goatdan
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Posts posted by goatdan
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I think they got those projections because that was the projections that they needed for the park to move forward, and no one with any sense in the theme park industry checked them to see what sense they made.
And cfc, to follow up your comment there, let's just pretend that with all the silly stuff put together, hourly capacity of the "big" attractions would be (in a perfect world):
1000 pph for Led Zepplin
500 pph for Maximum RPM
1600 pph for Eagles
300 pph for Slippery
780 pph for Shake, Rattle, Rollercoaster
1000 pph for Knights
* I don't have exact claimed numbers on these, they are generous guesses based on similar rides... Also, "claimed" numbers are generally significantly higher than "real world" numbers, probably by 20%, so take into account that I'm being OVERLY generous here...
Based on the above, the park has an hourly capacity for these big rides of 5180 rides per hour. To put that into perspective...
If the park had hit it's attendance projections of 30,000 people (average) per day, this means during the peak times of the day, the lines for these attractions would have averaged nearly FIVE HOURS. What do you think the average guest would have thought of that experience?
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Guys, I said this a few pages back but it still holds up...
They said they expected 30,000 people per day to come to the park. That expectation was based on the prices that they were charging.
It does not matter that the area has that much tourism, New York has tons of tourism and based on the attendance that I have seen and using simple math, Great Adventure doesn't pull in 30,000 people a day. According to their attendance projections, they would have basically had to be ahead of every Cedar Fair and Six Flags park in the country to make their goals.
Let's just pretend that they dropped admission to $25 / person. They would have needed then 60,000 people per day to show up in the case. Their attendance goal had everything to do with the amount of money each of those people would be spending, you can't say that the park would have done better with $25 admission unless you believe they would have well more than doubled attendance.
Again, there was a LOT of other stuff that was done wrong with the park (and their ticket model was definitely one of them), but it can all really be traced back to the projection that they needed to have 30,000 people per day show up to be a success. Even if everything else had been done differently (marketing, ticketing prices, etc), that problem would have still remained.
And, to show just how silly this was as a concept, their signature rides had capacities of around 1,000 / hour (or WAY less, like Maximum RPM), which would have meant that lines would have been unbearably long had the crowds showed up. Think the waits for Deja Vu, but with ONLY Deja Vu in the park, and everything else being closed. Had 30,000 people showed up, it would have been a horrible experience anyway.
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This is exactly right. The station is basically 1 block split in 2 as it has 2 separate tracks. Most (If not, All) dual-station coasters operate on this same principal. CA Screamin @ DCA is another example.
The only one that I can think of that potentially wouldn't operate on this same principal is the pair of Freeze coasters only because each train never enters the same series of blocks (which, being a shuttle coaster, is basically just "one" anyway), but that is due strictly to the fact that the trains would not "switch" stations during operation.
Having said that, it's a totally unique situation because it is a shuttle coaster where each transfer track is probably blocked as it's own ride, and since that is the only block for the ride, it makes sense to be set up differently.
Actually, just thought of one more - as I recall, Space Mountain at WCW loads multiple trains at the exact same time, which is arguably a dual station coaster, so it would theoretically block the dual loading station differently, but that is because it's a wholly different principal than Tatsu, just like Freeze is.
Wow, that took a turn... sorry Anyone have any ideas about my Fast Lane thinking?
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Tatsu's station counts as 1 block.
But why? You can't have two trains in the same block and If they're operating both stations, there will almost always be 2 trains in the station block...
Gosh, this is really hard to explain. I know exactly how it works, but typing it makes it not seem to make sense... Here's my best shot:
The station is both a single block and two blocks. It's a single block because in the progression of a train on the ride, you will never get to go from one station to another without going through the other blocks first. In other words, you can't go station (left), lift, station (right), first brakes, second brakes, station (left), so the ride acts as if it is not a separate block...
However, obviously if one of the stations is empty, the ride can send the next train into the proper station for it to sit there. More or less, for the purposes of the units on the track, once it has parked in the station it 'disappears' until it is sent out again...
Oh heck, that doesn't sound right either. Hope someone can sort of get what I'm saying here.
The evolution of B&Ms blocking system is actually rather interesting, as their early rides blocked in a different way then their newer rides do. I'm not sure exactly when the change happened, but older B&M rides do not allow the trains to advance into a block unless the block directly in front of it is clear. Newer ones make an exception to this - they will advance the train directly behind the other in the station block. It totally makes sense from a capacity standpoint (and it does other stuff too, all good, at basically no risk), but it actually helps to disguise the exact blocking of the rides a little bit.
