DirkFunk

Is that from employees at the entrance or what? It's on the app, which is pretty reliable at Dollywood so I'd take that as a confirmation. I can't really say I blame them. Ahhhh....I should probably download that again if I plan to be there tomorrow, shouldn't I?

Is that from employees at the entrance or what?

Six Flags America has a desirable coaster lineup, Wild Thing hurts, and the Riverside Cyclone wasn't interesting. OK.

Right. But this is exactly my point. You look at a company like Apple. Every product they make is the highest quality. If these companies are going to have some parks that are not the highest quality, they should let them go and put more wood behind fewer arrows. Okay, so you think Cedar Fair should sell off a bunch of profitable parks because you personally want a B&M? Got it. No, I think Cedar Fair should sell Valleyfair and put their resources toward parks they care about, and then let a private owner take over Valleyfair like what happened with Kentucky Kingdom and put some love and care into what is currently a crater of epic fail. You think being sold guarantees getting giant new rides? Go head to the Darien Lake thread and tell them that. So little goes on in either that there aren't even Wild Waves or Elitch's threads to post in.

Six Flags America's B&M is a rough as hell 26 year old used standup. They've only gotten hand-me-downs from Six Flags Great America for the last 15 years and the operations are total garbage. Do you think if you had spent the last decade+ years riding Superman instead of Wild Thing that you'd be satiated?

Bill, share some of those La Ronde photos again. I need to see what an adult's park looks like. It's been awhile.

I'd like the Frontier Trail to be more Frontierish, but just theme it oil derricks or something like that and it'll work just fine. Still better than a fenced off area.

If Adventureland in little Des Moines Iowa gets Monster, then the fact that a Cedar Fair park supposedly pegged for growth gets no new roller coaster in 10 years is nothing short of epic fail. They also went 23 years without getting a new roller coaster (if you count Underground, then just 20) and when they did get one, it was under $10 mil. But that's the point. It's a beautiful coaster. And the fact that it's under $10 million for such a beautiful, epic ride, and Valleyfair gets nothing of the sort, is a disgrace. Meanwhile, the sister park Cedar Point gets ride after ride after ride. You can apply your radius analysis to Sandusky Ohio and come up short of Minneapolis population wise. Valleyfair got Renegade in 2007. If you don't get another coaster for a quarter century from there (so ~2030) and it turns out to be something akin to an Infinity Coaster, I'm gonna take a wild guess and say you won't be happy about it. The Detroit-Windsor area alone nearly matches that 150 mile radius from Minneapolis. Sandusky blows it (and Carowinds) out of the water.

If Adventureland in little Des Moines Iowa gets Monster, then the fact that a Cedar Fair park supposedly pegged for growth gets no new roller coaster in 10 years is nothing short of epic fail. They also went 23 years without getting a new roller coaster (if you count Underground, then just 20) and when they did get one, it was under $10 mil.

You can be mad that you have a competently run amusement park with a hyper coaster, two wood coasters, crazy unique Arrow mine train, etc. Or you can enjoy it and the fact that you're by far the northern most community in the US to have that and access to a second theme park year round and arguably the best fair in the Americas. It's up to you. Being a target for growth and being a target for a $30 million dollar roller coaster can be entirely exclusive things. The same posts you suggest linking to from the calls indicate that they were pleased with the way the market reacted to their additions in 2015, which were water park based. I'm not saying they won't get a new coaster ever; that's just not realistic. But to expect or even demand Fury 325 is even less realistic. And even if they get their Fury 325 (a result I don't expect), invariably it will "get old" to people who visit there because any ride at any park can get to feel old to someone who visits an individual park enough. "Growth" can be derived from water park expansion, after all. As far as market size goes, there's a number of tools which basically work to pull data from GIS that you can play around with on the internet. Here's a pull from a different site with two radii set of 150 miles (241.401 KM) from the rough area the parks are around. Since that just fell short of Duluth from Valleyfair's location in the Minneapolis St. Paul area, I even spotted an extra 20KM on radius to give them a few more folks. Beyond just saying "statistics," look at the number of cities each radius encompasses. In fairness, more of the cities in the Carowinds radius are in competition with other amusement/theme parks than in the Valleyfair radius, but then again, most of the cities on Valleyfair's radius are tiny. So for fun, I created a freeform gigantic map that more than doubled a theoretical Valleyfair market space, and we're still millions below Carowinds in terms of population. Maybe if I could include Canada, you'd get closer, but how many are doing the 7-8 hour drive from Winnipeg?

Whatever they build at Valleyfair isn't something I can ride during a long layover at MSP on a weekday in February. That's inherently limiting. I haven't even been to Valleyfair itself in 12 years, but I've been to the MOA recently enough to go on Shell Shock.

