doesn't beat the snot out of you. I've ridden wooden roller coasters in the snow before, so I'm not exactly sure that would be the case. It's probably more along the lines of figuring out a way to attract people to visit during a winter climate. Obviously many parks in Europe and Asia do it... But anyway, back to the prototype... They DID have to warm it up for about an hour or so before we could ride it. I think I even mention this in the report! There is nothing inherently wrong with running rides at colder temperatures, however the colder that it is, the more friction that the grease or whatever has, and the slower it moves, meaning that you run a much higher risk of a ride valleying than not. I think it was Cedar Point that talked about different wheels at different points in the season to make the ride run differently a couple years ago, and that's totally the case. Depending on which wheels and how many of them certain rides had, they had certain temperature limits that they could be run at. A lot of the bigger rides cease functioning earlier because the friction causes the chance of valley to be much higher. In fact, one day I was somewhere when they weren't open, and when I left one of the wooden rides was stranded, partially because of cold, and partially because of wind (it was just above the low temperature to run the ride at, and then the wind kicked it...) -
Orphan Rocker Coaster at Scenic World
goatdan replied to verticalzero's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
This just about sums it up I reckon. 30 years without any attention, I suspect they just don't want to pay to remove it at this point. That's particularly interesting, as supposedly work was done on it as late as the early 2000s. Seems like even the park itself doesn't know what has happened with the ride, which makes it even more interesting. -
S&S Sansei Discussion Thread
goatdan replied to Coaster Joe's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
Well, look at it this way. The car holds 8 people so that automatically makes it twice the capacity of any Wild Mouse or Tony Hawk type spinner. Sure, it's not going to be a "people eater" like a 3-train B&M hyper, but I doubt it will be a Deja Vu either. The capacity on it will really rely on a solid load style. The trains do hold double the capacity of a wild mouse type ride, but if the get locked in and go time takes considerably longer, that'll negate the double capacity. That's where Deja Vu really sucked - it's load procedure was abysmal. If they could have fixed that or if it would have operated how originally designed - with no seat belts - it wouldn't have been quite so bad. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to get one. If I had any influence on a park, I'd definitely want to look at this. Imagine what you could do with it as an indoor ride, themed. There are SO many options, I wouldn't doubt that this gets refined and ends up in something expensive and awesome in Orlando in the next 10 years. -
S&S Sansei Discussion Thread
goatdan replied to Coaster Joe's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
I'm sure it is a totally different experience. Having X2 point you head first to the ground, only to swoop out of it on your back at the last moment is extremely unique, and unfortunately this sort of ride looks like it would be impossible to create that same sort of experience - from what I understand the dampers only help to give the ride a 'push', but can't actually completely control movement (Robb, correct me if I'm wrong there). This appears to be more of a hybrid between a coaster and an awesome flat ride, and for that I think it's really unique, but I do hope that S&S or someone can still devise a way to make a 4D coaster that reliably works without feeling like hell. There is a lot more that could be done with that concept. My only potential concern about this particular ride is the capacity doesn't look like it could be all that high, which would limit where it could go. Here's hoping they've already got a great answer to that - and your thought about controlling intensity by your own choice is a REALLY good one too. -
S&S Sansei Discussion Thread
goatdan replied to Coaster Joe's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
I was watching the video for the question - the reason I asked was specifically with some of the spinning you see at :32 and just beyond that - Your legs in particular aren't moving, but it looks like the transitions between forward and backwards are still relatively sudden. Hearing that it doesn't feel like it's jerky, well, that sounds great. I always like the dramatic way the 4D coasters could position you, and while I think this is cool I don't think it will be quite as amazingly dramatic as how those control your exact movement. However, if it isn't soul-crushingly painful to ride, I think that until they figure out a way to perfect that system, this is the better overall ride. Very cool -
S&S Sansei Discussion Thread
goatdan replied to Coaster Joe's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
