For the sake of argument, Six Flags America. RIP
In all seriousness though, big agree. Signs are looking more and more positive by the week.
State of the Park
- Thread starter GASM
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For the sake of argument, Six Flags America. RIP
In all seriousness though, big agree. Signs are looking more and more positive by the week.
when I go to CVS to pick up my prescriptions they tell me I'm a high priority and then I wait an hour in the sad chairs next to the blood pressure cuff machine thing unless I continuously glare behind the counter to remind them I'm Waiting. It's all about reading the room
Do a backflip John Reilly
Do a backflip John Reilly
Don't be such a shallow thoosie. Get to know the coaster, judge it for its character and personality. "True beauty lies within" and whatnot.
But yes, it needs a paint job.
But yes, it needs a paint job.
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It's not presented well at all, if it were up to me they would retheme the entire ride. Keep the name if you could help it (maybe a theme like Orion would work) but if not it's not the end of the world.
Did not mean it in offence to nitro but I would love a new color scheme and maybe an actual theme
idk the theme is Fast. doesn't need much to represent that
i (ME, northdetective) do[es]n't think a Nitro retheme would bring a single new customer in, but I do think general improvement in conditions (including a Nitro paint job) would make it significantly more attractive for locals to come in and relive their memories of the park in its prime instead of avoiding the place entirely for fear of replacing said memories with markedly worse modern-day experiences punctuated by fading paint and overall decay
i (ME, northdetective) do[es]n't think a Nitro retheme would bring a single new customer in, but I do think general improvement in conditions (including a Nitro paint job) would make it significantly more attractive for locals to come in and relive their memories of the park in its prime instead of avoiding the place entirely for fear of replacing said memories with markedly worse modern-day experiences punctuated by fading paint and overall decay
A Nitro retheme on it's own? no probably not
But looking at that area it's kinda in crisis. It's kinda inbetween the pine barrens and movie town, no cohesion whatsoever. If I'm looking at Great Adventure as the new Six Flags management you're trying to make parks like Great Adventure a higher ticket experience. And to do that you generally need to have a more cohesively themed park/experience. This is the direction that the most successful parks in the chain are going in for a reason (before someone says it, Cedar Point is an outlier and always will be, its known across the country as "the coaster capital" and that means there is a completely different set of expectations). Looking at the park there's only two/three areas that don't need a major overhaul, those being main street, plaza de carnival, and movie town (needs some work but nothing extreme). Everything else needs a major overhaul. Right now the attention is and should be on the boardwalk and golden kingdom, but after that I would put Nitro's plaza/pine barrens as the next on the list.
As for the whole nostalgia thing....nostalgia sells, but is Nitro really that nostalgic? Sure its an older ride but it's part of the very end of the "nostalgic era", I don't know many locals who really miss the post-recession era of great adventure. You want to sell nostalgia? You make a modern day Scream Machine, Freefall, Rolling Thunder, (prob not lightnin loops....for obvious reasons) you bring back the rainbow logo.
We've seen this new company give much more iconic rides a brand new theme...Intimidator 305 anyone?
I don't know what this new theme would be, its kinda hard to theme a giant metal box station, but I could definitely see them trying to expand upon the pine barrens theme and make it a legitimate themed area, rather than whatever the hell it is now. But this is the direction the company is going in, look at how great Jungle-X-pedition, Adventure Post, Fiesta Village, and Aeronautica Landing are. That's the future these parks area hopefully going in.
And what did you just call Pantherian? The retheme clearly hasn't been successful in a way that sticks in people's minds. Retheming Nitro is absolutely not what park needs imo
Renames take a bit to catch on with thoosies. That isn't at all a reflection on how successful a retheme has or hasn't been. Reception for Pantherian has been excellent.
just gives Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia vibes. or Pearl Milling Company formerly Aunt Jemima (don't come at me about the racial undertones. it's still on their packaging)
Maybe in isolation I'd be here for it, but if the Superman retheme rumors are true I simply think it's a poor decision to try to sell multiple existing attractions as new experiences in a park where "old experiences" have been destroyed en masse. but I'm also not likely to complain about DC rethemes at all
Maybe in isolation I'd be here for it, but if the Superman retheme rumors are true I simply think it's a poor decision to try to sell multiple existing attractions as new experiences in a park where "old experiences" have been destroyed en masse. but I'm also not likely to complain about DC rethemes at all
Your point is well taken, but I don’t think the goal is to “sell multiple existing attractions as new experiences.” Sure, the marketing folks will try to drum up excitement for a retheme, because that’s their job. But I believe the real goal of a retheme is to improve the park experience and the perceived value of the park in the long term. SF isn’t angling to get new guests buying tickets so they can ride the rethemed Superman; they’re hoping they’ll enjoy the park experience more and decide to come back (or maybe buy a season pass) because it makes the park feel nicer and more cohesively themed.
I think of it like this: management is asking, “If we could do it all over again, would we have themed that ride to Superman, or would we give it an original story that fits the theme of the area?” They’re optimizing the park for what it needs in the long run instead of chaining themselves to past mistakes.
