You may have noticed a new subforum has appeared under the Busch Gardens Williamsburg forum called "Areas". I know it seems to be a bit of a strange addition, but, believe it or not, I actually have good reason to try it out. You see, there's one park-specific board I hate. Which one you ask? The History board. Why? The History board is a strange conglomerate of posts about a wide variety of different things that fall under the massive umbrella that is park history. Now, that's not really a problem for discussion purposes, but if someone comes looking for information (which is how I'm sure the vast majority of you found BGWFans anyway), it's a nightmare to find anything in the History board. Now, since launching the Attractions board a while back we noticed something interesting: Historical ride discussion had all but vanished from the History board. Why? Well, it seems that having threads for every ride gives people a place to ask questions or talk about ride history without having to create a new thread for every topic under the sun.
Anyway, the other day I was looking through the History board trying to figure out how to "fix" it- taking specific note of what people were actually using it for and how we could better serve those topics elsewhere. After scanning through the threads, I noticed that a rather large number of them had to do with specific areas of the park so, in my never-ending quest to remove the need for the History board, I figured a subforum dedicated to discussion of the various areas of the park would be a neat experiment. Hence, the Areas subforum was born.
Now, you may be wondering why "Areas" was chosen instead of "Hamlets". The answer to that is actually pretty simple: The park's hamlets have always been defined by the park (sometimes in conflicting ways) and, to be quite honest, they haven't done the best job of drawing borders within the park. Land of the Dragons for example isn't considered a hamlet by the park so, even though it holds a radically different theme than Rhinefeld, it's always lumped together with Rhinefeld. Another example of this would be Hastings and Threadneedle Faire. They were very different places with very different purposes, but technically speaking, the park always lumped Threadneedle Faire into the larger Hastings hamlet. So, in an attempt to free the board from the restraints the park set forth with their hamlet divisions, "Areas" was chosen.
Anyway, all that said, if you haven't checked out the Areas board yet, please do. If you think an area should be added or have another recommendation of that sort, by all means, let me know.
Anyway, the other day I was looking through the History board trying to figure out how to "fix" it- taking specific note of what people were actually using it for and how we could better serve those topics elsewhere. After scanning through the threads, I noticed that a rather large number of them had to do with specific areas of the park so, in my never-ending quest to remove the need for the History board, I figured a subforum dedicated to discussion of the various areas of the park would be a neat experiment. Hence, the Areas subforum was born.
Now, you may be wondering why "Areas" was chosen instead of "Hamlets". The answer to that is actually pretty simple: The park's hamlets have always been defined by the park (sometimes in conflicting ways) and, to be quite honest, they haven't done the best job of drawing borders within the park. Land of the Dragons for example isn't considered a hamlet by the park so, even though it holds a radically different theme than Rhinefeld, it's always lumped together with Rhinefeld. Another example of this would be Hastings and Threadneedle Faire. They were very different places with very different purposes, but technically speaking, the park always lumped Threadneedle Faire into the larger Hastings hamlet. So, in an attempt to free the board from the restraints the park set forth with their hamlet divisions, "Areas" was chosen.
Anyway, all that said, if you haven't checked out the Areas board yet, please do. If you think an area should be added or have another recommendation of that sort, by all means, let me know.
