Okay, after some rides on Tempesto and a couple of days to think about them, here is my review for whatever it's worth. As a former project engineer I'm reluctant to post this, because I understand what goes into a project of Tempesto's scale or larger. People work themselves to the bone for months on end to make this kind of attraction happen. Then other people celebrate our consumption culture by crapping on said attraction needlessly as a form of garbage social currency (and occasionally as a service to others). Still, I paid my money to get in and I'm entitled to my stupid worthless opinion, so here it is.
Appearance
Tempesto is ... okay. The ride's colors work for what they are. The location (visually speaking) is less of a problem than I would have expected. Admittedly it really messes with the sense of scale for Apollo's Chariot. The structural labyrinth of supports is so very Premier, about as far as one can get from Apollo's elegant look next door. With new paint on Apollo I think the whole thing may work better, the unifying theme being COLORS COLORS BRIGHT COLORS. It's fine-ish within Festa, which is already a bit of a weird dead-end area with a misfit ride pedigree. (RIP Gladiator's Gauntlet, that P standing for "pieces.")
From outside the park Tempesto really doesn't fit at all, which is one bit about this ride that truly bugs me. It kills the park's onetime elegant-peek skyline by garishly showing off 2/3 of perhaps the most gauche structure on the property. I am similarly unenthusiastic about the "star plaza" pavement effect in front of Tempesto's entrance. The painted star doesn't do anything for me visually, serving only to clutter up the space with a design that has no precedent or even a rough stylistic cousin elsewhere in the park. Is large-scale pavement painting not more of a Six Flags thing? It's the kind of comic-booky element that looks possibly compelling in an overhead design drawing, but which is sadly less impressive to behold from an altitude of only 5-6 feet vs. the designer's virtual "altitude" of hundreds of feet.
The signage and banner are decent, better than I would have expected to find. The ride vehicles are likewise more attractive in person than I anticipated, though I have more to say about them below. The queue is the worst adult coaster queue in the park, invoking a theater catwalk more than the World's Most Beautiful Theme Park, but they did paint absolutely every surface they could find in bright colors. Even the underside of the (corrugated steel) station roof is fully painted in canary yellow. The walking surface in the queue is composite decking. Really stretching here to differentiate this from a Cedar Fair queue; I'll just stop. If one knew nothing about the ostensible back story behind this ride's installation, the conclusion would be the same: not a high budget project. At least they dropped a handful of arborvitae in the area to slightly soften up the lines over time. I do like the lights they strung up overhead as one approaches the queue. They give exactly the impression of a colorful but hastily assembled traveling fair attraction. Only in Festa does this make any sense at all. To me, this also demonstrates that the park has no long-term plans to remake Festa into something more consistent with the rest of the park's themed areas.
What can you do. I guess I'll ride it!
Ride experience
First of all, the restraints. What in Sam Hill is this? No contemporary ride should be so hard to step into and out of. The lap bar portions don't pivot nearly far enough to allow efficient ingress/egress for an already throughput-challenged ride, and I see no evident engineering-related reason why this has to be the case. Add to that the fact that the lap bar pivot is located close to the base of the seat, and you have a restraint system that doesn't seem to want you there. I could expand at length on this lap bar but I had better not.
In a park sporting three B&M rides, managing the restraints on Tempesto feels a bit silly and overcomplicated. I am happy not to have a big-bar restraint astride my face during the ride, but contorting and pulling the floppy "vest" restraint overhead while squeezing feet-first into a very small amount of floor space just does not happen gracefully. Maybe with practice, but who wants to practice that? It's all goofy, again increasing load time somewhat on a throughput-challenged attraction. Death by a ...few cuts. The system does feel very secure once it is in place, and I was completely comfortable during my ride with no blunt force impact to the sides of my head or neck.
I love how much Premier puts into a small footprint and short ride time. A longer ride time, a higher hourly capacity, a bigger footprint, a free hot bonus girlfriend on the side with every visit, etc. would all be wonderful. Still, Tempesto does a lot for a 30-second ride end to end. The ride is not very forceful - even the back seat did not do much for me on the drop after the barrel roll, which I was hoping would be nuts - but the front seat visuals are good during the launches and during the roll. The loop-but-not-a-loop section doesn't do anything for me but nonetheless I am glad it's there. I'd rather see the loop fully invert at its apex for a floaty zero-G effect before the station fly-through. Might be neat-o.
Other observations affecting my review
- My wait times for this ride have been incredibly short, somewhat improbably. Time of year, high temperatures, people being blinded by the color scheme and staggering away in terrified confusion, all of the above... whatever the reason, my longest wait has been 10-15 minutes and my shortest was a near walk-on. Can't credit the ride configuration for this, obviously. This line will very often be prohibitively long during the high season. I briefly wondered about a sliding transfer table in the station for two-train ops, but given the ride's operation it would not be terribly helpful.
- Ride ops seemed to be working efficiently given the system they have, which admittedly biases me toward liking a ride more.
- I got an unexpected little slice of intrigue when, on my first-ever Tempesto ride, a helicopter was hovering uncomfortably close to the ride at low altitude. It was just... hanging out there for a good while. A little high-rotor goofy thing, like a Robinson R-22. It looked like a toy but most certainly was an actual bloody helicopter. I asked around a bit and apparently it has been making sporadic appearances for a couple of weeks, but ride ops claimed not to know what it was doing. Seemed to me that it must be hovering over park-owned property. Admittedly my perspective to judge that was a bit compromised at that moment. As a fan of odd anecdotes, I took away a higher opinion of Tempesto given the mystery-helicopter angle.
