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Energylandia | Choco Chip Creek | Vekoma Minetrain | 2024

A cred's a cred and it definitely beats the oddly named Happy Loops!!
To be honest, I didn't think Choco Chip Creek looked that great considering the scope you have to work with with a vekoma mine train - but we can be fairly confident it will look better when the theming's eventually finished! :)

EL certainly has no problem being a 'quantity over quality' park, but there's no shortage of high quality stuff to lap once the creds are mopped up :D
 
Wait a minute? Or they now throwing yet another casual kiddie/family Vekoma in the mix? This is a goldmine for credit hoes!

God, this park is full of surprises, and Vekoma must be so happy to have them as their main source for coasters.
 
I really hope for another kiddie coaster, I think the park really lacks those 😂
But seriously, I want them to be the first park to hit 20 coasters, not SFMM.
 
The thing is... Most, if not all, of their mid size vekoma family coasters are excellent rides, and actually all often have more queues than their RMC, Hyper and Launch coasters!!! So you can kind of see why they keep buying them!
 
All of the artwork I see for Sweet Valley just screams 1980s to me. I'm not sure why, I'm not sure if it's intentional and I'm not sure I like it. But it just does.

Also yay creds.
 
JoshC. said:
All of the artwork I see for Sweet Valley just screams 1980s to me. I'm not sure why, I'm not sure if it's intentional and I'm not sure I like it. But it just does.

Also yay creds.
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It looks nothing like the art work posted here… The colour palette is much brighter and louder than the pastels shown above… Not sure if that’s a good thing or bad? :/

Edited to add: I suppose it will weather and fade in time though…
 
Nicky Borrill said:
The thing is... Most, if not all, of their mid size vekoma family coasters are excellent rides, and actually all often have more queues than their RMC, Hyper and Launch coasters!!! So you can kind of see why they keep buying them!
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Long queues doesn't always mean more popularity, it can also signal a low capacity.
 
Pokemaniac said:
Long queues doesn't always mean more popularity, it can also signal a low capacity.
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It can, but when you’ve an RMC, on one train, sat in the station ten minutes waiting for riders, whist several of the family coasters have queues, it’s a bit more than capacity at play.

Yesterday was incredible though, the first time the park has ever felt ‘packed’ to me… With the big rides all having good queues, packed midways, and an absolutely electric atmosphere!!!
 
Pokemaniac said:
Long queues doesn't always mean more popularity, it can also signal a low capacity.
Click to expand...

Nicky Borrill said:
It can, but when you’ve an RMC, on one train, sat in the station ten minutes waiting for riders, whist several of the family coasters have queues, it’s a bit more than capacity at play.
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I think the way I look at it, if people are prepared to wait a long time for a ride, then they have some sort of expectation it will be good. If you're queueing a long time for a ride, when other rides have shorter queues, there's certainly a level of thinking of "I'm choosing to queue this amount of time for this because I want to do it, and I want to do it because I think/know it will be good". Obviously there's exceptions, such as if people have done everything else, but I think that's a big part of it.

But obviously, if all the family coasters are busier than the thrill coasters, that's telling in its own right. Is it that the park is much more densely packed with family groups than thrill-seeking groups? Is it just that the combined throughput of the thrill rides is at the right level for the park's visitors, but the family level is too low? Are the park in a position that they need to stop building thrill coasters and should look to more accessible family-thrill rides (a la the mine train)?

The park have good financial backing of course, so if they want to keep adding thrill rides and family rides and not be overly concerned that they needn't have added the former, that's great news. But it's an interesting discussion. For all the jokes about the park having a larger number of small, off-the-shelf coasters, it's clearly working for the park and for their visitors.
 
That is indeed a legitimate argument. I mean, most parks will not bother to purchase 2 of the same coaster types, but if you see that those are very popular, it might actually make sense to relieve the queue times. Sure, a more diverse lineup sounds more compelling, but sometimes GP does not need 12 different kinds of family coasters, but only a few decent ones.

@JoshC. I believe they told a couple of years ago on a press conference, that a majority of their guests are actually schools.
I don't feel like they are lacking family attractions, but they might need to renconsider the kind of family ride they are building. When I visited in September on a Saturday, every larger ride had a decent queue, but lots of family flats were still completely walk-on.

Also, I believe the park might have good backing, but is also self sustaining. I think @pawel98123 posted the numbers of 2019 a while ago and the park turned a good profit. Keep in mind, that it is very expensive for Poland, and their prices have steadily increased for the last years. My new annual pass was ~50% more expensive than my old one.
 
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JoshC. said:
I think the way I look at it, if people are prepared to wait a long time for a ride, then they have some sort of expectation it will be good. If you're queueing a long time for a ride, when other rides have shorter queues, there's certainly a level of thinking of "I'm choosing to queue this amount of time for this because I want to do it, and I want to do it because I think/know it will be good". Obviously there's exceptions, such as if people have done everything else, but I think that's a big part of it.

But obviously, if all the family coasters are busier than the thrill coasters, that's telling in its own right. Is it that the park is much more densely packed with family groups than thrill-seeking groups? Is it just that the combined throughput of the thrill rides is at the right level for the park's visitors, but the family level is too low? Are the park in a position that they need to stop building thrill coasters and should look to more accessible family-thrill rides (a la the mine train)?

The park have good financial backing of course, so if they want to keep adding thrill rides and family rides and not be overly concerned that they needn't have added the former, that's great news. But it's an interesting discussion. For all the jokes about the park having a larger number of small, off-the-shelf coasters, it's clearly working for the park and for their visitors.
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To be clear… (On most days) The park has far too many rides and attractions for the number of guests that visit… Full stop.

On many of the quieter days I’ve visited on, (which is most times I’ve visited) the demographic on park is mostly families and school trips. On these days it’s not unusual for the thrill coaster to be very quiet, whilst the family attractions still attract queues. It’s also not unusual to hear many English, American, German, Dutch etc accents in the Zadra and Hyperion stations.

The way I see it is that the park is doing a great job in attracting Polish families to spend their hard earned money on days out. And they seem to be doing well at attracting school / coach trips. These are their ‘core’ customers, and the reason for all of the family attractions.

But also, at the same time, they’re really trying to attract international guests to the park, and Zator in general, hence the big boys. And it seems to be working.

Each time I visit, more hotels / holiday apartments have popped up around the park. There appear to be more and more ‘non polish’ accents.

So yeh, two different methods to attract two different types of customer.

And lets be honest, the cred count doesn’t hurt when attracting foreign enthusiasts either, and once they’ve got that record, I firmly believe they will bash the hell out of it in marketing ;)
 
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