Pantheon

Manufacturer

Intamin Amusement Rides

Model

LSM Launch Coaster

Hamlet

Festa Italia (Italy)

Opening Date

March 25th, 2022

Tallest Drop

180ft

Max Height

178ft

Top Speed

73mph

Inversion Count

2

Launches Advertised

4

Launch Segments

3

Launches Experienced

7

Riders Per Train

20

Number of Trains

2

Height Requirement

52–76in

Pantheon is an Intamin-made LSM Launch Coaster that debuted at Busch Gardens Williamsburg on March 25th, 2022.

 

[CoasterAuditor]

Even if they had pouches I have a hard time believing a lot of folks would use them. I was at BGT to ride Iron Gwazi and saw the train pulling out of the station with a guy just casually staring at his phone like he wasn’t about to experience extreme ejector airtime over and over again. You go to Great Adventure when the bull is actually running I basically saw phones and wallets flying off it all day like projectiles.

 

[warfelg]

Even if they had pouches I have a hard time believing a lot of folks would use them. I was at BGT to ride Iron Gwazi and saw the train pulling out of the station with a guy just casually staring at his phone like he wasn’t about to experience extreme ejector airtime over and over again. You go to Great Adventure when the bull is actually running I basically saw phones and wallets flying off it all day like projectiles.

They should do the metal detectors, just put them after lockers that come right before the station.

 

[Icer]

Forcing me to put my phone in a locker is socialist. I have the American right to have my personal equipment on me or flying quickly towards someone face.

What's next, I can't use my cash to get an American meal at Trapper's?

 

[Zachary]

Forcing me to put my phone in a locker is socialist.

Forced redistribution of one's own loose articles/personal property into free, accessible, communally-funded lockers. Theme parks are participating in the Marxist indoctrination of our youth!

 

[Celticdog]

Metal detectors are a novel idea, however, how many times have you come into the park and the detectors at the front did not register with your phone?
I rarely get the detectors at the front of the park to trip with phone. Sometimes it doesn't even happen with my camera.
Now, if they went with super highly sensitive ones, similar to airport detectors, then maybe all items would be caught.

 

[Icer]

The goal with the detectors at the front of the park is not to detect phones and cameras and whatnot. Else everyone would get dinged and there would be no point. They are tuned to detect more dense items, such as weaponry or hazardous devices. Not perfect, but better than what existed previously, which was no detectors. They also act as a general deterrent, people are less likely to get tricky when they see detectors.

If they wanted to detect phones and belt buckles and whatnot they could. Simply tune the detector. But that would be fascist and socialist.

 

[rswashdc]

I would put this more on the park to enforce no phones on more extreme rides, including metal detectors where needed. The average guest isn’t going to know how extreme any individual ride is, so someone who is likely to pull out a phone may get a false sense of security from other rides having milder forces and do so on a more extreme ride.

That being said I still believe the penalty for pulling a phone out on a coaster or thrill ride should be immediate ejection from the park and rescission of any fun card or season pass if applicable.

 

[saltytaco]

While it would be nice to have suspension or some other punishment from the park if you have your phone out, I question if enforcement would even be good enough. I can recall a couple times at BGW alone where someone is facetiming or doing something blatantly obvious with their phone up in front of their face and ops do nothing. I especially recall a guy facetiming on verbolten from sit down on the train in the station all the way to brake run while my friend and I were seated behind him. We kept trying to tell him to stop as we watched his hand like a hawk the entire ride just waiting for his hand to slip and the phone to fly into our faces. I had to talk to him myself afterwards.

But yeah where is BGW putting detectors, at the start of the queue where people will have to wait in a potentially long line without their phone?

 

[rswashdc]

Probably the best non-metal detector setup I've seen is Skyrush. With the cubbies and signage, it's really intuitive that you need to put your phone and keys away. Pantheon could do something similar with enough visual and audio cues.

 

[Jonesta6]

I feel like KD finally got it right with TT's lockers - they're part of the queue right before the station so they're super convenient.

Not sure how that could be replicated at BGW for most rides including Pantheon though.

