Too Fast For Comfort

It would be kind of cool if there was a pre-ride video, and immersive theming in the station and up the lifthill, but the twist that the park was hiding is that its actually themed to the Cold War and the fear of the Arms Race and Mutually Assured Destruction. Then the post-credit scenes shows Putin interfering with our elections and controlling Trump like a puppet, showing that the Iron ("Steel") Curtain never really went away.

The implications of this are interesting for sure. SWSD has never really been on the map as far as rides go yet is one of my absolute favorite parks. It's a shame the animals don't carry the park anymore. With all these new rides the overall feel of the park will definitely change; it's already different than it was before. But ultimately it's for the better and I definitely don't see Seaworld getting rid of any animal exhibits, even in the long term (except for, of course, when all the Orcas die). If we see a couple more rides over the next 10 years then SW will definitely corner the market on the San Diego area, though, and I think the park will start seeing a lot more success. I'll never argue with prioritizing coasters over sushi ingredients. But I do appreciate any touch to make a park better. I think caring for animals is just way too expensive and impractical for a private company interested in making a profit, and you really need a government grant to make it work.

Another plan (if you're spending 2-2.5 days there) is to prioritize rope drop (assuming you have a Gold/Platinum pass or are a hotel guest) and make sure to close the park down each other. Do whatever you need to do in the middle of the day... possible even just go back to the hotel/Airbnb and just chill, nap, eat, get work done, etc. The bulk of the groups and crowds are there in the middle of the day, but don't bother to make rope drop or stay late. Granted, it might be cheaper to get the Fastlane than to get an extra day of lodging and burn another day of PTO. But extra time can have its luxury as well. When my group went to CP last, SteVen was at one train ops so it was off the Fast Lane list. We stayed 2.5 days and more or less did what I suggested, but we may have bought the FL+ if it had SteVen on it.

I've never understand why enthusiasts hate dive coasters so much. Shiekra is at my home park so I know it pretty well (rode Griffin and Valravn before but don't remember them that well). With Shiekra, what's not to love about two intense weightless drops, an immelman with hangtime, a tunnel, and a water splash effect?

That's awesome. I think its smart for parks to extend their operating seasons as long as possible. They have a bunch of valuable land that's just sitting their idling otherwise. A lot of ski resorts try to make their resort useful and they schedule events in the summer too.

I was actually just thinking earlier that it might be kind of cool for a park with a bunch of money to make snow with the snow machines that the ski resorts use for certain sections of the park for the holiday events. Could also have an ice skating pond too. Obviously try to keep it from getting on the coasters, but that would be a cool (pardon the pun) way to go for the extra mile for the guests who are paying to go to a park where most of the coasters can't operate.

If you get the FL Platinum Pass, the free tickets and 50% off tickets are only usable at the FL parks. It's the same if you had a Platinum from SWSA which would only be good at that park. Parking and in-park discounts (food, merchandise, etc) are the main things included at every park. Most other perks are state/park specific. https://seaworld.com/orlando/faq/current-pass-members/ [attachment=0]SWO Free Guest Ticket Info.jpg[/attachment] Thanks for the help buddy. I'm thinking it might just be worth the $360 to make sure I get my guest passes and preferred parking. The distance from general to the park for BGT is a beast!

You watch your mouth! I absolutely LOVED the Scooby Doo Ghoster Coaster! I was 17 the first time I rode it and loved every second including the random hard stop in the middle! Pteranodon Flyers is still running at IOA, so you could get your fill of horrible capacity kiddie coaster there.

I think its more whats the point that anything else, why bother with a B&M 7 looper when new designs from Vekoma are much cheaper, or get a Gerstlauer with maybe 5 inversions but you get a beyond vertical drop as a bonus for half the price. I think B&M is just a bit too expensive really for growing parks, almost all B&Ms are now only going to established parks or Chinese new builds with lots of money to spend. Tell that to Kennywood. Opening not only a coaster with 7+ inversions, not just 8+ inversions, but 9 inversions. Breaking the American record by two. They're prolific, but still considered to be a smaller, family discount park. Theming to the ride is puke worthy though.

Can only speak to SWO, but it seems like they've upped their game for making it appealing for adults to go to drink and eat specialty stuff. So they're basically following an EPCOT model. I'll never object to parks pushing alcohol and appealing to young professionals. No beer jail, you can pretty much take your craft beer in line with you, and put it in the cubbie while you ride your rides.

I just went ahead and bought one. I got it for a day that my season pass isn't blacked out, so I got my traditional FP+'s. But I'm not sure of the answer for if you wouldn't have rights to get in with the After Hours pass. Best bet would be to try it yourself in the Disney website. I'm 90% sure that you probably could, and if so, that would be valuable.

I've been targeted by a lot of their Facebook ads and those seem to be pretty well made ads. The discussions in the comments tend to be pretty good too. What you're talking about might be old media. It seems like they're doing a pretty good job with new media.

So I was wondering about this event: do you have to be ticketed for the park that day to buy the event ticket? As somebody mentioned that it was more six hours? How does that work? I'm a Fl resident M-F season passholder, and I was considering doing one of these (you get a slight discount as a seasonpass holder, and it would be a way to get in on a Saturday potentially).

For any park like that, Thanksgiving week will be absolutely mobbed. One of the worst weeks of the year for crowds. Mid-September is more like it. If you could go on a Tuesday or Wednesday you'll have the park to yourself (you'd have to be a pretty irresponsible parent to pull your kids from school just to a park when school has just started.

