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Busch Gardens Tampa Bay (BGT Discussion Thread)

p. 375: Phoenix Rising family inverted coaster announced for 2024!

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I guess I'll have to discover the landmines over time. I guess it might pay to re-ride when comes out as. One thing I'm wondering about with RMC Gwazi is the quality of the remaining wood. If some of it has gone into disrepair due to the perils of being in Florida, RMC may only be able to use some of it, and not make use of the entire structure.

 

Some parts of it (from the structure to some of the queue structure) has already been recycled and re-used at other parks in the chain. They may be able to reuse parts of the layout and footers but they'll have to replace more of the structure on this one I feel.

 

Exactly, I wouldn't be surprised if the wood that is kept is mostly just kept for decoration and the headchopper affects as opposed to being true supports. I believe that almost all of Twisted Sisters was scrapped except for the station and the footers when Storm Chaser was built.

Twisted Twins was built with steel supports (it was a hybrid...now it's all steel).

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Do you think that people care about records? That's just a marketing thing. All of I am too stupid to spell Steel Vengeance so I'll just write SteVen and pretend I'm being cool's "records" were made up. A hybrid coaster isn't a real thing, steel vs. wood is only determined by the type of track, what they use to support the ride is irrelevant. Either way, the GP doesn't care about those made up records that only enthusiasts would care about, they just care about the end game result.

 

Yes they definitely do. I think you have this backwards. Enthusiasts care about the end result and the GP cares about records.

 

The talk about RMC Gwazi being the most prolific park is because its at a 365 park, so close to Disney World, and at a higher tier park. Arguably Twisted Collosus has been the highest profile RMC so far -- in a 365 park, close to Disneyland, in the most prolific SF park, on a coaster that Hollywood loves to use.

 

With all due respect I think all of this is irrelevant. So what if it's a 365 park. Cedar Point actually has more guests than Magic Mountain despite being open less than half the time. BGT barley has more guests than CP. The fact is (according to the numbers) the vast majority of people who visit Disney are not visiting BGT. And if RMC's are enthusiasts coasters (and they are) then RMC Gwazi isn't going to attract the Disney crowd to BGT.

 

 

 

Don't get too tied up with CP. Its all of our favorite parks, but its not really a huge blip on the radar of the average American.

 

And BGT is? It could be argued that CP is the biggest blip on the radar behind Disney and Universal. When the average American wants to learn about parks and coasters they are going to go to something called Google and search "best parks/coasters in America". What they will come across are the GP ranking lists, the wikipedia record rankings, and the golden ticket awards. The park that is going to be mentioned the most by far is Cedar Point.

 

And, SeaWorld/Busch are in a higher tier than Six Flags/Cedar Fair. Come to think of it you could also say that Lightning Rod is up there, as Dollywood has some GP appeal. But of course it never actually runs.

 

Not sure what you mean by higher tier. SeaWorld is a more well known name nationwide but nobody outside the enthusiasts know that Busch Gardens is owned by them. So it's a little illogical to clump them together when talking about the GP. Based on all those things I said above I would say CP is more well known than Busch Gardens. And Dollywood isn't even in the top 20 most popular parks...

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Gotta love TPR. Sometimes when I get an email notification about a new post, in this case, one of A.J.'s posts, not even having hit the debate/argument yet I'll scroll down and suddenly see I've got 4 pages of reading on what is usually a dead thread in the space of a few hours and I already know what I'm in for before I even have clicked to view the next page.

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Now that I think about it more, the GP doesn’t know the ride manufacturers. So trying to use them in an argument as to which is the most prolific RMC is like asking people who don’t watch football who will win the playoff games this weekend.

 

 

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Do you think that people care about records? That's just a marketing thing. All of I am too stupid to spell Steel Vengeance so I'll just write I am too stupid to spell Steel Vengeance so I'll just write SteVen and pretend I'm being cool and pretend I'm being cool's "records" were made up. A hybrid coaster isn't a real thing, steel vs. wood is only determined by the type of track, what they use to support the ride is irrelevant. Either way, the GP doesn't care about those made up records that only enthusiasts would care about, they just care about the end game result.

 

Yes they definitely do. I think you have this backwards. Enthusiasts care about the end result and the GP cares about records.

 

The talk about RMC Gwazi being the most prolific park is because its at a 365 park, so close to Disney World, and at a higher tier park. Arguably Twisted Collosus has been the highest profile RMC so far -- in a 365 park, close to Disneyland, in the most prolific SF park, on a coaster that Hollywood loves to use.

