DirkFunk

Oh, cool, the park with all production model clones bought a failed ride. Sounds like a great time.

Basically this. There's many ways this plays out. In the meantime, someone's kid is dead and a couple people are injured at no apparent fault of their own. No matter what happens next or how the report ultimately plays out, this should be kept in mind.

Killing a lawmakers son is the only thing worse for a theme park than the resident Shamu/Shamu equivalent eating the trainer. Therecare very few occasions by which decapitation death on a ride is inherently likely even with misconduct, and Verruckt is an attraction with an array of thrikes already against it in terms of its design. I'm willing to hear out an investigation still, but that park (and Kansas attractions in general) are about to see changes.

I'd agree with you if the lead on Avatar wasn't one of the names I heard and alluded to in my first post.

Legoland makes it work but they also have a year round water park. Adventure Island closes in October for BGT. I think it isn't a bad idea for that park and a couple others like San Antonio (though that park is kinda lousy all around) and Williamsburg, but Orlando it strangely enough I think is too late for an adjustment. I've harped on this before, but if Antarctica wasn't as crappy as it is, we might not be having this discussion at all.

You mean Q1 2017 as 201 has past? They need the on property resorts but they need to get them right. Even Cedar Fair showed the greatest growth in lodging. I'm wondering when we see Six Flags enter that Market. They could build their own resorts with indoor water parks and ropes courses and what not. Look at St Louis and all that spa e around the Eureka park. With Halloween and Christmas becoming an important seasons for theme parks it's more and more a no brainer. Yeah (and they also adjusted down capex spend). SeaWorld is surrounded by hotels already but they own none of them and, frankly, I don't think there's any demand for an additional further away hotel that is "officially" SeaWorld branded given how soft the lodging market is right now sans a lot of the international guests. Six Flags would need to invest money to do that, and they have said a few times now that they're not looking to spend at all. I think they even said a couple of announcements ago that they were thinking they could spend even less than they are now on cookie cutter S&S Freefly coasters and flat packages for guest increases.

As long as you have the fiscal responsibility to PAY THE BALANCE EVERY MONTH, credit cards are the best. Free money and points. SPG had the best card going for awhile, but now that Starwood is getting swallowed by Marriott, I assume the card is going bye-bye too. The IHG card has been OK for me, but the Marriott Visa is (IMO) choice. SPG Amex though is the GOAT travel card. Also, if you're a Lansing resident, you're somewhat beholden to Delta (even though LAN is getting a lot of American flights), and the AMEX from them with free bags and Zone 1 is a nice pickup. [also; quickly declining? is that what you call all those cranes and development along Michigan Ave.? OK.]

Attendance was up year over year after the coasters opened at the two Florida parks, and Mamby already stated future attractions will open in Q1 2016 as a result. As for the Brazilians: yes, they aren't coming like they used to and yes, it is apparently noticeable. The fears of Frozen having never ending queue lines after opening basically dissipated after a couple days when it became clear there were fewer bodies inside the gates. SeaWorld has had similar issues.

Or fortunately, depending on your perspective. How awful would it have been if Cedar Fair had Windseekers installed in every park and they started having issues chain-wide at the same time? I have a deeply unpopular take in some circles that the state of California acted properly by refusing to let Windseeker reopen when the manufacturer and Cedar Fair admitted there was no way to actually prevent the problem of the ride being stuck/slowly descending for a period of hours. That this would be considered an intended safety feature of the ride is preposterous. As much as I do at times enjoy them, I actually go through the seemingly ridiculous process of going to the bathroom before riding one simply because I know how screwed up it is.

Don't forget new Soarin' and the additional theater for it (and 3rd track for TSM). Half of that are needed capacity improvements but nothing to really advertise. There's also Disney Springs, which while it is great that it has been updated, is still an outdoor dining/shopping mall area with no gate fee and, you know, not a theme park to draw anyone specifically to Orlando.

SMASHING THAT LIKE BUTTON IF IT EXISTS

Brazil's economy is in freefall and Brexit threw the Brits into turmoil too. Add in kids being eaten by alligators and regional mass shootings, and its a bad mix for mass tourism. SEAS just announced today that their Florida parks had lousy attendance for those reasons (though an increase year-over-year once they got the coasters up). I'm told Universal's numbers are just fine, probably because they've been building new stuff right along and it's still attracting new eyeballs and bank accounts.

