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TombRaiderFTW

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Everything posted by TombRaiderFTW

  1. If there's one thing I've figured out in this hobby, it's that when a ride is SBNO or has its closure announced, people who were otherwise silent on the matter WILL come out of the woodwork to talk about how amazing and underappreciated it is and why the park should reverse their decision immediately. I genuinely never witnessed a single person do that for Garfield's Nightmare.
  2. I actually own a copy of this book. It's a nice little guide, although obviously the material is 20+ years old. It makes me nostalgic for Kings Island as it was when I first realized my love for it. I don't suppose there's a legal means for KIC to scan and document it in the photo galleries, right?
  3. Thank goodness. I was there in October, and rather than emptying the park and readmitting everyone like Carowinds does, they closed the rides for an hour and had everyone inside the park line up to be rescanned. The problem was that the rescanning happened by Berzerker and the line stretched past Drop Tower, so the vast majority of people never got rescanned--the park reopened and eventually the staff just told everyone they didn't have to be rescanned and could go about their day. I'm on the fence about whether or not Halloween events should be separately ticketed, but that entire experience at KD just reeked of being scare tactics (no pun intended) to get you to buy a separate ticket to Haunt that, effectively, you didn't have to buy. I struggle to imagine any nights except the most lightly-attended ones using that strategy effectively.
  4. I love this new litmus test for amusement park amenity usefulness. If it's not relevant to KIC user FreedomPenguin, it's gotta go.
  5. Smart move. Weird move to make in 2024 instead of 2014, but as long as this helps the chain move forward...
  6. Finally. Someone with VISION.
  7. ^ To clarify, the Suspended Top Spin is a model that has been offered by HUSS longer than the Giant Top Spin ever was. Kings Dominion's Tomb Raider: Firefall (later The Crypt) and Knott's Riptide were both Suspended Top Spins. At this point, Cedar Fair has removed all variations of HUSS Top Spins from their parks--KD's Crypt was the last to go. Wonderland has a similar ride, but it is from Mondial (makers of WindSeeker), not HUSS. HUSS continues to offer the normal Top Spin and the Suspended Top Spin; Cedar Fair just doesn't own any of them.
  8. Like... I'm not defending Chad, but after 7+ months of folks going after him and Elizabeth and the quality of their individual work, why wouldn't you cut off folks' ability to discern whose work is whose? Surely the criticism wears thin after a bit, regardless of the fact that there does seem to be consistent patterns in what has been observed about Chad's work. Like, yeah, maybe this is just changes from the top... but the merger has not happened yet. And there is a nonzero chance of it being rejected in the SIX vote--remember that a big shareholder for SIX was against it. Adjustments in preparation of that seem pretty premature.
  9. ^ I'm not implying you're wrong, but I'm curious: What site(s) is your data based on?
  10. Yeah, but be sure to look at ground level for them--they've cut them way shorter than they used to be.
  11. I'm not suggesting this is a good practice, but let me add some perspective to hopefully help keep this thread from falling into more anti-Six Flags hysterics: This comes after a couple years of the SeaWorld parks doing a 5% surcharge on all transactions, for similar reasons. What I'd like to know is why chains see this as a better move than to simply raise prices. Who's going to notice that prices at Six Flags jumped $1? Why is $0.99 the point at which leadership goes, "We've got to blame the economy and our workers for this to save face?" Unless, of course, this surcharge actually has nothing to do with the economy and is actually about increasing revenue...? I wonder if there's some value in being able to point out increased revenues to their shareholders when it comes time to vote on the merger. But like, I also get that the economy isn't great right now, so it could just be what it says on the tin. But I still want to know why adding the surcharge makes more sense than increasing prices. EDIT: Just to corroborate this entire situation, here's a tweet with a picture of a menu at SFoG showing the surcharge: https://twitter.com/OnlineHyde/status/1726370435510497582?t=oBC0V9GgssWl1iwiuUJNIQ&s=19
  12. There's a slight difference between what I said and what you asked. I don't think he has ruined the brand--that's your word. I think Six Flags has a niche presence in the market and Bassoul has attempted to break out of it and redefine what Six Flags is extremely quickly, which (based on SIX's quarterly reports) has presumably done some damage to how Six Flags is perceived. Whether or not doing that was a smart move is a matter of perspective. I'm purely going off of vibes here, but I do wonder if he was intentionally trying to position SF to seem more attractive to CF or other prospective buyers.