 

[mikes]

I feel like KD finally got it right with TT's lockers - they're part of the queue right before the station so they're super convenient.

Not sure how that could be replicated at BGW for most rides including Pantheon though.

They could redo the thing they call a queue, Having double sided lockers seems like it could easily happen if they wanted it to.

 

[horsesboy]

They could redo the thing they call a queue, Having double sided lockers seems like it could easily happen if they wanted it to.

It would be extremely difficult to redesign Pantheon queue to allow for dould sided lockers any where near the station given that the maintenance bay blocks all access from the other side for most of the queue.

 

[CoasterMac]

Rough drawing, but something like this should be possible:



All it'd need is wooden walls boxing the pathway (like the queue when it passes under the track) and to thread between the supports of both tracks. Could even do metal detectors there if they really wanted to. Right at the base of the stairs, I imagine it'd result in a less crowded station too. Only issue I see is that when the Quick Queue line extends beyond the stairs, that'd be a traffic jam area for sure.

 

[horsesboy]

Rough drawing, but something like this should be possible:

View attachment 29058

All it'd need is wooden walls boxing the pathway (like the queue when it passes under the track) and to thread between the supports of both tracks. Could even do metal detectors there if they really wanted to. Right at the base of the stairs, I imagine it'd result in a less crowded station too. Only issue I see is that when the Quick Queue line extends beyond the stairs, that'd be a traffic jam area for sure.

You are placing the cut through right in the middle of the final break run I can't be 100% certain but I imagine that there are things bellow the tracks for the breaks that would make that less the. ideal.

 

[CoasterAuditor]

Was at the park yesterday at opening, after finding a closed DarKoaster, walked over to Pantheon and found it deserted and the operators just CRANKING the trains. So I rode it 7 times it was glorious. Then I went back to DarKoaster and found a 150 minute wait and had a friend with me that wanted to ride. The rest of the visit was in DarKoasters line and a single Alpengeist ride because my friend that wanted to ride DarKoaster wanted to leave. On the bright side the 7 laps in a row on our glorious modern Intamin made up for all that. I guess they have operating it down at this point. I've never found the capacity problematic with Pantheon it's rare the line stretches around the corner towards the entrance sign when I go or it's just not long at all.

 

[Icer]

Welcome to the world of shooting yourself in the foot. A new ride on the scale of Pantheon can and should easily draw a crowd for at least 3 years after opening. When you immediately open another new coaster on a similar (or arguably, greater) marketing scale, you delete a huge chunk of the value of the new ride yourself.

They are basically giving up a giant amount of ROI on these new additions in favor of more frequent spikes at a large monetary cost. While this will always benefit attendance, I still believe attendance is not the metric of success by itself in a park. The amount of margin efficiency that exists by milking every last drop of hype from a new attraction for multiple seasons is pretty interesting, through avenues such as merchandise, food/drink sales, add-ons, and customer experience all by manipulating the flow of foot traffic.

And of course, this comes at the cost of longevity. Eventually you can't keep adding stuff. That day may be far in the future, but between space constraints and people just getting tired of things changing every year, you'll wish you have staggered additions more. I hope this "every year" game plan is temporary measure focused on reorienting their business plan and once they start to reach a point where they are comfortable stabilizing they take the foot off the gas some, but this "grow grow grow" drumbeat SEAS is running right now doesn't seem to have a concrete goal in sight.

 

[CoasterAuditor]

I think at some point they need to pivot to other rides/significant infrastructure improvements. That said if Gwazis sister is opening in 2025, that plan should remain.

 

[ControlsEE]

Then I went back to DarKoaster and found a 150 minute wait...

Isn't a 150 minute wait on DK like 1,000 riders in line? I would hope Pantheon has a better capacity than DK.

 

[horsesboy]

I have seen the wait at 60 to 90 minutes on several days for Pantheon and that is with a full 4 man load team. I think it's easy to forget that if things are running smoothly that Pantheon can crank out a fairly decent rider per hour count which leads to people seeing a short wait and thinking low popularity.

 

[CoasterAuditor]

Yeah it was just after park open and the crew seemed to determined to prevent a significant line accumulating. I wouldn’t call it a popularity issue.