ajfelice

Right, I would never want to see a park be sneaky like an airline when it comes to pricing. What I was considering is having it posted well in advance what the price of admission/parking would be for certain days. For example, after July 15th all Saturdays will be X amount of dollars for admission, Saturdays in September in October for Halloween event would be X dollars, and so on and so forth.

Amen! Amen! Amen! When I first read the "DNA" statement, all I took it was that Cedar Point is still committed to being a roller coaster capital, and that it's obvious that new coasters are a part of their future. Yes, they might be taking a short break from major coasters right now, but they also did from 2007-2012. Who knows when, where, or what type of coaster is next. We can speculate all we want, but can we at least save the heavy speculation for when a real hint comes out (a.k.a. what Knoebels did)?

After a search of the forums, I have found little discussion on a topic that I believe is something that we will start to see more of. Dynamic Pricing in the simplest of definitions is charging more for a product or service when the demand is higher, and charging less to stimulate demand when sales are slower. It is obvious that park attendance varies considerably on Weekends versus Weekdays, and the time of year as Halloween Events are taking the industry by storm. My favorite example that comes from experience is the Columbus Day Weekend fiasco at Cedar Point. For the non-seasonal parks, it appears to be night and day when it comes to the typical school months where the holidays and breaks seem to give parks a healthy bump. With park attendance generally seeing an uptick across the industry, and the contrast from peak attendance days to lower attendance days becoming more pronounced, do you think it is time to price those huge days accordingly to attempt to control these massive crowds? I look at other industries who seem to do well with this pricing structure like skiing, movie theaters, and sporting events. Heck, many indoor water parks have been all over this strategy for awhile. So I have been wondering if it is time to look at this for many Amusement/Theme Parks. Or are the line skipping/reducing systems enough to dynamically price a visit based on crowds? Of course we will never see a flat attendance comparing Weekends to Weekdays and busy times to slow times, but should parks try to at least reduce the attendance variability? I personally see pros and cons to both sides of the debate, and I think this could be a very insightful discussion considering how the offseason has hit many of us hard with cold and boredom with a harsh winter.

So you are saying that SFGAm needs to go forward in time and take pictures of an operating Goliath so they can have 100% accurate pictures for their preseason promotions? Using a very similar in appearance coaster like NTAG is perfectly acceptable to use in a promotion for Goliath.

My two cents on the clone debate. Six Flags knows something that many enthusiasts don't always realize at first. The know that the vast majority of the General Public do not know or ever care that their local park's coasters are clones of coaster in other parks because the vast majority of their GP doesn't go to other Six Flags amusement parks very often. Superman: Ride of Steel is the perfect example. Most GP who go to SFA as their local/regional park probably view S:RoS as one of their favorite rides ever, and they probably don't have a clue that S:RoS is a mirror copy in another park called Darien Lake or even know that there is such a place called Darien Lake. I'm not saying the GP is stupid, they just don't take the time to do the research and scrutinize every minor detail of a park like us enthusiasts do. As for the non-locals who are looking for fun things to do in the D.C./Baltimore area, they are likely going to consider SFA by seeing a 200ft signature ride that is S:RoS (they really don't care when it was built as 200ft is still big to them). Six Flags also lists in their annual report that Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Kings Dominion, and Hersheypark as their competition for SFA. The only coaster SFA has that is somewhat a clone of a competitor is Joker's Jinx, but GP are very unlikely to catch on that one is the outdoor version of the other, so SFA is providing a diverse option in their market. There is one asterisk I want to add about their competition. Two of those parks, HP and BGW are primarily destination parks, not local parks like SFA is. SFA does not have to be on the plush level as a destination park like those two are to be successful. Enough with this debate that clones are a problem working against SFA and their business model. It's pretty obvious that SFA's problems probably lie more within the service aspects of cleanliness, up-time, guest service, and efficient operations, not the fact that their coasters aren't diverse from the rest of the Six Flags company. And who is to say that this park is struggling financially as this thread and other threads have suggested? We only see the annual report for Six Flags as an overall company, not an itemized income statement from each park.

