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RE: Project Madrid: New Hamlet? Giga Coaster? 315' Tower?

Zimmy said:
If you are looking at the other threads, you may have noticed that Seas is in TERRIBLE shape financially.  They have not recovered from BlackFish and things keep getting worse.  
I can't imagine Seas spending the money necessary for a Fury class coaster at this point in time. Frankly I don't see them spending the money for a new fully flushed out hamlet either.  Now, infrastructure for and a tall ride in a potentially new hamlet, maybe.
Click to expand...

Before people yell boo, hear me out on this:

Last year we saw some animal habitats come out for the Coke station and just....green space. I think this was someone tied to the BlackFish scandal. I wonder if looking at using this area, they will look to move on from having so many animals around the park. I think that they are going to look to distance themselves from the whole BlackFish thing by massively downsizing what they do.

So how am I tying that to this project?

So what if this whole project is a way for them to announce that they are going to no longer house the goats, horses, ect in that field, and that they will no longer be staying in the park. So in turn they are going to use the area for a new hamlet.

From a PR perspective....that makes sense.

Yes, most (or all) of us that love the park will hate the removal of the animals from the park. They are a great addition to the park, with BlackFish out there it is a bit of a blackmark to people. So having all the parks start to move on from having animals will be a way to recover.
 
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RE: Project Madrid: New Hamlet? Giga Coaster? 315' Tower?

The way I see it. If they are building a hamlet, they will probably leave the fields on the other side of the railroads intact. Which means they still have space for the animals and HOS attractions.
 
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RE: Project Madrid: New Hamlet? Giga Coaster? 315' Tower?

Out of curiosity, wouldn't a launch coaster fit in the proposed area? I'd think Top Thrill Dragster's tower could be considered "open lattice". It's not unique in the industry (neither is Invadr) but certainly in the region. "Nuberu" (Cloud Master) is a Spanish mythical creature....
 
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RE: Project Madrid: New Hamlet? Giga Coaster? 315' Tower?

Unagi said:
Matt S B said:
How about a 300 foot version of the balloon ride at Disney Springs. I just don't think this is a roller coaster. I think the balloon ride would be a classier ride versus a Star Flyer and something unique for the park.
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There's a reason the Disney Springs balloon is outside of the parks...

It's extremely low capacity and they wanna charge people to ride it. The attraction wouldn't be a good addition at all.
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That's a shame. I seriously don't see a roller coaster coming and at least it would be something different than a Star Flyer
 
RE: Project Madrid: New Hamlet? Giga Coaster? 315' Tower?

warfelg said:
So what if this whole project is a way for them to announce that they are going to no longer house the goats, horses, ect in that field, and that they will no longer be staying in the park.  So in turn they are going to use the area for a new hamlet.

From a PR perspective....that makes sense.
Click to expand...

Frankly I think this would be a disaster from a PR perspective. People would roast them (as well they should) for being that cold regarding their animals. If for no other reason, conservation is still for now a stated corporate objective.

Now are they playing lip service to this? I think they have been for some time. But I do not think that is the same thing as white washing the fact that they ever had animals, and sending, a somehow positive (really?) message to the public that they have moved on.

I can not speak for anyone else, certainly not the public at large, but if they truly became that jaded and frankly flippant about their animals, I would have to take a hard look at my continued support.
 
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RE: Project Madrid: New Hamlet? Giga Coaster? 315' Tower?

Matt S B said:
Unagi said:
Matt S B said:
How about a 300 foot version of the balloon ride at Disney Springs. I just don't think this is a roller coaster. I think the balloon ride would be a classier ride versus a Star Flyer and something unique for the park.
Click to expand...

There's a reason the Disney Springs balloon is outside of the parks...

It's extremely low capacity and they wanna charge people to ride it.  The attraction wouldn't be a good addition at all.
Click to expand...

That's a shame. I seriously don't see a roller coaster coming and at least it would be something different than a Star Flyer
Click to expand...

