anewman35

They mighnt take a short-term PR hit, but I'm sure they'll take it in order to get the extra money (and then in a few years, people will stop remembering it was ever free, and the park will still get the money).

It might not be necessary, but from the park's perspective there's zero reason to change anything (it's not as if it's something they could really promote it to the general public, and at best it would bring a few extra enthusiasts, which wouldn't be worth their while). The park isn't going to spend money on something that isn't going to make them money.

People bring this up sometimes, but nobody ever seems to be able to cite proof. Personally, I don't really buy it - MAYBE it's true for the part near the station that's closest to Washington Street, but the rest of it doesn't totally strike me as plausible - I don't think the village would care that much about the few houses right across Washington Street, and as for being close to the Tollway, there's a fairly recently-built building across the Tollway that's closer to the road than the Eagle is.

While I have no idea why the renderings didn't show this originally, it seems crazy to think they'd care at all about a "backlash" from a very small amount of people. They aren't building this for the people on the message board, they're building it for the millions of people in the general public who attend every year, and they won't care AT ALL.

And SF really isn't being very clear on this, anyway. Like, on the park's home page right now is the line "See the tallest, steepest, fastest wooden roller coaster" (and the promo video uses a similar phrase). The vast majority of people are going to assume it is the tallest wooden coaster in the world (and then probably assume it also has the world's tallest drop). I'm not entirely sure that it'll really matter to people that much anyway, given that there's already a taller, faster roller coaster in the same park - the steepness may end up being the big selling point.

According to Wikipedia, at Midway Airport (close enough), the average high temp in April is 59.2 , May is 70.2, and November is 48.6. That's a pretty big difference.

They draw for Fright Fest, but I don't think they'd draw at all past that. For one, it's usually much worse weather in November. Plus, the last few days they are open in September are usually pretty empty (and I can say from firsthand experience, this year the last weekend day they were open was one of the lighter crowds I've ever seen). There has also been at least one year when they opened the weekend after Halloween and there were NO crowds (which is why they don't do that anymore).

Well, it's not really a random Monday, because like you said it's Columbus Day, so schools are off and some people are off work. Plus it's Fright Fest, which is always popular. I don't think it would be horribly horribly crowded, but I wouldn't expect it to be dead either.

After building a custom RMC coaster at the park. I doubt they will do a take over of American Eagle. I could maybe see them do some work to it but I doubt we will see a RMC hybrid of American Eagle. why not something along the lines of the Texas Giant or Iron Rattler? It's a comparatively cheap way to put new life into a ride, although I agree that topper track is more likely. The reason "why not" is that Goliath is going to just be a few steps down the midway. If it wasn't for Goliath, sure, but having two crazy extreme RMC rides almost right next to each other seems really unlikely, at least for a really long time.