Jarrett
Most Obnoxious Member 2016
This is, by far, my most controversial opinion in the coaster community. On the Facebook groups I get so much heat for this so I thought I'd make a thread on here to see where we all stand on this.
Kind of a large part of my mark on the coaster community has been the use of the hashtag #RMCitorWreckit when discussing older wooden coasters, and what it means is just that. Outdated wooden roller coasters that fail to provide a ride as good as their modern descendents should either be RMCed or torn down, with little to no regard for history being taken into consideration. For me I draw this line as before the second golden age, so almost anything before 1972. Aside from a very elite select few (Wild One, Phoenix, Twister, Blue Streak), everything from this era should either be RMCed or torn down to make room for a modern wooden coaster. After this era it's about mixed, with some deserving the #RMCitorWreckit treatment and some not, lasting up until the advent of CAD in roller coaster design, in which I believe almost nothing needs it.
I've made some points with this belief that has gotten a lot of feathers ruffled in the past, including wishing all of Kennywood's wooden coasters defunct (RMC Thunderbolt, bulldoze Racer and Rabbit), wanting both Hersheypark's GCIs left alone in favor of RMC Comet, and wishing Compounce had RMCed Wildcat instead of restoring it with such a weak layout.
A couple of points I've made for this:
*Outdated rides take up space in parks that could be used to instead add newer, more modern, innovative additions instead. If we keep leaving outdated rides around in parks with finite space just because they're old, the park is on track to run out of space and therefore run out of options. No new additions is a guaranteed way to kill a park.
*Old for the sake of being old gets old. Rides that are old and still pack a punch deserve to be set apart.
*It's way easier on a park to maintain an RMC than it is to keep retracking a 100 year old wooden coaster
*The ride experience that an RMC offers, designed with CAD and precision machined with CNC equipment, is way more versatile than the pencil and paper with which old coasters were designed.
*If a park's goal is thrill rides, having an outdated ride that provides nothing of substance completely goes against that philosophy. The only place an outdated coaster belongs is in a historical context, at parks like Knoebels or the National Roller Coaster Museum. It's an amusement park, not a history lesson.
*Often people argue that forceless outdated rides make decent family coasters. These could easily be replaced with something like FireChaser or Wooden Warrior or another good, modern family coaster.
So share your thoughts on this, I'm interested to see what we all have to say!
FUN FACT: I actually received a death threat from someone in a Geauga Lake group once for posting #RMCitorWreckit on a video of Big Dipper coming down, though that was just me messing with conspiracy nutjobs and I didn't actually expect it to be RMCed obviously.
Kind of a large part of my mark on the coaster community has been the use of the hashtag #RMCitorWreckit when discussing older wooden coasters, and what it means is just that. Outdated wooden roller coasters that fail to provide a ride as good as their modern descendents should either be RMCed or torn down, with little to no regard for history being taken into consideration. For me I draw this line as before the second golden age, so almost anything before 1972. Aside from a very elite select few (Wild One, Phoenix, Twister, Blue Streak), everything from this era should either be RMCed or torn down to make room for a modern wooden coaster. After this era it's about mixed, with some deserving the #RMCitorWreckit treatment and some not, lasting up until the advent of CAD in roller coaster design, in which I believe almost nothing needs it.
I've made some points with this belief that has gotten a lot of feathers ruffled in the past, including wishing all of Kennywood's wooden coasters defunct (RMC Thunderbolt, bulldoze Racer and Rabbit), wanting both Hersheypark's GCIs left alone in favor of RMC Comet, and wishing Compounce had RMCed Wildcat instead of restoring it with such a weak layout.
A couple of points I've made for this:
*Outdated rides take up space in parks that could be used to instead add newer, more modern, innovative additions instead. If we keep leaving outdated rides around in parks with finite space just because they're old, the park is on track to run out of space and therefore run out of options. No new additions is a guaranteed way to kill a park.
*Old for the sake of being old gets old. Rides that are old and still pack a punch deserve to be set apart.
*It's way easier on a park to maintain an RMC than it is to keep retracking a 100 year old wooden coaster
*The ride experience that an RMC offers, designed with CAD and precision machined with CNC equipment, is way more versatile than the pencil and paper with which old coasters were designed.
*If a park's goal is thrill rides, having an outdated ride that provides nothing of substance completely goes against that philosophy. The only place an outdated coaster belongs is in a historical context, at parks like Knoebels or the National Roller Coaster Museum. It's an amusement park, not a history lesson.
*Often people argue that forceless outdated rides make decent family coasters. These could easily be replaced with something like FireChaser or Wooden Warrior or another good, modern family coaster.
So share your thoughts on this, I'm interested to see what we all have to say!
FUN FACT: I actually received a death threat from someone in a Geauga Lake group once for posting #RMCitorWreckit on a video of Big Dipper coming down, though that was just me messing with conspiracy nutjobs and I didn't actually expect it to be RMCed obviously.
