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Small News From The Theme Park Industry

VonRolland

Hyper Poster
Zamperla have released a new design for their spinning mouse coasters:

View attachment 13033
Source: Zamperla FB

Looks much better than the standard design, should be a fun ride. Footprint and dimensions doesn't appear to be too different than standard design either so can see a lot of the smaller parks getting this in place of a standard mouse.
Does very much remind me of the layout on Spinning Racer...
 

Matt N

CF Legend
Diggerland in Devon is reportedly closing forever on 5th September, due to the COVID crisis’ financial and staffing impact: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-diggerland-theme-park-closes-24834837?gaa_at=la&gaa_n=AYc4ysugfq8uS8rOGDQFen6ZINtotIzUIivdlSx111zvGoMvmQ4CdgvWfVEpvdV7&gaa_ts=61264bb4&gaa_sig=jiTcxgNINR0vO5UuLy2MTgEIaLM_d4KglGWCLwUB2u9Xae8JQEuIxZcmcQlcvJwSadegubd-n-HwMmcrh4kZiQ==

A park closing is always sad, especially one like this which has some pretty unique attractions. Let’s hope someone might swoop in and save it, as we’ve seen with some other attractions as of late.
 

Nitefly

Hyper Poster
Probably not small-news in the scheme of things, but Di$ney have announed their replacements for FastPass etc at the US parks ; App-based "Genie" and "Lightning Lane" queues. Hmmm.


This is a strange / curious change. It sounds a lot like they are incorporating the sort of day planning that Touring Plans has historically offered. Then adding a fast pass option onto that, but from the blurb it’s hard to understand how it will work in practice.

I did enjoy rinsing the fast pass tricks and tips at Disneyworld, in the sense that you could play the game and make every ride a walk on, but it did require an awful lot of addictive ‘being on your phone’ / cancelling and rebooking etc, which took away all of the ambling fun that makes park visits relaxed and special. Plus the absurd ‘constantly refresh your phone to get time slots months in advance’, was absolutely ridiculous. It was like this OCD game of: “just how well can you engineer the rules in your favour?”

The most common trick was really counterintuitive; if you had 3 fast pass slots to book, which could only be booked one hour apart each, it was more time-economic to massively spread them out at first, but then constantly refresh to get earlier time slots in between the hour windows you had already booked. So you just walk around the park refreshing like a madman. And you could see dozens and dozens of people doing the very same thing, all around you.

I think the very most ridiculous thing I did was book a single night stay in a cheap Disney hotel, just to collect the wrist bands and get earlier access to the fast pass bookings in the preceding months for my whole 2 week visit. Got the wrist bands at the check in desk for my family and literally handed the room keys straight back to them. It was absolutely bonkers how far people were going with it.

This new system will hopefully cut all of that ‘game the system’ BS, even the playing field and keep things simple for everyone (to the collective mutual benefit), but who knows.

I dislike that they have named it after the genie though. Seems a little poorly thought through to blight a popular character with such an association.
 
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RcTmix

Mega Poster
This new system will hopefully cut all of that ‘game the system’ BS, even the playing field and keep things simple for everyone (to the collective mutual benefit), but who knows.
Hopefully this is the case. I know that apps for everything are ubiquitous now, but as you said, having to constantly be on your phone really hampers the experience. I'd much prefer to just be at Disney and ignore my phone entirely, but it seems those days are long gone (and now I sound like a crotchety luddite).
 

Nitefly

Hyper Poster
Hopefully this is the case. I know that apps for everything are ubiquitous now, but as you said, having to constantly be on your phone really hampers the experience. I'd much prefer to just be at Disney and ignore my phone entirely, but it seems those days are long gone (and now I sound like a crotchety luddite).
What I’m hoping is that it doesn’t just shunt the mad ‘refresh your phone’ exercise to 7am of the day if your visit, or whatever, to get that ‘important fast pass’ as quickly as possible. I’d prefer putting that stress before my holiday!

Sites like Touring Plans are really interesting when it comes to approach, if you ‘study’ their day planner tool and throw all sorts of alternatives at it… which is the sadistic level of planning I was going to. According to their algorithms, it’s sometimes better to wait in the standby line for 2 hours for the busiest ride and fast pass everything else (using the aforementioned tactics), than lock yourself to a single fixed afternoon slot on the busy ride and standby line everything in the meantime. Makes sense when you think about it and no different than any standard park strategy, but it is counter intuitive!

I guess Touring Plans will be a little worried now that this Genie thing is offering a similar-ish service.
 
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Pokemaniac

Mountain monkey
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator

This may be old news, but it appears Orphan Rocker has been scrapped piece by piece over the last few years. No longer will it be eternally SBNO, but officially removed. Not sure what RCDB is classifying it as, since RCDB itself appears to be down at the moment.
 

Lori Marie Loud

Giga Poster

This may be old news, but it appears Orphan Rocker has been scrapped piece by piece over the last few years. No longer will it be eternally SBNO, but officially removed. Not sure what RCDB is classifying it as, since RCDB itself appears to be down at the moment.
RCDB still says SBNO.
 

TilenB

Strata Poster

This may be old news, but it appears Orphan Rocker has been scrapped piece by piece over the last few years. No longer will it be eternally SBNO, but officially removed. Not sure what RCDB is classifying it as, since RCDB itself appears to be down at the moment.
I can't really find any sources that would report more of the ride being removed since my visit in 2017 (you can see most of the somewhat decent photos I took on rcdb). And I kind of doubt they'll ever bother removing the entire ride, since most of it is well away from where the general public can reach.
 

Niles

Giga Poster
Sorry for a double post but Skyline Attractions are back, with a new family coaster range known as the P'Sghetti Bowl ( Awww :3 ) , cannot wait till a park announces a single rail coaster is coming just to find its one of these, however depending on there comfort and cost I think these designs should sell much better for them than there original coasters.

Model A (185’)

Skyline Attractions P'Sghetti Bowl Rendering Model A Ortho

Model B (235′)


Skyline Attractions P'Sghetti Bowl Rendering Model B Ortho


Model C (420′)
Skyline Attractions P'Sghetti Bowl Rendering Model C Ortho


Model D (410′)

Skyline Attractions P'Sghetti Bowl Rendering Model D Ortho


Custom Duelling
Skyline Attractions P'Sghetti Bowl Custom Layouts

Themeable track:
1631099667493.png



Source: https://skylineattractions.com/skyl...-for-any-park-or-family-entertainment-center/
 
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