SonofBaconator

I had a few parks that I think CF would benefit from owning if the opportunity ever arose: Six Flags New England: CF doesn't have as strong of a hold on the east coast market so acquiring this park would help. They could drop all the Six naming and rename it Riverside Amusement Park like it used to be. New England is a pretty big market and I think CF could give the park a better feel in the quality department. Busch Gardens Tampa: In my opinion, this is THE park CF should spend their money on if the opportunity ever arose. In my opinion it's pretty darn close to a Cedar Fair park already so it wouldn't have to be altered much. Also having a huge year round park in the Florida market would be extremely prosperous for the chain. The only road-block I'd see to this is the animal situation as Cedar Fair doesn't have a lot of interest in working with animals. With that being said however, animals are a huge part of BGT so I could see Cedar Fair dipping their toes in the water if it means having control over one of Florida's most popular amusement parks. Lagoon or Silverwood: This is just something I'd be interested in seeing how it would play out. Cedar Fair has no parks in the Rocky Mountain Region of the US and I think it would be interesting to see them add either park to their portfolio. I'm not sure what the ROI would be for acquiring either park though. Six Flags America: Call me evil but I would liquidate this park. I hear its awful and I've heard the land is worth more than the park is. I have friends who live in the DC/Baltimore area and they never go to this park often opting to go to Hershey, Kings Dominion or Busch Gardens Williamsburg. I know no one wants to lose an amusement park but with the East Coast so chock-full of awesome parks, I don't think a lot of people would miss it, but maybe I'm wrong.

There has to be somewhat of a balance between thrill rides and family attractions. There are some parks that do this well and others that don't. Cedar Point, for example, does a good job of incorporating family attractions in with their coasters and thrill rides. You have the train, the Cedar Creek Mine Ride, 2 antique car rides, three kids areas, and a whole bunch of other things. Disney does it a little differently where some parks are more thrilling while others are more mild and tame. I like to think Kings Island is more family driven but the rides don't always reflect on that. I think having "The World's Best Kid's Area" for nearly 2 decades didn't really show a need to add more family styled attractions. Other than Planet Snoopy we only have other family style attractions like the Miami Valley Railroad, Antique Autos, Adventure Express, Backlot, Boo Blasters, and some of the Coney Mall attractions. I think it would be in KI's best interest to add more mild family rides that the grandparents can ride- not a lot of grandparents can ride Adventure Express or Backlot. Adding more dark rides and walk through attractions would help with this in my opinion. If you look at KI's layout, there's the ability for a dark ride or walk through to be added to almost every section. With Cincinnati's climate situation, it would be nice if the park had more attractions that they didn't have to close down due to weather.

Hypothetically, is it possible for both Virginia parks to coexist under the same company? I'd imagine the less successful park would have to be toned down significantly.

The title is pretty self explanatory. I would like to hear what park some of you chose and why. To make it realistic I'm asking that people don't go off the rails- for example, don't say CF will buy Magic Mountain or Great Adventure (you get the jist). Other than that have fun and please be respectful of people's choices. I'll say mine later on! (Also water parks can be included if you want)

I think Vortex's land will alter Rivertown in a way when they eventually decide to touch that land again.

I never said that at all. The closest thing I can think of that sounded relatively close to S&S being more reliable than Intamin was talking about their 4d freespins. S&S has built 10 freespins since 2015, Intamin has only ever built 4 with the last one being in 2011; Green Lantern even has its own Defunctland video. Obviously there's a reason why parks are buying from S&S instead of Intamin. Heck Intamin redesigned their Zac Spin and as of 2020 there's no talks of one being built. I also said Intamin has a bad track record with CF where S&S does not.

I'd also say Carowinds. I think it goes without saying though that all the top 4 CF parks had a great decade. In fact I think the 2010s were a good defining decade for the chain- they saw which parks did better and which parks could be put on the back burner for the time being. Now with a newer CEO, the chain wants to forcus on the mid/ lower tier parks as well which will be needed if you're home park is Dorney, Worlds of Fun, Kings Dominion, etc. I wonder if Covid will force the chain to mainly focus back on their top tiers for the 2020s

Enlighten me on what I need to research

Call the parks up and ask them. All I can say is Cedar Fair experienced Intamin's failures 1st hand. They haven't really had any issues with S&S since Hypersonic was under Paramount ownership. Kinda the same logic behind CF working with Gerstlauer after the Smiler incident

Their standard 4d freespins are an improvement over Intamin's Green Lantern model. Though any ride with free moving parts is gonna be a maintence nightmare, parks can keep the smaller Joker styled ones in check given their size. There's a reason why there hasn't been a giant freespin like X2 built in a while but the smaller ones are extremely popular. You can find one at almost every Six Flags park, there's a few popping up around the globe and in the US. Heck even Cedar Fair is joining the party with KD's new coaster. Parks, in my opinion, are more willing to take risks with smaller coasters so if they end up being down, its not going to kill the park. Intamin has reintroduced their shuttle invert coaster with its new track and it looks pretty cool. It'll of course have downtime but it doesn't take up a huge footprint and is a short ride so it won't do a lot of damage if it has to to down for maintence. Wicked Twister shuts down and nobody panics. Millennium Force shuts down and everyone loses their minds.

