The end is near, and the future has come

[Plokoon111]

I have been researching on old parks to there current status.
For instant Dorney Park! Dorney PArk had so much more fun stuff, like more cooler rides. Now its like a Sixflags poser almost.


The End has come, many parks have fallen, that had so much to give.

Now all the park owners care about is makeing the park inteseier! More big coasters. That is why I hate six flags, they are competeting to make the tallest coasters! Im not that much of a coaster guy, I even get scared on the wild mouse!
I mean we hardly see any classical rides. Darkrides are being instinked and being turned into fanzy 3d stupid houses. All the classical rides as know as Monster loop o planeApollo, and many more are being destroyed and bein made for room for mega puken coasters. As known as Mega Puking coasters that IHAGBOMS, .. . . . . . I hate and get butterflys on me, Scary.

I mean another example ark is Hunts pier, they had lots of cool rides, cool darkrides/funhouses, and cool woodies, intil they got tooken by Moreys, and they made lots of IHAGBOMS. So I am being upset that in the future, coasters will be mega scarier, and that classic parks will die :(

[WoddenWarior]

Huh? What the heck is "inteseier," "tooken," or "intil?"

[Small Print]

Originally posted by Plokoon111
I have been researching on old parks to there current status.
For instant Dorney Park! Dorney PArk had so much more fun stuff, like more cooler rides. Now its like a Sixflags poser almost.


The End has come, many parks have fallen, that had so much to give.

Now all the park owners care about is makeing the park inteseier! More big coasters. That is why I hate six flags, they are competeting to make the tallest coasters! Im not that much of a coaster guy, I even get scared on the wild mouse!
I mean we hardly see any classical rides. Darkrides are being instinked and being turned into fanzy 3d stupid houses. All the classical rides as know as Monster loop o planeApollo, and many more are being destroyed and bein made for room for mega puken coasters. As known as Mega Puking coasters that IHAGBOMS, .. . . . . . I hate and get butterflys on me, Scary.

I mean another example ark is Hunts pier, they had lots of cool rides, cool darkrides/funhouses, and cool woodies, intil they got tooken by Moreys, and they made lots of IHAGBOMS. So I am being upset that in the future, coasters will be mega scarier, and that classic parks will die :(

I see what you mean, thank god i live near alton towers.:D

[Harpo]

What you're seeing is economics in action.

Sad but true, advertising a new walk-through attraction, or slow-conveyance ride-through doesn't tend to draw guests into the big amusement parks. The majority of the target audience wants bigger, faster, more thrilling rides.

Additionally, many of the older rides become very difficult to maintain, as parts stop becoming available. As an example, Cedar Point had an old walk-through funhouse, plus two slow-moving rides (Earthquake Ride and Pirate Ride). They were cheesy, but fun. However, when things broke, the park simply couldn't get replacement parts anymore, and custom-making the parts was not cost-effective.

Additionally, many of the older rides didn't have all the safety updates that are so critical in today's sue-happy society.

There isn't enough demand for ride manufacturers to build the older-style rides with updated technology, hence they aren't available to those few parks that want them.

So, if you want the older rides, you'll increasingly need to go to small mom-and-pop parks that can't afford the big coasters, and therefore keep cobbling together the older rides in order to make them work.

If you look at a really old park like Dorney or Cedar Point, there's another factor, too. They had some fascinating stuff in their history, but most parks from that era didn't survive the Great Depression, or post-World War II. Most parks from Dorney's and Cedar Point's eras were permanently closed by the late 1950's. (Cedar Point almost was closed at that time -- Disneyland was actually a factor in saving Cedar Point.)

During those struggling years, many attractions at those old parks fell into disrepair, and eventually had to be torn down as unsalvagable. That's why Cedar Point, in spite of being the 2nd oldest park in the U.S., with a coaster heritage dating back to about 1888, doesn't have a coaster older than the 1964-built Blue Streak. The other coasters didn't survive through the park's economic hardships of the 1950's.

[Small Print]

Come to alton, alton towers has no big record breaking coasters, but they are all fantastic.

[SnooSnoo]

Thats the way people are today. Intensity brings the crowds, to watch or ride. Coasters are the business, not like the days of old. EVERY major park in America has some sort of coaster in it. Frankly, I love it. Coasters are the best thing ever created, but there are less people like you (not being mean at all, don't take it wrong) and more people like me who love thrills.

[Small Print]

There are happy mediums however, like me.:D





*shivers in the corner bieng afraid of hieghts.http://instagiber.net/smiliesdotcom/cwm/3dlil/ugh.gif*

[Kadillac]

Whatever. I like the bigger coasters. They are a lot more fun, unless it's a classic or a woodie.

