Forums

As much as I love Vortex, I'd rather have a replacement and/or new attraction not named after it. There are other rides named Vortex (with one essentially using the same type font and one used the same logo), for those looking for nostalgia. The renaming of Flight Deck to The Bat was fan driven...but I'd argue it was a better idea because of the addition of Banshee than if the park put in a new ride/attraction to just name it The Bat because there was a former ride named it. IMO it'd be better if there was a desire to keep The Vortex name, to rename Invertigo than putting in a new ride/attraction naming it after the former ride in Coney.   Carowinds (same type font) Canada's Wonderland (former logo)

They used to...

Or just keep it simple and open a new looper and just reuse The Vortex name. Its a household name and it leans into the park's affinity for nostalgia. The park has now had two Bat coasters, while the current one was not originally named that upon its opening, it still bears the name of a historic landmark coaster. And we are literally getting an updated Phantom Theater which bears the same name + some extra verbiage. I think older fans would appreciate the nod and the new generation would have their own Vortex to grow up with. 

I'll grant the sentiment angle, but I would like to hear more about how the attendance and ROI conclusion was reached. It's not as though public companies go out of their way to share data that demonstrates they made a poor 8-figure investment. In fact, public companies are always inclined to do the exact opposite - perform logical acrobatics to spin poor financial performance as the fault of anything other than their decision making. But more to the point, as Losantiville Mining Co. points out, Orion did not debut in a vacuum! Instead of getting the normal first year bump in attendance - and thus a huge chunk of its expected ROI - Orion debuted during the pandemic, operating a fraction of the expected hours its first year, with limited attendance and capacity. Even in its second year when those restrictions were lessened, a nontrivial number of people simply were not traveling, depressing the park's attendance, and thus further depressing ridership and ROI. There is no way to definitively untangle those effects versus the effect of the supposed guest sentiment that Orion is "just OK".

Looks like the usual "cold weather tunnel" for doing trackwork, but trackwork on a GCI less than ten years old seems odd. That section is higher-stress though so maybe a new top layer and fresh steel? I haven't seen a Notice of Commencement for a while, so I'm not sure if GCI has a contract open with the park right now. Most parks have GCI do tracking on their GCI rides (SFMM being a notable exception, but wood track seems to dry out quickly there and Apocalypse got retracked down to the ledgers by a third party a number of years ago now.)