Overall, Tempesto is... okay. Don't think I'll ever feel the need to ride it again unless it's a walk-on. My only real complaint with it is the way it looks - in a park that historically has been obsessed with quality visuals.
Appearance
Tempesto is ... okay. The ride's colors work for what they are. The location (visually speaking) is less of a problem than I would have expected. Admittedly it really messes with the sense of scale for Apollo's Chariot. The structural labyrinth of supports is so very Premier, about as far as one can get from Apollo's elegant look next door. With new paint on Apollo I think the whole thing may work better, the unifying theme being COLORS COLORS BRIGHT COLORS. It's fine-ish within Festa, which is already a bit of a weird dead-end area with a misfit ride pedigree. (RIP Gladiator's Gauntlet, that P standing for "pieces.")
From outside the park Tempesto really doesn't fit at all, which is one bit about this ride that truly bugs me. It kills the park's onetime elegant-peek skyline by garishly showing off 2/3 of perhaps the most gauche structure on the property. I am similarly unenthusiastic about the "star plaza" pavement effect in front of Tempesto's entrance. The painted star doesn't do anything for me visually, serving only to clutter up the space with a design that has no precedent or even a rough stylistic cousin elsewhere in the park. Is large-scale pavement painting not more of a Six Flags thing? It's the kind of comic-booky element that looks possibly compelling in an overhead design drawing, but which is sadly less impressive to behold from an altitude of only 5-6 feet vs. the designer's virtual "altitude" of hundreds of feet.
The signage and banner are decent, better than I would have expected to find. The ride vehicles are likewise more attractive in person than I anticipated, though I have more to say about them below. The queue is the worst adult coaster queue in the park, invoking a theater catwalk more than the World's Most Beautiful Theme Park, but they did paint absolutely every surface they could find in bright colors. Even the underside of the (corrugated steel) station roof is fully painted in canary yellow. The walking surface in the queue is composite decking. Really stretching here to differentiate this from a Cedar Fair queue; I'll just stop. If one knew nothing about the ostensible back story behind this ride's installation, the conclusion would be the same: not a high budget project. At least they dropped a handful of arborvitae in the area to slightly soften up the lines over time. I do like the lights they strung up overhead as one approaches the queue. They give exactly the impression of a colorful but hastily assembled traveling fair attraction. Only in Festa does this make any sense at all. To me, this also demonstrates that the park has no long-term plans to remake Festa into something more consistent with the rest of the park's themed areas.
What can you do. I guess I'll ride it!
Ride experience
First of all, the restraints. What in Sam Hill is this? No contemporary ride should be so hard to step into and out of. The lap bar portions don't pivot nearly far enough to allow efficient ingress/egress for an already throughput-challenged ride, and I see no evident engineering-related reason why this has to be the case. Add to that the fact that the lap bar pivot is located close to the base of the seat, and you have a restraint system that doesn't seem to want you there. I could expand at length on this lap bar but I had better not.
In a park sporting three B&M rides, managing the restraints on Tempesto feels a bit silly and overcomplicated. I am happy not to have a big-bar restraint astride my face during the ride, but contorting and pulling the floppy "vest" restraint overhead while squeezing feet-first into a very small amount of floor space just does not happen gracefully. Maybe with practice, but who wants to practice that? It's all goofy, again increasing load time somewhat on a throughput-challenged attraction. Death by a ...few cuts. The system does feel very secure once it is in place, and I was completely comfortable during my ride with no blunt force impact to the sides of my head or neck.
I love how much Premier puts into a small footprint and short ride time. A longer ride time, a higher hourly capacity, a bigger footprint, a free hot bonus girlfriend on the side with every visit, etc. would all be wonderful. Still, Tempesto does a lot for a 30-second ride end to end. The ride is not very forceful - even the back seat did not do much for me on the drop after the barrel roll, which I was hoping would be nuts - but the front seat visuals are good during the launches and during the roll. The loop-but-not-a-loop section doesn't do anything for me but nonetheless I am glad it's there. I'd rather see the loop fully invert at its apex for a floaty zero-G effect before the station fly-through. Might be neat-o.
Other observations affecting my review
- My wait times for this ride have been incredibly short, somewhat improbably. Time of year, high temperatures, people being blinded by the color scheme and staggering away in terrified confusion, all of the above... whatever the reason, my longest wait has been 10-15 minutes and my shortest was a near walk-on. Can't credit the ride configuration for this, obviously. This line will very often be prohibitively long during the high season. I briefly wondered about a sliding transfer table in the station for two-train ops, but given the ride's operation it would not be terribly helpful.
- Ride ops seemed to be working efficiently given the system they have, which admittedly biases me toward liking a ride more.
- I got an unexpected little slice of intrigue when, on my first-ever Tempesto ride, a helicopter was hovering uncomfortably close to the ride at low altitude. It was just... hanging out there for a good while. A little high-rotor goofy thing, like a Robinson R-22. It looked like a toy but most certainly was an actual bloody helicopter. I asked around a bit and apparently it has been making sporadic appearances for a couple of weeks, but ride ops claimed not to know what it was doing. Seemed to me that it must be hovering over park-owned property. Admittedly my perspective to judge that was a bit compromised at that moment. As a fan of odd anecdotes, I took away a higher opinion of Tempesto given the mystery-helicopter angle.
Overall, Tempesto is... okay. Don't think I'll ever feel the need to ride it again unless it's a walk-on. My only real complaint with it is the way it looks - in a park that historically has been obsessed with quality visuals.