No shame at all. Think about it for a second. What major theme or amusement park has a giant helium or hot-air balloon as an attraction? Can you name one? Disney Springs doesn't count because that sits outside the parks where they can charge each rider. Disney doesn't even own that balloon as they hired an outside company to build and run it.
 
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RE: Project Madrid: New Hamlet? Giga Coaster? 315' Tower?

warfelg said:
I wonder if looking at using this area, they will look to move on from having so many animals around the park.  I think that they are going to look to distance themselves from the whole BlackFish thing by massively downsizing what they do.
Click to expand...

I am assuming the above is more or less what they will do, over time.  I don't imagine the park would commit to something as severe as eliminating all animals from the park, ever.  But it would be very much in line with boilerplate corporate financial scrutiny to look at the costs vs. benefits of each type of animal in the park every 2-3 years, and keep only the better-known ones with small-ish space requirements. Ramp it down slowly.

Injured eagles and wolves may not be super cheap to care for, but I think they do provide a real draw, and what else are you really going to do with that space?  IMO, last off-season we saw what can happen to BGW animals that don't pull their weight in units of visitor mindshare, even if they DO take up very little flat horizontal space: they find new homes elsewhere.  If corporate is (potentially) willing to underwrite a brand new footprint expansion that the park can market the hell out of for years to come, then who in the park leadership is going to buck that pressure by insisting the goats stay instead?

I have no idea what will happen.  But I don't think a continued scale-down of animal attractions would be unexpected.  Animal attractions in general cannot possibly be a popular bet right now for Sea World Parks, and removing some of them from BGW is probably an easy sell in the C-suite.  A phased park expansion may even by a carrot from Orlando to the park in return for easing up on that whole animal-focus thing.

...Maybe this is just what happens when corporate leadership realizes they didn't really "get" the Blackfish situation until it was already out of hand.  I have personally witnessed crazier things from spooked business leadership...
 
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RE: Project Madrid: New Hamlet? Giga Coaster? 315' Tower?

Unagi said:
[...] What major theme or amusement park has a giant helium or hot-air balloon as an attraction?  Can you name one?
Click to expand...
Exactly... It's not as if the theme park industry has simply not noticed that they could put a big balloon in a park.  They have.  It just doesn't make a lot of sense to do so.

The Philadelphia Zoo has a balloon ride.  It rises to 400 feet and takes a bit over 10 minutes to make a cycle, not including load/unload which extends actual cycle time to perhaps 15 minutes.  I think it holds something like 12 passengers.  So that's a capacity of 180 pph.  Tempesto looks like a queue eater by comparison.

A large tethered balloon's 20k cubic feet of Helium probably cost less than $2000 in material cost, so that's not a big deal.  But operating conditions are.  Here is the Philly balloon landing in "windy" conditions.  Take a look at the trees to see how "windy" this is.  The thing has to be DEAD calm to operate without freaking out the old and/or skittish, both in the air and on the ground:



The balloon itself lasts about 5-7 years before requiring complete replacement (minus gondola).  I don't know what that costs.

As far as I know, not a single other zoo in America has followed in this zoo's footsteps -- not even at $12 per rider.

I would have said "no way" to the idea of a Sky Rocket II 5 years ago, so I'm good at being wrong.  But a balloon seems like a very poor fit for BGW.  My two cents...
 
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RE: Project Madrid: New Hamlet? Giga Coaster? 315' Tower?

halfabee said:
The Philadelphia Zoo has a balloon ride.  
Click to expand...

This is a zoo. And like most zoos, it's a non-profit one at that.

I was asking what major theme or amusement park has an attraction like this.
 
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RE: Project Madrid: New Hamlet? Giga Coaster? 315' Tower?

Another baseless theory- being that a wooden coaster is more latticed than a steel, what if Indavr was veritable test run on building and maintaining a wooden (hybrid) coaster for BGW and Madrid will be a full-tilt-bozzo wooden coaster? Plausible? Thoughts?
 