KD is a good example of this working well. Like SFGADv, KD also struggled for many years with a reputation of removing lots of beloved attractions. They could have decided to not retheme Avalanche or I305 or their scrambler or (going back a few years) Ricochet to minimize the amount of change their guests experience. But I believe, and I don’t think I’m alone, that the park is absolutely stronger now than it has Reptilian and Pantherian and Arachnidia and Apple Zapple in its portfolio. I doubt many guests came through the turnstiles to ride the rethemed Avalanche known as Reptilian, but I’m confident that many people better enjoyed Jungle X-Pedition because of it. And I’d wager that not a single guest felt misled that one of the rethemed attractions was marketed to them as a new attraction.
tl;dr rethemes are for the long term value of the park, not a short term bait and switch to trick people into coming to the park.
I think people are still stuck on the idea that my negative bias is unique to me. *I* do think it would *feel* like a bait-and-switch among regular parkgoers for this park, at this moment, to retheme two large, highly visible roller coasters in completely unrelated sections of the park after they cruelly disappeared a 400 foot roller coaster and drop tower in (relative) secrecy only to propose replacing them (as we've seen in surveys) with a 400 foot roller coaster and drop tower. They have not earned the presumption of anything but a profit extraction motive (why should they these days), and appear to think their customers have the object permanence of a blue tang.
I've only been to KD post-Jungle X, and Pantherian was closed so I can't say how much the atmosphere has changed, but everyone makes it sound like quite a lot. I don't know the circumstances of Anaconda's demise, and I know not many would agree, but if KD were my home park, I'd *personally* have preferred to see money go toward keeping Anaconda around a while longer instead of money being spent to make the rest of the area around Rapterra lore-consistent. Even so, KD had enough in the lineup that such a tradeoff didn't leave the rest of the park devoid of recognizable classic rides.
Right now, Great Adventure's non-DC roller coaster lineup is
El Toro
Jersey Devil Coaster
Medusa
Nitro
Runaway Mine Train
Skull Mountain
If Nitro becomes Ortin, the park is further depriving itself of rides that are unambiguously associated with Great Adventure. Does that bother me as "history erasure?" Yes. Do I also think that having good rides that people recognize by name and want to reride is an important part of a park's brand and therefore business? Also yes.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. A paint job would be nice. But there's a lot else to be maintained, fixed, added, or otherwise improved in the park before I would think that retheming Nitro makes any sense
I’m a little puzzled by the reasoning here. Because the park has “not earned the presumption of anything but a profit extraction motive”, they shouldn’t start doing things in service of the customer experience now?*
Also not sure where the assumption that Nitro would be themed to Orion (I’m assuming that’s what you meant by “Ortin”) came from other than a musing of another forum member. Why can’t Nitro or any other ride be given a new theme and identity that’s as, or more, “unambiguously associated with Great Adventure”?
*As a side note, I’d argue that everything a publicly traded theme park company does has what you would call a “profit extraction motive” — even the things we love. These companies are, and always have been, legally obligated to maximize profit. Investments into theming, entertainment, amazing roller coasters, good customer service, etc. are all done with the belief that they’ll ultimately make the park more profitable. These places aren’t charities.
But many would argue that Nitro IS broken. It's an aggressively generic, poorly-presented, theme-less attraction randomly dropped between two increasingly-themed areas—and it currently needs a repaint anyway.
The fix would be to repaint the ride and improve its presentation. When investing the money to do so, I'd call it malpractice not to take the opportunity to better integrate it with the park by theming it in some forward-looking way to improve the park broadly long-term at the same time.
Ortin is Nitro backwards. Just a placeholder for the theme of their Incredible New Hypercoaster
Thank you for informing me the parks aren't charities! There used to be some commitment to customer service and atmosphere that allowed people to feel like it wasn't an uphill battle to enjoy oneself while ignoring long lines and high prices. Maybe it'd be better said that it was once not entirely laughable to think that the management of the parks genuinely wanted people to enjoy their time while being captive consumers. I do think that is very laughable now, with a few exceptions.
For some reason it's completely incomprehensible for me to long for the bare minimum "fix," a paint job, and yet it's also simultaneously suggested that I expect all amusement parks to be nonprofit. Do I think park make money?? Who can tell
People know Nitro, people enjoy Nitro. Great Adventure is lacking in familiarly good experiences. If anyone suggested we retheme El Toro right now, pants would be pooped. Not because the theme is incredible, immersive, or impactful in a way that would make the ride worse by changing it, but because it's a recognizable staple, and Great Adventure really needs the few of those they have at the moment.
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I also don’t understand the thought that there are more important parts of the park that need TLC. There are many areas that need it but I’d argue that nitro has the worst presentation of marquee roller coaster maybe anywhere in the states. It’s the most popular ride in the park and it’s depressingly ugly. Off the top of my head I really can’t think of any other major park that has their top ride looking this ugly. I do think you can keep the name (since it’s so generic and everyone knows it) and apply a more cohesive theme to it.
Yeah, because El Toro is themed to the area in which it's housed. Trying to draw a parallel between Nitro and El Toro is insane.
For the record, I don't think Nitro is priority #1. The lakefront is far more important in my opinion. Joker and its neighbors are a disaster. I'd prioritize improving theming in existing themed areas over fixing Nitro too, probably. The DC area is largely hideous, for instance.
I just think that when the park finally repaints Nitro, it needs to be part of a larger project to both refresh and integrate the attraction.
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Yes Everyone I know only likes El Toro because of its festive station. Silly me
That would be nice. I had assumed a retheme would also come with a renaming, which I would oppose
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