DispatchMaster

To be fair, if they were comfortable paying for it, they wouldn't be gauging interest in it. If they were comfortable with paying for it, they'd just build it. But they need to gauge interest to determine whether or not there's a financial case to be made. So why haven't they built any? They had opportunities, specifically at CP or CW, but instead chose considerably smaller versions, even at Cedar Point, the so-called favorite child of the chain that gets all the best stuff. Now, this is not to say they absolutely would never build a dive machine that tall. But considering that every added foot to a coaster's height has diminishing returns - guests/riders can't distinguish between 299' and 301', nor can they readily distinguish between 301' and 315' - parks have to ask themselves how much value there is in the marketability of a 301' ride versus a 299' ride. And even if we assume that extra 2' might be justifiable in terms of ROI, going a further 14' isn't necessarily a slam dunk.

The taller the coaster, the larger every element needs to be to stay within comfortable G-force range. The larger each element is, the more steel is required. And steel is expensive. Have you ever wondered why there are so few coasters taller than ~300 feet? It's because it gets stupid expensive very fast to build even a narrow gauge (e.g. Orion/Leviathan) coaster at that scale. It may be hard to tell without looking at them side-by-side, but dive coaster track is a lot larger than traditional track. The rails are set wider to accommodate 8- or 10-across trains, so that means more massive ribs, and the spine is wider/thicker as well, since the moment about the track axis is much greater compared to sit-down coasters. And then of course the support columns need to be sized up to support the static weight of the track. All of this adds up to a very difficult ROI case for a dive coaster of that size. One constant in the enthusiast community is how freely folks are willing to spend park operators money, as if it were RCT in sandbox mode. In the real world, where budgets exist, things are more complicated.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but a dive coaster as high as the ET would be about 40% taller (!!!) than the two tallest dive coasters yet (Valravn & Yukon Striker). The only place a dive coaster of that height is likely to be built is Saudi Arabia. It's just too expensive.

You suggested that the new coaster may be heading to CP because the park's expectations for hotel reservations were not met. I pointed out that it's nonsensical to spend several million dollars to sell a few extra rooms because in addition to it not making sense financially, dynamic pricing allows them to throttle demand in real time, and at no cost to the park. That the park's hotel has local competition or that there's an amusement park there are red herrings. If Cedar Fair felt the resorts were not meeting their target, they would simply dynamically lower prices until demand increased to their target. Conversely, if demand were outstripping supply, they would dynamically increase prices until the two were in balance.

I don't agree with this at all. If the park were concerned about bad PR, they would have removed TTD completely. Rebuilding the ride is not good PR, and in fact the rebuilding of the ride was cited by Hawes' attorneys, which complicated the case, and gave the plaintiff firmer ground for damages. If anything, rebuilding the ride rather than removing it added insult to literal, life changing injury. I fail to see how that's good PR. From that point on, keeping the ride closed following the modification is good PR, in that the park is willing to shutter the ride until they are absolutely certain the ride is safe for guests. You're painting with a wide brush, first of all, and making assumptions based on your anecdotal experience. Generally speaking, guests can barely get the names of rides correct most of the time, so I find it hard to believe that there's adequate "word of mouth" to make the ride being SBNO some sort of "disaster". I would bet that poor weather has had more adverse impact on the park in a given season compared to TT2 being down. And I'll counter your meaningless anecdotal evidence with meaningless anecdotal evidence of my own. Some friends of ours, who haven't been to CP in many years, visited this summer and had an absolutely fantastic time despite TT2's status, and can't wait to come back again. Again, enthusiasts tend to overestimate how much normal people care about this stuff. Yes, it quite literally does. That's the entire point of dynamic pricing - to adjust the supply-demand curve in real time. If demand is weak, prices decrease. If demand is strong, prices increase. This is the most basic, fundamental concept of economics. Think about it... If the park weren't meeting their hotel revenue target, which option makes more sense as a solution? Solution A - Adjust room rates down until demand meets their target. Cost to park: literally nothing. In fact, there would be additional revenue and profit, assuming rates are kept above operating cost (which, at those rates, they are). Solution B - Hastily install a new ride and hope demand increases. Cost to park: millions of dollars. Considering that one of the two solutions earns more revenue, while the other costs millions of dollars, it should be obvious which solution makes the most sense.