 

With all due respect I think all of this is irrelevant. So what if it's a 365 park. Cedar Point actually has more guests than Magic Mountain despite being open less than half the time. BGT barley has more guests than CP. The fact is (according to the numbers) the vast majority of people who visit Disney are not visiting BGT. And if RMC's are enthusiasts coasters (and they are) then RMC Gwazi isn't going to attract the Disney crowd to BGT.

 

 

 

Don't get too tied up with CP. Its all of our favorite parks, but its not really a huge blip on the radar of the average American.

 

And BGT is? It could be argued that CP is the biggest blip on the radar behind Disney and Universal. When the average American wants to learn about parks and coasters they are going to go to something called Google and search "best parks/coasters in America". What they will come across are the GP ranking lists, the wikipedia record rankings, and the golden ticket awards. The park that is going to be mentioned the most by far is Cedar Point.

 

And, SeaWorld/Busch are in a higher tier than Six Flags/Cedar Fair. Come to think of it you could also say that Lightning Rod is up there, as Dollywood has some GP appeal. But of course it never actually runs.

 

Not sure what you mean by higher tier. SeaWorld is a more well known name nationwide but nobody outside the enthusiasts know that Busch Gardens is owned by them. So it's a little illogical to clump them together when talking about the GP. Based on all those things I said above I would say CP is more well known than Busch Gardens. And Dollywood isn't even in the top 20 most popular parks...

 

Well, here's the list of rankings:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amusement_park_rankings

 

SeaWorld Orlando is still holding off CP in terms of attendance (although considering that CP gets most of its business over a few month span of time and SWO is 365, CP is kicking the crap out of SWO). But that's also because SWO is a shell of what it used to be. Blackfish hit the parks with SeaWorld in their name hard.

 

But I still think that in terms of how the GP see things -- not necessarily us because we're a niche group -- theming, landscaping, and park aesthetics carry more weight than quality of unthemed, outdoor rides. So that's how Disney, Universal, and the SeaWorld parks are able to charge so much more and get people to travel from across America to attend them. The non-themed amusement parks generally just get locals to come who don't spend as much on a daily basis. SeaWorld is still incredibly expensive, so even though the park usually seems dead, they probably still make money, because they extract so much from guests. Its $100 for a ticket, and you don't see the generous discounts for their tickets that you have at the amusement parks unless you sit through a time-share presentation. Season passes also tend to be a higher multiplier over a single day ticket than the Six Flags parks and one-off regional parks.

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[

Well, here's the list of rankings:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amusement_park_rankings

 

SeaWorld Orlando is still holding off CP in terms of attendance (although considering that CP gets most of its business over a few month span of time and SWO is 365, CP is kicking the crap out of CP). But that's also because SWO is a shell of what it used to be. Blackfish hit the parks with SeaWorld in their name hard.

 

But I still think that in terms of how the GP see things -- not necessarily us because we're a niche group -- theming, landscaping, and park aesthetics carry more weight than quality of unthemed, outdoor rides. So that's how Disney, Universal, and the SeaWorld parks are able to charge so much more and get people to travel from across America to attend them. The non-themed amusement parks generally just get locals to come who don't spend as much on a daily basis. SeaWorld is still incredibly expensive, so even though the park usually seems dead, they probably still make money, because they extract so much from guests. Its $100 for a ticket, and you don't see the generous discounts for their tickets that you have at the amusement parks unless you sit through a time-share presentation. Season passes also tend to be a higher multiplier over a single day ticket than the Six Flags parks and one-off regional parks.

 

Yes, those are the rankings we have been referencing the past few pages. People will travel for any park they feel is worthy to spend a vacation at based on their tastes. If we were to go off of theming or all-inclusive in every day vacation taking, no one would visit anywhere but Cancun, Hawaii or someplace in the Caribbean. Regional parks vs. Larger Parks is a different question. The fact that SeaWorld Orlando and Busch Gardens Tampa (both great parks and both in a large tourism market) pull in less than 500,000 more than Cedar Point, a seasonal park located in the middle of nowhere in a relatively mid-sized market does point to the fact that people do view it as a "destination" and not just a one-off. I get where you're coming from and the logic does work for some other parks in the Cedar Fair and Six Flags chains for sure. Operating season, however, does not have an impact on how people view a park, it just means its open less or more!

 

CP is kicking the crap out of CP

dont-beat-yourself-up-dmd-fit-for-life.jpg?fit=560%2C315

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[

Well, here's the list of rankings:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amusement_park_rankings

 

SeaWorld Orlando is still holding off CP in terms of attendance (although considering that CP gets most of its business over a few month span of time and SWO is 365, CP is kicking the crap out of CP). But that's also because SWO is a shell of what it used to be. Blackfish hit the parks with SeaWorld in their name hard.

