Project 2026: Verbolten: Forbidden Turn
- Thread starter Le Moose
- Start date
Sorry I’m late, but I’m curious how BGW pushed United Parks to fund this extensive of theming project? If it draws people in they should definitely keep doing it because I love what I’m seeing so far.
BGW management has maintained (read: fought for) a degree of autonomy over their cap-ex spending that the park's United Parks siblings have long-since lost. There have been multiple instances I'm aware of now involving incredibly crafty, clever maneuvering from BGW to utilize this autonomy to deliver end-products that, if entirely under United Parks corporate's direct control, would have seen very notable downgrades during development.
Park-level BGW management deserves a TON of praise for how they've been maintaining control and utilizing that power to better the park. The headwinds they've been overcoming for years now are wild.
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Every year I see everyone ask when the new attraction will open...
Guys for decades.........ITS ALWAYS LATE MAY OR JUNE.
Except Pantheon. Pantheon is the special oddball.
What's wild to me is UP not seeing the benefits that BGW is seeing and still choosing the pull autonomy away from parks.
My understanding is that, throughout the mid-2010s, the majority of the chain's Design & Engineering institutional knowledge and experience ended up largely centralized in Orlando and Williamsburg. Orlando as a power-center of design for the chain makes sense, but my impression is that Williamsburg likely retained so much talent during the centralization efforts due to the size and success of BGW in comparison to the other remote parks, the strong, senior leadership in Williamsburg's engineering department at the time (namely Larry Giles and Suzy Cheely), and the need for a team to handle the chain's remote, non-flagship projects. Oscar's Wacky Taxi at SPP and Wave Breaker at SWSA are both remote projects that, from what I understand, were lead by Williamsburg-based folks during this period.
BGW's ability to retain control over their cap-ex is only possible, in my assessment, because we ended up with one of the centers of power on-property. I'd love to say that United Parks should just turn control back over to the other parks' local leadership to make decisions that make sense for their specific, unique market positioning, audiences, etc, but the unfortunate reality is that, in many cases, from what I understand, in-house teams to turn power back over to simply don't exist anymore at the majority of the chain's properties—and attempting to rebuild such experience from scratch is almost certainly a pipedream sadly.
It is gloriously ironic that the remote, Williamsburg-based, B-team within United Parks has been delivering stronger products, producing better returns, and completing projects on-time unlike the A-team folks down in Orlando though, right? To be fair to Orlando though, if you're a strong, competent design and engineering employee at United Parks headquarters, you're almost certainly constantly applying for better paying jobs in better environments working on more exciting projects at just about any of United's regional competitors. Given the type of ship United runs, holding onto tallent in Orlando is almost certainly impossible.
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A lot of people who worked on projects like Infinity Falls, Mako and Empire of the Penguin, left for jobs at WDI and Uni Creative right at the time large projects were in development. They pay more and SW wasn’t changing with the times fast enough. There was apparently a lot of internal drama going on too, disagreements from what the park wanted and what corporate wanted (that’s how kraken unleashed happened). So people just left for bigger and better things, better uses of their talents.
Some pictures from today:
Edit: I added one more picture that shows the structure they are building behind the 2nd launch. Should be the first picture below.
Edit: I added one more picture that shows the structure they are building behind the 2nd launch. Should be the first picture below.
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Got to drive by this tonight as I was leaving the park:
Also for context, I was stopped right there due to the truck having to go through the exit lane by the employee gate. It was too big of a flatbed to navigate the crazy mess of cones they have for the employee parking security booth setup.
Also for context, I was stopped right there due to the truck having to go through the exit lane by the employee gate. It was too big of a flatbed to navigate the crazy mess of cones they have for the employee parking security booth setup.
Very excited to see this. I was waiting to see if the big stuff had been cut.
SHIT that is huge. Like, I knew it was going to be big, given it’s a roller coaster and all, but in the scale of a truck puts it into perspective. DAMN.
I'm not an arborist, but judging by the shape it would look like that's supposed to be a branch, doesn't it? The trunk is gonna be absolutely monumental.
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TheCoasterNerd
Previously known as @coasters_bgw
That's ONE BRANCH
Looked like it’s actually two branches on the flatbed.