I think this is right on. How many parks with a B&M 7-looper budget don't have one already? Parks are either working with less expensive companies for their inversion-heavy rides, or they're filling out their lineup with other B&M products. Or a third option: The park has tons of money, they have no loopy B&M coasters, but they have figured that they can make a ton of more money building other stuff. A prime example is Disney... all the money in the world, but they sink that money into the heavily themed stuff that everyone in the family can ride and enjoy.

Speak for yourself. You can keep those floaty barrel rolls or whatever. I'll take Kumba's zero G roll that tries to kill everyone on the train over any inversion I've ever experienced on any coaster ever. It's ridiculous. I respect that. No two coaster enthusiasts have the same preferences. No hate over here for you.

Kumba, Alpengeist, Montu, et al are pretty much the opposite of dull. They kind of meander around a bit after their last inversions but that doesn't make them any less exhilarating. Not saying that I hate the rides. I could just take more of the "meandering" and less of the pointless inversions. Kumba for example: Vertical loop is awesome, especially because its the closest thing that you get to hangtime in the park Dive loop is fine 0-G roll is fun... not as good as the newer generations one (prefer it to me more flat to get the 0 G feeling or more of a stall to get hangtime), but fine for its era Cobra roll is pointless Interlocking corkscrews are pointless BGT is my home park now, and I've been on Kumba 15 times in the past year so I think I have a pretty strong handle on the layout. I'll be at BGT again tomorrow, and I'll come back to this thread with more of my thoughts. I actually do like Montu and Alpengeist a lot though, but again, I'd probably be happier with just keeping the best 3-4 inversions and keeping the rest of the track length as fun, fast "meandering."

To me, I think that even seven inversions is pushing it. With their old school floorless, inverts, and Kumba, pretty much the entire ride is inversion after inversion with the other pieces just being a drop, MCBR, and transitional pieces to get you from one inversion to inversion. Not much else really goes on. If you like inversions, great, but otherwise it makes for a relatively dull ride once you've been on a bunch of coasters with seven inversion. Granted, their new coasters tend to have six outside of the dive machines or hypers, but I could see have seven is overkill. Me personally, I think that coasters are best served when they cap out of three. That's the golden number I think. Four is fine too. That's one of the reasons I love RMC so much. They get me. Its about substance, airtime, and fun, and not just pointless inversion after inversion. But you still get the awesome inversions too.

... or just cut those positions entirely and keep churning out food at the same glacial pace that they do now. My money is on that option. I authentically think they'd do that. I chalk their low staffing up more to the job market being hyper competitive. I even think going year round at multiple parks is a sort of retention strategy (also revenue on infrastructure they have to maintain anyways) to replace increasing wages. But at the end of the day it still comes down to economics. Sure, they can claim that its a tight job market and maybe some people will believe them, but if they decided to pay them $18 an hour instead of $8 an hour and trained them well, people would be lining up outside the gates to work there. So it comes down to cost. They want to keep plowing $8 an hour into employees and that's that. So it will always be a tight labor market for them. Who wants to work for $8 an hour to get yelled at all day and stand in the sun?

Well, it didn't quite answer all of the questions. But I'll call in at some point later as its getting closer to when my Silver SWO/BGT pass expires. I wanted to know if I can use the two bring a friend for free passes and six 50% off tickets, but that might be better served with a phone call. I like phone calls anyway, because if you get them talking, sometimes they tell you more useful information or start giving you stuff for free.

I meant the difference between a FL resident buying a pass at BGT/SWO and a non-resident buying a pass from BGT/SWO. Kinda pointless to keep speculating. I just shot them a quick email. I'll report back. Smartest thing I've read from everybody all day. I appreciate the intel you're gathering for me from the email. I have until October to decide anyway, that's when my SWO/BGT silver expires.

I'd shoot them an email. They were very responsive to me. There was nothing anywhere that said I had to be a resident of Texas until after the passes were purchased, so I was definitely going for a refund if it wasn't going to work at all. It's my gut that parking is only at your home park. If SFFT and SFOT weren't close, it wouldn't even have been a consideration for me. That said, now that I know how much fun San Antonio is, I'd do it again. Then again, it may actually be different if you are from Florida. Looking at BGT's site, the only difference between Florida resident passes and visitor passes is that residents can do EZ Pay. No, for BGT and SWO, the websites were more clear, and they mentioned that Platinum benefits were only offered to the Florida parks for the Florida platinum pass (but you get free admission at the other parks). It was just wasn't that explicit for the San Antonio website. I was hoping that its just very rare for people to fly all the way to Texas just to scan in, so they were hoping people would. If there's no parking and guest passes for the FL parks, I may just pay the $360, because paying $25 a trip would get pretty expensive, and I like having the passes to encourage new people to come out with me.

The verbiage is a little vague on parking on SWSA and SWO's websites. It does say that free parking is not available at Aquatica or Adventure Island in Florida on SWO's membership benefits page. Then again my pass order receipt says my pass is only valid for Texas residents and that was not an issue. We are going to be visiting BGW, BGT, and SWO this year, and my daughter is going to SWSD, so we should get our money's worth even if we have to pay for parking. It says this about free tickets on SWO's page: I'm going to visit these parks without expectation and just be happy if we get any perks. I live in Florida, and I was thinking of booking a flight and hitting up SWSA, SFOT, and SFFT to take advantage of this. I'd hate to fly all the way out there and get screwed if I didn't dot my i's and cross my t's. I'm very unhappy with how ambiguous the details are on the official website.

Anybody know if you can get the Platinum benefits (preferred parking, bring a friend for free, bring a friend for 50%, etc.) at the Florida parks if you buy the San Antonio pass and not just basic free entry?

In all fairness, that's really not that long of a line comparatively.