 

But I still think that in terms of how the GP see things -- not necessarily us because we're a niche group -- theming, landscaping, and park aesthetics carry more weight than quality of unthemed, outdoor rides. So that's how Disney, Universal, and the SeaWorld parks are able to charge so much more and get people to travel from across America to attend them. The non-themed amusement parks generally just get locals to come who don't spend as much on a daily basis. SeaWorld is still incredibly expensive, so even though the park usually seems dead, they probably still make money, because they extract so much from guests. Its $100 for a ticket, and you don't see the generous discounts for their tickets that you have at the amusement parks unless you sit through a time-share presentation. Season passes also tend to be a higher multiplier over a single day ticket than the Six Flags parks and one-off regional parks.

 

Yes, those are the rankings we have been referencing the past few pages. People will travel for any park they feel is worthy to spend a vacation at based on their tastes. If we were to go off of theming or all-inclusive in every day vacation taking, no one would visit anywhere but Cancun, Hawaii or someplace in the Caribbean. Regional parks vs. Larger Parks is a different question. The fact that SeaWorld Orlando and Busch Gardens Tampa (both great parks and both in a large tourism market) pull in less than 500,000 more than Cedar Point, a seasonal park located in the middle of nowhere in a relatively mid-sized market does point to the fact that people do view it as a "destination" and not just a one-off. I get where you're coming from and the logic does work for some other parks in the Cedar Fair and Six Flags chains for sure. Operating season, however, does not have an impact on how people view a park, it just means its open less or more!

 

CP is kicking the crap out of CP

dont-beat-yourself-up-dmd-fit-for-life.jpg?fit=560%2C315

 

Well, I guess I go off of percentage of guests over a year. Just because certain people break the rules and do things a certain way, doesn't mean that they don't represent a percentage so low that its not worth the park's time to worry about. Some people may travel to rando' amusement parks across the country, but when you factor in the legions and legions or local people who make up their bread and butter, they're not even a rounding error. In contract, Disney does pull in some local people, but the majority of their customers are coming from out of state (and when you're in Orlando, leaving the state takes a long time).

 

Now, I doubt that many people really travel over 1,000 miles just to go to BGW or SWO, but I think that they get some spillover from Universal/Disney, and they might stop by when they're on vacation. Orlando/Tampa/Miami just get tons and tons of tourists, so people will just stop by. Whoever thought of taking your family to a rural town 60 minutes outside of Cleveland? Whoever thought of taking their family to Cleveland for a vacation for that matter? I think that CP gets a lot families and adults who are doing local travel within 5 hours, but its probably mostly just the enthusiasts who would go halfway across the country to visit. And... a very large portion of enthusiasts already live in Ohio.

 

Anyways, this kind of ties back to the original argument: RMC Gwazi might be one of the highest profile projects for RMC, as BGT pulls in tons of tourists and not just regional guests. Even if those guests didn't necessarily come for BGT.

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But I still think that in terms of how the GP see things -- not necessarily us because we're a niche group -- theming, landscaping, and park aesthetics carry more weight than quality of unthemed, outdoor rides. So that's how Disney, Universal, and the SeaWorld parks are able to charge so much more and get people to travel from across America to attend them. The non-themed amusement parks generally just get locals to come who don't spend as much on a daily basis..

 

If theming, landscaping, and park aesthetics carried more weight then wouldn’t BGW have more guests than CP? Plus BGW has a longer operating season.

 

It’s a little more complicated than that.

 

Disney and Universal have very specific theming to the most popular movie and tv characters. It’s that plus the fact that it’s a park designed for families.

 

As far as non themed parks just catering to the locals. That isn’t true with CP. CP is a destination for thrill seekers, and there are a lot of thrill seekers that are GP and not enthusiasts. And they make those cross country trips to CP.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

Anyways, this kind of ties back to the original argument: RMC Gwazi might be one of the highest profile projects for RMC, as BGT pulls in tons of tourists and not just regional guests. Even if those guests didn't necessarily come for BGT.

 

This is where you lose me because we’ve already established that BGT doesn’t get a tom of spillover from the Orlando parks based on the numbers. But even if it did, or heck, even if RMC was to put something in Orlando it wouldn’t matter because by definition the GP doesn’t know who RMC is. And they won’t seek out other RMC’s.

