Kenban

I read the page while it was live, and still have a copy open. It was available at https://www.cedarpoint.com/blog/2023/introducing-the-all-park-passport Most guests are still going to get gold passes and if they want access to other parks just add on the all parks passport. With a Prestige pass and that add-on your prestige benefits do work at other parks, it does warn the extra benefits are only valid at parks with a Prestige pass but that is also expanding to six parks. It listed Canada’s Wonderland, Carowinds, Cedar Point, Kings Dominion, Kings Island, and Knott’s Berry Farm as all having prestige passes. Do pass add-ons still work chain wide, only some add-ons? Makes me wonder about season long Fast Lane. The platinum pass was the same price chain wide to combat people just getting a pass from the cheapest park in the chain. Basically what else is changing, and do those changes make it easier or harder to abuse the system? There are a lot of unknowns here. My biggest take away is confirmation that Prestige benefits will be chain wide. Which is the way it should have been, and it’s time to change it so it works that way this year.

The RMC hints are likely for the replacement Fire in the hole ride at Silver Dollar City. The park sent out a tweet yesterday that was a single word “Tomorrow”. Plus that RMC is doing it has been one of the worst kept secrets in the industry.

That picture is from Kings Island. That’s a leg from the Eiffel Tower on the right.

I thought the same thing at first about Kingswood. I changed my mind though. I bet it’s International Showplace. That puts both the first and second concept possibilities at the same location. I suspect the project itself or location has already been decided and I bet it’s the launched wing coaster. The first art piece shows an invert but the description still says launched wing. My gut says they know what they are building and where and want feedback on theming. To add some fuel to this fire, there are reports that survey markers have show up in the area near the mountain including around International Showplace.

I cannot see Disney or Universal touching it. Six Flags is not in a financial position to do so. That leaves 3, Cedar Fair, Herschend, and Sea World. I could make an argument for why it could make sense for any of those 3. But would management at any of them consider it, I have my doubts. Also I really believe no one would want Fun Spot Atlanta, it has plenty of protentional but almost no one wants to deal with the expense of building a park from almost nothing.

Snoopy’s Racing Railway has a realistic capacity of 300 something riders an hour. It has to run a single train, since it takes two laps around the track, and only seats 14 riders. It’s a low capacity kids ride, having the child requirement makes sense. Personally I prefer it not get cloned. I would prefer that Kings Island get rides with better capacity.

The statement from Clermont was published Wednesday but I suspect it was made on Tuesday. An employee from B&M did not arrive on site to inspect the damage in person until Wednesday. The announcement that a replacement support would be manufactured was made on Thursday. Likely the support was ordered either late Wednesday or on Thursday before the park announcement. Which would have been after Clermont stated they were not involved. It was likely true that at the time they were not involved but I suspect they are now.

As far as I can tell there is no official black list but the relationship between Cedar Fair and Intamin is not really improving. Cedar Fair moved away from Intamin for a lot of reasons and it was more than just a few problematic rides that people keep bringing up. The poor service and replacement part availability continues to be a problem and continues to create friction between the companies. Intamin likes custom proprietary parts and it has caused a lot of downtime. Here is a video from a ride mechanic that discusses a few manufacturers, and discusses how they are to work with. He talks about B&M at 1:50 and Intamin at 8:12. If you have a chance go do Winter Chill Out and talk with the mechanics at Cedar Point. I have discussed similar issues with them before. It’s just really hard to get parts from Intamin. When the unexpected happens you’re stuck with months of downtime, and in the worst cases it can take more than a year to get the items. Xcelerator at Knott’s closed in March of 2022, they just announced last week the parts to fix it arrived from Intamin, and expect it to open later this summer, it’s already been closed 16 months. This is not the first time Xcelerator has had extended downtime due to part availability. Falcons Fury at BGT, closed for around a year with a sign out front that said they were waiting for parts from the manufacturer, it just reopened maybe two months ago. Kings Island had this happen with the Drop Tower, it went down last year, and the park was still waiting for replacement parts at the start of this season. Intamin needs to figure out how to provide support in a reasonable period of time, even if the ride is 20 years old, discontinued, low volume, or maybe a prototype. Changing how they design rides and placing a focus on using quality off the shelf components and reusing as much as possible between models so they can stock items for faster service would be a good start. B&M earned its reputation for quality, reliability, and service though a lot of hard work. I cannot imagine they will not provide superior service in this instance.