Well other manufacturers have come along since then. Years ago parks used to buy from Arrow, Morgan, CCI, & Dinn. Then you get a good influx of Premiers, B&Ms, Intamins. Now we got other players in the U.S. market like Vekoma, Premier, S&S, Mack, GCI, and RMC that are giving parks something different. B&M and Intamin don't build rides like 4d freespins, huge hybrids, spinners etc. Parks aren't really buying a lot from B&M anymore because for the most part they already got their fill. You'll definatly see more dives, wings, and maybe flyers because they're unique enough to satisfy clients. Almost every park has a hyper, invert, or some type of sitdown looper of some kind by B&M at this point. In Intamin's case, they're finding themselves competing with companies like Mack, RMC, Premier, S&S and now Vekoma. While they were absent in the US for a good decade, the companies I just mentioned came in and made a good name for themselves in the current coaster market. Its all about relevance and track record. If you have a bad track record, parks are gonna be hesitant to work with you again, even if you've improved your product. I'm sure Cedar Fair is looking at how the Intamins at BGW and Universal do before they even consider working with Intamin again which in my opinion is still a longshot.

I think if it adds to the theme/story I'd say its worth it. Ques tend to be key when setting the mood for a ride anymore-I'd argue sometimes they make the ride better. Heck there were times I used to walk along the old White Water Canyon trail just because I enjoyed looking at the trees and feeling like I was somewhere secluded. Stuff like Forbidden Frontier at CP or even Tom Sawyer Island at the Disney parks where people can interact and view different things would be awesome.

@bkroz This is some of the best content I've read in a long time

Sarcasm is hard to read on social media

Did he really just say it's B&M track?

I think the big issue is RMC debuted their new trains when Cedar Fair contracted them. I dare say if Hurler had trains that were similar to Goliath or Twisted Colossus, it wouldn't have had its issues. I'm not sure if the old type of RMC trains could have worked on Steel Vengeance though. That or RMC didn't have has good of reliability as we thought since Six Flags was their primary client and we all know how reliable their rides are. I could understand if they would run in issues with steel Vengeance giving its size and length. Hurler on the other hand should have been walk in the park for them which is why I think it was the new trains that caused the headaches.

I think RMC came in and did their job. Mean Streak and Hurler needed to be converted. There's not a lot of other Cedar Fair woodies that I think would benefit from the Iron Horse treatment. The only ones that come to mind are Grizzly at Great America or Wolverine Wildcat at Michigan's Adventure. I think if RMC wanted to earn CF's trust back, they'd be brought in to work the coasters I just mentioned. We certainly don't need RMC to touch any of our wooden coasters.

I remember talking to CF executives back in 2018 and asked them where their relationship with Intamin stood as of that time. One person said they were happy that Intamin gave them rides like Millenium Force, Wicked Twister, Top Thrill Dragster, and Maverick since those were huge crowd pleasers. However, their reliability is what made them have a falling out in a ways. I recall one exec saying the cost to operate those Intamins had rose over 50% since their installations. They were also told by Intamin that Top Thrill Dragster would never stall after it was built which was a blatant lie since its happened a few times since. People were complaining that CP went with B&Ms between 2013-2016 but in reality that ended up saving them a ton of money in maintence costs. They said they'd never stop working with B&M because of this so don't be suprised if more come to the chain this decade. Going back to Intamin, they make fun rides but they've put themselves in a position where some chains would rather opt to work with another manufacturer. Will Intamin return to Cedar Fair? It would be dumb to say no honestly, but they're not going to be installing gigas, giant blitzs, etc right out the gate. I could see CF giving them a chance and go small like a compact shuttle like Wicked Twister or something like Maverick for a park like Canada's Wonderland, Great America, or something. For now though, companies like B&M, Mack, Gerstlauer, & S&S seem more appealing. I'm sorry if people love Intamin so much but from a business standpoint its not worth the risk for Cedar Fair to go back to them at this time. Universal and Sea World Parks can take this risk because they're in the postion where they want to attract more visitors from across the country that'll probably visit once a year. For the regional parks like Cedar Fair, it doesn't make sense to buy from a manufacturer that is known for downtime when a decent chunk of their parks aren't open the full year. Poor reliability and maintence plagued rides aren't a friend of seasonal parks which is why CF has been removing problematic rides the past few years.

Here's my thought for every B&M on this list: Dives: The coaster that's labelled as the "One Trick Pony" but is loved by GP. Dives are unique but there's more and more of them popping up which makes it a good and bad choice for KI. Good because the market is beginning to become saturated so it wouldn't hurt to have two dives in the same state. It would be bad because saturation can lead to blandness and the difficulty to be original. My final verdict is that its possible but not likely at this time. Family: We already have a family invert. Verdict is not likely at all Floorless: Y'all know my opinion on floorless models. Verdict is yes they should Flying: This is a tough one. I've watched El Toro Ryan's video on Superman Ultimate Flight and how complex it is which leads me to believe KI wouldn't want to mess with that. There's too many moving parts so to speak. My verdict is, if you go for it, you've been warned. Its not something KI needs and it would be too much of a hassle in my opinion; maybe I'm wrong. Sit Down: Not necessary with a floorless. Verdict is extremely unlikely Stand-up: Not a single stand-up has been built past the 90s and if that doesn't tell you anything you better do some research. Verdict is not a chance. Surf Coaster: This one's interesting since it sounds like it'll be B&M's 1st true take on a launch coaster with modified trains. My verdict is that its too soon to judge. Wing: Dollywood, Holiday World, and Cedar Point all have them. They're fun rides but the trains and the near miss potential are the selling point of the ride for me. My verdict on this is...maybe. (Kings Dominion needs one more than us)

Basically their take on Flying Ace Ariel Chase https://rcdb.com/6712.htm

Well you succeed. Give yourself a raise

You don't have to vote either

@IceePirate Aren't Diamondbacks supposed to rattle?

Was that video all you @Kyle Kruthoffer?

#belikefernando