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A Gimmick or a Stigma?

Jarrett

Most Obnoxious Member 2016
So today we just saw Canada's Wonderland announced a big, beautiful dive coaster that they're spending big bucks on, yet coaster junkies worldwide are just kind of shrugging it off. And that's okay, it isn't for us. Building a coaster that'll bring a couple of out of town coaster weirdos to a park isn't going to get any return on the millions they invested in it, the goal is to get as many people as possible out there. As many people out there to shell out cash to park, to spend like $60 to feed their family of four at an overpriced Tim Horton's, Dad can waste $30 trying to win a $4 giant stuffed animal for their kid, get the kids on rides so they feel the need to prove they rode it so they buy a $20 t-shirt, all that. Maybe they even have a season pass and shell out a bit of money every month to go multiple times and spend a little each. And in large, for regional parks like Canada's Wonderland, Kings Island, and Six Flags, the rides are a very large part of the draw there, and especially the coasters. Considering how usually (but not always) attendance goes up after the addition of a new coaster, there's very little argument that they don't draw people to parks.

So how do you build a coaster that does that? Not one that necessarily puts out the most balls-to-the-wall extreme ride experience, but draws the regional population to the park in droves? Here I can see E-ticket rides split into two categories: Gimmick and Stigma. A gimmick ride would be anything that's visually impressive/interesting and draw people in either by curiosity or perception of how the ride might be. Joker clones, dive machines, Eurofighters, wing coasters, hyper/giga/strata, spinners, boomerangs and anything that looks either unfamiliar or extreme would fall into this category. Stigma rides, on the other hand, it's nothing the GP hasn't seen before but relies on being known for dishing out a good ride experience, either through word of mouth about the ride itself or the park's reputation for having good rides. Most RMCs, most modern wooden coasters, Intamin blitz, and former gimmicks that are starting to become commonplace (inverts are a good example) would fit this category. Or do you need a mixture of both in there, with no right or wrong answer and combinations of all one, the other, or both working equally well?

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Valravn is a gimmick-based draw. It exists to do one thing and one thing only: scare the absolute crap out of the GP. It's big, it's imposing, everyone stops on the midway to watch it dangle this car over the edge before dropping it. It's not meant to have anything else marketable about it, it's all about that terrifying freefall face first. You go to take on that terrifying coaster you saw on the news/social media, make a day out of it, and buy a souvenir to show you actually had the guts to do it.

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Steel Vengeance has stigma-based draw. There's nothing it has that isn't somewhere else in the park. Valravn has a taller vertical drop, Gemini and Cedar Creek are both hybrids, Millennium and Dragster are both taller, and every element almost can be found on some other coaster in the park. The only unique things it has are its records: biggest hybrid and most airtime, which are both enough into geeky coaster terminology that the GP isn't going to hear those and understand what they are immediately. Steel Vengeance has to get its ridership based on its reputation for being an extreme ride as it's all it has left to do. Now granted, this RMC saw a down year for Cedar Point, but others have boosted park attendance. The products have done very well as they continue to fly off the shelves.

So this thread could be boiled down to one question: What should be considered when selecting a coaster that will boost park attendance? Is it best to build the craziest looking contraption you can find and promote it as the scariest thing ever? Or is it better to build something that's a bit more familiar but out-performs other coasters your demographic might have ridden? A few years ago I got a lot of flack on here for saying that Valravn was "not for enthusiasts" and I agree in hindsight that it was a bad way to word that, here's probably a better way to get that point across. Does a coaster that enthusiasts rave about also attract crowds and bring home the bacon for the park?
 

EpochEmu

Mega Poster
I think most parks would build a gimmicky attraction, even if guests don’t enjoy the ride as much (this would lead to someone getting off Twisted Timbers and saying it’s a good ride, but Intimidator is still the best). They’ve still payed for admission, and they likely won’t go home just because of one bad ride, so it’s a win for the park. And it’s likely they weren’t frequent visitors and were just stopping in for the new attraction.

Take SFGA for example, I’d bet they draw in a ton of attendance from having the world’s tallest coaster alone and not from other rides which enthusiasts like (El Toro). But El Toro provides the park with another great ride which may surprise guests since it’s more stigma.

Plenty of parks have found a good mix of either gimmicky rides mixed with stigma-based rides, or rides that are both gimmicky and stigma-y (wow is that a confusing sentence). I’d say Steel Vengeance actually has a lot of gimmicky aspects as well, considering it’s an inverting wooden coaster and general public think wooden coasters are not allowed to go upside down (I’ve heard that countless times).

Family rides also have to be taken into account, a park needs plenty of those to have a good lineup. But those aren’t the million dollar investments you’re talking about.

Building a coaster that'll bring a couple of out of town coaster weirdos to a park isn't going to get any return on the
millions they invested in it,
Really, you answered your own question there. Parks want big booming rides that have crazy looking elements which will draw people in, and it’s actually pretty hard to go wrong there. Most big coaster models will provide that. Even if they’re cloned, the regional guests will be drawn in without a doubt.
 

Howie

Donkey in a hat
It's a good question... but stigma is definitely the wrong word. A stigma is a bad thing, a mark of disgrace or disapproval. The Smiler has the stigma of the crash attached to it, for example. Son of Beast had the stigma of just being terrible.
Not entirely sure what the right word is though, but it would be the opposite of stigma. Reputation? Esteem, maybe? No, that's not right. Praise? I dunno... but it ain't stigma.
Just sayin'.
As you were.
 
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MestnyiGeroi

Giga Poster
It's a good question... but stigma is definitely the wrong word. A stigma is a bad thing, a mark of disgrace or disapproval. The Smiler has the stigma of the crash attached to it, for example. Son of Beast had the stigma of just being terrible.
Not entirely sure what the right word is though, but it would be the opposite of stigma. Reputation? Esteem, maybe? No, that's not right. Praise? I dunno... but it ain't stigma.
Just sayin'.
As you were.
Exactly. It’s a good OP but that one word choice of stigma kept distracting me, and I was reading just to get to an explanation of this choice. :p
 

Pokemaniac

Mountain monkey
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
I think this is a very interesting question, but I too find your choice of words confusing. Then again, it's not like I have any better suggestions for terms. The word "gimmick" doesn't really have any good antonyms.

For me, the difference between "Gimmick" and "Stigma" is that with the former, a feature of the coaster is used as a main draw, for the latter it's the package. To take your example, for Valravn the whole point is the big drop, while the rest of the ride is "filler". Nobody is drawn to ride Valravn because the dive loop after the second drop looks so fun. In contrast, Steel Vengeance is basically a big, forceful coasters whose features in isolation is nothing special. But it is a great ride, and the image it sells draws people to it in droves. But I'm not sure if these categories are mutually exclusive. For instance, where would you put inverted coasters? Or even boomerangs? Coasters that go upside down backwards are uncommon enough that the general public would consider it a unique aspect, but those who travel a lot know they're roughly as common as ice cream stalls. Or coasters that claim to be "The biggest X in the world!", where X is a somewhat common thing? The world record is an interesting feature to market, but if the ride overall has no standout features, is it then a gimmick or ...the opposite? In other cases, the gimmick is created through marketing, but has little bearing on the ride experience.

At any rate, I believe regional parks will get roughly the same visitor boost no matter which type they build. People rarely go to a park for one coaster, they go there for the full experience, and a new coaster will only signal something new to do in addition to what they are used to doing. It's only part of the package, and it would take a massive flop for the package not to be improved by a new E-ticket coaster. It's not like I have gone through park visitor numbers to back up this idea, however.
 
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