I'll stop going into the nerd stuff now. In totally other news, I'll FINALLY be hitting King's Island on August 15th. Originally, I was going to be there on a Saturday and was planning on getting Fast Lane passes. Will it be just as important on August 15th? I realize that some other parks like Holiday World have stopped operating by that point. I was planning on buying in advance to make sure that I had them, should I just wait? Thoughts from the experts in riding? It's been years, and although I know the nerd stuff, I just want to RIDE this time
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^I am not sure if this is on all inverts, but some actually have a drain system (little tube that runs down the side of the car) for that very reason.
That's standard on B&M equipment I believe, but it alone doesn't do the job. As far as I am aware, Intamin and Vekoma inverts do not have this - but to be fair, their rails are painted in every instance that I can think of too, negating the need somewhat.
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Honestly guys, if it's not a B&M Wing Rider I might have to eat my hat. Parks buy these kinds of coasters in sets often and B&M is pushing this style hard. It's also not hard to do 'record breaking' things with a ride that only has 4-5 cousins in existence.
Parks don't generally "buy things in sets" over multiple years. Think about it - let's say Gatekeeper bombed at Cedar Point - Didn't raise attendance to the park at all, lines were very short all season, and the general public said they seriously miss the Sky Tower. Would Cedar Fair really want to have made a deal to build three more of these already? Imagine what the owners (shareholders) of Cedar Fair would think when they announced, "Yeah, attendance at Cedar Point did nothing with Gatekeeper... we're building two more next season!"
And trust me, I know how unlikely such a thing seems, especially with the scenario above, but parks make missteps relatively often and you can't wager your future on them. This doesn't mean that it *isn't* a Wing Rider, just that in all likelihood it isn't a deal that Cedar Fair made to make them for multiple years.
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Sucks to see GL come down like that. It will forever be my "one that got away." I really should have insisted that I get on it last time I was at the park and it was operating. Darn.
Having said that, everyone who thinks the track is too rusty, what do you think is seriously done with exposed roller coaster track in the off season? The answer is that it sits outside. And gets weathered.
Most coaster track doesn't look like that when the season opens because running the trains around the ride track helps to considerably remove the rust look. Early in the season they'll look rustier than later.
It's particularly an issue to parks with inverts that have/ had have unpainted rails, as the rust will actually drip on people. I know of at least one ride where starting in March if it is raining they will send someone out to just cycle it to clear up the rust on the tracks so it doesn't drip on people.
GL didn't look to be in that bad of shape - seriously. I'm sure that it was just the cost for a new launch system versus the cost of new ride were weighed, and the idea of getting something new was far easier to market. Besides that, it helps to fit Ed's group's theme of "everything that Six Flags did didn't work" in it's removal. Win, win, win.
I've also got to say, this park is really fascinating to me right now. I really hope that a go of it can be made again.
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Took some time off this thread to let people calm down a bit, then read though some of it just now... Just a couple things to add:
Rides already discriminate against "fat" people based on their harnesses. If you get on a B&M invert for example and can't buckle the seatbelt, you can't ride - doesn't matter if your height is right or not. The key is that it isn't the ride operators looking at people and making a judgement call - the restraint is the item making the call for the rider with zero guesswork involved. As a matter of fact, really buff dudes get turned away from B&M inverts regularly because the harness locks nearer the upper body, making those with larger upper proportions easier for the ride to "discriminate" against then those with bigger bellies, thus why I threw the word fat in quotes at the beginning.
Regardless, this is almost definitely why NTG and IRAT are still closed - If the restraint closed around the rider who was ejected appropriately according to the restraints and standards that were in place, the park is going to want a new standard to be created and implemented before the rides reopen that will hopefully bar this from ever happening again. If instead the park re-opens the ride and a rider manages to be ejected a full investigation and tighter standards are enforced, then the second accident would be a negligent accident on the park's fault.
The exact same scenario played out in the SROS ejection. The restraint system showed that everything was okay, but it clearly wasn't, so the park created a new standard to hopefully prevent an accident like that from ever happening again. Based on the lack of ejections from that style of ride since that point, it appears as if the tougher standard "fixed" the issue.
The final thing is that while the legal system will probably find someone to "blame", the fact is that it is tough to do so in "real life". If the mechanics of the ride were fully functional as it sounds like they were, and the ride operators only sent the ride with the harness positioned tightly enough as they did (or they couldn't have actually dispatched), then the only thing left is that the original calculation of how far down the harness needed to be was wrong - but not on purpose. Simply put, in the millions of rides that the Giant has given since the reprofiling, it seems that the calculation was correct for every single rider except for one, unfortunately. It's hard to blame an engineer or designer for creating something that works perfectly 9,999,999 times out of 10,000,000, it's just that with a roller coaster the stakes are much higher and we demand perfection. And we should.
