TombRaiderFTW
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Posts posted by TombRaiderFTW
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6 hours ago, standbyme said:
^ At least it’s still 12…they haven’t cut any days out of IT yet.
Yeah, but be sure to look at ground level for them--they've cut them way shorter than they used to be.
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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
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On 11/4/2023 at 5:11 PM, Tr0y said:
What has Bassoul done to ruin the Six Flags Brand? Other than trying to make it a more premium brand like Cedar Fair?
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.
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15 hours ago, homestar92 said:
I think a lot of the sentiments I've seen here to the effect of "person in my social circle who doesn't even like theme parks has a negative opinion of Six Flags" doesn't realize that these people probably have an even less informed opinion of Six Flags than you do, because their opinion is likely just what they've heard from you. People who never go to parks aside from their local one only know about other parks from the things that their friends who do go to other parks say about them. Enthusiasts broadly seem to dislike Six Flags, so normal people who occasionally talk to enthusiasts end up with a negative opinion of Six Flags. It's really just a feedback loop.
Six Flags operates *a lot* of parks and many of those parks feel very different from each other. Some SIX parks are indeed dirty and poorly operated, but not all. Six Flags does many things well. Their Flash Pass system is far more elegant than Fast Lane, and it works well at every park. The same cannot be said of Fast Lane (ever tried using it at Cedar Point? Enjoy somehow still waiting an hour after paying hundreds of dollars).
The idea that *every* Cedar Fair park is always clean and always has great operations isn't any more true than the idea that Six Flags are all dirty and mismanaged. Six Flags Great America is one of my absolute favorite amusement parks anywhere, and they've won awards for their cleanliness. I'm also a big fan of Darien Lake. Both are SIX properties. Coincidentally, "dirty and poorly operated" was my experience when I visited Worlds of Fun, which is a Cedar Fair park. Six Flags also has two different parks with animal safari-type exhibits, so they have the experience and expertise to bring that back if they wanted to. Six Flags has IPs that are far more relevant to children than Snoopy (as much as I personally LOVE Snoopy, he's not culturally relevant anymore outside of the Christmas special).
Kings Island is going to be just fine, and I don't know that we have any reason to believe that Six Flags will even be added to its name (aside from perhaps "Kings Island - a Six Flags park". Both chains have things that they do well and I really do think their collective expertise can really help both chains. Remember, Six Flags and Cedar Fair didn't compete with each other outside of California. But they *do* compete with the likes of Disney, Universal, SeaWorld, and other destinations, and this merger gives them access to the resources to actually stand a chance at competing with those chains. If anything, this has created more *actual* competition even though there are fewer competitors in the game.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.
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5 hours ago, Orion742 said:
The problem with getting a B&M wing is GateKeeper is 3 hours away and if we wanted to do a launch to differentiate, Thunderbird is 2 hours away so it wouldn’t be very different from the surrounding area coasters.
Respectfully, I think this largely would only matter to enthusiasts.
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Rivertown Funnel Cakes had them its first few years. I don't think they do anymore.
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1 hour ago, silver2005 said:
SEAS building all these coasters recently reeks of the way SIX overbuilt in the early 2000s, and not in a good way.
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.
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14 hours ago, SonofBaconator said:
What surprises me is that Williamsburg hasn’t gotten a B&M since ‘07 as they’re direct competitors with Kings Dominion. I wonder why Sea World Entertainment didn’t throw them a wing coaster sometime during the 2010s.
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.
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31 minutes ago, PKIDelirium said:
I wonder if the swinging part is unclear wording? The render image looks exactly like the stock Family Invert train.
I had similar thoughts. My bet is that this is just coincidental wording and it will just be a typical family invert.
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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.
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4 minutes ago, tks944 said:
Originally the launch went up to the top of lift hill right? Then it got changed to about 3/4 of lift hill was launch with a coast over the crest. If the high speed chain lift is actually high speed then this change could be an upgrade.
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.
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14 hours ago, kirbias1 said:
Built in 78. No "end of service life" for Loch Ness!
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.
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1 hour ago, cdubbs727 said:
I think in time the ride's settled into its reputation -- people love it; the shed is cheesy fun. But the marketing was miscalculated.
