The park doesn't get crowded anymore due to poor management and sub-par additions.
News Project 2027/Purple: Delayed “World Record Breaking Coaster" (Phantom Spire?)
- Thread starter Zachary
- Start date
The additions haven't been terrible. Most of the park's past additions reflect the overall trend SF is trying to focus on and a good chunk of those additions were pretty solid. Cyborg is the only one I can think of that I thought was fairly weak.
I like Justice League, Jersey Devil, Wonder Woman, and Sky Screamer a lot. Those were all good additions.
The only negative I have towards management is the lack of general maintenance, but if KK's massive operating budget was part of that, we should see maintenance improve across the board in the coming years.
I like Justice League, Jersey Devil, Wonder Woman, and Sky Screamer a lot. Those were all good additions.
The only negative I have towards management is the lack of general maintenance, but if KK's massive operating budget was part of that, we should see maintenance improve across the board in the coming years.
You would be great friends with a certain other member of this forum.
Speaking of, what are your thoughts on weather closures?
If Kingda Ka’s maintenance budget was THAT atrocious. They should have closed this ride YEARS ago
Cedar Fair would probably bite that bullet and agree.
Not saying they're all terrible, but how many in the last 10-15 years are already gone. El Diablo, cyborg, the original setup for the safari off road, Green Lantern, zumanjaro, king cobra.
Yeah but the issue is the park hasn't really kept up with anything. Justice League, Dark Knight, Batman, and Skull Mountain theming/effects need serious TLC. A lot of the rides have lacked general upkeep and look like they are rusting and falling apart (I mean Kingda Da was never repainted, Nitro has never been repainted, Toro has had terrible upkeep although that is changing thankfully). I don't know the exact reason for why the Skyride couldn't be repaired, but maybe if they kept up with it more over the years it would still be able to operate today. I also don't know if the reason for the lack of maintenance at this park was due to Kingda Ka's operating budget, but hopefully things will get better in the future. Ryan Eldredge made it clear the future for this park is bright so let's see.
The park would have no reason to remove KK if the operating budget for the ride wasn't extremely high. The ride is still fairly popular, it's a flagship for the park, and it's a very marketable coaster (tallest in the world since 2005). They're taking a hit removing it. If the park was really dropping millions over the last 20 years to keep it open, I can definitely see KK being the reason you're not seeing proper maintenance done on Skull, JL, Dark Knight and the lack of paint anywhere. KK is eating all those resources. The ride basically required someone on staff to keep the ride in shape 24-7 even when the park wasn't operating.
SF removed their super loops across the board. I think only one or two are still operational. Same with Cyborg. The ride was hardly operational anyway. GL ended up not being that popular anyway (even though I enjoyed it). Not sure about the Safari. I thought they reopened that entrance when they decided to bring off road back. Didn't King Cobra cause issues for the park? It seems like SF took a few risks with these rides and they didn't really pay off.
This premise of KK having too high maintenance costs being the reason for its removal has flaws. Any launched 400 foot coaster is going to be a moneypit to maintain and operate. This means replacing KK with another launched 400 footer is nonsensical. This is especially true for a spinning coaster as the trains would be even more complex as well as heavier than KK's requiring more force to accelerate.
Considering the park was heavily crowded for 1/3 of my trips there last season, its more than a handful. Perhaps not every ride needs to be high capacity such as second or third tier rides. However, the anchor rides such as major coasters need high capacity since they are the main draw, they will draw the most crowds.
Last edited:
So I went to the park six times last year including a Saturday visit and I only had to worry about crowds once. I think the park is perfectly capable of building a ride that can handle those crowd levels.
So the million dollar question. Where is all this backlash against other parks building low capacity stuff? Even Darkoaster didn't get this much hate and that ride has horrid capacity. Yeah people criticized it right after opening but it didn't get nearly as much hate as this concept art has. Why does BGW get a pass but GAdv can't?
So the million dollar question. Where is all this backlash against other parks building low capacity stuff? Even Darkoaster didn't get this much hate and that ride has horrid capacity. Yeah people criticized it right after opening but it didn't get nearly as much hate as this concept art has. Why does BGW get a pass but GAdv can't?
There's a big difference in cost/maintenance with hydraulic compared to LSM.
I don't recall BGW getting a break at all. There was plenty of criticism. But that was in scale to both the attraction being removed (indoor family ride, low capacity) and the attraction being installed in its place (indoor family ride, low capacity).
DarKoaster took the place of a unique and enjoyable ride system, but it neither replaced nor served as BGW's signature attraction, in stark contrast with Spinda Ka. Extra thoosie-scrutiny is to be expected.
True, but there is also a big difference in maintenance costs between LSMs and traditional lift hills. An LSM coaster will still eat up more maintenance budgeting than any of the still existing rides at the park.