[Small Print]

I like fast, but not big.
Acrophobia you see.

[live_the_thrill]

I just Live for the Thrill:p

[-MoNtU]

I will keep my home at Busch Gardens. Always will.

[wardy91]

Whilst i think the point you make is correct, Six Flags are too competitive, in all honesty it is record breakers and thrillers that pull in the cash though. Thank god im British, our parks are mixed, they are just right. :D Rule Britannia! http://www.bilgitoplumu.gov.tr/dbtz/img/uk_icon.jpg

I like fast, but not big.
Acrophobia you see.
Open spaces i like, im claustrophobic. And i need rides to feel safe.

[Your_Name_Here]

Sorry, I have to disagree with you there.


Disney has always had classic rides, no record breakers. They've made another roller coaster to Animal Kingdom, and it isn't a record breaker at all.

Busch Gardens also isn't striving for bigger uglier roller coasters. Sure, shei-kra was large, but it wasn't the tallest I don't think. It needed that height because it was a diving coaster. :rolleyes:


I could go on adding parks, but I'm pretty sure it's only Six Flags which was striving to be the only park franchise with any record breakers. Six Flags died and is being bought by someone else(right?). Let's hope this new management will change some things, but probably not. :down:

[wardy91]

Originally posted by Your_Name_Here
Sorry, I have to disagree with you there.


Disney has always had classic rides, no record breakers. They've made another roller coaster to Animal Kingdom, and it isn't a record breaker at all.

Busch Gardens also isn't striving for bigger uglier roller coasters. Sure, shei-kra was large, but it wasn't the tallest I don't think. It needed that height because it was a diving coaster. :rolleyes:


I could go on adding parks, but I'm pretty sure it's only Six Flags which was striving to be the only park franchise with any record breakers. Six Flags died and is being bought by someone else(right?). Let's hope this new management will change some things, but probably not. :down:

True i suppose, i retract my previous comment, as it seems Six Flags are the only major people for doing this, and look where it got them *cough*bankrupt*cough*

Although Animal Kingdom is a record breaker, most expensive full themepark in history. :)

And i expect Six Flags will pull through under new ownership

[Small Print]

I dont get why they do all these record breaking coasters, ive heard KK isnt even that good, or medusa, although that i have to say looks cool. They could of atleast put 10 seconds thought into KK, and top thrill (although ttd is original). Record breakers dont always make record money, acording to forbes.com, alton towers was the biggest money making theme park last year.

1. Alton Towers, Staffordshire, England
2. Busch Gardens, Tampa Bay, Florida, USA
3. Disneyland Park, Anaheim, California, USA
4. Europa Park, Rust, Germany
5. Gardaland, Castelnuovo, Italy
6. Liseberg, Gothenburg, Sweden
7. Lotte World, Seoul, South Korea
8. Port Aventura, Salou, Spain
9. Six Flags Great Adventure, Jackson, New Jersey, USA
10. Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen, Denmark

The only one with a record breaking coaster in there is SFGADV (surprise surprise) at a measley ninth.

[-MoNtU]

Well apperently KK did something, Six Flags Great Adventure is #9.

[okinawaboy11]

Six Flags does know how to make a good park...But only when they wan't too. And there are good Six Flags parks out there. SFGAm, is the best run, next to SFGAv, then SFoT. Some times I would even rather go to SFGAm then go to CP. I'm not a Cedar Fair L.P. hater, I loved ValleyFair, but Cedar Point was acually boring after I rode MF, TTD, and Gemini. The rest was...blah. SFGAm has a wide variety of rides that are always up and running. The GP dosn't care what you think, they care about rides. If they keep seeing the same thing for years to come, they won't go back. Such as SFA, we havn't gotten a new coaster since 2001, and attendance has been dropping since then. But after they opened the New Hurricane Harbor, our attendance sky rocketed. We even had full Q's on weekdays.

[Plokoon111]

Onee thing I have to say is, I do not go onto big big coasters, I was afraid to go on Steel force, that was high :eek: Thunder hawk is a very good but kind of scary. Im afraid of hieghts and butterflys!!!!

[okinawaboy11]

:bored:

[Harpo]

Originally posted by okinawaboy11
SFGAm has a wide variety of rides that are always up and running.

Just curious.... when did you go? The last 5 times I've been to SFGAm, there's been at least 1 (usually 2) coasters closed, as well as multiple smaller rides. Perhaps I've just had bad luck on those past 5 visits.