I suspect the Peanuts sale is a sign, not that they are being removed, but that the kids area is being overhauled into Camp Snoopy. Try to find any merchandise that says Planet Snoopy that is not included in the sale. Plenty of generic Kings Island Peanuts merchandise that is not on sale. The survey at Carowinds which became Aeronautica Landing occurred in 2020. 2021 they did a survey at Kings Island asking about the kids area and a lot of questions about dining. To add a new coaster I would remove the old theatre and barn yard area. I think a Mack spinner like Sierra Sidewinder at Knott’s would be a great fit. While I am certain a clone would fit, a custom layout to better utilize the space would likely be better. Based on the survey and construction at other parks a large new restaurant with indoor seating, maybe even a stage for live entertainment, maybe character dining. I would put it on the path leading to the picnic grove and the water park. Across from the picnic area is a small strip of grass with some trees, and a large employee parking lot on the other side of the fence. It’s not really usable for expanding the kids area with rides, but a large restaurant would be perfect just don’t put windows on the backside of the building. The employee parking can easily be shifted and it’s unlikely the restaurant would take the whole lot. There is enough room here for a clone of Harmony Hall, it feels unlikely something that big would get built but a food court would be nice. Although a Lazy Bear Lodge style restaurant would look good in a Camp Snoopy area. I would love to see boo blasters replaced as well but this feels like too much for one year. I would like to think that they would demolish the majority of the land and rebuild it, similar to what has been done at other parks when they receive a camp Snoopy retheme.

I keep seeing people assuming B&M or Clermont had to have made a mistake. If a footer moved, especially if it’s the one supporting the diagonal, the forces imparted to the support would be increased and I believe the failure would look exactly like what we have seen. The top of the support appears to be pushed outward away from the support, which is the direction it broke in. My theory is they do a survey and find the diagonals footer sunk into the ground more than expected.

I am concerned that Carowinds maintenance missed it for what now appears to be a week. They should be doing a visual inspection of the entire ride daily and we have people going back through their pictures from the last week and you can see it progress from the top of the weld to slowly tear the support apart. I understand how it got missed the first day or two. But I saw a picture from Thursday the day before it was closed and it’s very obvious.

Here is a video, it appears it happened in the middle of the day. I wonder how long it operated with it broken like that. Likely a lot of inspections going to be happening. I also expect engineers from B&M to be on site next week inspecting it in person. While Clermont could likely get them a new support in a few weeks, B&M is likely to redesign it first. I would also expect B&M will issue a service bulletin to inspect other rides just in case. I have heard and seen pictures of cracked spines on B&M coasters. This is the first broken support to my knowledge. I think I know where this is on the coaster, but please someone correct me if this is wrong. It looks like the first big turn after the lift hill. Which means this would be somewhat close to a road.

The LSM launch fins act as their own magnetic brakes. The train would not even make it to the spike.

I think part of the problem is people have some extremely weird ideas of what changes are happening. I know I was hopeful the ride would be extended so something could be done with the speed beyond just hitting the brakes, but the lack of any additional construction means that is unlikely. But I keep seeing people thinking the ride will be taller than Kingda Ka, or faster than Formula Rossa, and frankly I never thought anything like this would be reasonable. Cedar Fair likely just wants a safe, and reliable ride, and is not concerned with breaking records. I am expecting TTD with a new station, a switch to get onto the launch track, a spike to get some initial speed then a long launch to get just enough speed to clear the top hat, hit the brakes same as before and a slightly longer slow speed section to get to the new station. That’s it basically the same ride with just a backwards launch up a spike to get some speed. Zamperla is not going to build the launch, it’s likely being done by InTraSys. Most of the track and it appears all the really high speed sections will be the original track just modified to add a new launch system and different brake layout. Zamperla is building trains, a station, a spike, some track to tie it all together, and a new control system. It’s common to outsource track switches so I would not be surprised if they are not responsible for that. Does Zamperla do their own control systems, those are also frequently outsourced. It’s still a complicated project but I think people are really overthinking this.