If we want to be really technical, Chance never left, but the Morgan name was dissolved into the umbrella of Chance Rides. This company is quietly one of the most solid names in the ride manufacturing sector. Their rides are extremely reliable, comfortable, and easy to operate. To say they just now coming back is huge understatement. True, this is their first larger coaster in a long time, but they have been chugging along just fine building and refurbishing many other types of rides and attractions in the meantime.

A much needed change. A common denominator from employees and guests is that Maverick's standby queue was the most unfairly affected by the basic Fast Lane due to Maverick's lower hourly capacity. GateKeeper eats guests like clockwork, so the increased traffic under the regular Fast Lane should not slow down the standby queue very much at all. Great decision by Cedar Point!

When I think of this more traditional track style, I think back to the days of Arrow and early Vekoma. The problems were mainly transitions which weren't the most comfortable due to technological limitations. I have never had a problem with this track design where it's just simply rough. Morgan hypers proved very well that you can have this style of track and provide a comfortable ride for well over a decade now, and their transitions were mastered back then. I imagine Lightning Run to be just as smooth and track nicely like its older cousins.

I better dust off my Resume and get out of Waldameer fast before it folds using your logic. We would kill to make as much revenue as Michigan's Adventure. The bottom line is that Michagan's Adventure is profitable based on our information. The sheer amount of revenue a park makes doesn't matter if they can't cover their expenses. It's called being successful relative to your market size and resources available.

Wow, great photos! I have never seen SFA look so good in pictures. It actually looks pretty appealing to take a trip down there. Usually the offseason makes parks look at their worst too.

I believe I know why he would say that, but he just used the worst possible way to describe what he meant. If you can more frequently than not fill two or more trains on a consistent basis, then yes, multiple trains are more than necessary. When a park is not busy, loading frequently empty seats with multiple trains running is a waste of maintenance resources. A fifteen minute maximum line at one point in the day can usually be transformed to half capacity trains under two-train operation (I have seen it and worked it). In many cases, you are dispatching at the pace of single train operation anyways when the crowds are minimal due to holding up for people running in the station to jump into empty seats. Hurrying up and getting the air gates closed will irritate people just getting into the station or cause injury as they run for the seats. Also, you aren't going to have great employee morale if they run their butts off locking and unlocking empty seats all day just to keep things moving with two trains. There is nothing wrong with a fifteen minute maximum line due to one train operation as I have experienced what it takes when it comes to resources in deciding how many trains are appropriate. In the case of SFA, if single train operation is for reasons due to insufficient staffing or maintenance issues preventing the train from going into service, they need to address those problems. I find it very hard to believe that they would only run one train "for the hell of it." There must be another issue at hand if they are running single train operations when crowds dictate more than one train.

Ravine Flyer II is the root of my passion for roller coasters and amusement parks. However, it was almost a decade before RFII was built, that I developed an interest. As I got more curious about this proposed "big" coaster to be built in my small home park, I started coming across other pieces of coaster information. Next thing you know I was hooked. Of course RFII's Opening Day is still the highlight of my passion as that was moment everything came full circle. Ever since then, my travels have really picked up and I began to branch out from the parks within three hours of me and explore a whole range of parks. Heck, I got so hooked on exploring parks and coasters that it became very clear that my career should be in this industry.

Orientation for my first amusement park job as a Ride Operator in 2011 gave all us incoming employees a surprise soaking. We were all gathered at Flying Swings (Zamperla Flying Carousel) being shown some basics about what to expect through the course of your day running a ride. After my manager was done speaking, he offered us all a ride on the brand new Flying Swings. Once we were all buckled in, the ride started and all of the sudden a torrential downpour of water comes off the top of the ride and soaks everyone riding. Apparently it had rained the night before and they hadn't run the ride since then to get the water off the top. We later took pictures for our ID badges were I had a nice picture of me all soaked to remind me of that surprise for two years as they used the same picture on my badge in 2012.

