GAcoaster

It keeps coming down to maintenance and parts availability and costs. Especially in parks where there is a waterpark attached to park there is less demand for a flume ride.

Apparently it has not lived up to expectations with the attendance bump they wanted. I have heard AK attendance was up about 14% this summer, but EPCOT and DHS are both down by a lot.

It seems like everyone's attendance has been off this year. Disney just opened up all but the last couple of Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party dates to cast discounts. Usually they only give CMs a discount on the September dates, but now they are offering the discount through October 26th. They've only sold out one or two dates this year and that came much later than normal. Busch Gardens Tampa is offering any two nights of Howl-O-Scream for $49.95. There are deals everywhere but I think people are a little cautious between fear and caution about spending.

I think the Cedar Fair parks will pretty much stay on the same trajectory they've been on. Now Ouimet leaving is interesting because there are rumors he may go back to Disney or take on a combined SeaWorld/Merlin Parks.

Six Flags almost bought SeaWorld when InBev first tried to sell off the parks. Thank goodness they didn't end up buying!

It was a case of the park owners deciding they had other priorities that season. They had already cleared the site by moving the greenhouses to the other side of the property. Six Flags was on a roll with those Cyclone/Psyclones and I think they were pretty much planning to add them to every park until Time Warner came and with new ideas and priorities.

I always thought it was odd that Merchandise ran Kandy Kitchen as well. It's funny too because down here at SeaWorld our Merchandise department also runs the candy store, but the Culinary department makes the candy we sell. I believe that the Main Street Confectionery at Magic Kingdom is also run by their Merchandise department.

There are plenty of places that could have used it, but finding a buyer for something as large as Dragons was is not that easy. On top of that, Universal is most likely using this as a huge tax write-off which will save them more money than they could have got from selling it. Yes, the ride is less than 20 years old, but it also operated 365 days a year for all of those almost 20 years. It easily has had more wear and tear than other coasters built at that time because it never got the downtime that others get. It was running in a diminished capacity since they had to stop the dueling for safety. It was a problem for the park because it spoiled some of the site lines in Wizarding World of Harry Potter and the license holders (JK Rowling and Warner Brothers) were not happy with the metal detectors at the ride entrance that Universal Operations deemed necessary after several incidents at the park. It's not great losing two really good coasters (they were great when they dueled), but the business model of Universal is much different now and the replacement coaster will be a huge improvement for families (wider range of riders) as well as beating Disney to the punch by 2 year (2019 opening when Tron and Guardians of the Galaxy won't be ready until 2021).

I hear you and I know I really want to eventually launch a Busch Gardens history website, and we would really like to eventually expand to have historic information for other Six Flags parks as well. If anyone has a passion for putting together historic information for other parks, I encourage you to put something together! I'd love to see every park eventually have a website on its history and I constantly find myself frustrated with the lack of historic detail about other parks. I don't know why I always expect that somebody else is as passionate about their home park as we are with ours. If you haven't seen them yet, there are a couple of other parks sites I enjoy: http://www.greatamericaparks.com/ https://www.tampapix.com/buschgardens10.htm I love that there are so many Disney history pages, just wish every theme park had one...

We had a lot of challenges over the summer with our migration to a new server (which was necessary). I write most of the text for the updates as well as having been the point person on the migration and upgrades that have occurred and unfortunately I have to work a full time job and a part time job (generally about 60 hours a week between the two), and I would LOVE to have more time to devote to GreatAdventureHistory making updates and new spotlights as well as updating my own website, but there just isn't enough time in the day for all that I want to do. Harry and I are lucky to have two great moderators on here to help us out with the day to day stuff here on the forums, and we are working on possibly bringing on new contributors to help with the pages and spotlights. We have SO MANY big plans of what we would like to see and do with the site (all the links that are still inactive on the home pages give hints about that) and hopefully now that the back-end stuff is out of the way we can continue to grow and expand the site with great new stuff. Part of the challenge is that we keep getting new stuff to update and expand the existing spotlights and pages so then it turns into the decision of update something that already exists or create something new. Thank you for your continued support and patience!

There are several of those dome buildings here in Orlando, and one that appears to be the same size as Showcase and is part of the Pirate's Dinner Theater was just destroyed by Irma:

I'm shocked to see so many parks removing log flumes like this. They still get long lines and are family favorites. And it's not like they're replacing them with new versions or other water rides. I guess the maintenance is costly, but at the same time there's nothing on these rides that should be too hard to replace. The pumps are standard equipment and the fiberglass troughs should be easy enough to repair. The only thing I can think is maybe the logs/boats are costly to replace when they wear out.

Having worked in Show Ops I can tell you the problem is MOST of GA's crowd won't sit through a show like this. You have people walking in and out throughout performances. The park absolutely should have entertainment, but it really needs to be things that you just "find" around the park where you can sit and watch or just catch part of as you pass by. Universal does a lot of this with small street shows around the park throughout the day. The idea of a sit down musical review like this is something that unless it done REALLY well doesn't play to theme park crowds anymore. I love these kind of shows when they are done well, but that takes money which most parks don't want to spend on entertainment anymore.

The problem is that Six Flags contracts out for the lockers rather than running them in house. The company that runs the lockers wants to make money so they charge. It's not unreasonable to ask you to put things in a locker or to charge you a dollar to do it. It's a fact of life for theme parks which are businesses, not charities. While I get that some people have zipper pockets they keep their stuff in, the park knows that many who use those are also the ones who pull the phone out on the ride.

All it takes is one person who doesn't follow the park policy to ruin t for everyone. In this case multiple people disobey the policy of no loose articles and bring things on and/or film on the rides and it has ruined it for everyone. Any time people complain about this I just have to remind them that those are the rules and the park is private property. Don't like it, stop going. I personally hate those policies. I have a camera that securely fits in my pocket. I am not taking it out while I'm on the ride. I also understand that the park's policy is there for a reason and I just throw my stuff in a locker or give it to someone else to hold while I ride. Because of policies like this I don't ride the rides where I have to empty my pockets as much because it's so annoying. I still remember the first parks to really get strict about this were the Busch parks and I remember many years ago being furious when I went to ride Montu and they wouldn't dispatch the ride because someone saw me put my camera in my pocket (I had taken pictures in the queue). They insisted that I had to leave the camera in the station or I couldn't ride (and it was a new, expensive camera!). I was pissed, but they had good reason because so many people kept taking photos on ride (it was pre-digital/cell phones, but people would still take pictures).