Jarrett
Most Obnoxious Member 2016
Pretty simple thread, name a park that comes to mind and what you think the most important addition to it in the near future could be. Basically, a giant place to just dump your creative ideas directed at specific parks.
I'll start with the biggest ones I've had lately:
Dollywood
Dollywood is an amazing park with a fantastic setting in the Smoky Mountains and as a result, some of the views you can catch from localities around the park. However, you can hardly get a good glimpse of the mountains from inside the park. The train provides a nice view and the view you get from the top of Wild Eagle is amazing, but I feel like the park needs a sort of observation tower that could allow families to enjoy the view that thrill seekers enjoy on Wild Eagle.
The engineer in me that simply couldn't turn on this problem came up with a pretty reasonable solution. A Polercoaster. Maybe do a bit of an upgrade to the Wilderness Pass entrances and use this as the chief attraction in doing so. Cut out the useless basketball game by Tennessee Tornado (maybe move it to County Fair?) and in that spot open a Polercoaster with a mountain lodge motif. This could be a 300-500 foot tower that could crap all over Gatlinburg Tower nearby (which I believe is the biggest observation structure in the area). At the top of this there could be a two-tiered observation deck, the lower one holding a small park museum (put the Thunder Express car in the tunnel up in there) and maybe a souvenir shop and a full service restaurant, while the top one holds primarily an observation area. This would have so much more use than Skyscraper as unlike the paper-flat Orlando area, there's actually landscape to look at from this tower. You would ride up a tower painted a nice timber-y brown color with river rock accents in a nice glass elevator giving you a great view of the Smokies. On the actual coaster, however, you would spiral up and glide down on track painted a jade color (think the copper tarnish in some of Wild Eagle's decorations) with a 360-degree view of the Smokies surrounding you. Both the line for the elevators and polercoaster could reflect the "inspirational challenge" feel they used for Wild Eagle. I'd probably ditch the huge LED screen that it would have, but if it's an integral part of the design, use the layer to hold cutout steel sculptures of mountain life, like this picture but adapted for the Smoky Mountains complete with bears, deer, and eagles.
If not, then maybe an animated mountain panorama on the LEDs, showing a mountainous view with the clouds moving and the occasional bird flying by and maybe a butterfly or two fluttering around in the foreground as a little homage to the park's logo.
As for names, I'd elect to call the tower Big Bear Tower or Dollywood Tower and the coaster, which would be tricky to name, I would probably call Smoky Mountain Run or something really basic like that. Maybe Mountain Wings if they go with the butterfly ornament I get to in a bit?
FireChaser just filled the two huge gaps the park had open and I feel like this would really bring something nice, fresh, and unique to the area as a whole. It would be something huge that could be seen from the entire park and possibly even outside, and act as sort of a "landmark." Most parks I've noticed have a "landmark"-type thing around them that serves as a visual icon for that park (KI and KD's Eiffel Towers, CW's Wonder Mountain, Epcot's Spaceship Earth, Cinderella's Castle, I could go on for pages if I wanted to) and Dolywood, while it is small, is a park I don't see as fully "regional" as it's located in an area that tourists from everywhere frequent and it aims to cater to those groups, so having a landmark attraction there would potentially make the park more of a Smoky Mountain icon. Maybe they could even put the Dollywood logo revolving on the LED screen if they have to go that route or put a giant butterfly capping off the tower, similar to what KBF initially wanted to do with its Windseeker.
I think having one of these visible throughout the park and immediately outside of it would be really good for the park and set it apart some from other regional parks, because right now I feel like it straddles the line between a regional and national destination, and adding something that could be seen as an icon of Dollywood would really boost attendance from the tourist portion of the crowd it's trying to please.
Just an idea that's been messing with my mind lately that I wanted to get out on paper.
Busch Gardens Tampa
When I went last November, Gwazi officially became my least favorite wooden coaster, taking the spot from Son of Beast. I sat down in the train, expected the padding to make it a bearable experience...didn't NOTICE the padding on that **** thing!
However, I feel like the idea of a big, long, epic dueling wooden coaster was good and it would be an amazing ride if it wasn't for the Son of Beast-esque texture.
My ideal fix would be to get RMC to reprofile (which shouldn't require much considering how well GCIs are typically shaped) the ride and I-box it, painting the I-box tracks the colors of their respective sides. In addition to that, as part of the reprofiling (and yes, I know I've suggested this for SFMM Colossus as well), add in two instances where the trains perform inversions in which one track zero-g rolls over the other and switches sides of the structure. I can think of a few places where this could be done.
As for branding, have RMC try to replicate what a 4-seater Millennium Flyer car would look like and save the front plates from the GCI zero cars to repurpose on the RMC zero cars. Call the ride something like Gwazi Unleashed or Gwazi Unchained and maybe add some small queue upgrades, similar to what they did with Cheetah Hunt.
And I LITERALLY just thought of doing this as I typed this, but maybe refit the drops with Medusa Steel Coaster's Smiler-style entry. It's a great layout with plenty of RMC potential, it's just that the texture is **** awful!
So yeah, post away! Love hearing peoples' ideas, especially when they get as detailed as mine!
I'll start with the biggest ones I've had lately:
Dollywood
Dollywood is an amazing park with a fantastic setting in the Smoky Mountains and as a result, some of the views you can catch from localities around the park. However, you can hardly get a good glimpse of the mountains from inside the park. The train provides a nice view and the view you get from the top of Wild Eagle is amazing, but I feel like the park needs a sort of observation tower that could allow families to enjoy the view that thrill seekers enjoy on Wild Eagle.