Because A) Charlotte is in a southern climate and has the potential of 9 month operation. Minneapolis St. Paul won't be in that position for probably 30 years, by which point food shortages will be bigger concerns to the populace. B) Extending the radius to 150 miles, you find that Charlotte has 13.1 million people within that range with a projected population growth rate of 15%. Minneapolis-St. Paul has 5.7 million people in a 150 mile range with a projected population growth rate of ~7%. Even if you extend out the radius to 250 miles from Minneapolis, you have a pretty stable 7ish percent growth rate and fewer people (11 million) than Charlotte has within 150 miles. C) Carowinds closest significant competition as the crow flies is 154 miles away (Dollywood). Valleyfair's most significant competition is 11 miles away. Valleyfair's most significant competition is open 365 days a year and is immune to bad weather. There's also a water park very close by to that competitor which is probably open around 250 days. D) Charlotte doesn't have a giant multi-day event to siphon off tourists from Carowinds in the form of a giant fair. The North Carolina Fair does just over a million people and ranks in as the US/Canada's 17th largest, but it's all the way in Raleigh, 2 1/2 hours by car. And it's in October, when the park isn't running daily operations anyhow. Valleyfair shares a metro area with the Minnesota State Fair, which runs in late August to Labor Day, AKA peak season. The Minnesota State Fair is the most attended fair outside of Texas, ranking #4 on the continent and getting over 100,000 people a day in the turnstiles and 1.9 million over its run this year. As you might expect for such a big deal, it has its own independent midway rides and attractions and will lure people away from Valleyfair right at the time Valleyfair is most wanting those guests. So basically: The demographics are bad, the location is cold, and the competition is a lot stiffer, so Cedar Fair is not going to sink millions into it the same way they do Carowinds. Sorry, I'm unable to accept the crocodile tears knowing that tomorrow morning, you can drive a short distance and ride a flying theater, a dark ride, one of the top log flumes in the US, multiple adults sized roller coasters, and some fairly unique flat rides all day long if you so desired...on a Wednesday. In December. All right around the 45th Parallel.

Cobra being torn down makes it MORE likely I'd go next year. One less long line for a ride that is completely garbage (it's one of the three coasters there I've been on: thanks Six Flags ops!).

Just got off Exceptionally Angry Streak. Needs moar forcezzzz. Super overrated. If you want to ride a real coaster, me and all the voices I keep hearing suggest this rare Meisho jet coaster at a park with 18 characters in the name.

lmao security guards. At Mt. Olympus? There's probably a huge hole in the fence to crawl through there. They'll probably scare the family by saying they don't have insurance and then offer to settle with them for a $200 gift card card to Shoney's and that'll be the last we hear of it.

They need two years to overcome the sinking and build the underwater tunnels. Boats. Cuda Falls. Assless Chaps is a double negative because chaps don't have asses. Aquatrax.

If you think about it, the continuum of time is such that the end of years is entirely conditional. It is all artificial and imaginary. For that reason, I am stating that Mean Streak will open in 1994, because 1994 never ended to me. It is still happening until I feel otherwise.

Wait, we're still doing this? What did I say? Predictable as the day is long. Still waiting on those recipts. Even if I managed to have a full copy of the contract with the agreed upon terms and conditions and theorized date of opening, I wouldn't post it just because I get to see people come up with the craziest stuff to justify this belief.

Wait, we're still doing this? What did I say? Predictable as the day is long.

It'll be August before the "its opening in 2017!" people fully admit that won't happen. LMAO

Nobody associates fast food chains with quality or luxury, so why pay money to include them? At least with Johnny Rockets on the RCCL ships you're talking about a full service experience and what used to be better quality burgers (don't know how good they are still).

I briefly considered linking you to a long form essay someone did about the nature of the Pirates of the Caribbean queue and how Fastpass subverted the time travel aspect and has perverted/ruined the experience, but I figured you probably don't want to waste valuable hours of your life reading that.

I think you have to go to I-drive to find that premium product... You think Disney fans complain about upcharges, goddamn man....

Listen, putting a Swiss mountain with a Nepalese cryptid inside it between a circus and the ocean makes total sense. and if you don't think so, you need to read the 15"x12" plaque about fantasy when you come in. It was all part of the important third act, which comes before the crescendo of Rocket To The Moon.

Talking about parks and trying to think about them is fine. Using a placard next to no one actually sees as justification for the kind of "thematic continuity errors" that get everyone else in the industry dragged? Bloviating about "the opening act" as though Disneyland was intended as a narrative experience by the Almighty Walt and not filled with stuff like the Fritos Kid, Aluminum Hall of Fame, and Aunt Jemima's Kitchen at opening? It basically comes across as sounding cult-like because it is.