neil009

This seems to be a thing, slowing lift hills. I wonder why they don't just have it how they want it from the start. Skyrush, this, Outlaw Run, El Toro... I'm sure there are others.

Wow.

Six Flags: Kind of dumb.

I mean I've ridden them, and I've ridden them at a bunch of other places as well, and I can't say I've ever come off them thinking it was an especially exciting or worthwhile experience when compared to the same ride anywhere else. You drive, you bump. *shrug*

Hahaha, if you want to get reductionist like that, we can do that comparing Haunted Mansion to one trailer Owen dark rides just the same. Calling the Lusse's and carousel "normal" but with only a couple additions gets me rolling, bro. The haunted mansion is a long ride with a large variety of well-maintained uncaged stunts with generally perfect timing. That makes it unique. The bumper cars are a bunch of cars going around in a circle bumping into each other. That makes it pretty much like every other bumper cars. There's plenty of uncaged stunt dark rides. Heck, what separates the Old Mill at the Kansas State Fair from Pirates in the Caribbean? The boats are bigger? The robots have more points of articulation? Reductionism is stupid for serious critique when you take it down that far. The Lusse scooters aren't like other bumper cars. They're much heavier and produced much more pronounced bumping. Comparing them to random fiberglass bodied Bertazzons is fine if you flat out ridiculous unless you don't care about bumper cars. Same with serious discussion of the Grand Carousel vs. its peers. I understand your points but I think I'm being misunderstood. My intention is not serious critique. No I honestly couldn't care less about bumper cars. Maybe others don't care about dark rides and don't understand the hype surrounding the Haunted Mansion, and that's fine. My point was merely that many of these finer details, like the material the bumper cars are made out of, are things that may get lost on slightly less fanatical park-goers, and therefore their reaction to the park might be less superlative than the, shall we say, connoisseurs such as yourself. Therefor the park gets way overhyped and some people come away vaguely disappointed. That's all.

Hahaha, if you want to get reductionist like that, we can do that comparing Haunted Mansion to one trailer Owen dark rides just the same. Calling the Lusse's and carousel "normal" but with only a couple additions gets me rolling, bro. The haunted mansion is a long ride with a large variety of well-maintained uncaged stunts with generally perfect timing. That makes it unique. The bumper cars are a bunch of cars going around in a circle bumping into each other. That makes it pretty much like every other bumper cars.

Drugs are bad. Knoebels is really all about simple pleasures, but the praise people heap on it is anything but simple. I'm just saying when people talk it up so much I can totally understand why someone traveling a long ways for it might be let down. Bumper cars is bumper cars is bumper cars. Oh boy, they're going *slightly* faster, now I can bump people *slightly* harder. You would have to be doing drugs while riding them to say they're a can't-miss ride.

^I'm just not sure what's giving you the impression they're bringing in the number of people a park of its size should be bringing in to remain successful. Are you counting the cars in the parking lot? Most people accept queue length as a good indicator of crowd size.

And this is the problem when things get over-hyped. I love Knoebels but people talk about it like it's Disneyland and I think they're setting a lot of people like yourself up for disappointment. The two bigger coasters and the haunted mansion are really the things that stand out the most, and those things are what you loved. If that's all you'd expected, you would've come away feeling happy and like you got your money's worth (I mean come on, you got into the park for free). Instead people overhype everything and you come away feeling disappointed, and there's really no reason for it. Are the bumper cars really that much better than every other bumper cars in the world? No. Is the carousel just a normal carousel with the addition of a beautiful band organ and the brass ring game? Yes. Are the flyers really that exciting? I don't know, most people (myself included) can't make them do much more than go up and down and up and down. It's just a small, nicely-run rural amusement park with free admission. I feel like if that's all you'd been expecting you would've enjoyed your visit more, instead of going and feeling like there's something you're not understanding. EDIT: Ok so you didn't like Twister, nobody's perfect.

^No no, you must have been imagining things, every ride is a walk-on all day every day. Which is fine because everybody's just there for the water park. They just need to add a couple more boomerangs, they'll be fine. *eye twitches*