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.
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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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It's 4:54pm and I wish I was asleep:
Why is it called Flight of Fear if the fear is being introduced, not alleviated?
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13 hours ago, Pagoda Gift Shop said:
I can only speak for myself, but I've seen enough Brady Bunch mentions by the park to last a lifetime. In my opinion if they want to bring up nostalgic memories at this point, it's time to start focusing on the Paramount era.
[enthusiast voice] But if they do that, they'll have to say nice things about the Paramount era! What's next, saying something nice about Six Flags?! [brain explodes]
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I don't dislike the idea, but I wonder if this could be accomplished just as successfully but not as narrowly by having a Concepts subforum.
I'm assuming that the kinds of things that would be debated would be changes to the park. As has been mentioned, that kind of stuff gets debated anyway when brought up, but in doing a Concepts subforum instead of specifically a Debates subforum, you'd also open the doors to non-debate ideas, e.g. "Here's my concept for a new area of Kings Island!" It creates room for debates AND gives a new platform for people's creativity.
It'd also open the doors to more NoLimits/Planet Coaster/RCT-based ideas, which used to have considerably more presence here (and I miss them!) The existing Multimedia subforum works well enough for that, but it's not specifically geared towards creativity--you could just as likely (or more likely, in recent years) encounter a conversation there about the latest Call of Duty than anything amusement park-related. I'm glad those conversations are happening here, too, of course, but I'd love to see NL/PC/RCT creativity make a return here. I realize the internet has changed a lot over the last 20 years and forums are somewhat taking a back seat to things like Reddit, which I think is a big contributor for why that creativity has disappeared, but I also think you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
The trade-off (which I don't particularly worry about here, but it's worth mentioning) is that in creating a spotlight for ideas and creativity, it becomes somewhat easier to critique or put down those ideas. The last thing I'd want is for people to feel like their ideas don't matter or feel picked on because they suggested something that someone else doesn't like. But, I think we generally have a decent culture of respect here, so I wouldn't expect that things would devolve into that on their own.
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1 hour ago, brenthodge said:
Which leads me to believe that’s on par with this years “add”
Correct. Much like this year, when announcements get 24 hours' notice, it's usually a smaller addition that enthusiasts don't like and put shady quotation marks on but families enjoy.
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Very weird to me that KillMart and Slaughterhouse might leave before Madame Fatale's... Aren't both younger than Fatale's?
Anyway, if the park had an interest in theming its houses to the areas they're located in, Slaughterhouse would be an interesting spot for a house themed to haunted woods or something supernatural, wooded, and "outdoorsy" (that could benefit from actually being inside.) Had Wolf Pack not already run its course, I'd say that's a good place for it to go. Not immediately sure of what to do with KillMart's spot.
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I was! That was a really fun event. The Banshee announcement and the Thunderbird announcement the following year were some of my favorite park events I've been to.
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It's almost like, and hang with me here, the park needs to stop entirely catering to season passholders. This really only becomes acceptable if someone in charge goes, "Oh well, most people will just come back another day." As a Paramount Parks fan, I cannot begin to explain how much it pains me to compliment the Kinzel era, but this kind of stuff was basically unthinkable then, as far as I'm aware.
Ditch the constant nostalgia as a growth plan, ditch the meal plans, ditch the "tack on a million benefits to make the season pass experience what YOU want, even though we can't sustain our promises" model, get serious about the experimental food offerings, competitively pay your employees, and start running an amusement park again, instead of a large adult daycare with roller coasters.
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How weird and refreshing it is to see Dorney Park doing a teaser campaign. I'm excited for them.
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I don't care, as long as they're good.
Good clones: Premier Sky Rocket II's, KI's Bat and Wonderland's Vortex, Racer 75 and Thunder Road, the B&M Batmen, the Hurlers (fight me), KD's Grizzly and Wonderland's Wild Beast, and more.
Bad clones: Vekoma Boomerangs, Vekoma SLCs, the B&M Supermen, etc.
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Concept #1 definitely seems like it'd require Wonder Mountain's Guardian and possibly Vortex to be removed. I wonder if they're already being considered for removal...
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Kings Island 2024 Entertainment Auditions
in Kings Island
Posted