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RE: Project Madrid: New Hamlet? Giga Coaster? 315' Tower?

halfabee said:
warfelg said:
I wonder if looking at using this area, they will look to move on from having so many animals around the park.  I think that they are going to look to distance themselves from the whole BlackFish thing by massively downsizing what they do.
Click to expand...

I am assuming the above is more or less what they will do, over time.  I don't imagine the park would commit to something as severe as eliminating all animals from the park, ever.  But it would be very much in line with boilerplate corporate financial scrutiny to look at the costs vs. benefits of each type of animal in the park every 2-3 years, and keep only the better-known ones with small-ish space requirements.  Ramp it down slowly.

Injured eagles and wolves may not be super cheap to care for, but I think they do provide a real draw, and what else are you really going to do with that space?  IMO, last off-season we saw what can happen to BGW animals that don't pull their weight in units of visitor mindshare, even if they DO take up very little flat horizontal space: they find new homes elsewhere.  If corporate is (potentially) willing to underwrite a brand new footprint expansion that the park can market the hell out of for years to come, then who in the park leadership is going to buck that pressure by insisting the goats stay instead?

I have no idea what will happen.  But I don't think a continued scale-down of animal attractions would be unexpected.  Animal attractions in general cannot possibly be a popular bet right now for Sea World Parks, and removing some of them from BGW is probably an easy sell in the C-suite.  A phased park expansion may even by a carrot from Orlando to the park in return for easing up on that whole animal-focus thing.

...Maybe this is just what happens when corporate leadership realizes they didn't really "get" the Blackfish situation until it was already out of hand.  I have personally witnessed crazier things from spooked business leadership...
Click to expand...

Agreed.

There are some things like the wolves, eagles, pet tricks, parakeet glen, and the other animal show will stay. But I wonder how much the uppers were freaked by that and will roll back major animal installments in the parks.

Kinda really my point.

They freak out, find a way to move on, and the quick answer is to move on.

The other option is that they're only going to use a few of the enclosures and move on from having bigger animals in the park.

Some other things kinda tied to this:
In this map (file:///C:/Users/gwgil/Downloads/location_map_with_dots.pdf), I'm 99% sure that the orange lines are property lines. There's quite a bit of space there that would be "unrealistic" for the park to expand to (such as north of the pipeline and west of the river), which could be used for the animals. The supplemental landscaping to offset the environmental impact is a little bigger than the area along the river.

So some other tid-bit's:
~When I overlay all 3 major location maps using environmental markers (mostly overlaying the edges of the Rhine) the "approximate location" is different. Does this say much....not really. Either they don't want to give up the exact location or the cartographer that did the work kinda poorly.

~On the location map they marked the other times they've needed to get a height waiver.

~In the site lines exhibit, the lines of sight are very much on similar angles.
 
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RE: Project Madrid: New Hamlet? Giga Coaster? 315' Tower?

Just a couple of open, lattice-like structures over 300 feet...
mj-618_348_top-thrill-dragster-cedar-point-sandusky-oh-americas-best-roller-coasters.jpg
 
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RE: Project Madrid: New Hamlet? Giga Coaster? 315' Tower?

Unagi said:
halfabee said:
The Philadelphia Zoo has a balloon ride.  
Click to expand...

This is a zoo.  And like most zoos, it's a non-profit one at that.

I was asking what major theme or amusement park has an attraction like this.
Click to expand...

Ones that do have things like observation towers and the like seem to be taking them out in favor of a higher occupancy or higher thrill ride.
 
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RE: Project Madrid: New Hamlet? Giga Coaster? 315' Tower?

angelicurrr said:
Does this news story have something to do with this thread?

Just popped up on my news feed this morning.
Click to expand...

Thanks for showing this! Unfortunately, nothing has been said of what the ride will be, this is sadly poor journalism that gnarls the teeth of coaster enthusiasts and fuels false facts to the public who goes to Busch once every 6 years.

This video will have to be amended, the park has made no mention this will or won't be a coaster.
 
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