I think it was honestly all the changes at the corporate level that did DK in. I worked at the park at a very pivotal time, shortly after the sale to Blackstone and though the IPO becoming SEAS. Most of the people I worked with, who had been there longer, worked during the BEC Era, through the Inbev transition, then the Blackstone sale. From what I was told, the park was very Disney-esk in their expectations of Cast Members during the BEC. The guest experience was to be "world class" and nothing short. Most of us who grew up at the park at this time probably remember it as being such. It all hit the fan when Inbev took over, who knew nothing about parks, but tried for a short while. Apparently, budgets and staffing were abysmal during this time and one story I heard was about rounding every pencil in the park up, then evenly dividing them among all departments and locations. Blackstone obviously poured a bunch of desperately needed money in, resulting in a lot of upgrades, but I think at this point, they were more concerned with competing with CF and other chains than holding the park to the higher standard of the Florida parks. There was no need to compete with KD and CF before since BGW was clearly a Themed park, with a high and accurate level of themeing and guest experience, while KD was more focused on rides. To the GP, rides may be more important to some, but the park definitely started to decline around 2010/2011 when they shifted to a ride centric focus. When push came to shove, DK would require a substantial overhaul to keep up with what the GP was expecting in 2017 and with VR being where theme parks were going at the time, motion simulators were on their way out. In reality, they probably should have redone the video for the ride around 2012/2013 when 4K was really picking up steam. Redone the ride vehicles by the start of 2015. I would guess that there were numerous conversations about these things at the time, but corporate wanted their park who had 4 coasters at the time to compete with a park who had 12, including one that had just been built (I305). To the new owners, it was a numbers game. They needed to get the coaster count up ASAP as possible. They were already planning Verbolten when the transitions took place, but they needed more. Hence they've doubled the coaster count at BGW within the last decade where as BEC only added one coaster, a dark ride, and closed an iconic coaster the decade before. Looking back, they cared only to increase the ride count and not upkeep the existing theming, let alone keep a very exquisitely themed ride that had waning technology and a very large labor requirement (6-12 operators) operational. It should be no surprise that they did take it out, but it really is a shame that they really didn't keep it up to the standards it was built to. I'd say at this point I don't think they would put in anything more than a Laff Trak or maybe a Mystery Mine, but hide the fact they don't have themeing with darkness or lighting effects that go out 2 years in.
I actually like the ride vehicle premise so much that I do hope to build my own dark ride for Halloween one year and make it a ride much like DK, though with a different theme (I'm thinking Jurassic Bark and having my dog dress up in a costume and half way though kids can throw treats at her to "feed the dinosaur"). Right now I have most of the mechanical and electrical design done, as well as I have the land. Just waiting on an excuse to build a large enough "garage".
bgwfans.com