Six Flags is tougher with their safety than most. When the Superman incident happened at SFKK, Six Flags modified all of their drop rides to guard against the same scenario happening even though I don't believe any other company (chain or otherwise, including Cedar Fair) made the same changes to their rides. They'll finish this and the Giant will reopen with just as much wicked awesomeness as it has had in the past.
Sorry that was long, hope someone cared
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I know that no one is listening to the wait suggestion, but a lot of the comments are strange. Not that I think anyone will listen to me but...
Seat belts on coasters are almost always used not as a redundant safety system, but instead as an indicator on rides about if the rider can safely be restrained by the harness. I could cite examples, but I doubt anyone would read it.
Instead, I propose parks wrap all riders in bubble wrap and bungee cord them into place.
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Crappy situation, and my heart goes out to everyone...
But for everyone here, stop and take a step back. Don't listen to any of the speculation and don't contribute to it. The investigation will eventually yield some sort of answer that we can then look at and debate, but before that point there is a number of things that have to happen first, none of which anyone here can do. Listening to people who 'were there' but have no idea about what happened isn't going to help matters either.
What we know is that a rider on the NTG came out of the ride and died.
I'll also add this, without going deeply into it - restraints are designed to handle the most extreme situations that they can. It is ridiculous to think that the manufacturer did not design the restraints with the knowledge / understanding that a larger person could sit in the ride putting additional outward stress on the harness. The restraints were designed to handle all of those situations.
It's also ridiculous to hypothesize that because the ride spent some time down because of harness sensors in the past that those issues have any bearing on this. When B&M created the flying coasters, they did a computerized harness check and those things were down CONSTANTLY while the bugs were worked out of the system. None of those rides - nor any B&M for that matter - have ever ejected anyone.
If the lady stated that she didn't feel safe in the ride before she was sent out, then she joins the ranks of dozens of people who make the same claim every day. Your checks is what ensures that they are safe, or should be. Again, this means nothing.
Most parks and chains are self-insured, including Six Flags, so the shutting down of any other rides is not ordered by the insurance company, unless you count that as the chain itself.
At the end of the day, the ultimate goal of a park should always be to ensure that everything is as safe as possible, and this situation is no different. There is NOTHING worse than an accident to cause bad pub and stop people from coming, and with Six Flags being a chain, the effect can be like dominoes - just because the accident occurred at Texas doesn't mean it won't affect attendance at Great Adventure and Magic Mountain. It will. Watch the stock price on Monday and I bet you'll see a sizable dip, and I'm guessing it will affect the entire year's earnings. Cedar Fair will be in a similar situation, even though it wasn't at their park.
It is the absolute worst thing that can happen to a park (for so many different reasons, the largest still being the loss of life), and so I have full faith that Six Flags will be putting a ton of time into getting to the bottom of this and then figuring out how it can be prevented for the future. After the Superman issue at Kentucky Kingdom, I know of many changes that Six Flags voluntarily implemented on their drop rides to ensure their safety.
Some other time, I'd be happy to discuss harness theory, and how I am fascinated that we have all this new technology and ride harness systems are only scratching the surface of what they can do, but this isn't the time. What's done is done, and we can hope that moving forward it is solved so that a tragic accident like this doesn't happen ever again.
...oh, and one last thing, I'm sure that the government will use this as another example about how better government oversight would help prevent this stuff from happening. (I just saw it on the CNN article, for instance.) Just for the record, while I'm all for actually improving the safety standards, this simply wouldn't help anything. The biggest incentive for keeping the rides safe is what I mentioned above about how bad it is for a park from every angle if they don't, and because no state has enough amusement rides for there to be an inspector full time that just does that, the people that you put into those situations have no idea what they are looking at.
Simply put, some government inspector isn't going to be a better authority on how to fix your shiny Intamin coaster than the people who work on it daily. While like I said above, I don't want to speculate, one thing I am positive of - additional government oversight would not have prevented this in any way.
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Why are some people so keen on dumping on this development?
I wouldn't say that people are so keen on dumping on it, just being realistic about the environment that it operates in. If it was a moneymaker, do you think that Six Flags would have shed it like they did? As part of bankruptcy, Six Flags was essentially able to walk away from the contract to rent the land... and they did.
If the park was making money, even if it wasn't much money, do you think they would have walked away from it?
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I wonder if the focus on the water park has to do with the way the park has been forced to operate during fair previously. It was definitely weird that you could ride Chang like it was a carny portable. I can only imagine how much potential revenue was lost because Joe Schmoe could go ride Chang for $1.50 (or whatever) the year it opened instead of paying for a full day pass.
