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Maybe they've changed since I was there in either 2016 or 2018, but my jaw dropped when I saw that. Before COVID, SFNE had a solid enthusiast reputation (that my visit fully confirmed) for taking 3-5 business days to load and send a train.

While the CGA closure decision predates the merger, I think we technically have two examples of there being two parks (at least one of which isn't a top performer in the chain) in the same market and one of those parks gets shut down. I have no insider knowledge and I'm definitely not an expert, but I'd keep an eye on Six Flags St. Louis/Worlds of Fun and Six Flags Great Adventure/Dorney Park. My money would be on WoF and SFGAdv staying. Whether that means SFSL and Dorney would get demolished or sold, it's hard to say. Herschend is the only domestic chain that seems like it'd be willing to purchase a park of that size, but neither of those parks make a ton of sense in terms of the kind of experience Herschend typically offers**. Would a European or Asian chain be interested in them? I don't lump Knott's and Magic Mountain together because LA, in my mind, operates like Orlando in that destination parks are more able to coexist because of the large local population and high tourism. I don't lump Michigan's Adventure and Cedar Point together because Michigan's Adventure is a large FEC and surely isn't pulling people from anywhere other than central/northern Michigan. It's a local destination whose pre-CF ownership overinvested in it and it wouldn't be able to sustain becoming any bigger than it currently is, which is why it doesn't get new additions. Texas is an odd one. SFoT and SFFT have both been heavily invested in recently. San Antonio is able to sustain both SWSA and SFFT and has done so for years. The Dallas area is about to get a Universal park. (Meaning, there's competition for SIX to pay attention to in both cities.) I wouldn't count on either Texas theme park going anywhere, but I'm curious to see if there will be a change in the investment in either park going forward. I feel like the smaller parks without much competition (Michigan's Adventure, Valleyfair, Great Escape, La Ronde, Frontier City) could go any direction. If the chain is HURTING hurting for money, I expect we could see them either get demolished and have their land sold (if they're in locations where the land is valuable) or sold to another chain. Otherwise, they seem to be able to sustain themselves and bring in money without needing frequent or big investments, so there might be an argument for keeping them. If I were to take a stab at what I think will happen with the smaller parks: Michigan's Adventure and Great Escape will stay open, La Ronde will be demolished, Frontier City will be demolished or sold to a chain like IB Parks & Entertainment, and Valleyfair will either stay open or be sold to whatever chain might be interested in a park that size. (**Neither does Kentucky Kingdom, though, so it's hard to say.)

Herschend's recent expansion combined with Six Flags's announcement that they'd like to offload more parks makes me wonder which Six Flags parks we might see become Herschend Parks. And if those parks have "Six Flags" in their name, what those parks' names become.

I'm glad to see this happening. I hope the work extends into the turn off of lift 2. That turn has always tracked really poorly with age and always seems to devolve into two big, uncomfortable jerks to the left, just before the track straightens out. I assume that's an issue with the support structure. Maybe we can even lose the trims on that drop...? My biggest hope for one of the next few off seasons is that they have Gravity Group reprofile the last turn before lift 2. I assume that the suddenness of that turn is a big reason why the first half of Beast has as many trim brakes as it does even now. (Think Magnum's reprofiling of the valley before the turnaround early in its life, where riders would go from airtime to positive G's very quickly and were getting hurt.) If that turn was less abrupt, it could potentially ditch some trims or even the whole "MCBR."

Diamondback would be less forceful with the 4-across trains. The layouts of all modern coasters are initially designed around the forces at the center of the train, so the farther you are from the center (e.g. the front or back rows) the more forceful the ride is. The forces have to stay within certain limits for the ride to be safe, so longer trains require the ride to be more drawn out so the forces at either end stay within the limits. Compare how small the radius of the top of the lift on Orion is compared to Diamondback. If you swapped out the staggered trains for the 4-across trains, everyone would sit closer to the center of the train, so the ride would be gentler. See also: Voyage being more extreme in the front and back rows with the original 7-car trains than with the current 6-car trains. The inverse is true with Orion: If you put an 8-car staggered train on Orion, the forces in the front and back would likely be way too high for people to safely ride.

Was really hoping you meant the one at Six Flags St. Louis. Disappointed.

It's almost like, and hear me out, casting some chains as "the impossibly good ones" and others as "the irredeemably foolish ones" was never the appropriate lens for enthusiasts to view the industry through. Not least because the largest "irredeemably foolish one" is, at the moment, operated by a large majority of people from a former "impossibly good one." Theme park chains don't operate how y'all play RollerCoaster Tycoon. Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled "[park with slow ROIs] deserves a new coaster."

I feel like almost the inversion of this is more what I've noticed--Son of Beast profits unfairly in the enthusiast zeitgeist from being the "child" of a well-established ride. I think many, many, many "what was it like"/"who got to ride it"/"was it as awesome as I imagine it" conversations post-closure, including this thread, would not have happened if it was simply a terrible ride with a standalone name. It was given unearned rose-colored glasses from the moment they decided on that name--which is personally a bit annoying when that weird reverence is coming from someone who otherwise unequivocally has negative opinions of the Paramount era. Paramount did such a good job in marketing a bad ride that we're still somehow talking about an almost universally disliked ride. Had they given it a Cedar Fair-type standalone name, we'd probably talk about it no more or less than we talk about Firehawk or Screamin' Demon. Anyway, to respond to the original prompt: I think Twister at Knoebels does a better and more interesting job of being a "sequel" to The Beast than Son of Beast ever was. Given the era in which SoB opened, it could've been interesting to see CCI do their take on Twister.

I'm not about to pretend that SFA was some underloved gem--I went once about 10 years ago and have never craved a return--but it's worth pointing out that the widespread downtime you experienced really doesn't seem to have been a thing prior to this year. You're judging a store based on its "everything has to go" sale. Also, the fact that an amusement park is having the maintenance equivalent of an "'everything has to go' sale" is its own issue, but that's for another post.

The question here is if this is the actual Jeff Putz or not, lol.

Respectfully, I can't figure out if the tone of this thread is sarcastic or if someone loves them a muffuletta with a side of theatricality.

I am so old.

Well, yeah. Also that.

A Vekoma Madhouse.

I'm not trying to be difficult here--there's every possibility that you're 100% correct--but you do have to admit that there have been many posts over the years that claimed to factually have insider knowledge of what's coming and going that are still active posts on this site. Not to mention that if the person claiming The Bat is on its way out is correct, there wouldn't be equipment on site in December 2024 if it's being removed in late 2025 or early 2026. You've got me as far as the whistleblower thread goes. I'm not enough of a conspiracy theorist to be sure of myself here, but there's a part of me that wonders if, since the ride removals are allegedly being done without warning in order to minimize loss of season passholders, the park would have a vested interest in not letting that story gain a lot of visibility. It IS odd that one thread stayed while the other disappeared.