Talon and SF both pulled huge crowds when they were new, I remember waiting an hour or more for both of them. By the time Hydra came the decline had already started, but it still wasn't like it is now. No point in arguing that since we're both just going off of memories of whatever random days we happened to show up. Although if what you're saying is true then I doubt CF would've made three massive attempts at making the park into a major coaster destination, in fact they could've abandoned the dry side completely if they'd wanted. But the biggest point is that the dry side is at least twice as big as WWK. It doesn't take as much for WWK to look like a mad house because it's on a smaller plot of land and water slides have terrible capacity. If the dry side is spending the majority of the season virtually abandoned, it means the park is not doing well. I feel like I'm stating the obvious here. It's not like Holiday World where the sides are more even and the dry side is relatively small, they have a lot of huge rides running all day long soaking up money and if people aren't riding them then they're just bleeding revenue. As for "the flat rides always have lines", A) again, most of the flat rides are clustered around a relatively small area of the park and it doesn't take as many people for them to have a line, possibly giving the impression that's where most of the people are at, and B) you're telling me that for some reason, a higher percentage of DP's clientele go to the park to do nothing but ride flat rides. I am telling you, that defies common sense. It's not Knoebels or the local state fair. Dorney does not market its flat rides, it markets the coasters and the water park. That's what most people are there for, same as any other park.

^I'll get right to the point. Dorney is a major thrill park. They market themselves as a major thrill park in the local media and they already have several world-class (in terms of size) coasters, along with all of the maintenance cost and expense that entails. They need attractions that will drive attendance long-term. No it doesn't particularly matter if it's relocated, but spinning wild mice, small-scale eurofighters, these do not drive attendance long-term, at least when you're already the size of Dorney. If they did, then no park would ever build large coasters and our country would look like a giant German fair circuit. Lack of new signature attractions is, I assume, one of the main reasons Dorney is failing, and it is obviously failing to some extent. The fact that you could walk around the park and see no lines for any of the major attractions and somehow take this to mean the park is doing fine, is strange to say the least. The recession came, parks like Dorney were hit hard, but things are generally on the upswing, they just got a huge water park expansion and there's no reason we shouldn't expect to see the dry side get a major expansion as well in the next couple years. As to the line length discrepancy, tell you what, I will take some pictures of the lines next time I go and put together a nice little queue length TR, just for you, and in the event that I can't find a single ten minute + line, I will concede that what you're saying is even possible. Keep in mind I go every year and I have never seen a day that you describe, where every coaster is literally a walk-on all day.

GL takes its ending corkscrews faster than Bizarro does, plus the standing position makes the inversions feel much more intense because of your higher center of gravity. True it's a parking lot coaster but I'll still take it over almost any other B&M that's not an invert or hyper coaster.

I will never understand the hate for GL. Last I checked it's about 200x more intense and exciting than either Bizarro or Superman.

Because no matter how much money they pump into TH it'll never be a major draw for them, unlike a new GCI would be. They're not the only corporate park who's let their classic coaster become an overly braked shake-fest, no need to single them out for that. Except, oh wait, Dorney has added new coasters in that time. Two of them, in fact, which means the rate at which they add coasters is actually pretty average. They may not have been new or expensive, but moving them there was still a sizable investment, and why would CF have bothered when they could have just gotten more flats which would've been cheaper? It's because Dorney's clientele do in fact love coasters, and they needed new ones to advertise and keep them afloat against their competition, even though CF was obviously concerned with putting its most expensive investments elsewhere. But where are you getting this idea that just because CF hasn't done something for awhile it means they never will again? SFGAdv hasn't gotten a new original coaster in eight years, probably soon to be nine, are you going to say they're doomed to clones and relocations forever and ever as well? By your logic, Great Adventure should never add a kiddie ride or family ride again, and Hershey should stop trying with their water park. Neither of those things are going to happen either, because the owners of all three parks know that to have a successful major park you need a mix of attractions that offers a little bit of everything against the competition. Nobody goes to Knoebels for big looping steel coasters, right? Look what they're building. Outside of Hershey, Dorney is still the biggest park for coasters in all of eastern PA, that's still a major draw for them. I don't know why you keep saying this, the coasters are most certainly not always walk-ons during the summer especially after the water park closes, and this has been corroborated by several other people in this thread. No the lines never get that bad, but walk-ons? No. And I don't know which Halloween event you were at but last time I went the coasters got pretty sizeable lines after dark. Regardless, have you ever considered that maybe what you're seeing is actually a sign of attendance flagging in general, that maybe that's what a park with a large water park looks like when they're getting smoked by their competition, and NOT a sign that for some reason people who go to Dorney just don't like coasters? Ok so we agree that "coaster people" go to Dorney. Then I'm sure you must realize that larger, original coasters boost attendance more than cheap inverted boomerangs, or else nobody would ever build large original coasters. Also, again, I don't know where you're getting your info but even Stinger wasn't a walk-on its opening year, I distinctly remember waiting at least 30 minutes in line for it and this was well into the summer, in the middle of the day when the water park was still open. Your argument seems to boil down to "If they were going to add a big expensive coaster they would've done it by now", which doesn't make any sense, and "People at Dorney don't want a big expensive coaster", which is flat out wrong. We'll probably have to agree to disagree. You seem to be saying Dorney will do fine just continuing to do what they've been doing, but they are clearly not doing fine, so that right there invalidates your argument. Eventually Dorney is either going to see some heavier investments or it'll be sold/closed, one or the other. No way they'll continue on the way they've been going. CF has reported increasing revenue the past couple years so I'm pretty sure it'll be the former.