The Beast's tunnels will always be my favorite considering how loud that train barrels though them. The Voyage comes in second with the triple down.

I was bored this afternoon, so I took some valuable time out of my nap schedule to watch this video. A quick bit of research doesn't give me hardly any recent reputable source that truly falsifies what has been put out about secondhand by several reputable sources. So I really hope you just caused me to waste my time and posted that video as a joke as it did a wonderful "Blackfish" job of using bits and pieces that lack context to make an argument. I might be torn on e-cigarettes in parks, but I'm certain that smoking should be limited to designated areas as there are more reputable studies out there indicating that secondhand smoke is in fact harmful to others who choose not to smoke. 99% of smokers have been more than understanding of this compromise to limit their smoking to secluded areas. Heck, I even supported an error that was put on our park map of an extra smoking area in the North End of the park. My argument that it was actually a secluded enough spot, and it would make several guests happier (our smoking demographic) that it should stay as we recently eliminated a smoking area when we built the North End. We ended up making this smoking area official so that we would limit the amount of problems with people smoking outside of designated areas in that section of the park.

This is the new "pandora's box" of park smoking policies. For myself personally, I am torn. From the knowledge we have so far on e-cigs, it appears the general consensus is that they are not harmful in terms of secondhand smoke (it's supposedly water vapor). In terms of smell, most e-cigarettes are not disturbing by any means. However, I did learn by working at my former job, a bowling center, that some flavored e-cigs do give off a potent odor. Now this isn't traditional cigarette odor, but there were occasions that an e-cig gave off such a strong smell that many people complained to me to the point I made the decision to ask the users to please only use them outside (my family owned the business, so I was allowed to make those kinds of decisions on the spot). So with limited tests indicating the secondhand vapor is essentially harmless, and the odor is non-existent in most cases, are parks going overboard? The easy answer initially is yes, but I understand where some parks are coming from when they blanket their smoking policy to cover all traditional and electronic smoking. In a tight queue line or crowded midway it still could be disturbing having that cloud of vapor being blown in close contact with others. It's also very hard to differentiate the secondhand smoke from the vapor by simply passing by a guest on the midway when you are not an e-cig user or smoker yourself. So that leads me to the question, should we park employees have to walk around like Nazis within feet of people to determine if it is an e-cig or not? That sounds ridiculous. In addition, with the use of e-cigs becoming so widespread, it will be easier for the more harmful traditional cigarettes to be used inconspicuously as they will be more easily lost in the crowd. I might have talked myself into why parks should include e-cigs into their smoking policy, but I'm still torn because I think we are on the verge of a serious guest backlash as e-cigs become more widespread. Yes, Pandora's Box and the Can of Worms are open, and all of the evil is running rampant.

One thing that came to my mind was the idea of having a section on Headchoppers. Debunk the guest myths that you could actually hit the tops of tunnels or coaster structure. Perhaps even a small interview or something with a description on how to design the perfect Headchopper. Personally, I love to hold my hands up as tall and straight up as possible during these elements of a coaster.

As great of an idea the Ride and Slide season pass is, it really baffles me why it took them until this point into the offseason. I'm sure they have already sold several thousand original ride only or slide only, so there will be some hassle and confusion as they sort out who is willing to upgrade and whatnot. Overall great idea, but to me this seems like a terrible time of the year to make that decision as they are already pretty far along in the selling process.

