Weak showing for KI at 2020/21 Golden Ticket Awards

[SonofBaconator]

11 hours ago, super7 said:

Planet Snoopy is run down.   Hardly and trees.   No quality dark ride. Poorly themed to the same handful of characters    It doesn’t deserve an award.  
 

Orion was built for the 300 ft marketing but they only built 3/4 of a ride.  Not deserving. 
 

Overall it’s not a very nice park.   It feels dated, total lack of shade.   Cedar Fair budget cuts are obvious this year.   It’s sliding back into the Paramount days. 

I mean Planet Snoopy won Best Kids section for nearly 20 years. I believe they're focusing back on Planet Snoopy in the coming years.

Orion is a completely different story. Read @KIghostguy's book and you'll understand.

I don't understand the dated part. The park spent a ton of money renovating International Street, the Eiffel Tower is being repainted, they restored the glockenspiel at the Festhaus, brought back an antique car ride, I could go on. We did have a global wide pandemic that affected spending across the chain. The lack of shade part I can understand but the rest seems a bit exaggerated considering everything we've gotten under Cedar Fair.

[Shawn Meyer]

On 9/12/2021 at 10:12 AM, SonofBaconator said:

Orion is a completely different story. Read @KIghostguy's book and you'll understand.

I don't understand why some people hate on Orion at times. I might be the only one who applauds Kings Island and B&M for creating something different with the GIGA design. I love the fact that in height, it's almost 300 feet, but then you make up for it with the 300 foot drop. I love that! Both air hills provide a different sensation of airtime with the speed hill and floater air time hill. Yes, it could be a little longer, but the park did spend $25 million or so on Orion. The price of steel is on the rise, so it's easy for us fanboys to envision spending the parks money. I might also be the only one that says this on here, but I like Orion slightly a little more than Diamondback.

[MDMC01]

14 minutes ago, Shawn Meyer said:

I might also be the only one that says this on here, but I like Orion slightly a little more than Diamondback.

No, I also agree that Orion is better than Diamondback.

[FUN&ONLY!]

18 minutes ago, Shawn Meyer said:

I don't understand why some people hate on Orion at times. I might be the only one who applauds Kings Island and B&M for creating something different with the GIGA design. I love the fact that in height, it's almost 300 feet, but then you make up for it with the 300 foot drop. I love that! Both air hills provide a different sensation of airtime with the speed hill and floater air time hill. Yes, it could be a little longer, but the park did spend $25 million or so on Orion. The price of steel is on the rise, so it's easy for us fanboys to envision spending the parks money. I might also be the only one that says this on here, but I like Orion slightly a little more than Diamondback.

I completely agree!

[Hawaiian Coasters 325]

21 minutes ago, Shawn Meyer said:

I don't understand why some people hate on Orion at times. I might be the only one who applauds Kings Island and B&M for creating something different with the GIGA design. I love the fact that in height, it's almost 300 feet, but then you make up for it with the 300 foot drop. I love that! Both air hills provide a different sensation of airtime with the speed hill and floater air time hill. Yes, it could be a little longer, but the park did spend $25 million or so on Orion. The price of steel is on the rise, so it's easy for us fanboys to envision spending the parks money. I might also be the only one that says this on here, but I like Orion slightly a little more than Diamondback.

I 100% agree! Diamondback is my 4th favorite in the park while Orion is my number one at the park! I rode Fury back in August and I will tell you I didn't notice as much of a difference in height while on it as I thought I would. It felt higher, but not as much as I thought. We definitely would not have noticed another 13 feet if it were 300 instead of 287. Drop is 300 feet and it feels the same as Fury's and every other giga drop so Orion is a giga. 

[chad_1138]

10 hours ago, Shawn Meyer said:

 I might also be the only one that says this on here, but I like Orion slightly a little more than Diamondback.

 

10 hours ago, MDMC01 said:

No, I also agree that Orion is better than Diamondback.

