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The long and short of it is that building coasters is difficult. There's a lot that can go wrong, and every little wrong thing can hamper the ride experience, the ride's reliability, and in the worst case, safety. And you never quite know how such a complex system will work in practice until the...

The downtime and disappointing the guests is one thing, but the sheer effort required to keep Falcon's Flight operational will be a huge tax on the park in any case. It's a very maintenance-heavy coaster, requiring constant attention to all the things that can go wrong. Its upkeep will be very...

This was already mentioned in the Top Thrill 2 thread, but I think it bears repeating here. One thing that really baffles me about Falcon's Flight is the level of technical risk involved. Risk, as we all know, is best defined as a sort of combination between the consequences of something going...

I must admit that this sort of thing makes me rather curious about Falcon's Flight. Consider, for a moment, a rollercoaster as a system of components that have to work together for operation to be possible. Some components need to work flawlessly, others within tolerances, and yet others can...

I wonder if these guys have prepared an ambush on Disney lawyers or something, because naming your park "Mini Disni" is such a tremendously poor idea it has to be bait. If not, well, it makes sense to cut the graphics budget to the bone and set aside $300 million for the project, because that's...

If the park needs development, Parques Reunidos won't touch it. They buy parks that are "readily developed" in areas with little competition, then use their local dominant position as a reason not to invest a penny further. They wouldn't buy a park they'd have to invest in to make attractive.

Yeah, some of them are stretches at best, and some weren't surpassed for a good few years and got to regin uncontested for a while. But it does have a compound effect on the park's current lineup. Many of the rides there seem outdated compared to vastly better counterparts elsewhere (or they...

Whatever it is, I hope it doesn't follow the proud ol' SFMM tradition of building coasters right before that coaster type undergoes a paradigm shift, leaving SFMM with coasters that feel obsolete or inferior to comparable alternatives even after a few years. There are just so many examples to...

Traditionally, it's better to say it as soon as the possible. Full marks if you say so while the ride is only at the stage where it's rumoured/sort-of-just-speculated that the park may be adding a new coaster. However, it can only be said once per project.

It appears they want to straddle the line between "family friendly" and "thrill ride", and have chosen to market it as the most thrilling family ride out there. But if you think about it for a second, they might as well have looked at it from the other perspective and said "The UK's tamest...

It might be a translation error. I don't think there is a good Danish word for "thrill ride", but the word "rutsjebane" is short and similar enough that someone may apply the term regardless.

An oil drum hanging by a rope from a tree branch, and a guy to whack it with a baseball bat for a couple minutes after the riders have climbed in?

If they've went and bought one of those Maurer contraptions ...

Indeed, but I still can't get over the fact that there still lacks any sort of logical connection between the entrance and the center of the park. There's the Dome - great. There's the main street of sorts, that begins by Tidal Wave or thereabout - great. But why the heck is the path out of the...

This summer will mark 20 years since Pinfari's bankruptcy, and still there are parks putting up their coasters. Although they tend to be fourth or fifth-hand now. Still, though, one would think the parks would have a look at coasters that others have gotten rid of thrice, and think "maybe there...

If this map is accurate, it really hammers home how needlessly isolated from the rest of the park Swarm is. The distance between paths on the Stealth and Swarm side of the lake is barely longer than the footprint of Flying Fish, and probably shorter than the queue lines of either ride. Would it...

Seeing as today is March 3rd, I guess we can unstick an Other Ride Construction thread right on time for once, then!

I just had a shower thought: The name "Splash Mountain" was always disconnected from the theme of this ride, and it has become a very iconic name. I think it will return some day. They're giving it a new name for now, to underscore how the ride has been refurbished, but I would not be surprised...

Adding to this, they need to renew the big things eventually too. What was built in the nineties as a huge headliner attraction will, over time, turn into an old clunker with ever-greater maintenance needs, while also becoming "old news" in the eyes of the public. They can't rely on an...

Thermal expansion in a fire can be nasty for a steel structure, even if it is left standing afterwards. At certain temperatures the steel may even undergo some chemical/structural changes on the material level, which makes it really uncertain whether it retains its intended strength. I doubt the...