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Do you wanna know what really grinds my gears?

GuyWithAStick

Captain Basic
Yeah, most of EE's price was the extensive theming and the Yeti. I'm not 100% sure on the most expensive COASTER, but I'd assume it's a larger ride like SD2K or Eejankaika.
 

Pokemaniac

Mountain monkey
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Lofty said:
Pokemaniac said:
EE cost a whooping 100 million dollars to build, making it the most expensive coaster built to date if themeing is included.
Yeah, that figure is for the project as a whole as far as I'm aware, so that also includes the ridiculous Yeti animatronic and it's own support structure, too.

And an artificial mountain, and of course a Yeti museum, and enough actual supplies to get several climbing parties up Everest (minus food, I guess), and probably the nicest gift shop ever put on a coaster (hey, thread idea!), and gardening...

The point I was trying to make, in response to a post by ATI, was an argument against the notion of Vekoma solely being a budget alternative for poor or stingy parks. Disney had the most expensive coaster project ever (is that a good enough wording?), yet still chose to go for Vekoma, and they had excellent reasons to do so. Not because they wanted to be cheap on the coaster when its surroundings were so expensive, but because Vekoma could deliver high capacity, high reliability, and design an unconventional, tailor-made support system that fit into the ridiculous jigsaw puzzle that hides beneath that mountain. Vekoma have low-cost off-the-shelf coasters that fit the requirements for "cheap" parks, true, and those coasters probably comprise most of their revenue. But they're also surprisingly high-end and flexible if the customer is willing to pay for it. Where most manufacturers would respond "our way or no way" if approached with such a complex project, Vekoma broke a lot of their conventions when designing Expedition Everest, giving Disney an unusually high level of control in the design process.
 

MagnesiumPC

Roller Poster
VR on Already good rollercoasters - bring them down in quality, queue time, and operations.
The Hype on RMCs - sure, they're great, but they aren't the second coming.
Roller Coasters that don't even try to have a theme.
 

Ashstrodamus

Mega Poster
Why, in this day and age, do parks still think its acceptable, after spending god knows how much money, to use the manufacturers standard ride name?! How boring do you have to be to buy a new Zamperla Air Race and then go and call it Air Race, the same :emoji_zipper_mouth: name as every other :emoji_zipper_mouth: Air Race in the world.

Not so much a topic dedicated to the above but do you have any major gripes in the world of coasters / themeparks? Here's a place where you can let them out!
People complaining at me when I'm smoking in the designated smoking area. Also, line breakers are the worst. It won't happen around me. If someone wants to catch up with their group, fine, no problem, but people just cutting the corners or taking up a gap that hasn't moved forward yet will not be tolerated by me.
 

caffeine_demon

Strata Poster
and unnecessary "no singles" rules (translates to all "no singles" rules)

I feel like another rant about this - I can kind of accept the rule on a coaster like thunderbolt at kennywood where the non split seat would mean you sliding all over the place, but I hate being told that I can't go on a ferris wheel for example, the reasoning given by some parks that it's to "prevent suicides" is ridiculous - if someone really wants to jump out at the top are a group of strangers expected to attempt to stop him/her?
another one where I was spited by a no singles rule was on the monorail at gllians wonderland - I was behind 2 people, who went in the front seat of the (i think)six seater train, gestured for me to wait, sent them on their way and turns to me and says "oh - no singles alllowed" - I wiated a bit to see If I could tag on behind another group, but noone came...
and then there's the daft "no singles in a row" on x at thorpe - 1st time I rode after that was introduced I had to wait an extra 4 cycles til I got someone to buddy up with - and 2 of the trains before had empty double seats! where's the logic in that?

Another one I hate is OTT security searches at parks (particularly food and drink bans) - maybe stop people having full banquets, but when you're confiscating a bottle of drink, or small snacks - it just leaves people pi$$ed off, I think it was Jordan who had a hair clip confiscated at six flags America... And I'm not quite sure why walibi holland were frisking everyone!

and another one I thought of today is - how when you go to print a copy of a park map, it's usually a PDF version of their professionally printed map (usually done on A3), sao when you print it on A4 - it's pretty much unreadable - wouldn't it be nice if you could download 2 or 3 nicely readable a4 pages?
 

TLARides

Hyper Poster
One word. Fasttrack.

The parks already have "No line jumping" as a rule. What better way to enforce that rule than letting people pay $20 extra to jump in front of people who have been waiting for possibly hours on end?
 

HeartlineCoaster

Theme Park Superhero
Not letting out the clutch fullly.

Over the top safety rules on rides.

^Fastrack is fine if it's managed properly, gotta spend money to make it.
 

Hyde

Matt SR
Staff member
Moderator
Social Media Team
New annoyance: amusement park websites that are not properly optimized for mobile.
 