 

That’s why their highest profile projects are going to be the ones thrill seekers and enthusiasts like, not the GP.

 

 

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Let’s get this thread back on track...

 

Made a visit to the park today. It was pretty serviceable in the morning but by the time I left in the early afternoon, the crowds had picked up. Even Montu had a 45 minutes wait, alongside 50 minutes for Cheetah Hunt and 75 for Cobra’s Curse.

 

SheiKra appears to be down for scheduled maintenance, the splash pond is drained. Kumba and Montu kicked butt as usual. Cheetah Hunt had a bit of a fart and had to be cycled a few times empty before reopening.

 

Tigris’ first tower is about halfway finished. No visible work happening on the Gwazi structure as of yet but there’s a crane in there somewhere.

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C1C0D1EA-1FFE-4ADE-8595-214F7DF3A13E.thumb.jpeg.eabbf70e477c35fc8a85ca3609e29cd9.jpeg

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How do you feel about it's fluffy, fluffy bunny filled with medicine and goo policy though? Would you say that I am too stupid to spell Steel Vengeance so I'll just write SteVen and pretend I'm being cool is better or worse than WindexCyanide?

 

 

WindexCyanide is a new one for me....

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Let’s get this thread back on track...

 

Made a visit to the park today. It was pretty serviceable in the morning but by the time I left in the early afternoon, the crowds had picked up. Even Montu had a 45 minutes wait, alongside 50 minutes for Cheetah Hunt and 75 for Cobra’s Curse.

 

SheiKra appears to be down for scheduled maintenance, the splash pond is drained. Kumba and Montu kicked butt as usual. Cheetah Hunt had a bit of a fart and had to be cycled a few times empty before reopening.

 

Tigris’ first tower is about halfway finished. No visible work happening on the Gwazi structure as of yet but there’s a crane in there somewhere.

 

That's unfortunate news about ShieKra. I just went to BGT a week ago, and for the first time ever I saw it running four trains with both loading stations operating. It made the line move extremely quickly for once. I was hoping that they'd keep the four loading station mojo up.

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That's unfortunate news about ShieKra. I just went to BGT a week ago, and for the first time ever I saw it running four trains with both loading stations operating. It made the line move extremely quickly for once. I was hoping that they'd keep the four loading station mojo up.

 

SheiKra is having it's scheduled annual maintenance right now. Nothing to worry about.

https://buschgardens.com/tampa/park-info/ride-attraction-schedule/

1143354803_bgtridemaintenance2019.JPG.3e4a4719257ba41d7c6cd5f43e172059.JPG

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So I caught it on the only weekend out of the entire year that it was scheduled to be down. Phooey!

 

Good to know about Kumba, I wasn't planning on visiting again until the middle of March anyway.

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So I caught it on the only weekend out of the entire year that it was scheduled to be down. Phooey!

 

Good to know about Kumba, I wasn't planning on visiting again until the middle of March anyway.

 

Since BGT is a year round park, they usually always have their maintenance schedule posted on their website. It’s always worth a look before planning a trip there, especially in the off-season.

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So I caught it on the only weekend out of the entire year that it was scheduled to be down. Phooey!

 

Good to know about Kumba, I wasn't planning on visiting again until the middle of March anyway.

 

Since BGT is a year round park, they usually always have their maintenance schedule posted on their website. It’s always worth a look before planning a trip there, especially in the off-season.

 

Yeah, that's definitely pretty awesome that Busch does this. For one -- they actually do awesome maintenance, but keeping people in the loop is great too. Six Flags doesn't care. They don't do a bad job on maintenance, but I don't see them going out of their way to keep guests in the loop. I think that what kills Six Flags is that the employees will often not know how to respond to an issue or will struggle to get a train out when the system starts acting up. Better training and having the money to hire A players could let them hire ride ops who were more mechanically savvy and better able to adapt to different scenarios. Also probably don't have enough mechanics on staff to respond to issues.

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So I caught it on the only weekend out of the entire year that it was scheduled to be down. Phooey!

 

Good to know about Kumba, I wasn't planning on visiting again until the middle of March anyway.

 

Since BGT is a year round park, they usually always have their maintenance schedule posted on their website. It’s always worth a look before planning a trip there, especially in the off-season.

 

Yeah, that's definitely pretty awesome that Busch does this. For one -- they actually do awesome maintenance, but keeping people in the loop is great too. Six Flags doesn't care. They don't do a bad job on maintenance, but I don't see them going out of their way to keep guests in the loop. I think that what kills Six Flags is that the employees will often not know how to respond to an issue or will struggle to get a train out when the system starts acting up. Better training and having the money to hire A players could let them hire ride ops who were more mechanically savvy and better able to adapt to different scenarios. Also probably don't have enough mechanics on staff to respond to issues.