And that is still the biggest reason I see this as an extremely tough thing to overcome. I'm sure that if the restrictions from the fair weren't on the park, Six Flags would still be operating it, but between the fair getting parking revenue and the way they open it (and then allow outside vendors to set up portable rides right around it too!) makes it one of the oddest operating environments I've ever seen...
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I don't know if Vekoma is really known as the "budget" company amongst parks. Remember, while they do stuff like Boomerangs that are clearly cost effective (no matter how much a lot of enthusiasts don't like them), they also seem to be the coaster-maker of choice by Disney right now, having done (just in the US) Rock N Roller Coaster, Expedition Everest, Space Mountain (Land), and the Seven Drawves Mine Train.
With how many rides Vekoma constructs in a year, they have a solid niche in their own market. I think that market is mid-sized rides that they allow the client (with their input) to customize the crap out of. They don't have a lot of incentive to move out of that market into one that already is dominated by two makers currently, so why bother?
If a client came to them and asked them to do it, I'm sure they would have no problems devoting the resources to making it happen, but until then, I don't think we'll see it.
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Would this park have had a better chance, because the concept(not the location) was good, if it was attached to or part of a larger Hard Rock development that includes their casino/resort properties. Say Biloxi? Tulsa? Maybe the cradle of Rock and Roll and the blues as part of a large project in Tunica? It seems the park should not have come first but as part of the initial development or a soon there after one.
The concept was not necessarily so good. It was a very adult theme, but the rides themselves were more geared to a younger audience. I'll give it that it was extremely creative, and really thought through a lot of details, but the business plan was never run through the right people it seems. For one, I know they did some sort of report that said that there was more then enough tourism in the area to support a park, so that was part of the reason they went forward with it, but the flip side is they estimated that 30,000+ attendees would walk through the gate every day that it was open.
And therein lies the problem. To put that into perspective, Cedar Point is a well established destination park. It's seasonal, operating I would guess about 150 days a year. It has reported attendance of over 3 million for the past few years. That means it would have an average gate of 20,000.
Hard Rock Park, with a much shorter operating calendar, expected to get the same sort of attendance that Cedar Point does. Never mind the missteps in promotion, ride openings, local partners, questionable theme, or anything else which may have contributed - whomever came up with the idea that just by existing, this park would have a larger average daily attendance than Cedar Point must have been delusional.
The skeleton of the park was overbuilt from the beginning to try to accommodate those people in the way of facility, but not in the way of actual attractions. You can't efficiently operate a facility made to house 30,000 people when 2,000 are showing up.
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^ That was my thought exactly.
And just because I really haven't kept up much with the demise of this thing, can anyone tell me why in the world the rides are all just sitting there rotting? Is it in the hands of the government now who delusionally think that someone is going to show up, slap a new coat of paint on this thing and it will become this massive money-making park? Seems like whomever owns those rides would like to recoup some money, no?
Then again, the afterlife of this thing is no stranger than the life of this thing...
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Is it just me, or are those pictures of Zepplin shot with empty trains?
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Holiday World has made its name well known to a larger audience at an increasing rate ever since The Voyage and probably before that.
I have no knowledge of attendance history, but I would imagine that the year they got the Legend was really when they started picking things up. Before that point, although the Raven was already well known, it was hard to justify a trip there for essentially one good ride (okay, mind-blowingly-awesome ride, but it's hard to believe it is that good from just hearing about it) for one coaster. When Legend was being built, there was talk of this amazing ride that was already there and another they were making.
I went for the first time that year, and I knew a bunch of friends who did too - because they had heard the Raven was awesome, and because the Legend would be even better.
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Is is really that tough to continue the successful practices of a predecessor who set a good example? No, it is not. I know whenever I started a new job I always made sure to keep constituents happy which what had worked in the past, instead of just stopping a practice because it was not my idea.
Sounds like laziness or jealousy to me.
Without seeing the financial statements for Magic Mountain, I can't necessarily tell you if Jays methods were successful or not. Catering to the enthusiast market does not make a park successful.
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We might visit Fantasyland at the Disney parks, but the parks exist in the real world. In the real world, if the parks don't make money THEY CLOSE.
That was my point? As I said, I just think it's interesting to follow because it is one of the biggest changes ever in how people visit parks, and there is potential for it to misfire, as there is for anything in this industry no matter how well thought out it was / is.
Although as someone said recently and I agree with this, Disney never fails, the just state the goal is different!
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What is the Yeti doing in the Matterhorn? He doesn't belong in the Swiss Alps.
