Kenban

The company I work for is still getting quotes of 2+ years on what used to be off the shelf electronic components. When you’re dealing with long lead times it’s really common for the supplier to get the estimate wrong. A couple of extra weeks or months is really common. My gut says the supplier is giving delivery dates and just not delivering. I have been in the middle of this before. You place an order and are told it will be delivered by X day. Which you use to tell your customers when they should expect their orders. The problems occur when you don’t get your parts on time, suddenly your production is backed up and cannot deliver to your customers by the dates you already promised, which just snow balls down the chain. I do blame Worlds of Fun for not cancelling the opening earlier. I cannot imagine GCI was not communicating to the park about this issue. Likely they were planning to use overnight shipping to get the items as quickly as is possible, and relying on bad information, but they held out hope for way too long. The impression I have is the parts have always been missing, and that nothing broke, it’s not important to test the ride, and I read where the park was even able to train ride ops. My understanding is that GCI employees have been riding it as well. All of my guesses deal with locking/unlocking restraints, restraint position sensors, or communication between the train and the station when parked in the station. Something that you can work around or disable without too much hassle but you need working for operating with park guests.

I did not find out until after I wrote that. It was actually confirmed to be missing parts by a pair of GCI employees over the weekend at an ACE event at WoF. It’s something unique to the Infinity Flyers, and they are waiting for the parts to arrive from somewhere in Europe. Except for these missing parts, the ride is complete and ready to open. My understanding is it is related to the electronics for the restraints.

This caused me to cancel my trip. At this time not sure what I will do, might reschedule, might make totally new plans. I will be at Holiwood Nights next weekend. I had planned on turning it into a longer road trip and making my way out to WoF in part due to the 50th anniversary and also to ride this coaster. It was going to be a few other parks as well on the way there and on my way back home. I was already tempted to delay or cancel after I found out that the fireworks do not start until later in the summer, delaying the opening of the ride was the push I needed to just cancel anything past Holiday World. Rumor is they need a part, not sure what they need. They were able to complete a decent amount of testing and even released a POV, so it was operating a few weeks ago.

Due to the multiple spinning platforms on Cargo Loco, unless you try to balance the weight around the barrel you’re going to have a really hard time getting the barrel spinning. A single person, or groups who sit together are just going to be fighting against the ride too much. As the smaller platform spins when your barrel approaches the outer edge your weight will be forced to the outer edge. You can try to take advantage of this imbalance because it does accelerate the barrel, but so far I have not been able to do so. Load a barrel with 5 people and they spin really easily. I wonder if the issues people have had getting the barrels moving is not differences between the barrels, but differences in weight distribution.

If management wanted to make this work I think they could have tried a lot harder. But this feels like a project from previous management that the current leadership just wants to die. I do wonder just how expensive are the operating costs? How low could Disney go before it’s not worth running? The employee discount is 50%, which frankly makes it cheap enough I would have done it, and still might talk to some friends who work for Disney, but is it profitable at that price point? The Starcruiser is mostly going to be worthless for anything dealing with the general public. It’s directly behind the star wars land, but across an employee parking lot so even having “excursions” to the ship would require Disney run shuttles. Unless you’re entering from the current hotel check in, which is also a problem, it was valet parking only for a reason, there is no regular guest parking lot and no where to put one. It’s only 100 small and currently windowless hotel rooms, there is a window but it’s not very wide and is hidden behind panels in the room for emergency use only. The restaurant was designed for a pretty small number of guests, when occupancy was higher it had to run two services. It was very purpose built for a single use. I suspect it’s going to be torn down or just sit abandoned. Even turning it into offices feels like too much work.

What Universal is building in Texas is unlikely to even say Universal anywhere but the fine print. If you look at the concept art it’s a Dreamworks park. I doubt it will be marketed as a Universal park except as a way to get approvals to build the park. I believe having that separate identity is important, it focuses it to a much smaller group of IP, and provides less competition for the resorts. This also allows them more flexibility in their standards as they build and operate the park. Except for maybe Pixar, Disney would have a hard time separating a single brand from the parent company.