[fathorse]

I'm with Harpo, I've heard SFG:Am has pretty poor maintenance. Actually I've heard most 6 Flags have horrible maintenance, wasn't KK down because of that? I know Cedar Fair is spending a lot of money repairing what 6 Flags wouldn't, couldn't, or didn't care about at Geauga Lake to make the coasters better there. But that's beside the point.
Harpo is right, a lot of the old rides just don't have replacement parts. My favorite ride at CP was Earthquake, and I still miss it. I think it's not quite the parks fault to trend to some of these rides but the manufacturers. Are there any that still make a good dark ride?

[okinawaboy11]

Exactly...you HEARD that SFGAm had bad maintnence.

As for Harpo. Sucks for you, I go more then 20 times each season and the only ride that is down the most (But usually open), is Deja Vu. But thats not Six Flags part, thats Vekoma's part and there poor manufacturing.

[Harpo]

Originally posted by okinawaboy11
As for Harpo. Sucks for you,

Unfortunately, that's the type of response I've received from the Six Flags parks I've visited when I've complained in person, and from Oklahoma City when I've sent letters of complaint. My letters only glossed over the closed rides, and focused more on the operator inattentiveness, leading, in my opinion, to unsafe operations. (It can't possibly be safe for a ride operator to be pushing an enable button for a coaster while doing text messaging on her cell phone, yet I've seen that and other such atrocities at Six Flags parks, and management didn't seem to care.) The letters also touched on the lack of cleanliness, employee rudeness, and inefficiency. Now, admittedly, I'm only comparing visits to 21 Six Flags parks with the other 158 parks I've visited, so I may not have much of a basis for comparison when I say that Six Flags is the worst run amusement park chain I've visited.

The biggest factor in my decision to avoid Six Flags this year was the remarkably poor response from the Oklahoma City management team to multiple letters in multiple years. I've had some issues at non-Six Flags parks, too, and those letters were responded to immediately, with assurances that the parks would address the issues. I recently had one such issue with Cedar Point. Within 1 week, I received a letter back addressing the issue, indicating they were going to work on fixing it, giving a small outline of how they would address it, and inviting me to stop in to meet the park's General Manager on my next visit. The Cedar Point response clearly showed they care about their guests, while the Six Flags responses have shown that they find guests to be a nuissance to be tolerated, rather than being their bread-and-butter.

[fathorse]

I had bad experiences at SF:WOA myself. There was a gigantic crowd of people waiting for X-Flight to open when the park opened. They were testing it (with employees riding) from park open for about 90 minutes, which means people are getting really anxious. Finally they open it, and people start surging in, suddenly, the 4 ride ops link arms and say "We can't let you in, someone was running. You all have to go back and walk." I mean WTH, this is isn't 1st grade. They let us in when people started shouting about what crap the park was, and remember that CP is only an hour away, and we could go ride all their rides without problems. Then, in the station, the rideop on the board was too busy talking to his friend to notice when a train could go out, so you'd be sitting there waiting almost 5 minutes between trains because he was too busy talking. I waited 3 hours to get on X-Flight that day, which was sad because I went on all the rest of the rides in the park in the next three, then said screw it and went to CP for the rest of the day.
When I wrote Six Flags to complain, I never received a response. And all I got at the customer service window at the park was some generic "Oh, sorry". Of course the next time I was there was closing day before they sold out to CF, and it started raining, and vendors left pop bottles outside at their carts, and abandoned them. People were stealing pop left and right because they were too retarded to take them in, or secure them. Thank god they sold the park, I hope CF is doing a better job at customer service. Those experiences make me not really want to visit a Six Flags park, since I've had HEARD other horror stories from around the country. When that many stories exist, there must be some truth to them.

[Harpo]

Geauga Lake is running MUCH better now, although it still needs improvement. Some of the rides still need some rather significant refurbishment, as they were neglected under the previous ownership. I'd love to tell one VERY scary story about that, but it was told to me in confidence by Cedar Fair management, so I'm not going to say any more, other than to say it's amazing that SF:WOA did not have a catastrophic failure.

The first SF complaint that resulted in my writing a letter to top management happened because of a serious issue at SF:WOA, where I got stuck on a ride. While waiting for maintenance, the operator admitted to me that he didn't know how to run the ride. He also told me that Mr. Hyde's Nasty Fall was down so often that day because that crew didn't know how to run that ride. When maintenance did arrive, I overheard one maintenance person tell the operator, "After we get these people off, I'll show you how to run the ride." After a second complaint about that park written to top management, the GM of SF:WOA (now GM of SFGAdv) did call me, and we discussed the issues. Although he didn't actually SAY it, I got the impression that he cared, but that he was powerless to fix the significant issues in the park. He did tell me that he thought they could learn a LOT from Cedar Fair.