My wife and I agree as well.  Honestly, since riding Orion, we don't even ride Diamondback anymore.

[IndyGuy4KI]

25 minutes ago, chad_1138 said:

My wife and I agree as well.  Honestly, since riding Orion, we don't even ride Diamondback anymore.

I have not heard anyone say that. I agree you can notice the drop difference, but the floater air on DB is hard to pass up for me.

[Browntggrr]

On 9/9/2021 at 6:51 PM, coaster sally said:

LMAO, you guys are acting like the golden tickets are legitimate.  CF needs to grt with the program and cater to enthusiasts if they want to use the golden tickets for marketing.

To the typical park guest, the Golden Tickets are legitimate.

To an enthusiast, we can poke holes all day in the voting.

[SonofBaconator]

I like Orion for the speed and I like Diamondback for the floater so I can't say I like one over the other.

[KIjames]

On 9/14/2021 at 10:41 AM, SonofBaconator said:

I like Orion for the speed and I like Diamondback for the floater so I can't say I like one over the other.

Good take. I like Orion better, but Diamondback is not rendered obselete. They have different strengths that make both a must ride.

[BeastForever]

On 9/9/2021 at 9:49 PM, Hawaiian Coasters 325 said:

The main thing I was surprised about is that Leviathan, Magnum, Intimidator, and Diamondback made the top 25 and Orion didn't. Is Orion really that disliked by those who vote? And is Diamondback that much more popular than Orion?

I'm a bit late to this, but if my understanding is correct, the fundamental problem with GTA's voting process is that their tabulation system is very one-dimensional and rankings are based merely off of "vote-points".

What this means is that coasters that have been ridden by more people will have an unfair advantage over less-ridden coasters simply because they'll appear on more ballots and thus have more opportunities to accumulate vote points.

Thus, it's not uncommon for new coasters to not fare as well as one might expect its first year in the voting process. 

Throw in a pandemic, and I can imagine Orion's ranking largely has to do with the fact there are still a lot of GTA voters that have not ridden it yet.

This is why the only polls really worth considering are ones that are based off the "Mitch Hawker methodology", that uses a "head-to-head pairs" tabulation system where it looks at how every coaster on one's ballot compares to every other coaster and assigns a win-loss % respectively. There is still a minimum number of riders needed for a coaster to qualify in the rankings, but most importantly it gives recognition to more obscure coasters that are otherwise overlooked by the GTA style (and thus, flawed) polls and ranking systems.

More about that here: https://www.ellocoaster.com/why-this-poll-is-different

To my knowledge, there are two polls that have arisen since the end of the original Hawker polls that use this methodology: one from Ellocoaster and the other from TPR (I know, I know).

Both are worth taking a look at, but I believe TPR's poll has a bigger sample size. Setting aside my own (and I am sure many of yours) opinions of TPR as an organization otherwise, I would have to admit that their poll seems pretty legit. Their rankings give notoriety to coasters that are less-ridden, but well-liked by those who have ridden them. And overall, the rankings seem to be a bit more inline with general enthusiast opinions, or at least more so than GTA's annual lists.

 

That having said, if one is curious to know how KI's coaster collection fares in TPR's 2020 polls, I would say pretty well...

https://coasterpoll.com/results/2020-steel-results?page=1

https://coasterpoll.com/results/2020-wood-results?page=1

From the steel list:

#28 Orion

#59 Diamondback

#80 Banshee

From the wood list:

#14 Mystic Timbers

#30 Beast

One thing to note about these lists is that there are A LOT more coasters (many from outside North America) to compete with so really any steel coaster in the top 100 and any wooden coaster in the the top 50 of their respective lists in this system is notable considering the competition.

Only a handful of parks have 3 or more top 100 steelies or 2 or more top 50 woodies.

If I am not mistaken, KI appears to be the only park with both 3 top 100 steelies and 2 top 50 woodies...