Instead of getting angry over a hobby that's supposed to be fun, why not let us know in the Dorney thread what expensive coaster you think they'll get and why you think it would be a good investment. I'm really curious. Ok so I apologize for lashing out. I know it's silly but I took your statement a little personally since I have a lot of happy memories from Dorney, and it's gotten the short end of the stick lately. It's a little like if your sister graduated from law school, but her husband left her and now she's too busy with the kids to take the bar and start her career, and someone tells you, "Well it's ok, your sister's really not that great at all that lawyering stuff anyway, best if she doesn't worry her pretty little head about it and just takes care of her kids." Plus, unless you've got some hard figures to back up your argument, you can't tell just from looking at the length of the lines whenever you happen to be there what kind of impact Hydra made on attendance. The water park is a bigger draw sure, but you can't say people who go to Dorney aren't interested in roller coasters because that is demonstrably false. The people who go to Dorney are the same people that go to every other park. I am 100% certain they will get a major new installation at some point, when I can't tell you, but I'm certain they will, as long as CF isn't planning on abandoning the property. Why do I think the strategy you propose is a bad one? Because no major park can hope to survive without occasionally adding new headlining attractions, that's simply a fact (especially in an area as competitive as this one). Also keep in mind that the economy, as well as many of the areas around Allentown, are on the upswing. What coaster will they get? A GCI would be great, as would, oh, I don't know, anything. Wing coaster, giga coaster, you name it, they need it. Where will it go? At the moment, Stinger's spot is looking increasingly likely.

I absolutely agree, Chiller's old spot would be the best location. However, this is Six Flags we're talking about, and I'm sure it would be cheaper to fill the land they just vacated then to open up a whole new area of the park. That area has been unused for so long and I'm fairly certain cost has to be the reason why. I'm sure they'll open it back up eventually but only after they've used up every possible ounce of space elsewhere.

Wings versus the center seats makes ALL the difference. It's not that the ride tracks poorly, it's that the wing seats have less support so they oscillate up and down, especially on the huge turnaround after the first airtime hill. And it seems to be worse this year than last. Not every ride will be exactly the same but many (myself included) have described rides that felt almost like a wooden coaster in how bumpy it was. It's *never* been glass smooth, at least in the wing seats, but the more you ride it and get to know it, the more you notice stuff like rattling.

If Dorney does not get a major addition to the dry side attendance will continue to dwindle until the park finally shuts down or is sold. They can't survive against the competition never adding anything new, and CF knows it. To say that Dorney will never get another new coaster is not only bullsh*t it's also extremely irritating to those who call it their home park. I didn't say they wouldn't get a new coaster... I said I don't see them getting an expensive new coaster. What cheap transplanted coaster do you see them getting next? Another boomerang? Maybe another wild mouse or two? Bullsh*t. People DO ride the coasters at Dorney, another major investment will come, especially as the economy continues to improve. Ok, I'm done derailing the thread, back on topic. Personally I do think SFGAdv will get a major new coaster in the next couple years, but I don't see it coming next year. 2017 at the absolute latest. And I bet it'll go in RT's old spot as that is the cheapest option and you can always count on SF to go with the cheapest option.

If Dorney does not get a major addition to the dry side attendance will continue to dwindle until the park finally shuts down or is sold. They can't survive against the competition never adding anything new, and CF knows it. To say that Dorney will never get another new coaster is not only bullsh*t it's also extremely irritating to those who call it their home park.

Pretty sure whatever you want to see in the clues, that's what you'll see.

I know, I'm sure it'll be fun, and obviously I'll reserve judgement till I ride it, just saying it could have had a more exciting layout, like Thunderbolt's, with a couple really strong airtime hills. The layout was more what I was referring to, not manufacturer.

KNO*E*BELS Otherwise, nice trip report.

That's been the running theory in this thread since literally the very first entry.

I am so stoked! Glad to hear the trim brake didn't kill the second half of the ride, could you feel it at all? I honestly wish this is what Knoebels would've gone with, looks much more forceful than what they're getting.