[okinawaboy11]

I wrote a letter to SFA last season, a very very "Nasty Gram" stating areas that need improvement, such as over flowing trash cans, rude employees, and broken rides. They wrote back, telling me, that "with the new year coming, and the expansion of our water park, we will try even harder to make your visit it SFA a great one. We have already started plans for staff training. We have also started to hire full time jobs for the next season and are already in the works of training them."


That was just some of it. While I was somewhat dissapointed and pleased that SFA replied. But to my liking, This season, 2005, has been amazing for SFA. On opening day everyone was so polite and happy, and still was when I went last weekend. I even heard a manager talking to a group of employee's and he all asked them, "What are we doing?" They all replyed being polite and working. So I'm guessing that the main thing they did for SFA was try to get there employees have not so much attitude and acually enjoy there job. Which they did do. Minus the ROAR! crew, which I always have troulbe no matter what day I go.

[Kadillac]

Six Flags has no clue. Whenever we complained that SFAW sucked and was not worth the money, the replied, "AstroWorld is one of our most treasured parks and just because you had a bad experience dosen't mean we should revamp the whole park"

Well, OBVIOUSLY it is your most treasured park.

[littlelolligagged]

My biggest objection to Six Flags is that when they bought White Water (the big water park here in the Atlanta area), they basically ruined it. I still love going to SFoG, but they really don't need to be in the water park business. I've never been to any of their other water parks - but I am guessing they are about the same.

[okinawaboy11]

Seems that SFGAm run there water park very well for the first season. But SFMM was just gross. SFA was ok, there was a bandaid in the water once, but the water overall was quite clean. SFoT water park was mixed. SFGAv, ran HH very well while I was there.

My worst water park was not Six Flags but at PKD. There water park is very very horid, to bad the park is so good but the water park is so gross.

[Small Print]

Carribra creek at alton is good, and so is alton.
I just hope that cedar or six flags dont open a park in england.

[okinawaboy11]

Why wouldn't you want Cedar Fair L.P. To open a park overseas? They do an excellant job. Now Six Flags I could understand. But When I went to Walibi World under the Six Flags ownership, they did a great job too. From what I heard all the Six Flags parks in europe were run quite well.

[-MoNtU]

Originally posted by okinawaboy11
Why wouldn't you want Cedar Fair L.P. To open a park overseas? They do an excellant job. Now Six Flags I could understand. But When I went to Walibi World under the Six Flags ownership, they did a great job too. From what I heard all the Six Flags parks in europe were run quite well.
Surprisingly, they wanted to sell them.:rolleyes:

[Small Print]

They would be an eyesore. Alton towers is hidden by trees (they are forced to).

[okinawaboy11]

I think they only wanted to sell them because they needed to get closer out of Debt. Like SFWOA, it was an amazingly large Six Flags park, but CP managed to buy it.

[Harpo]

You don't have to worry about Cedar Fair going overseas. I was chatting with someone in management who told me that Cedar Fair MIGHT consider a park in Canada, if the right opportunity presented itself, but they have no interest in operations in any other countries besides the U.S. and Canada.

The CEO has indicated an intention to retire soon, however, so it's entirely possible that a new CEO would have a different opinion, but I would expect Cedar Fair to remain an American park operator.

Besides, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I find Cedar Point to be gorgeous -- I love the views over Lake Erie while riding the coasters, bordered by the beautiful Cedar Point beach. In my opinion, no man-made landscaping could come close to matching the nature's beauty that is so evident all around Cedar Point. Of course, that is just my opinion, with my visual preferences. Your mileage may vary.

I also think Cedar Point's landscaping doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. Cedar Point's website is making strides to change that. Take a look here:
http://www.cedarpoint.com/public/inside%5Fpark/landscaping/

[Small Print]

Its just me because where im from, drive 10 minutes in any direction, and youre are in georgous countryside. This pic of alton towers is like what where i live is.
http://ukga.com/images/content/image3772.JPG

[SFA PKD Fan]

Originally posted by okinawaboy11
Exactly...you HEARD that SFGAm had bad maintnence.

As for Harpo. Sucks for you, I go more then 20 times each season and the only ride that is down the most (But usually open), is Deja Vu. But thats not Six Flags part, thats Vekoma's part and there poor manufacturing.

I'd agree,in part but actually vekoma is doing rather well now.Look at their boosterbike coaster....same technology as the rockets by intamin but so far they seem to work much more reliably.

It's only SF's poor maintenance coupled with vekoma's desire for a quick sale that led to the failures with DV,notice how well stuntfall at WBMW in spain is running & it's the same ride just a different color scheme? so it just goes to show that vekoma isn't entirely at fault here....also Batwing at SFA has been running a bit better this year as well,that's far more than I can say for Supes so far cuz it's had much more downtime this season.