Howie

Donkey in a hat
You wanna know what really grinds my gears?
Coming on to this forum to check for any new news, gossip or stimulating debates, only to find the 'New Posts' box clogged up with entries from the 'Three Word Story' thread and the monumentally pointless 'Staff vs User Counting Game' thread.
I mean, really? 444 pages (so far) of people counting? What a colossal waste of cyberspace that is.
Get a life!!!
If there's some way that these threads could be excluded from appearing in the 'New Posts' box, that would be amazing.
I'm sure there's other pointless topics that are worthy of the exclusion clause, but those two?
Yeah, those two in particular really grind my gears...
 

davidm

Strata Poster
^ seems that the forum software might have some "Ignore Thread / Forum" functionality, but its either not turned-on or setup ; pester his @furie -ness about it.
 

MestnyiGeroi

Giga Poster
I despise fastpasses on principle (don't get me started), but when they combine with inept ride operations, it's infuriating.

I went to Knott's Berry Farm a few months ago, and we got in line for Sierra Sidewinder, which is a family coaster (on the intense end of the spectrum of family coasters, but a family coaster nonetheless). As a family coaster, this ride has no right having a long line. Yet the line for this coaster extended out of the ride area and stretched down the side of the main thoroughfare. But length of the line was not the problem. The line moved the slowest of any working coaster line I have ever been on (and I've been riding coasters for a long time). It absolutely inched along. It was not unusual not to move at all for five to ten minute stretches. Then a few steps. Add to this the constant stream of riders cutting through the line to "re-join" their groups, and I'm getting pretty aggravated. So, we wait in this ridiculous line for a mediocre ride for two hours. And what do I see when we finally reach the station? The fastpass people are entering from the side and moving forward to take up three out of the four cars, and blocking off the GP from entering anything but the first car. This means that every two minutes or so, two to four people are getting on the ride from the main line. I looked at the ride operators in absolute disbelief, and they seemed oblivious, treating the situation as if it were normal.

In other words, the insanely long line for this simple ride was absolutely created solely by the horrendously poor operations set-up. If the ride were managed properly, there would be no line to speak of.

Has anyone else ever encountered this level of ineptitude in ride operations?
 

Benenen

Hyper Poster
Has anyone else ever encountered this level of ineptitude in ride operations?

Chessington on a rainy busy day when they only load two per car on Rattlesnake for some safety reason.

Fast track takes up every other car meaning you get two people from the main queue every 90 seconds or so. Like you described the queue just doesn't move and it's a real burden to stand in.
 

MestnyiGeroi

Giga Poster
Chessington on a rainy busy day when they only load two per car on Rattlesnake for some safety reason.

Fast track takes up every other car meaning you get two people from the main queue every 90 seconds or so. Like you described the queue just doesn't move and it's a real burden to stand in.
Yep, that sounds like the same kind of thing.
 

furie

SBOPD
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
You wanna know what really grinds my gears?
Coming on to this forum to check for any new news, gossip or stimulating debates, only to find the 'New Posts' box clogged up with entries from the 'Three Word Story' thread and the monumentally pointless 'Staff vs User Counting Game' thread.
I mean, really? 444 pages (so far) of people counting? What a colossal waste of cyberspace that is.
Get a life!!!
If there's some way that these threads could be excluded from appearing in the 'New Posts' box, that would be amazing.
I'm sure there's other pointless topics that are worthy of the exclusion clause, but those two?
Yeah, those two in particular really grind my gears...

There are add-ons for doing that that I can test out. Nothing native in the forum software though.

Will look into it :)
 

Howie

Donkey in a hat
^Sounds awfully technical to me, not the sort of thing my simpleton, Ewok loving, Shropshire-bumpkin brain can deal with, but if it's no trouble for a tech-savvy fella such as yourself, then crack on, good Sir!
Thanks mate :)
 

NathP

Roller Poster
Mine has to be one train operations when it's busy, kids queue jumping to join their massive group near the front of the line and the huge parking charges the parks impose on us!
 

furie

SBOPD
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
^Sounds awfully technical to me, not the sort of thing my simpleton, Ewok loving, Shropshire-bumpkin brain can deal with, but if it's no trouble for a tech-savvy fella such as yourself, then crack on, good Sir!
Thanks mate :)

It's what sepeaates the brilliant from the Ewok lovers :p

I've added the mod. I think it has to be done at the forum level. I see something different to the rest of you oiks, so it's difficult to know if it's a new thing or something I always had :p

If you go to Forum Fun, the should be a tick box next to Three Word Story. Click it and then you can access the moderator tools, which includes Ignore.

This doesn't work on Tapatalk by the way, none of the mods do because they're web specific only.

If I don't reply, it's because I successfully set this thread to ignore :p
 
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