Something else I want to point out is that maintenance at GAdv was already poor for decades before KK was built. During the 90s and early 00s it was common for GAdv to let theming and props to fall into disrepair and often removed them rather than fix them. This happened with Batman, The Right Stuff, Skull Mt, Chiller, Houdini, etc. It was really bad over in HH, so much of its themeing was lost in its early years. People are tending to use KK as a scapegoat for the park's deferred maintenance when it was already deferred long before KK. Though I agree that KK probably exabated the already preexisting maintenance issues.
In the long run LSMs are cheaper and easier to maintain than hydraulic launches. That's why the industry shifted from hydraulic launches to LSMs in the first place. You can't have a cable snap issue with an LSM launch. Look at the uptime for a ride like Xcelerator, which was closed for a year for a full refurb compared to a ride like Velocicoaster, which hardly ever goes down extended.
SF boosted the park quite a bit in the 90s-00s, so instead of funneling money towards upkeep, they basically dropped that money on new rides. That issue isn't unique to GAdv. You can see it at plenty of other Flags parks around the country. Its one of the reasons Geauga Lake ultimately closed.
Wasn't Darkastle's capacity pretty high though? I don't recall the ride getting crazy lines outside of peak periods and during hotter months. It was mostly a walk on whenever I rode it.
Even then I don't really hear much criticism for it capacity-wise much anymore. The last time there was discussion here about it was in October.
I'll say the same for other low capacity rides like Daredevil Dive, Mystery Mine, Laff Track/Fahrenheit, and Seven Dwarfs. Yeah the capacity sucks on those rides too, but I don't see those parks getting as much flak for building a low capacity attraction as GAdv has. Hell let's throw Volcano into the mix too. Everyone misses the ride even though it had insanely low capacity. Nobody really talks about the 60 min waits on the slowest of days the ride always commanded.
SF boosted the park quite a bit in the 90s-00s, so instead of funneling money towards upkeep, they basically dropped that money on new rides. That issue isn't unique to GAdv. You can see it at plenty of other Flags parks around the country. Its one of the reasons Geauga Lake ultimately closed.
Wasn't Darkastle's capacity pretty high though? I don't recall the ride getting crazy lines outside of peak periods and during hotter months. It was mostly a walk on whenever I rode it.
Even then I don't really hear much criticism for it capacity-wise much anymore. The last time there was discussion here about it was in October.
I'll say the same for other low capacity rides like Daredevil Dive, Mystery Mine, Laff Track/Fahrenheit, and Seven Dwarfs. Yeah the capacity sucks on those rides too, but I don't see those parks getting as much flak for building a low capacity attraction as GAdv has. Hell let's throw Volcano into the mix too. Everyone misses the ride even though it had insanely low capacity. Nobody really talks about the 60 min waits on the slowest of days the ride always commanded.
To be fair, the range of ride capacities in this list is absolutely enormous and, even if they are all low-capacity attractions, I don't think we should set the bar based on whether or not other parks have received some nebulous threshold of blowback for past mistakes. I think it's just a generally bad foundation to build the defense upon.
The better case, in my opinion, is that the design shown in the survey for SFGAdv can likely match the previous hourly capacity of Ka (replacing extreme thrill coaster capacity in the park in-kind) and can likely surpass the hourly capacity of the world's other stratas.
The primary objective with the design is likely to provide a coaster of 400+ feet. If SFGAdv is delivering capacity akin to other coasters in the strata category, no one has grounds to complain. That is the most anyone could reasonably expect. Demanding dramatically more than the peak of the current offerings at the top of the industry is wholly unrealistic.
Read this thread, there are many possibilities suggested. The spinning tower is the strongest SINGLE possibility because it's actually based upon a specific guest poll. But I wouldn't give it a 50% chance overall compared to several other options. The obvious disadvantage is it's too similar, it loses the killer launch in favor of some other features. However it could be a more complete experience, as those who rode TT2 found it to be. It could go taller than TT2 or even Ka for the American record but I'm skeptical the current management even wants to deal with 400.0 feet or even >100 MPH.
The big records of height and speed are expected to become unreachable, and furthermore the coaster that will be doing that is not a one-trick pony like the previous record setters. Therefore the new ride's records will be categorical, such as fastest family coaster, or extreme spinner (>115', >56MPH). I favor launched hypercoaster for the best ride: the current tallest, fastest launched coaster with a full featured layout is 205', 80.5 MPH, 3412' long, 5 inversions, by Mack. The longest launcher in America is probably Hagrid's at 5053', also possible to beat.
Last edited:
CF will go with the cheapest option that can be slapped up quickly. Being hypothetical for a moment, let's say the KK replacement is actually good and attracts huge crowds to the park. However, the park will still be down 7 rides to accommodate these crowds if they materialize. So if they do come, park experience will still be worse due to overcrowding and not enough other attractions to accommodate the increased attendance. This is the most positive outcome.
They KNOW they have to make a sizable investment for 2026 after removing so much— spending $20-30 million on a new coaster is not a small investment and should provide a decent new attraction with operating costs more inline with park attendance.