The engineer in me that simply couldn't turn on this problem came up with a pretty reasonable solution. A Polercoaster. Maybe do a bit of an upgrade to the Wilderness Pass entrances and use this as the chief attraction in doing so. Cut out the useless basketball game by Tennessee Tornado (maybe move it to County Fair?) and in that spot open a Polercoaster with a mountain lodge motif. This could be a 300-500 foot tower that could crap all over Gatlinburg Tower nearby (which I believe is the biggest observation structure in the area). At the top of this there could be a two-tiered observation deck, the lower one holding a small park museum (put the Thunder Express car in the tunnel up in there) and maybe a souvenir shop and a full service restaurant, while the top one holds primarily an observation area. This would have so much more use than Skyscraper as unlike the paper-flat Orlando area, there's actually landscape to look at from this tower. You would ride up a tower painted a nice timber-y brown color with river rock accents in a nice glass elevator giving you a great view of the Smokies. On the actual coaster, however, you would spiral up and glide down on track painted a jade color (think the copper tarnish in some of Wild Eagle's decorations) with a 360-degree view of the Smokies surrounding you. Both the line for the elevators and polercoaster could reflect the "inspirational challenge" feel they used for Wild Eagle. I'd probably ditch the huge LED screen that it would have, but if it's an integral part of the design, use the layer to hold cutout steel sculptures of mountain life, like this picture but adapted for the Smoky Mountains complete with bears, deer, and eagles.
If not, then maybe an animated mountain panorama on the LEDs, showing a mountainous view with the clouds moving and the occasional bird flying by and maybe a butterfly or two fluttering around in the foreground as a little homage to the park's logo.
As for names, I'd elect to call the tower Big Bear Tower or Dollywood Tower and the coaster, which would be tricky to name, I would probably call Smoky Mountain Run or something really basic like that. Maybe Mountain Wings if they go with the butterfly ornament I get to in a bit?
FireChaser just filled the two huge gaps the park had open and I feel like this would really bring something nice, fresh, and unique to the area as a whole. It would be something huge that could be seen from the entire park and possibly even outside, and act as sort of a "landmark." Most parks I've noticed have a "landmark"-type thing around them that serves as a visual icon for that park (KI and KD's Eiffel Towers, CW's Wonder Mountain, Epcot's Spaceship Earth, Cinderella's Castle, I could go on for pages if I wanted to) and Dolywood, while it is small, is a park I don't see as fully "regional" as it's located in an area that tourists from everywhere frequent and it aims to cater to those groups, so having a landmark attraction there would potentially make the park more of a Smoky Mountain icon. Maybe they could even put the Dollywood logo revolving on the LED screen if they have to go that route or put a giant butterfly capping off the tower, similar to what KBF initially wanted to do with its Windseeker.
I think having one of these visible throughout the park and immediately outside of it would be really good for the park and set it apart some from other regional parks, because right now I feel like it straddles the line between a regional and national destination, and adding something that could be seen as an icon of Dollywood would really boost attendance from the tourist portion of the crowd it's trying to please.
Just an idea that's been messing with my mind lately that I wanted to get out on paper.
Busch Gardens Tampa
When I went last November, Gwazi officially became my least favorite wooden coaster, taking the spot from Son of Beast. I sat down in the train, expected the padding to make it a bearable experience...didn't NOTICE the padding on that **** thing!
However, I feel like the idea of a big, long, epic dueling wooden coaster was good and it would be an amazing ride if it wasn't for the Son of Beast-esque texture.
My ideal fix would be to get RMC to reprofile (which shouldn't require much considering how well GCIs are typically shaped) the ride and I-box it, painting the I-box tracks the colors of their respective sides. In addition to that, as part of the reprofiling (and yes, I know I've suggested this for SFMM Colossus as well), add in two instances where the trains perform inversions in which one track zero-g rolls over the other and switches sides of the structure. I can think of a few places where this could be done.
As for branding, have RMC try to replicate what a 4-seater Millennium Flyer car would look like and save the front plates from the GCI zero cars to repurpose on the RMC zero cars. Call the ride something like Gwazi Unleashed or Gwazi Unchained and maybe add some small queue upgrades, similar to what they did with Cheetah Hunt.
And I LITERALLY just thought of doing this as I typed this, but maybe refit the drops with Medusa Steel Coaster's Smiler-style entry. It's a great layout with plenty of RMC potential, it's just that the texture is **** awful!
So yeah, post away! Love hearing peoples' ideas, especially when they get as detailed as mine!
First of all, I would add along the lines of a B&M Giga with a more terrain feel, stay close to the ground after the first drop and weave in out the hilly Kentuckyana landscape. This of course would be located out back of Voyage's second hill and themed to a storm that rocked the pilgrims on their way to the new world. Secondly, I would completely revamp the 4th of July area of the park. This area is easily the most run down area of the park and just needs something to attract guests away from Thanksgiving and Halloween areas. Whether this be a shuttle coaster that GCI developed but one that the Gravity Group designs that would start near the rapids and snakes underneath Revolution and comes out for the second spike near The Sparkler or 3-point shoot out. This could be revived as Paul Reveres Midnight Ride which was just removed for the Grand Carousel. Lastly, topper track on The Legend and The Raven.
