Festa Italia (Italy)
- Thread starter Zachary
- Start date
Eh, after they removed bbw the park had only 4(+1/2) coasters. Might not need to replace with the same spot, but you can’t just remove a coaster and not replace it like KD has if you only have a few to begin with.
In fact, I can’t think of any time a park has removed a coaster without replacing it other than KD, and maybe vortex if you want to count that. I’m not the most read up on this though.
I can think of three at BGW alone: Glissade, Das Katschen, and Drachen Fire.
Not really. There was more than a decade gap between the two. The old Glissade plot just sat boarded up and vacant from the early 80s to the mid 90s when Wild Izzy was built.
While DF was SBNO at the time, I find it hard to really see AC as a replacement per se when it opened 3 years before DF was finally removed, and on the other side of the park.
Admittedly: kind of interesting that AC opened only 2 years after Alpengeist, which is an oddly fast interval for the park (insert obvious 2020/2021 comments here). But that may have been driven as much by the success of Alpengeist and B&M's willingness to debut their newest, shiniest ride system at BGW, as by any perceived need for a direct replacement for the soon-to-depart DF.
However... I'd like to hear more about this idea, ˁ˚ᴥ˚ˀ, if you're willing. To me, this sits tantalizingly on the line between "nahhhh" and "well..." It would be cool to come away from this idea, which I hadn't really considered before, having done a 180 from my initial thoughts.
In a lot of situations I think this is a chicken or the egg thing. For df, I think that the fact that AC was opening the following year left the the park ok with closing it, or perhaps the addition of alpengeist served the same purpose. Either way, at no time did the park see an overall decrease in major attractions. Glissade was removed the year after big bad wolf and the kitten was a kiddie coaster. So while a park might not add a coaster because they removed a coaster, rarely will a park remove a coaster without either having recently adding a new coaster, or adding one soon thereafter. I think there’s a public expectation that you will always be seeing more out of parks and not less. If a park happens to add a bunch of stuff and needs to remove something that’s fine. If they haven’t added a coaster in a long while and they end up removing it, I believe there is normally a big effort made to meet that expectation.
Let’s consider big bad wolf and VB then. BBW was the epitome of a beloved coaster and it’s removal was met with a lot of disappointment. It’s replacement took quite a bit longer, but I think that to see verboten as anything short of a direct replacement for big bad wolf is remiss. The coaster is made to fit roughly the same family demographic, is focused on theming and even shares a very similar layout. I’m sure the park considered other locations, but by removing BBW I think that they knew what message they would get from the public and they sought to react to this. This is also during the time that the venerable John Riley was park president.
Sure the coaster took an extra year, but I think that part of that was from what they wanted to do with the whole project and it’s cost, as well as avoiding anything int Amin and finding design firms that could give what they wanted; that takes time.
Going back to festa, I would love to see the area retooled as something new. I don’t see that happening in the next couple years because I thing corporate sees the “something new” requirement filled. There could be an arguement for the next major investment being an area rework with a new flat or two like carowinds county fair area, the big if is will corporate go for that? Or will they continue to push for more scaled back, advertising friendly additions like the new largest/tallest/fastest/ etc coaster.
My honest opinion is that SEAS is mostly building for the billboards right now. Gwazi needed replacement and SeaWorld needed another raft ride sorely, but the other coasters that are being made or have been made reacently are almost all modest/moderate in scale and many break some mundane record(tallest launch coaster in FL, fastest multi launch coaster, tallest woodie in Texas).
Sorry for the rant,
ˁ˚ᴥ˚ˀ
Appreciate the thoughts... maybe this just reduces to an issue of semantics over what a replacement is per se. To my eye, it’s more than just “the ride that was installed closest in time to when the older ride closed, preventing the coaster count from indexing negative.”
For all of the stories around why DF closed exactly when it did, I never got the impression that the park perceived much leeway in the timing of the close... seems more likely to
me that they had to be okay with it regardless of what other ride was or was not on the way. But I wasn’t there.
I don’t know anyone who would rationally dispute VB being the intended successor to BBW.
For all of the stories around why DF closed exactly when it did, I never got the impression that the park perceived much leeway in the timing of the close... seems more likely to
me that they had to be okay with it regardless of what other ride was or was not on the way. But I wasn’t there.
I don’t know anyone who would rationally dispute VB being the intended successor to BBW.
The idea that Apollo replaced Drachen Fire also makes the original statement more confusing. I thought “other than KD” was a reference to Hypersonic, but under the same logic, Dominator replaced Hypersonic. Also, if we consider the 4 year gap between BBW and Verbolten, that rules out Volcano too. So I don’t know which coaster at KD you’re referring to @ˁ˚ᴥ˚ˀ.
Pantheon looked really impressive from this spot. The crappy picture really doesn't capture it but I thought I'd share a different view of the Festa coasters anyways.