I include myself in the weird community of enthusiasts. But I'm self-aware enough to know that the way we tend to reflexively think about things (why didn't Park A get New Ride X, they Park A deserves it more!") doesn't apply to the real world of park management. First of all, calling TT2 a "disaster" is an emotional response. But more importantly, who considers the investment to be "disastrous"? Just because an enthusiast thinks it's a disaster doesn't mean the folks in charge do. Now, that's not to say the ride not opening this year is anything other than bad, but coasters are a several-decade investment, so it's a bit early to label the investment a disaster. There were a few rides whose debuts were pushed from 2024 to 2025. Are those also "disastrous" outcomes? If those aren't "disasters" I don't see how TT2 is, considering the net effect is the same - a ride is opening a year later than originally scheduled. Even if it were true that hotel reservations were down this year, does it make sense to spend several million dollars because a few rooms went unused during the season? It seems like it would make far more sense to simply adjust room rates, something they already do to control demand. In fact, their ability to dynamically price lodging means that if there unused lodging capacity, it's probably more or less by design.

I think you may be overestimating the amount of press coverage dedicated to regional amusement parks, and as extension the impact of that press coverage on the bottom line. Is there some impact? Sure, of course. But is there enough of an impact to justify a multi-million dollar investment as a "distraction"? A common theme among enthusiasts is that they wildly overestimate the level to which anyone outside this weird community cares about this stuff. Your friend is a good example of this, I think. I sympathize with his plight, but the percentage of customers who would dedicate a nontrivial amount of their entertainment budget with the goal of riding a single ride rounds to zero relative to total seasonal attendance. I'm not suggesting that was the only factor. I'm saying it may well have been one of many key factors. If it's true that this was the Energylandia-SF Mexico model, the coaster has already been designed and manufactured, and therefore there were rigid constraints on where this could be installed. Sure, KI could have filled in & leveled The Vortex plot, or another park could have relocated existing rides and infrastructure to accommodate it, etc., but all of that of course carries cost. The plot at CP is as shovel-ready as it gets: wide open, flat, and can be accessed directly by heavy equipment without having to travel through the park. I've not suggested that it played no factor whatsoever. But there's a hell of a lot of space between "played zero factor" and was necessary "to distract from the TT2 disaster". See above point about enthusiasts overestimating how much 99% of park guests know or care about this stuff.

It's just not yet included in any renders. Maybe because they don't yet know exactly how it'll be routed, and/or because it's an unimportant detail in terms of announcing and marketing the new ride. What does this even mean? Distract who? Is revenue down due to the so-called "TT2 disaster"? Is attendance down at CP due to the "TTD disaster" rather than any number of other uncontrollable factors? You're being needlessly emotional about what was a pragmatic, unemotional business decision. It probably came down to "hey, we have this coaster that we've already purchased, and we need a flat plot of unoccupied land that's large enough and provides access from the park perimeter to support uninterrupted construction during the season, since we'll be getting a late start on construction. What parks meet those characteristics?"

It is ambiguous. An unambiguous way to phrase it would be "...will lure riders...". Based on the renders, the FL queue ("que" is Spanish for "that") bypasses the standby queue and merges at the station. Though hopefully they will throttle the FL queue substantially so as to minimize the pain due to the ride's apparent low capacity.

Because normal people, who make up ~95% of the park's guests, could not care less that these rides both have vertical drops. This is just not something normal, sane folks concern themselves with. Michigan's Adventure is doing gangbusters business, so no need to make the same level of investment there. Looking at the layout, Siren's Curse appears to be a design that was destined for somewhere else, and when that fell through, was rerouted to CP, since they have a flat, unused plot of land. If I'm KI, given the choice between a shoehorned installation of an existing design and a custom-designed B&M Dive (or whatever), I'd choose the custom design 100 times out of 100.

"Ohio's northernmost water coaster!!!"

If by "got the trains right" you mean the trains launched deadly-massive projectiles through the air that only avoided killing guests by pure luck, then yeah, agreed, I guess? (I feel like people who make these "but Intamin..." weren't alive for the first several years of TTD's operation. Either that, or they're just gaslighting people...) Also, getting the trains to speed without issue via hydraulic launch is an entirely different scenario compared to getting them to speed via multiple LSM launches.

Whoever approved that sign for public display deserves a talking-to. "Service begins at 5PM until Supplies last" not only doesn't make sense, buy why the heck is "Supplies" capitalized?!? Shouldn't it read "Service begins at 5PM while supplies last"?

