WoodVengeance

For right now, I believe Six Flags only has access to the Looney Tunes and DC IPs and they would probably have to pay extra to get any more IPs from Warner Bros. If you're curious about Hanna Barbera, it seems Six Flags did have access to the Hanna Barbera IP at one point since Six Flags Great America had a Hanna Barbera themed section named "Camp Cartoon" between 1998 and 2017.

It's crazy how fast Kings Dominion has been throughout the construction progress of Rapterra. In comparison, I think Orion's trackwork was only completed around the station, final brakes and the base of the lift hill this time five years ago.

"Snake River's future thrills won't be bad, we surely are not joking!" Is this implying that whatever is replacing Snake River Falls is still going to have the Snake River theming?

I'm also thinking that this was mostly likely done as some sort of publicity stunt (like Beast 2.0) to get people talking about a potential new coaster themed around Son of Beast. I wouldn't hold my breath about this leading to a more significant project unless we start seeing any of the following pop up within the next several months: Attraction removals around Outpost 5 (Xtreme Skyflyer, Timberwolf, The Bat) Survey markers appearing in the area of Outpost 5 Construction vehicles appearing near Outpost 5 Notice of Commencement for 2024-2026 Even with that all being said, I do think it's still very possible we could see our next coaster in 2026, but I would put more stock into it going in The Vortex plot as opposed to reusing the Son of Beast station. But then again, crazier things have happened in the amusement industry so who knows.

One key contributor to that is whether or not the landscaping/theme of a ride fits in with the area of the park that the ride is placed in. To go back on Backlot Stunt Coaster, that coaster is officially placed in the "Rivertown" section of Kings Island (a rustic riverside themed area) and is also really close to the "Coney Mall" section (themed to a early-mid 20th century theme park). Given the theme of Backlot is that you're driving a stunt car through an L.A. back lot, it really doesn't fit Rivertown or Coney Mall at all. Now if Backlot was placed in Action Zone instead, I think it wouldn't stand out as much over there given that the original theme of Action Zone from the Paramount era was based on a giant movie set.

Although Firehawk did definitely have its problems, I think it could've been possible to keep that coaster running for a bit longer if the park really wanted to, but when the opportunity came up to put in a giga coaster, it was a pretty clear decision for the park to replace a problematic coaster with a more reliable and popular attraction. I think the "reached the end of its service life" reasoning definitely applied more to Vortex than it did for Firehawk. I'm certain Kings Island would've preferred to keep Vortex in operation until a replacement was ready for construction. It seems the problems with Vortex were significant enough for Kings Island to pull the plug on it well before such a replacement was even conceived. Unfortunately, I think the problems with Vortex just came at the worst possible time. Not just because Firehawk's replacement was still under construction, meaning it would take at least another three years before Kings Island's next major coaster, but also because of the pandemic which delayed that project even further until we're still talking about what could go into that plot five years later.

I'm heading to Holiday World on Sunday and Good Gravy will probably be the first coaster I ride when I get there. I'm interested to see how it compares to SSBR.

Thundervolt at PNE Playland opened back in July, and that also has the lightning trains. It seems whatever issue is plaguing the trains on TT2 have to be specific to that ride, otherwise Thundervolt wouldn't have opened.

It's true that Intamin has been problematic when it came to rides like Top Thrill Dragster and it's definitely possible that several of those issues may still be plaguing Top Thrill 2. I cannot confirm this to be the exact cause of TT2's issues, but it definitely appears that at least some of the issues stem from the new lightning trains provided by Zamperla. If this is the case, then I don't think it's really fair to blame Intamin for this, as they had no involvement with the lightning trains.

It also helps that Kings Island currently does not have a coaster with a vertical or beyond-vertical drop. (Orion is the steepest drop in the park at 85 degrees) That makes it easy to market as "Kings Island's first and only beyond-vertical drop coaster". However, I would prefer if we got a different model as I don't really think the park needs another B&M at the moment. A Gerstlauer Infinity like Hangtime or Vekoma Tilt could work well as a coaster that holds you over the first drop and features a lot of inversions in the layout.

