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?
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.
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?
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?
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.
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?