When revenue is down because attendance is tanking, how do you keep earnings reports trending up? Gotta do something. That something is cut expenses.

You know, I'm torn. There's some NIMBYs who hated the place, but part of the hate was built into the lack of infrastructure present in the area for such a large theme park. And ultimately, they didn't kill the park; Six Flags, Busch, and Cedar Fair played specific, different roles to make that happen by killing off the demand for it. There's a lot of bad parks out there, but as bad as (new) Elitch Gardens is, it was never so bad that it killed the very idea of the amusement/theme park in Denver.

So I hear there are some Imagineers who might be looking for work this morning. Anyone want to hire a guy with 10 earrings and a lot of south pacific masks?

I was out of the loop during construction of Thunderbird. What system does it use for its launch? LSM powered by a flywheel. It would've been drawing too much power at once, so they decided to use the flywheels to just be able to slowly charge up for the launch. They have one big generator (last year it was 2 further down the hill) there as back up systems in case the flywheels were to fail. I think this is mainly because it's the star attraction. They can't really afford for it to go down, or they'll have plenty of angry guests in the park, since it's the only steel coaster there. Backup systems don't constantly run and emit smoke like that. They were using it as a primary draw last year. You could see the engines belch smoke when the trains would take off.

Yeah, exactly. Plus cost should be down a little thanks to the dollar coming closer to parity. I'd even find an ARM ride possible. But not the Mondial one. Noooooo way.

There is no chance they're buying another Windseeker. None.

With all of the revenue from the last 10 years the most exciting thing they could add is the world's first dueling wacky worm without the second track. They could lie announce that the park will close and have people in the tens come to the park and get enough money to buy another game for their arcade. Delgrosso's is growing steadily. In the time between my first and second visit, they've added a very good flat ride and a huge water park expansion. I see more flat rides coming to the park, but probably not a decent sized roller coaster, even for next year (the park's 110th anniversary.) From my understanding, this park is somewhat supplemented by the state government or even federal, is that true? I thought it was based on Leap The Dips being historic, the presence of public athletic facilities, and the fact that they have free community days. Plus I honestly don't think this park would still be in operation without special funding and tax exemptions. I enjoyed the park and think it deserves any help it gets to stay in operation. I've heard things like this as well and I imagine it must be the case for exactly the same reasons. I can tell you affirmatively that the NPO that funded Leap the Dips was dissolved years ago. Might have been nice for the coaster preservation guys to say something about that, but they were too busy ironing their Men's Daisy Dukes, probably.

I honestly don't get people's aversion to Hydra. Just baffles the hell out of me. Not rough, weird layout, physically feels like something is happening to you; they could have built a Intamin invert that can't run in a slight breeze or Gerstlauer anything with OTSRs and had something hideous instead on that spot (again). Going back to Kraken - it isn't "original B&M" to me at all in that it really doesn't offer any specific elements that is unique, but kinda collects a lot of greatest hits things and puts them together competently. God, it isn't like they got B:TDK from SFNE there.

Does Holiday World still have those portable generators outside Thunderbird?

People can't take criticism as anything but "complaining". They can build whatever the hell it is they want and I'm permitted to laugh at any stupid choices they make. They'll be fun rides and at least kinda unique for two of the towers.

The average S&S cluster has one line to reduce footprint since everyone is in line to ride an identical drop tower. In the instance where the middle tower produces a significantly better ride than the tallest tower, then all you do is switch which of the two towers sits idle with a 4-5 person crew by year 3. You also need three distinct (and long) queue lines since each double shot tower has a theoretical capacity approaching 400 an hour at a park with 3 million+ attendance.

What is this "Why would you want to have a layout near the ground, that's bad" nonsense? A) Hurler didn't suck until they deferred maintenance on it over and over and over. B) Did we learn nothing from Maverick? Did we?

My sentiments exactly. Maybe the middle tower was meant for people who are smart and know how to avoid long waits. CapEx geared toward the theme park customer that doesn't exist.