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Is your home park doing well?

Pokemaniac

Pokemaniac

Mountain monkey
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No park is entirely perfect from a coaster enthusiast perspective. We all know that our home park - or other favourite park - could be better than it currently is. Building bigger and better coasters more often, for instance. But that's usually just a matter of us enthusiasts always wanting more and bigger stuff. Parks tend to work in a more reasonable realm of investments and ambitions. Not building world-beaters every year, but at least adding to its attraction lineup every now and then, giving its buildings a new lick of paint, keeping the toilets reasonably clean, training staff to do their job adequately, and overall staying afloat in a myriad of other small ways. Few parks manage to consistently set visitor records year after year, but at least they hope for their numbers to stay somewhat stable or have a positive trend. They deliver a good visitor experience, more people come to visit. Some parks excel at this, others see a gradual decline, yet others are more in the middle.

How is "your" park faring in this regard? How are they doing financially, and how is the visitor experience developing from year to year? Do you see a positive or negative trend? Or does it just stay the same? Are you enjoying every new visit, and how is the park's reputation doing?

I believe I've made my thoughts on my home park clear in several other recent threads, so for now I leave the microphone to you. Is your home park doing well?
 
I mean, Carowinds is doing well if you take a glance at it- they're even getting a new coaster. But they could use a little bit of theming if you ask me...
 
Um... there are no theme parks in my immediate vicinity, unfortunately, so my home park is technically either Brean Leisure Park (I cannot quite bring myself to call it Brean Theme Park) or Symonds Yat Leisure Park in terms of distance, of which I've never visited either, so I'm not sure if I'm best placed to answer that question...
 
I don't think Seabreeze ever does "well" as they don't really make investments in the park all that often, though by no means do I believe they're close to losing money or doing poorly. Infrastructure is well maintained, employees are well trained and ops are good for the most part, they're just tight on land and don't really need to do much to maintain crowds as locals will likely go either way with the price and the waterpark being a huge draw.

Darien Lake is the far more interesting discussion and I'd say they've not been doing great these last many years (pretty sure attendance hasn't been great since the SF days, though has been rising slowly over the last few years) the parks only got one train on each coaster, infrastructure is falling apart buildings and landscaping need work but with a recent change in ownership and management its too early for me to predict anything about the coming years and will be an interesting case to follow.
 
It's not perfect, but I feel Parc Astérix is on a good path after a decade of stagnation in the 00s. Pégase Express is a fun family coaster and a decent addition, and obviously the LSM launch due for 2021 is some very exciting prospect. The park also worked well to improve on issues it has suffered with in the past - operations have been improved and line-cutters, once so prevalent, are now deservedly punished.
 
I'm not sure whether Michael Mack has the same skills as his father had as the boss of Europa-Park. The park is still doing great, but I don't like how there are more and more digital and VR-Things in the park that don't convince me, and I don't like that he brought several movie licenses in the park instead of creating original stories and themes. I am still looking forward to their next big coaster though. Let's see how that turns out.
Also, I am upset about the re-theming of Eurosat. Stupid Can Can stuff. But that's my personal opinion.
 
My home park SFGAM is doing well but my second home park which is Busch gardens Tampa and Williamsburg arent doing that great
 
N O
My home park is Gyeoungju World
3 min dispatch in B&M Invert called Phaethon+1train
In Draken
1 train on weekends(24 people) +2 min dispatch+70~80min wait at night.
 
Six Flags Great Adventure is my home park right now, and, yeah, they're doing alright.

Coney Island is a more interesting discussion since it's actually expanded a good amount, despite the lack of new coasters since Thunderbolt. Always a fun day going down there, and it usually is pretty crowded. Plus, with Cyclone and Thunderbolt being $10 a ride, they better be making a good profit!!! Oh ya, and $8 for a Volare. We all know the park should pay us $8 to ride that death trap.
 
SFOT is landlocked without any real ability to expand. They've essentially hit the max of what they can without removal. But yeah, it's a strong park that's due for a decent investment.

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Six Flags Great Adventure is my home park right now, and, yeah, they're doing alright.

Coney Island is a more interesting discussion since it's actually expanded a good amount, despite the lack of new coasters since Thunderbolt. Always a fun day going down there, and it usually is pretty crowded. Plus, with Cyclone and Thunderbolt being $10 a ride, they better be making a good profit!!! Oh ya, and $8 for a Volare. We all know the park should pay us $8 to ride that death trap.
 