Regarding Soarin', next time take a look at the average person riding it. Those people are the people who rave about it and those people are not your typical hardcore enthusiast.
I don't get the yeti on Matterhorn either, but the mountain itself feels better done.
As for Soarin, I would tend to agree, but my wife is definitely in the non-enthuiast crowd (won't ride most coasters, Tower of Terror, or even Splash Mountain for that matter, and she thought it was silly.
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A quick google search reveals many sources:
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/?p=11742
For instance, here's a fun article to read, lol
Wow. I can't say that I had read one like that one before... I need to go get a tin hat.
But yup. I've been following this very carefully for a long time now (over two years?) There has been a LOT of interesting stuff that has been gone over with this already. Disney isn't infallible. The most reliable figure I've heard is they are sinking $1.5 billion into this system. They aren't doing it to be nice - they expect to make some serious dough off of it.
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Man, I could have sworn I wrote something like this last night, but alas... Try 2:
She's also being unfairly picked on---why is no one in the other park threads talking about park GM sightings (or lack thereof?). Which is why I made my comment.I agree with you about it being unfair, but I think that she is being picked on specifically because she is being compared to those that were there before her. Jay was out and about constantly, and catered to the enthusiast community. In groups like this, a lot of people saw him as "one of theirs." It would be extremely tough for Bonnie to live up to that.
That's the thing though - I can think of general managers of at least four other parks offhand that I know who are out just as much as Jay was, they just don't generally seek out the enthusiast community when they are out, so they are rarely brought up on message boards like this.
Don't get me wrong - I think that Jay's strategy at the Mountain for talking with enthusiasts and trying to get them back on board was the right one, but he essentially made it nearly impossible for anyone to follow in his footsteps and do as well with the enthusiast community that he tried to cater toward there.
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^ Of course they have already considered this, but I don't have as much trust as you I guess. Disney basically threw away millions of dollars on Fastpass and they were unable to fine tune it to meet the needs of all guests for years upon years. It's an argument that is hard to explain to people who Fastpass generally benefits, but from a business standpoint that has been a debacle. They are spending more than a billion dollars implementing this, so they obviously expect that this will increase their bottom line by a lot, and the most likely target for that is the high paying guests who can now pay to play to get a better experience.
Perhaps ironically, I have almost no issue with regional parks that have this same pay-to-play structure, it's just that those parks still don't make you pick if you want to ride Diamondback or the Beast first thing in the morning.
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The only reason I tend to believe the fact that the holding brake being disabled on our V2 was true is because the Vertical Velocity at SFDK also runs with its holding brake turned off. The question as to why Possessed and Steel Venom both still use theirs is one I have been wondering for a long time.
I believe that SFDK's holding brake got "turned off" about the same time the back tower got chopped in half to meet the height requirements Six Flags somehow "forgot" about or whatever it was. That would have been 2002. Great America's holding brake worked for years after that point.
I would think it would've made much more sense to just add the trims- after seeing that I don't knkw why they didn't. Thanks for the pic! I remember seeing cranes on the first loop a few times before the park would open, and some type of work being done. If you look closely at pics of Great American Scream Machine and Viper you can see the vertical loops had additional crossmembers which Shockwave's did not have. This leads me to believe that there was something going on with it. Why they didn't ever add trims or add the additional bracing does leave me guessing, though.Again though, they didn't add the trims, which makes one wonder (or at least me wonder ) if the trims have little or nothing to do with the ride's maintenance. I alluded to this before, but in every case I've found it to be true - Trims that are put on wooden rides are most often added to decrease maintenance costs on the ride and / or extend it's life. But on steel rides, where you don't have the same sorts of issues like retracking and whatnot, they are often put on for a different reason, which I strongly suspect is to try to make the ride give out the same sorts of rides every time. It makes even more sense when thinking about how this is B&M we're talking about - they are extremely controlling of what their ride experience is, and many many of their coasters open with trims already installed. I also remember whatever the Dark Knight floorless was at Six Flags Ohio having a trim opening year.
I've heard this directly from them in interviews - B&M prides themselves on being the most safe, reliable, and cost-effective rides once built that you can get. I'm all but certain they put the trims there to ensure the ride operates exactly as it was intended to by them at all times, regardless of weather, regardless of "wheel hardness", etc.
You have a lot of interesting knowledge which I hope you continue to share. Thanks!Glad someone thinks so
Kings Island (KI) Discussion Thread
in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
Posted
The picture is just Gatekeeper, don't think of it as anything.
I like that they are reusing the Bat, although it would have made more sense as an invert. Who knows, we'll see!