  13. Saying nice (and truthful) things about Six Flags?! Burn the heretic! How dare you interrupt a perfectly good collective meltdown! Listen, are there reasons to be concerned with this merger? Sure. But everyone judging this situation based on Six Flags of 20 years ago ("Everything is going to get a Six Flags name! Parking lot coasters!") hasn't been paying attention to how Six Flags has handled its most recent acquisitions and additions. And much as homestar said, I think the chain is being judged off its worst examples. The Texas parks, for example, are fantastic, as are Great America and Great Adventure (though admittedly I haven't been to the latter in 10+ years.) Not to mention, as much damage as Bassoul has done to Six Flags's branding recently, the president is still Zimmerman and the board is still half Cedar Fair. IF people at the top are thinking about doing y'all's worst nightmares and transforming Kings Island into Six Flags America Part II: Electric Boogaloo, there are people with a lot of say who seem to understand branding better. I'm not saying that's impossible; I AM saying that y'all have a precise count on how many chickens you'll have when the eggs haven't hatched yet. And yeah, Six Flags's FoL system is, as far as I'm concerned, objectively a better system than Fast Lane.
  14. Respectfully, I think this largely would only matter to enthusiasts.
  15. Rivertown Funnel Cakes had them its first few years. I don't think they do anymore.
  16. I disagree. I think this expansion is 10 years overdue. The SeaWorld parks especially need to shift towards being more theme park than zoo/aquarium--their goodwill with the public as a zoo/aquarium is tarnished, and whether or not they can reclaim that goodwill is a moot point now. And they're dragging the Busch parks down with them. They're doing this one year at a time, not attempting to radically change from one extreme to another overnight (see: Six Flags Ohio in 2000.) SEAS is being aggressive, for sure, but there is at least SOME time to gauge between additions if things are going to plan. Adding 4 coasters to one park in a year did not provide that for early 2000's SIX.
  17. Because SEAS in the 2010s was trying to pretend the Blackfish backlash would just blow over without a meaningful response on their part, and it was doing a lot of damage to their bottom line in the meantime.
  18. I had similar thoughts. My bet is that this is just coincidental wording and it will just be a typical family invert.
  19. Nope. The park has done lights-on tours during the day during Haunt before, but that was the exception, not the norm. The houses are otherwise closed during the day and open for scares at dusk. Presumably, if they decide to offer lights-on tours again, they will make mention of that on social media and/or the KI Blog.
  20. I'm fairly sure the LSMs have always covered the ~3/4ths of the launch they currently do. They've just been tweaked over the years to launch more slowly.
  21. Obviously I don't know anything official, but I have a very, very strong suspicion that the end of LNM's service life drawing near is exactly why any of this is happening in the first place. "Service life" is a fact of engineering, not fancy jargon some marketing person made up to get rid of Vortex and Big Bad Wolf.
  22. Respectfully, I disagree. I think the marketing was very a straightforward and uncomplicated attempt to market something different from the norm of what the last 10 years of ownership had offered. It was a themed roller coaster, not just the tried-and-true Cedar Fair "coasters and concrete" approach--and what's more, it was a marketing approach that proved very successful 15 years earlier for Tomb Raider: The Ride. They told us something was coming, but they didn't exactly tell us what. What Marketing said: "There's a new roller coaster coming next year with a mysterious shed at the end of the ride. That's all we'll say until April!" How Marketing advertised the ride: A new roller coaster with a spooky theme and a mysterious shed at the end. "Come ride our new ride and discover the mysteries awaiting you!" How enthusiasts took it: "There must be a backwards launch*! Or a drop track*! Or a whole second half to the layout that's not shown in the renderings*!" Enthusiasts, the following April: "What do you mean it's a themed alternative to sitting on the brakes under the sun?! It should've been so much more! I can't believe the park hyped this up so much!" * = These, verbatim, are things that enthusiasts across the Internet were saying at the time. I'd wholeheartedly agree with you if the park spent time on social media or elsewhere making hints about elements to expect within the shed, but they didn't. That's why I have a hard time agreeing with enthusiasts who were disappointed with Mystic Timbers--I kinda feel like they played themselves and are blaming the park for it. I don't feel like the public at large had nearly as much beef with the shed as enthusiasts, either.
  23. Ooooh. Yes please. As grateful as I am that it got new paint, I really hated the all-brown paint job.
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