Has Another Coaster War Begun?

[GrandpaD]

Has the Second Coaster War Begun? - Coaster101

Tallest. Fastest. Longest. Steepest. All of these terms are now common lingo in the world of theme parks and amusement parks. However, even though these claims...

www.coaster101.com

 

[b.mac]

I wouldn't call this current trend of building a coaster war. I just think it's a natural overlap of development and expansion from multiple parks and it just appears to be a "war."

Parks are being smart about their additions. Things aren't as cutthroat as they were 20 years ago where it was basically kiss the year goodbye if you didn't build a coaster. Back then parks would just add coasters for the sake of adding them, no financial oversight, minimal budget restrictions, etc. You're not seeing these types of battles going on anymore among regional rivals, and 2020 isn't really giving any long term indication that it's back.

 

[warfelg]

To add to what @b.mac said, I think the “consolidation” of parks into fewer big chains as opposed to many small chains is a limiting factor here.

 

[Zimmy]

This model of Bigger, Faster, Higher Quality, but fewer is much better for the consumer than the previous Bigger, Faster, More.

 

[b.mac]

This model of Bigger, Faster, Higher Quality, but fewer is much better for the consumer than the previous Bigger, Faster, More.

I wouldn't even call the latest additions in the threshold of bigger and faster. Parks aren't exactly pushing the envelope with new additions like they did 20 years ago, even Cedar Fair until recently has just lightly one-upped themselves with their own additions. Six Flags is pursuing individual, niche records without building larger rides. It's not really a game of one-upsmanship, it's more a focus on marketing buzzwords to keep additions relevant and talkable for general media discussion. I'd even argue that newer rides aren't exactly of better quality than those which have been added 20, 30, even 40 or 50 years ago. Parks have definitely gotten smarter, and slower in their development, in order to guarantee their future success.

 

[Nicole]

I like to use the Fury metric for my personal yardstick. “Is it in any way better than Fury?” If there is an est-ier est, than is it really better than Fury? No? Just marketing then.

 

[mtorange]

I’m not sure about the rest of the park chains, but Cedar Fair is showing that they want to focus on Entertainment rather than rides with the addition of events such as Grand Carnivale and WinterFest. I welcome it! Rides can get old after a while, but these events always create new moments that one can remember for a lifetime!

 

[----------------------]

I don’t see many notable records being broken

 

[b.mac]

Arguably the most notable broken record in recent history is Kennywood taking the North American inversion record, since no one had bothered breaking 7 inversions in the US in 30 years.

 

[Zimmy]

I cede your point, perhaps my verbiage was poor. I had BGW in mind and that is not a good comparison. I certainly did not mean record breakers.

 

[b.mac]

I cede your point, perhaps my verbiage was poor. I had BGW in mind and that is not a good comparison. I certainly did not mean record breakers.

Yeah BGW and the SEAS parks as a whole are huge outliers in terms of expansion simply because they didn't really participate in the coaster wars themselves. They missed a lot of the ride expansion that happened back then and are finally "catching up" since they're not focusing on animal display anymore.