I expect Cedar Fair (now part of Six Flags) may still contract Zamperla to build future flat rides and smaller-scale coasters like Wild Mouse. I don't think they're going to completely blacklist Zamperla like they've done with Intamin and RMC.

Imagine showing this to someone from a year ago with parks like Kings Island and Cedar Point on the Six Flags website.

I think those rides should be fine as far as reliability is concerned. Unlike TT2 that uses completely new trains and other systems Zamperla hadn't used before, Rapterra and AlpenFury are both ride models that both manufacturers (B&M and Premier) had experience with before, and they aren't doing anything too crazy or different compared to similar rides like Thunderbird or Full Throttle.

My bad, then. I only just now noticed them yesterday and thought they were new.

I don't know if it's been discussed here or not, but I noticed that several rides now have a sign towards the exit that informs guests that if they've lost an item on the ride, they have a qr code that they can scan in order to report it to lost and found. It's good that the park is making this more clear for guests that might not know exactly how their items are going to be retrieved, but I can't help but feel disturbed knowing the context of why this was done.

It became enough of an issue that park staff working at the Eiffel Tower's elevator have to explicitly say not to spit over the railing. Sometimes people do the strangest things for little to no reason, like how people throw their armbands and other belongings on roofs throughout the park.

I have two recent thoughts regarding our next major coaster. 1) Is Kings Island going to care that much about capacity for our next coaster? I know capacity has been prioritized with past major additions and I definitely would prefer it if the park continued to do that. However, we just saw that Canada's Wonderland is only putting two 18-person trains on their new-for-2025 coaster, and that park gets even more crowded than Kings Island from what I've seen. If Canada's Wonderland is willing to "skimp-out" on capacity for their new coaster, who's to say Kings Island won't do the same for whatever comes next? 2) Also paying attention to the other parks in the chain, it seems that the chain no longer does in-person announcements for any of their major new coasters. Top Thrill 2, Iron Menace, Rapterra and AlpenFury all had online announcements that were posted early in the morning, and I expect this will be a thing going forward for the foreseeable future. I know it's not the biggest deal in the world, but seeing this type of atmosphere whenever Kings Island announced a new coaster is something I looked forward to with each "decoding season" I've been involved with, and I feel a lot of charm and personality is really lost when they just post whatever it is online.

Most, if not all of the thrilling new-gen Vekomas have a 48" requirement, so that would be a good fit.

The renders show that the trains do not have comfort collars, only lap bars.

Yep. I imagine people are going to start saying this is more of a Volcano replacement than Rapterra is.

If it was anything like Alpen Fury, that would be great. Just as long as they put more than 2 trains on it.

It definitely looks like it's going to be the best coaster Premier has ever built.

A while back, I made this fan concept for a Gerstlauer Infinity coaster that was themed to the Shooting Star at the old Coney Island. The general idea was to include 10 inversions and have the ride split into two parts, with the second lift hill taking place after the fifth inversion as a middle section. (Similar to what Smiler does with its two lift hills) I also included a Coney Mall retheme to Coney Fair, which also included a Gerstlauer Sky Roller and a Jukebox Diner retheme. I hadn't shared this concept before as I wasn't really sure how feasible a Gerstlauer was going to be in terms of capacity, but I'd figure it would be a good time to share it since this type of ride was included in the recent survey.

It'll probably depend on the reliability of Georgia Surfer and the straddle coaster going to SFNE. If new Six Flags sees that both of those coasters end up being pretty reliable, then maybe they will have a change of heart and give them more projects. In addition to that, this also makes me wonder what new Six Flags's relationship with Gerstlauer will be. Although Cedar Fair was okay about working with them, the incident that happened on New Texas Giant pretty much ruined the relationship Gerstlauer had with old Six Flags and if that's going to carry on at all.

Apparently there was another option in the survey for a Gerstlauer Infinity coaster with 10 inversions. In my opinion, something like that or a Mack Stryker would be a far better fit for that plot of land compared to The Beast 2.0 concept.