Yes, exactly. There's not a lot of socioeconomic overlap between someone with the lack of intelligence displayed in this situation with people who can afford the in-park cost to "achieve" a BAL of 0.277. I'm not saying it's not possible that she got over-served in the park, but anyone trying to draw a link between alcohol sales in the park and this behavior is not on well-founded argumentative ground.

There are likely performance clauses in the contract, but as far as penalties go, it's not likely to be extreme. It does no one any good for a park/chain to bankrupt a supplier over something like this.

I don't necessarily disagree, but I'm not sure what the heck that has to do with my comment, which was in response to someone making the argument that it is somehow incompatible or irresponsible or whatever to sell alcohol at an amusement park.

Is it really "amazing" that a for-profit business sells things that are in demand? Also, it's a flatly absurd implication that a place cannot simultaneously be family-friendly and also serve alcohol.

LOL How many people were injured during TT2's opening year? How many people, if not for pure, dumb luck, could have been gravely injured or killed as a result of massive, heavy train components flying off of the Lightning Train this season? Even if we arbitrarily focus only on the opening season of each iteration of the ride, it's important to remember that one of the biggest issues with TTD is that it failed in dangerous, unexpected ways that, in one incident (cable fraying), caused injury to riders, and in another incident (decorative tires detached from ride vehicle), could have caused grave injury or death to riders or innocent bystanders. It is only by pure, dumb luck that the latter incident didn't have a catastrophic outcome. So while I can see how the enthusiast crowd, focused solely on whether or not a ride is open, could come to the conclusion that TT2 was a bigger "disaster" than TTD, I think from a ride ownership perspective, it would be much preferred to identify potential issues before they injure or kill guests.

I have no idea what you're trying to "prove" at this point, but pointing out that KI's attendance didn't exactly track the area's population growth doesn't achieve that. I could also cherry-pick data to "prove" an obviously-wrong point (The debut of Diamondback led to a 4% decrease in YOY attendance. Clearly installing coasters is a bad idea! ) The point is, there is a clear trend line of sustained attendance growth even if we can point to individual years where the data fluctuates. And that attendance growth trend is finite and constrained by, among many other things, regional population.

Probably just wait until the Cincy Metro Area population grows enough to support that level of attendance. Amusement parks are what they are, and so long as the parks maintain a certain level of cap ex to maintain their appeal relative to other forms of recreation, they will continue to be a draw. But because they're a known quantity, the idea that building a certain coaster/attraction will create a sustained jump in attendance doesn't make sense, and in fact is not supported by whatever attendance data we can get our hands on, nor is it supported by first hand accounts of the folks who work in the industry. In fact, their known quantity status likely means the most realistic way to achieve growth would be to diversify what they offer, rather than install some RCT fever dream roller coaster. That's why up in Sandusky they've been diversifying with Sports Force Park, Sawmill Creek, etc.

The only thing that can even come close to being "statistically" demonstrated is that there is a long-term trend of attendance growth. You're trying to draw a broad conclusion (based on a clear personal bias, I would add) using a few points of data, which is not "statistics". There are a lot of variables even if we ignore the global pandemic - weather, regional economy, market competition, ticket price, season pass mix, pricing promotions, etc. - and the more variables there are, the larger your data set needs to be to be considered statistically-robust. But, and this should go without saying, but here we are, we can't ignore the global pandemic! The pandemic had profound impacts on the economy, travel, etc., that continue to affect the economy to this day, and regional amusement parks are quite obviously not immune to that impact. Also, as TombRaider points out, these numbers are not reliable. They're estimates, and "estimate" is nothing more than a fancy word for "guess". It's not what would be considered hard data. And without hard data, any detailed analysis is useless (garbage in = garbage out).

Ah yes, the "I was just kidding" after-the-fact defense. The classics never die!

I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are not being serious with this claim, because it would be a really absurd argument to point to pandemic-affected attendance as evidence of what you're suggesting. Obviously no one is so incredibly obtuse that they'd make such an argument in good faith, right?

By all accounts the same holds true for Cedar Point. The coaster lineup is maintained and refreshed in order to maintain the park's draw, since attendance growth is finite. That's why Orion didn't need to be 13' taller, why a set of dueling water coasters is a reasonable use of cap ex, etc.

I fail to see how: "it's complicated" the existence of litter somehow justifies the intentional act contributing additional litter it's OK to litter if, in the litterer's subjective opinion, it's easier to clean up their litter compared to other litter For me, it's pretty straightforward - don't make a mess that someone else will have to clean up*. *The obvious exception being places where patrons are expressly not permitted to clean up, e.g. full service restaurants.