Kings Island is the only park in the chain without a wild mouse style coaster. If anything Cedar Point getting one likely has increased the chances that the park will get one. It means corporate management is willing to install lower capacity coasters in the big parks. Although I suspect if the park gets one it would go in Coney Mall. The building for DarKoaster is larger than the Boo Blasters building but close enough something similar should be possible, but I am certain it would mean losing the stage, meet and great space, and might still require a little bit of expansion. A ride like that would likely need most of the building. Frankly I feel like DarKoaster was a mistake, not the ride or experience itself because everything I have heard about the ride itself is good. But because of just how low capacity the ride is. I suspect the source of the issue is trying to cram the ride into too small a space, which is what I feel would happen with the Boo Blasters building, I also think the trains are really not helping and traditional seating would allow a higher capacity train. From what I have heard it has a maximum capacity of around 350 riders an hour, roughly half of even a wild mouse, and my calculations back that up. Thankfully the slow dispatch speed means it’s likely operating close to that theoretical when it works, but even for a family coaster that is just really low for a big park. I am about to discuss the technical details of how the ride operates. You might consider this a spoiler, if so skip the rest of this paragraph. The building is pretty small, so there is a main loop of track which actually goes around the building twice and a pair of track switches, one to let a train off the loop into the station and one to let a train leaving the station to enter the track loop. While one train is in the station, the second goes around the loop twice and it feels different due to lighting and projection changes. So you actually travel around the building 4 times. The problem is the trains only hold 10 passengers and from launch to the brakes is just over 90 seconds. Combine the ride time with the train parking and the fastest dispatch even possible is roughly every 100-110 seconds. I think the Boo Blasters building would be better served staying a dark ride. I just would like it redeveloped into a new theme.

The pictures and video that I have seen of the aftermath so far are pretty wild. An entire wheel assembly came off the front car of the train and landed right next to a support. It sounds like 3 people were ejected from the train, two of them fell to the ground, one somehow got lucky and fell on top of a horizontal support and was able to shimmy himself up on top and there is video of him sitting on top of the steel beam waiting to be rescued. This sounds very similar to what happened on Mindbender and Quimera. Not sure if it’s the train design or maintenance issues, but to me at least the common link is Schwarzkopf. It feels like any of these rides still running original trains should have the trains replaced.

I am almost positive the missing letter was the hyper for CGA. The codes are from B&M and designate the design, the first two are the type of coaster, MC standards for Mega Coaster, and the 3rd letter is the actual layout. If you order a clone of an existing ride it will have the same 3 letter code as the original. The missing letter pretty much signifies someone paid B&M for a design of a Hyper/Giga which has not been produced. It has been revealed that Cedar Fair had gone as far as ordering the trains for the coaster before it was cancelled. I cannot imagine they did that before the design was effectively finished.

Are you certain this generates a fault? Having been to other parks with the same ride they have the same problem of people pulling down the restraints and it appears to not cause an issue.

I just thought getting an error message trying to fix my mess that happened due to error messages was funny.

It turns out if you get an error message when you submit a post, and it does not show up, it does not mean it will not show up later. I even submitted a report after I could not find a way to delete the messages myself, and got an error message.