Alton Towers for me and pretty badly. I'm still going annually, but not with any real excitement about it. I just know I'm gong to find a park that's looking worse and operating worse and offering less than the previous year :(
 
furie said:
Alton Towers for me and pretty badly. I'm still going annually, but not with any real excitement about it. I just know I'm gong to find a park that's looking worse and operating worse and offering less than the previous year :(
Click to expand...

I know that feeling all too well. Time to chime in with my own thoughts.

TusenFryd. Where do I begin? Probably 2006, when SpeedMonster was new and everything looked good. The park had its second-strongest year ever, with more than 535,000 visitors (just short of the 538,000 who showed up during ThunderCoaster's first season). After years of decent investments, they were building a strong lineup of rides. One new ride was built every year, with a big ride every three years or so (ThunderCoaster 2001, SuperSplash 2003, SpeedMonster 2006).

And then... Parques Reunidos invaded.

It didn't look as bad in the beginning. TusenFryd placed itself firmly on the flat ride map with a Zamperla Giant Discovery in 2009, continuing the three-year investment cycle. But that ended up being the only thrill ride built in the park since 2006. Under Parques Reunidos, the park has removed more rides than it has added, and age is taking its toll on those that remain. There was a second-hand family coaster added in 2012, it is actually older than SpeedMonster since it served a decade at Mirabilandia. Since then, only two new attractions have been built at TusenFryd. The cycle of "an investment every year, a big investment every three years" has turned into "an investment every three years". The northern half of the park hasn't seen a single new addition since 2006 (the interior of an attraction building was refitted in 2010, though).

I visited the park last week, and it was a sorry sight. A Sunday during high season, with brilliant weather. Queues were only existent because of spectacularly bad operations (for instance, assigning only a single ride op to the 40-seat Spin Spider, resulting in a dispatch time just north of 10 minutes). All the buildings looked bleak and weathered, as if screaming for a new lick of paint. Ride signs such as reminders to use the baggage boxes were made of laminated paper stapled to the wall of station buildings, as if the earlier style of decorative wooden signs had just been thrown away as the sun bleached them to illegibility. ThunderCoaster was rougher than ever, and utterly deprived of its once fabulous airtime. A staff member I spoke to estimated 5000 visitors that day, less than half the number of tickets sold the day ThunderCoaster opened.

TusenFryd is not doing well. It is stagnant and decaying, and only receives media attention when the national newspapers run their "worst food in the country" rankings, which TusenFryd tends to top. 2006 remains its second-best season ever, behind 2001, visitor numbers in the past few years have hovered around 460,000. Meanwhile, there are other parks in Scandinavia that have doubled both their coaster numbers and visitor numbers in the same time period. TusenFryd stays afloat solely because of a lack of competition, since current conditions would not sustain it if the locals had other options to go to without leaving the country. At least the three-year investment cycle will hit another peak in 2019, maybe they will build something big then. But I'm not optimistic for the long-term trend.
 
Toverland is doing really well, even though it's still an insider's tip. If you look at the numberplates at Movie Park Germany and then think about how far some of these people have driven (especially from the netherlands) then it doesn't really makes sense how Toverland only gets 1/4 of Movie Park's attendance. Luckily though, Fenix is destined to change that long term, even though this is going to take some time of course. From what I have heard and seen, the summer holidays have been satisfying for Toverland, but there is no hype around the new additions as in people queue before the park opens to ride the new coaster.

However, I can't see how these investments won't capitalize in the future, especially next year when everything is completely done and most people have learnt about their new additions. Since most people probably learnt about Fenix when it opened, it's reasonable to think that plenty of families already planned trips for the holidays, and didn't take Toverland into account.

And finally, since interest rates are bound to stay this low for literally forever (at least inside the EU), nothing is really stopping them from following through on their ambitious expansion plans. Here's what I expect for the future:
2019: finishing touch for Avalon (theming) and Port Laguna (show stage)
2020: Booster Bike retheme with new custom trains to fit into the Magic Valley
2022: opening of the Toverland Hotel
2024: new themed area with a Water Coaster, a Thrill Ride (Starflyer?) and plenty of kids attractions

But even if none of that happens, I still couldn't complain for now :D
 
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