TheDarkMaxim

To be fair they only removed 3 flat rides. Ranger, Raging seas, and UFO (while they claim its being refurbished). (and the kiddy motor bikes) But in the last 5 years have added: -Rolling Thunder -Blast Off -Hornet's Nest -Moose on The Loose

No CNL does not control the operational budget. Period. Premier makes revenue based rent payments to CNL. Premier makes operational budget, and I believe most of the capital budget. And yes Six flags has been gone 10 years, but the damage done 10 years ago is why rides are SBNO. If you don't upkeep a machine early in its life, it will run like shit for the rest of its life.

/rant CNL is a very hands off real estate investor. I've said this before, operations of the park are handled by premier. CNL is only really involved in major capital expenditures (even then they still aren't that involved). CNL is a REIT. Like other funds, investors put their money in, and a group of people manage the money and make strategic investments. In the case, its real estate. So you can sit an point a finger at CNL, but you sound ignorant. Lastly, its not like the park "doesn't care". These maintenance issues have been plaguing the park years. The rides were seriously neglected in the late SF, and PARC years. (Not to mention Twister and ROS have always been nightmares) They are working with what the have, and cant just go and blow millions of dollars rehabbing every single ride. The train for ROS was over a million dollars, and that not really something they can advertise and generate more revenue from, so of course they didn't buy two in one year. Also, why would they take a couple pieces off twister at a time if it were going to be removed? It's being repaired or overhauled most likely. The continuous misinformed bitching in this thread is worse than talking about Cuda Falls every single post. /end rant

That's not a good deal. If I were you WAIT. NVIDIA and AMD just announced their new graphics cards which are a major leap forward in performance, and power consumption. Also, AMD's Zen processors will be out later this year, which will be significantly better than that Fx4300.

If you have an android device, enable mock locations under developer settings. Then download a fake location setting app. You can then set your location to a SF park, and viola the app thinks you're at the park.

The "rattling" you will experience on most Intamin hypers. It is just as bad on SFNE's Superman.

I was also at the park yesterday. Lines really weren't too bad for such a nice a day. I'd agree the ride ops were moving pretty fast, except for Thunderbolts. A couple pictures from the day

You can pump out great quarterly reports, but when total liabilities keeps climbing you cant really say they're doing real well. Total liabilities hit over $2.4Bil this past quarter.

Are you sure you're on the right website? Their coaster lineup consists of an old Arrow, a vekoma hang and bang, a boomerang and a horrific wood coaster. The only 2 good coasters seem to be Ride of Steel and a portable Zamperla family coaster. They've also got a bunch of abandoned waterpark attractions and an abandoned mini golf course lying around. I mean... I'm not saying it's a terrible park but, "meh". I'm not saying it's the greatest park, but... Viper is still a fun coaster for its age. Predator isn't awful, it has some good airtime and laterals in it. Abandoned waterpark attractions? There is the concrete trough left from FF, but like its been said, removing that will be major undertaking because it supports much of the hill. Honestly the worst part of the park is the clientele.

Oh hey I completed this park and uploaded it over a year ago to NE. Here's your link. Here's some overview pictures.

Corn Popper just underwent a major refurbishment, including replacing a major motor a couple years ago. It's old, but in good shape.

That's madness! You can stay onsite at Disney for less money! I'll stick with the Super 8 across the street. $60 and free parking, 10 minute walk to the front gate. Wow that's pretty cheap in comparison to the 400$+ for the Poconos and NE ones on weekends.

Power shouldn't be much of an issue anymore, I think 2 years ago they replaced their substation and combined the parks 2 power grids.

CNL has already stated in their quarterly that they sold 3 of their themeparks/waterparks. We now know 1, for all we know Darien Lake could be one of the other two.

^Which they do. Canadian traffic in the campground and hotel is a huge revenue stream for the park. Your average person has no idea what rides are the same, so that's really not much of an issue between the parks. A big reason Canadians come to DL is it's a less busy escape. CW is so busy people come to DL to get away from that chaos.

^2013 was a rough year for the corn popper. I believe the central motor burned out early in the season and it ended up being down the rest of the year because the motor had to be rebuilt with custom parts.

^^Hmmm I wonder why SF went for the 24 passenger versions, when, for example, Darien Lake got the 32 passenger one.

You work for Darien am I correct DarkMaxim? Formerly a part of leadership. And CNL isn't necessarily selling everything. Basically their goal is to "provide liquidity to their investors". They can do two thing, sell everything and dissolve the REIT, or transition to a publicly traded corporation. They have sold a big chunk of their properties, its still possible they make go the corporation route with a smaller portfolio. But at this point it does look like they're going for dissolution.

CNL has nothing to do with the operating budget. Only thing they really have a say in is the capital budget.

Honestly a big problem with Darien Lake in the past years is that much of the park management had been there since Six Flags days. Most of them are gone, but a handful still exist. So while corporate management may have changed hands, a good chunk of local management stayed the same between SF, PARC, and Herschend. Some are still there now, most are thankfully gone.

From CNL's earning statement it sounds like Elitch (or) and Darien Lake are in process of being sold. "In March 2015.... and entered into an agreement to sell one of our attractions properties for $140 million and entered into a letter of intent to sell our unimproved land for $5.5 million" Elitch and Darien were each bought for 110 million, and CNL doesn't have any other attraction anywhere near that value.

The new park map is up. And ranger is still there so doesn't look like its going anywhere yet. http://www.darienlake.com/downloads/park-map.pdf

When I was there opening day and the following weekends, it always seemed like they had at least 1 supervisor operating/attending the ride. I was so impressed by how they ran that ride.

From DL's twitter. Footer looks like its been poured.

Doug, to me marketing always seemed terrible with the park. You seems to be doing a great job with it so far. I think if on the facebook and twitter pages for the park during the season, every day go out take a picture of a different part of the park, and drum up some excitement on the pages, I think it would go a long way.