I don’t think anything would have changed. My understanding is the source of this claim was a representative of Cedar Fair presenting a case on why they should receive the tax incentives to government officials in I believe North Carolina. I have seen no evidence that suggests tax incentives for Kings Dominion were ever a real possibility. In total the incentives were less than a million dollars, and lasted three years. That’s not a million a year, it was less than a million spread over three years. Cedar Fair had to spend something like $45 million dollars. I just do not believe a two percent savings is enough to change what park would receive this kind of investments. I am convinced Cedar Fair had already decided to invest this money at Carowinds. They saw a tax incentive program that they were not eligible for and decided to lobby trying to get an exception. It worked.

The savings is not as significant as you might think, Canadas Wonderland charges 13% tax. Kings Island would not charge tax on the purchase. You still save some money but its like 10-15% depending on current exchange rate.

To my knowledge Steel Vengeance is scheduled to open with the park. But at least during my trips last year it never did. Even during CoasterMania last year it opened about an hour late. It cannot open until maintenance has signed off on the coaster. Maintenance just seems unable to get the work done on time.

You’re both wrong anyways, it’s 4 days . Before someone corrects me, I know it’s really 8, but the park does not count the extra 4 due to it being a community fair which is held at the park annually. ACE has an event at Strickers Grove this year, I believe July 29th. If your a member I recommend going, if not find a friend who is and go as a guest. It is one of the small business days for groups that cannot buy out the whole park.

The links down at the bottom of the website, it’s under “Park Info” > “Attractions Advisory”. The links are mostly the same as what’s on the drop down at the top of the page but there are a few extra that do not appear there.

There is a way to do bottled beverages that would be more difficult to abuse. Have a bar that is staffed at all times the lounge is open. You have to request your drink just like the chips and they open everything before passing it to the guest. You still get a bottle or can, but your not going to be grabbing 10 of them to take home. I am really not surprised the park is cracking down on abuse. On several occasions last year I watched people take bags into the lounge, everything from backpacks to the clear bags you get from stores and filled them with bags of chips. Personally I would also be happy with a pair of the Coke Freestyle machines.

I thought Deluge was already closed? I was under the impression it was standing but not operating. T3 was removed from the website and park map already. Pretty sure it’s not operating at all this year.

I believe both Vortex and now Bat have similar problems, metal fatigue. Arrow Dynamics requires Non Destructive Testing annually. If you are a seasonal park with freezing temperatures the instructions say to do the testing towards the end of the off season. The requirement is 20% of high G areas and 5% of the rest, typically you rotate what you inspect so every few years you have hit everything. When multiple problems are found you expand your search, if those areas also show defects you do 100% inspection. Every defect you find has to be repaired. I suspect The Bat needed 100% inspection. The problem is at some point you’re fixing too many issues, the steel is just too worn out. You can fix the problems, and increase inspections throughout the year, but realistically the track just needs replaced. More often than not when a ride reaches this point the parks solution is to remove the ride. I believe this is what Kings Island really meant when they said Vortex had reached the end of its service life. To my knowledge Arrow never specified an end of life for their coasters. They specified where and how to test for defects. They also provided guidance on how to perform repairs. But from the documentation I have seen and read when a park states a ride has reached the end of its life, that is due to the park or chains standards not Arrows. The claim going around for The Bat is that the incident with the wheel last year caused more damage than was originally known or found at the time. It’s very possible this is wrong. No one is ever going to discuss issues like this publicly. Metal fatigue is an area where a park running all the trains all the time ends up hurting the coaster. The more days a year and hours in a day the park is open it does more damage. Cycles do matter on metal fatigue. So do the forces that the ride produces, those swinging cars might be fun, but they are not easy on the track. IF I am right, this likely would have only been found a few weeks ago.

Whenever it comes time for The Bat to be removed it will likely be the end to the entire pathway. Reusing the design from Canadas Wonderland basically forced the station to be located in a very awkward location. A clean sheet coaster design would never have been designed like that and would put any station and queue closer to the rest of the land. It would take major changes like for instance Timberwolf getting removed to see another station in this area. Most of what I have heard I would classify as speculation and not even a rumor. I doubt it has to do with any part availability, while Arrow is long out of business, S&S took it over and have been very good at providing service. To me the most logical problem is there is something wrong with the track, which is still a huge list of possibilities. Track problems have caused the removal of Arrow Suspended coasters in the past. Except The Bat was the last Arrow Suspended to be built. It seems strange for it to develop problems before some of the older rides especially since Vortex at Canadas Wonderland has the same layout and opened 2 years before The Bat.