I doubt this was leaked by the park, people really do monitor this information, but you’re wrong about what was being monitored. Also Screamscape is not where it was originally posted, it had already been making the rounds on other sites before Screamscape reported anything. This is also not even the first one from Vekoma that someone caught in the past year. It appears the Nashville Zoo is getting a dueling Vekoma family Boomerang that has also not been announced yet. I want to show just how easy this is, and this is literally how this was originally found. https://www.importgenius.com/suppliers/vekoma-rides-manufacturing-bv People are not watching the park, they watch the manufacturers, and where they are making shipments. As of right now item 10 on the shipments page is a 48,870 kg shipment to the Nashville Zoo… Shipment number 1 the most recent shipment was made to Koch development, it’s a little light at only 2,670 kg so no way it’s the ride itself, but this shipments marks and numbers listed is “VEKOMA REF: VRM-23-411 PROJECT: FAMILY BOOMERANG ROLLER COASTER”. Got to love coaster manufacturers who make it that easy.

Already been purchased, some park in I think South America, announced it a few months ago.

There are a few easy answers, Hong Kong for instance, both Ocean Park and the Hong Kong Disney Resort, have their own stops on the cities subway system. In Shanghai, Shanghai Disneyland has its own Subway stop. Personally I would count Disneyland Paris, and Tokyo Disneyland. Both are very easily and cheaply accessed from the cities. Those rail lines directly connect to subway stations and the transfer is very easy. Universal Studios Japan is also directly on a JR line. There are also smaller parks on subway lines. Tokyo Dome City, or closer to home the seaside parks in Coney Island New York.

As far as I can tell I have not received a single Pass Perk, enhanced or otherwise all season. As I remember this requires being signed up for marketing emails from the park. But as far as I can tell I am signed up, I have checked my account on the website they have the correct email address, my account shows marketing emails are turned on. So far, nothing. Frankly the whole pass perks program has always felt worthless. At the very least they need some other way to provide the perks. Maybe integrate it into the park app. But then I still hate how parks hide things on your account. This is not just Kings Island/Cedar Fair either. But for instance the 2 free bring a friend tickets, the renewal Fast Lane, etc they are all “loaded” into your account with no way to see them. You have no way to verify the correct item was used. Early renewal gave a free bring a friend ticket, the Prestige pass gave two. They expired at different times and zero way to check what was consumed if they got loaded into the account correctly, etc. The black hole really makes you not want to use them or makes you forget they exist. I cannot help but wonder if it’s on purpose.

I am hopeful this means the spin the wheel, gambling form of Fast Lane, will be removed from the park. I really prefer guests just paying and getting exactly what they want. I assume corporate has not changed their policy on Fast Lane, which means at most 50% of a ride’s capacity can be used for Fast Lane. Every ride has handled that differently but that’s why Cedar Point used one station for Fast Lane and one for the regular queue on dragster. If Fast Lane already had a line and the policy was followed before, the stand by line should be unchanged. But at least at Kings Island I very rarely see much of a line for Fast Lane so adding additional people to the Fast Lane will typically slow the regular line. The parks own advertising for Fast Lane is “Wait less. Ride more!”, capacity of the rides is unchanged, for someone to ride more others must ride less. The average wait time for the regular line basically has to be going up. Season long Fast Lane, and other season long products like the meal and drink plans change people’s habits. They encourage pass holders to visit more frequently. I have just about everything on my pass, and even before season long Fast Lane if I was in the area I would drop by for a “free” meal. Season long Fast Lane means I don’t care if it’s a holiday or weekend. I visit much more frequently, and except for food lines really don’t care how busy the park will be, for me the ride lines are still very short. I just don’t see this changing much. My biggest concerns are Flight of Fear, and Night rides on The Beast. Most of the time at Kings Island, Fast Lane has a very minimal wait, and I do not believe for most rides this product will have a huge affect on either line. Disney Lightning Lane is timed for a reason, most rides do not enforce it, but Tron for instance does, because of the concern of people buying a time earlier in the day and waiting until dark for a night ride. I am hopeful Kings Island will be using timed entry to prevent a ride getting overwhelmed at the end of the night, but I doubt it.