Busch Gardens Williamsburg Project 2023: DarKoaster (Multi-Lap Intamin Straddle Coaster)

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Zachary said:
The current state of this thread is more evidence that BGW should have already announced DarKoaster. Can't believe they're waiting this late—feels like they're really shooting themselves in the foot marketing-wise.

Announcing Pantheon at the end of July in 2019 went BRILLIANTLY. By all accounts and indicators, the park sold an absurd number of passes through a typically-slower pass sales season. Why they've taken that experience and said "fuck it, overlap the new ride marketing with Howl-O-Scream," is just baffling to me. It looks so very obviously wrong.
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I think the issue is that Pantheon was meant to be a coaster had to travel to experience and they marketed it as such. I think the expectation is that DarKoaster will not move the needle as much as Pantheon did, plus they don't want to steal the thunder from Pantheon.

I think that with SEAS in this current phase of yearly expansion, it will depend on the ride that opened the previous year. If it was a big addition, you might not see stuff teased an announced as early as in the past.

Zachary said:
It's especially silly after Pantheon was handled so well. Teasers well ahead of time, in person announcements both at the start of teasing and for the official unveiling, etc. To see the park return to an almost Tempesto-style radio silence just has me over here facepalming so hard. We know this shit doesn't work. We know what DOES work. The gameplan was executed perfectly for so many years—yet BGW's current marketing team just doesn't seem to give a damn. Hideaway, the HOS announcement, DarKoaster—it's lazy blunder after lazy blunder right now.
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I think the blame with some of these marketing blunders isn't on marketing all that much. Hideaway was a project that was super delayed and kept getting pushed back that it was hard to start a marketing campaign until you knew when it was actually opening, which I heard they basically started to open as soon as the contractor actually finished, so there was little time for marketing to do much to hype it up. I think there's a similar issue with HOS, from what I've heard there was a significant delay because there was a lot of discussions about what they could reasonably staff and have operating that delayed the announcement.
 
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horsesboy said:
Do you expect a possible opening date to be announced?
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I expect them to announce a time frame such as early 2023, but a month or date. It's too early to commit to even an exact month until they are further along in the entire process. I wouldn't expect them to communicate anything too specific until they know exactly when the ride will be handed off to them.
 
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BGWnut said:
I think the issue is that Pantheon was meant to be a coaster had to travel to experience and they marketed it as such. I think the expectation is that DarKoaster will not move the needle as much as Pantheon did, plus they don't want to steal the thunder from Pantheon.

I think that with SEAS in this current phase of yearly expansion, it will depend on the ride that opened the previous year. If it was a big addition, you might not see stuff teased an announced as early as in the past.
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I would take this more optimistic viewpoint if SEAS weren't treating all of their 2023 rides this way.

Also, if they have some budget for scenic, I think BGW could be underestimating how big a deal DarKoaster could be. It's fathomable to me that this could be a ride of Verbolten-level prominence. It could easily be the type of ride one only expects to find in FL or CA—if they have a theming budget.
 
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Zachary said:
I would take this more optimistic viewpoint if SEAS weren't treating all of their 2023 rides this way.

Also, if they have some budget for scenic, I think BGW could be underestimating how big a deal DarKoaster could be. It's fathomable to me that this could be a ride of Verbolten-level prominence. It could easily be the type of ride one only expects to find in FL or CA—if they have a theming budget.
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I think that's because Orlando is probably the only park that has an attraction that is meant to be a bigger draw than their 2022 attraction. But it's tough still, you don't want to discourage people from visiting this year, because there's another new ride coming next year so we might as well wait to come.
 
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BGWnut said:
I think that's because Orlando is probably the only park that has an attraction that is meant to be a bigger draw than their 20232 attraction. But it's tough still, you don't want to discourage people from visiting this year, because there's another new ride coming next year so we might as well wait to come.
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Agreed on Ice Breaker as an attraction, but I am not sure anything is ever going to top the Vanilla Ice Breaker t-shirt...

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This is going to get pretty interesting come September 6th. It would be great if it exceeded our expectations when it comes to theming and execution but I'm not getting my hopes up considering what happened with Pantheon (wonderful thrilling coaster, very lacking in theming).
 
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