 

Cedar fair and six flags are basically the same when listing ride closures. I actually found ride closures slightly easier to find at six flags parks. Typically they have a board at the parks entrance, and listed on the website.

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20180628_153513_0.thumb.jpg.8b92432d5b71cf981e5af9eb930ca345.jpg

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That's not even close to the same thing.

 

Six Flags only tells you when a ride is closed right now. It doesn't tell you in advance of the closure or when they expect it to reopen once it's closed. Knott's tells you (at most) about a month in advance on the bottom of this page.

 

At Magic Mountain, you could walk into the park one day and find a ride closed that operated the previous day with no advanced warning even if it was planned and no timetable of when it'll reopen (even if they expect it to be down for months).

 

Busch Gardens Tampa gives you the entire planned refurb schedule for the following year by mid-December so that you can plan vacations around it if there are certain rides that you want to make sure you get to ride. Depending on when you plan your trip you have over a year's notice.

 

This page is awesome and they should be commended for doing it because most parks don't.

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It seems like the ride closure schedule would only be necessary at year-round parks. Carowinds just added that to their website (It is still blank right now). The only other Cedar Fair park websites with that option are Knott's Berry Farm and California's Great America. CGA just has what was closed during Winterfest.

 

Maybe it will just show ride closures for holiday events at Carowinds? Seems like the open attractions list would take care of that.

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It seems like the ride closure schedule would only be necessary at year-round parks.

 

For sure. Any closure at a seasonal park is likely unplanned and due to a mechanical issue unless they're just posting redundant operating lists for their Christmas events.

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So I caught it on the only weekend out of the entire year that it was scheduled to be down. Phooey!

 

Good to know about Kumba, I wasn't planning on visiting again until the middle of March anyway.

 

Since BGT is a year round park, they usually always have their maintenance schedule posted on their website. It’s always worth a look before planning a trip there, especially in the off-season.

 

Yeah, that's definitely pretty awesome that Busch does this. For one -- they actually do awesome maintenance, but keeping people in the loop is great too. Six Flags doesn't care. They don't do a bad job on maintenance, but I don't see them going out of their way to keep guests in the loop. I think that what kills Six Flags is that the employees will often not know how to respond to an issue or will struggle to get a train out when the system starts acting up. Better training and having the money to hire A players could let them hire ride ops who were more mechanically savvy and better able to adapt to different scenarios. Also probably don't have enough mechanics on staff to respond to issues.

 

Cedar fair and six flags are basically the same when listing ride closures. I actually found ride closures slightly easier to find at six flags parks. Typically they have a board at the parks entrance, and listed on the website.

 

Its just a rite of passage at a Six Flags park to look at the board, and see 2-4 rides that they're not even attempting to open for the day. Then you get the rides that break down on top of that throughout the day. And of course the worst is when its a coaster that you need the credit for.

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I don't know what Six Flags parks you go to but aside from a few of them (La Ronde and the California parks for example) it's rare to go to a Six Flags park and see a coaster closed with the park making no attempt to open it unless it has a major mechanical issue or it's green and it's name's Goliath (which is suffering from a "major mechanical issue" almost every minute of every day).

 

I don't even know the last time I went to Great Adventure and saw a coaster closed all day (Joker usually sh*ts itself in the home-stretch of Holiday in the Park once temps get hilariously low but during the rest of the season with reasonable weather it's fine).

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I don't know what Six Flags parks you go to but aside from a few of them (La Ronde and the California parks for example) it's rare to go to a Six Flags park and see a coaster closed with the park making no attempt to open it unless it has a major mechanical issue or it's green and it's name's Goliath (which is suffering from a "major mechanical issue" almost every minute of every day).

 

I don't even know the last time I went to Great Adventure and saw a coaster closed all day (Joker usually sh*ts itself in the home-stretch of Holiday in the Park once temps get hilariously low but during the rest of the season with reasonable weather it's fine).

 

I meant to say "ride" not coaster. Always guaranteed to see some ride closures, if not including a coaster or two in there as well. I've been to about 2/3 of the SF parks in the chain, will probably get to the rest within a few years. Its the same everywhere. In contrast, CF is usually one at most, but most days they run everything. Don't think I've ever been to a SF park where everything was operating all at once -- and SFA used to be my home park as a kid and I'd go 5-10 times a year.

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