From what I have read, Hard Rock Park dropped the ball when it came to effective marketing and promotions. I'm not saying that their prices were wrong or that they needed to offer more discounts, but it seems like the efforts or budgeting restraints put onto their marketing department were to prohibitive in truly reaching out to enough people. In my honest opinion, the Hard Rock theme from the beginning was a turnoff for many people. While many adults and some older generations would love this kind of music, I believe the mass appeal or at least a large enough appeal to break even was overestimated. "Hard Rock Park" is probably not the name or theme that sparks a family with children's attention who are typically the biggest driver of any park's revenue and attendance. I enjoyed my visit to Hard Rock Park as it was very well done and had some spectacular employees, but looking back as I am older and more educated with marketing (a degree), it's now evident that their appeal simply didn't have a large enough audience to sustain a park that large.

Florida: Kraken Indiana: The Voyage New Jersey: El Toro New York: Ride of Steel Ohio: Magnum XL-200 Pennsylvania: Ravine Flyer II Virginia: Intimidator 305 South Carolina: Led Zeppelin (Time Machine) I need more States!

I understand you get upset when a ride is down for mechanical reasons, but before you make a claim that no one is working on a ride, understand how complex rides can be. There are computer and control rooms underneath stations or hidden in places hard to see where often times the source of the problem lies. Also, in many cases a park might be waiting on an expensive part that is not something you don't routinely keep in stock. Parks don't want to have down rides but sometimes things happen out of their control, even our punching bag park chains such as Six Flags.

Wow! Great Pictures! Looks like you had a great time. In light of recent CP announcements, did anyone have the guts to kindly ask what made CP decide to increase Iron Dragon's height requirement during the question/answer session? As an operations person myself, I'm very puzzled by this decision.

Typically, the state never forms the safety policies for rides, they only require that parks follow all manufacturer specifications. Potentially the insurance company could have had some influence, but that seems very unlikely because there haven't been any incidents. I'm willing to bet this is the product of Cedar Point all the way which is really sad because it does seem very restrictive for no particular reason at all. Kinda funny, once you are finally tall enough for Iron Dragon, Blue Streak, Cedar Creek Mine Ride, you also become tall enough for Millennium Force. Watch, next Millennium Force gets the boost to 60."

Biased? Maybe But this twisty s-turn under the large drop is secretly a very underrated part of Ravine Flyer II. First-time riders are often taken by surprise by how powerful the laterals are. Waldameer files

Having grown up with and continue to work at a raditional amusement park, my beliefs on what makes an amusement park a Traditional Amusement Park have evolved significantly. When I think of a Traditional Amusement Park, I think of a few core things: 1. A park that is deeply rooted in a community in ownership and patronage for several generations. 2. A park that is family friendly offering a fair amount of rides of all thrill and age categories. 3. A park that is operated traditionally with free/cheap general admission, option to pay-per-ride, and offers free/very parking. Not one of these are about the age of the rides or nostalgia of the ride. Having rare older rides is something often common in small traditional parks, but it is not what I think makes a park "traditional." Many older rides are often preserved in smaller family parks because the park has the time to delicately take care of them, and quite frankly the parks don't have the income to frequently upgrade to the high tech rides. Also, in many cases older rides are pretty low capacity which is simply not conducive to a large corporate park. Think about it, a place like your typical Six Flags or Cedar Fair park would never have a ride with as low capacity as Knoebels Looper or Satellite, and they simply don't have enough time to dedicate to maintain them when they have a huge facility to maintain. In my neck of the woods, a traditional ride like Whacky Shack sticks around because its still very popular, its low capacity is not yet taking away from the overall experience of the park, and the potential gains by replacing it with something better in capacity/maintenance are not yet significant to consider. There is nothing wrong with a traditional park adding a modern steel coaster. What makes Knoebels a unique traditional amusement park will still be there and continuing on for a long time. New rides will come and perhaps some old ones may retire, but in the end, Knoebels will still be delivering traditional style family fun. Quite frankly, nostalgia in having mainly older rides is not enough by itself to drive in the masses to keep a park growing. Last time I checked, keeping a park just the way it is for the sake of memories or nostalgia without any upgrades or new modern attractions for several years will only hurt in the park in the long term.