So I'm curious - did this seem to be all good for your legs? In the video and the pics, it seems like the random changes in motion would make your legs slam into the seat in the same fashion that X2 (and I assume, the other 4D coasters) do. It looks surprisingly cool, I just hope that it is more comfortable so they can sell a lot more of these then they did with the 4D coasters. -
Photo TR: WoF, Silver Dollar City, SFStl, Holiday World
goatdan replied to Condor's topic in Photo Trip Report Archive
Just saw this... To sort of echo what the others said about Raven, I always loved it because the transitions on it were quick and it was VERY hard to know what was coming next. It kept you on your toes and guessing, with some great surprises. I never got to ride it at night until August of this year, when I will confirm that I found out it becomes even more incredible. The run back in the woods seems to be totally different than in the day, and you can't see anything. I generally like small, twistier rides more than big ones, and I was a littler nervous to ride Raven again after more than 10 years where I had always considered it the best roller coaster I had been on. I still thought it held up - and then I rode it at night and knew it did. It didn't stop the Voyage from being my absolute favorite in the park, and it surprised me in the same way it did you, but I do still really enjoy the Raven. And, for the record, my group was split 50 / 50, with two of us loving the Legend more and two of us loving the Raven more, it does just depend what you're looking for in a ride. I think Legend is amazing too. -
I miss all the Intamin Ag 1st Gen Free Falls!
goatdan replied to VMan's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
This may have been something for the weird ride facts thread, but Disney was VERY interested in doing just that for the Tower of Terror originally. The story is in a book, and there is an online article about how they were originally going to use it in Euro Paris too. I have no idea where the book is, but I believe they did plan on making it much larger, as well as making the build up before the drop much longer, like a traditional dark ride. http://jimhillmedia.com/editor_in_chief1/b/jim_hill/archive/2006/07/21/4391.aspx It was. Rocky Mountain used it as one of their signature attractions during the end of their run, and I'm pretty sure it was the final major ride purchased before they were hit by their ownerships improper money issues. -
Orphan Rocker Coaster at Scenic World
goatdan replied to verticalzero's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
I've been fascinated by this one too. To me, the problem seems to be with the whole pivoting idea, but in that case why didn't they just commission cars that didn't pivot? As for the family members not really liking it, like it or not with as far as the project got, it couldn't have been THAT much more to complete it and get some sort of return on investment. When everything went south, whatever it was, I don't get why they didn't hire someone like Vekoma or Arrow to come in and do something to try to salvage it. Even if they spent a little bit on consulting work, tossing away a $10 million investment (which with inflation is worth nearly $20 million) just seems really weird. I feel like there is much more to the story, and I really do wish it was known. I think it would be a really neat way to see the scenery of a place like that, and honestly it seems to fit right in with the environment around it. -
I miss all the Intamin Ag 1st Gen Free Falls!
goatdan replied to VMan's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
For all the riding I've done, I've managed to miss these most of the time, although the downtime others have mentioned was almost a charming part of the experience. On one trip with friends, we got on Demon Drop at Cedar Point, and it was the first free fall like this any of us had rode. We had already been on the newer creations, but the old ones had eluded us. All of us agreed that the experience was *far* scarier than the newer ones, I think because you go down something you didn't go up, and you end the ride on your back which seems more "wrong" than landing on a newer drop ride. The day after Demon Drop, we tried riding Mr Hyde's at Six Flags Ohio. The paint job on that ride looked outstanding. We waited in the relatively short line and as we were about to ride one of us joked, "Are you ready to go over the Edge and survive?" at which point the ride immediately broke down. We waited, but after a bit were told to leave and come back, and the queue was cleared. Thinking we'd have less of a chance to ride it than anything else at SFO, as soon as we saw it cycling, we came back. Got seated on the ride, the same person who had joked about it being the edge said, "Now it's time to ride the Edge" at which point again immediately the ride broke. We were unloaded from the shaft going up, and the ride was closed the rest of the day. I wish I had got to experience Magic Mountains intertwined with Riddler's. Although it would make it seem shorter, I think the interaction sure looked neat.