After riding Iron Gwazi five days in a row now, it only makes me more adament that a RMC makes its way to Williamsburg.
Busch Gardens Williamsburg Project 2025/Holzfäller: B&M Family Invert for Festhaus Park?
- Thread starter Zachary
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While I like this, I think I like RMC rebuilds (for a lack of a better term) than ground up. They don’t seem too great (still) at creating a layout. Optimizing layouts though they are awesome at.
However: After the success of Texas Stingray and Iron Gwazi I think I would love to see another woodie type coaster (I know with steel supports these lines are becoming blurred). But I still am on my wanting to see a more GCI Boulder Sash style coaster back in the unique terrain that part of the park has.
Especially when you think about the fact that it will be the park’s 50th anniversary that year, they should have something planned for that. This is a far stretch but could they also, if they are in fact building a new coaster, add a new version of Le Man’s and hamlet with it? Just an idea.
Good thing I wasn't in the middle of drinking
So many of the rebuilds though were just fresh designs built on tight constraints. I do think that maybe Alan went a little overboard at times so maybe it was just keeping Alan in check? I honestly think things are going to look very different the more Joe Draves gets involved and I think if you look at Lightning Run and Steel Curtain you can see that he clearly is capable when he has constraints or not..... hell, just look at Slime Streak and Merlin's Mayhem and you can tell that even when he is tasked with making a family coaster he'll make it stupid fun.
I think Schilkie is awesome at getting elements and the rebuilds I think give the turns to get to each element. I think he struggles (like Arrow did IMO) on how to connect elements through the run.
I think a coaster has as much economic benefit as a new hamlet for less money, so I wouldn’t bet on a new hamlet…
I had thought about making that comment… and then figured I’d leave that to someone elseSponsored by Tesla
Yeah, I am betting against a new hamlet as well.
Should there be a new hamlet? Yes.
Instead, we weill likely get two coasters with entrances next to one another between the bumper cars and Festhaus.
Interesting thought on the new hamlet debate but you also have the new entertainment building in that general area perhaps part of that might be tweaked to see year round use and included. Perhaps finalizing plans for such a use is why that project is seemingly stalled.
Might a potential shift to the BfE building be in the cards for Ent and the planned Ent building become a new hamlet event space?
Maybe, but then again by square footage and ceiling heights alongside the space needed to maneuver, BfE's space is not all that big
My general thought is at the size of BGW, neither a new coaster or a new hamlet will move the needle a lot. Adding a new coaster probably doesn’t attract many guests that aren’t already visiting the park. Similarly a new hamlet would probably just spread out existing guests coming for foods, drinks, and entertainment or create so much new expenses in operating a major new part of the park that the ROI would be low.
At BGW’s size they almost to split off a second operating park or create some kind of modular system where different parts and forms of the park are open on different days to make a major expansion make sense.
So this is something I've been wondering for a while but never actually really looked into. Is BGW really that big of a park? I mean, it's not a small park but I've always felt that a lot of BGW's size was obtained from illusion as opposed to actual size (talking about populated space and not stuff they own that's not part of the park yet). One of the biggest things about BGW is that you always seem to be right next to where you want to be but it takes forever to walk there because they essentially have the attractions moving inward from a path that circles the complete outside of the park boundaries. If you mirrored the attractions you could almost have a single path to the middle of the park and access the majority of the attractions right from that spot (ignoring landscape/terrain/etc). The biggest problem with the big circle layout that they have is that everyone has to pass everyone since there is only two paths to each attraction (as opposed to numerous combinations at parks like KD) along with the zig zag circle that makes it hard for first timers to comprehend that just because you see Griffon right next to you doesn't mean you're anywhere near Griffon (or LNM, or Alpie, etc). With all of this being said, I think that a side path through another hamlet would be great because it is an alternate path for guests -- a bypass, if you will.
OTOH, I also get what you're saying.... And the food service thing is an implication that I think only SEAS is concerned about at the moment which probably is a nail in another hamlet being created. Personally, I wouldn't be putting money on a new hamlet -- there's a reason why Madrid never happened to it's full extent and I think that has a lot to do with why we *will* see more coasters of lackluster duration. The company seems to be all about building a coaster of some type to put a feather in the marketing hat and nothing more..... They will try to break records but they're going to be dumb records and the end result of the ride is not going to be impressive. I haven't rode Pantheon but I understand that it's quite thrilling but I think that's only because it's half of what Madrid was going to be so it inherited some of the size and thrill from before this plan of "checking the new coaster box every year" came about.
We'll see what happens (or what gets left on the editing room floor), as always, but if they're gonna stick more than DS back that way they're going to want to remove the dead-end or at least make it more obvious than the current path next to Das Frsthaus