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Phantasialand | F. L. Y. | Vekoma Launched Flying Coaster | 2020

Agree with what’s been said above, and with the park only being allowed one guest per 10 m squared of space, opening the new land would boost the capacity and therefore the money the park are able to take. With the new area opening the park could definitely be expecting to hit full capacity daily which will increase profits massively.

Also, the new hotel would be able to be marketed as this really exclusive experience, and perhaps if the situation stabilises a bit more in a few months time possible ERT on F.L.Y could be introduced which would really push hotel sales.

But yeah, they need to get the park and the ling bao up and running first, and then matamba, and then we can focus on the new area. It was supposed to be June this year so I think it’s in their best interests to get it open this summer :)
 
I would very much like to see this open this year if they're able to - continued testing of the thing seems to point that that's the direction Phantasialand are going in and in the past to my knowledge they've never really adhered to the more formulaic 'new ride' marketing/opening strategies we're used to from big chains like Merlin or Six Flags - they tend to just open when they feel like and the marketing spend follows on from there.

That said if there was indeed a pot of marketing money assigned to promote FLY/Rookburgh in a big way for this season I wouldn't be surprised if we saw that deferred into 2021 and this year becomes more of a 'just get open and make the best of it while we can.' With the COVID-19 social distancing rules in place the parks aren't going to want the park to fill with as many guests as possible (ie the general goal of any marketing campaign for any park anywhere) so it's almost a blessing in disguise. Defer the BIG marketing spend to 2021 and go all guns blazing with FLY/Rookburgh from then on and soft-open for the remainder of 2020 to keep those turnstiles ticking over comfortably in the meantime.
 
Howie said:
Exactly this. If it opens this year, I'm going. If it doesn't, I won't bother. From a business perspective, the sooner they get it open, the sooner they'll get lots of goon money flowing through the tills.
Bit of a no-brainer I reckon.
Click to expand...

I think if they choose to open it for 2021 it could make sense because if they open it this season, it will be quite late, so they won’t get the whole season to properly benefit from it, as it would lose its “brand new for this year” in a few months. However if they open it next season they have a lot longer to milk it, per say. So if they do only open fly for 2021 I think that would be their logic


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I agree that opening the coaster 2021 might be more clever marketing. But the problem I see is that no one really know what a season 2021 will look like. Can parks run on normal capacity? No one knows. So they might as well open the coaster this year and sell the amount of tickets the park can operate safely under. A new coaster might also sell out the tickets that perhaps wouldn't sell.

The times are so uncertain.
 
Twist3d_steel said:
I think if they choose to open it for 2021 it could make sense because if they open it this season, it will be quite late, so they won’t get the whole season to properly benefit from it, as it would lose its “brand new for this year” in a few months. However if they open it next season they have a lot longer to milk it, per say. So if they do only open fly for 2021 I think that would be their logic


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Click to expand...

Thing is, Phantasialand pushed Klugheim / Taron as new in both 2017 and 2018. Sure, they could only use "New for 2016" for one year, but they were able to milk it for a good couple of years.

A bigger marketing campaign might be more suited for the 2021 season I guess, but they still could - and in my opinion, should - open it in 2020 if they can.
 
As said above, there’s no guarantee things will be back to normal next year. For all we know, parks may have to operate on social distancing and limited capacity next year too. Therefore, it makes no sense to hold off a brand new investment for next year if it is practicable to open it this year.

If things are back to normal, then I would expect a bigger marketing push from Phantasialand next year for the area. However, I still think we should expect to see it open this season.

Also for anyone who has had their club membership frozen and was wondering about the hotel discount: the hotel discount(if you had it previously) will be extended along with your pass once the passes are resumed again, so hopefully there may be a chance to use the discount in the new hotel!
 
Not F.L.Y. related but Phantasialand news:
Richard Schmidt one of the founders of Phantasialand has died aged 93.
Together with Gottfried Löffelhardt (died 2011) they first opened the park in 1967. Schmidt did retire and step back in the 90s, and the park eventually passed into the ownership of Löffelhardt's son who continues to run it with his wife today but the management company is still called Schmidt Löffelhardt GmbH.
The two friends first met after the Second World War in Berlin - which is why they choose the city as the theme for the main street.
loeffelhardt-schmidt.jpg

Picture from the article of Löffelhardt & Schmidt together at the opening of Black Mamba in 2006. Must have been remarkable to see how far the park has come from its beginnings as a fairy tale forest and some rides around a lake on a former brown coal mining site.

Source
 
So Phantasialand reopened today and just incase anyone was still having summer 2020 doubts - at the entrance to Rookburgh tape to mark an entrance and queue has been stuck down.
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FB_IMG_1590739558353.jpg

Source Facebook

Elsewhere as previous shared in this thread Hotel Matamba has received a direct to park entrance (the hotel remains currently closed however) and with this the African area has been expanded essentially with an extra path loop around and through Black Mamba's loop. Additionally a new African bar has been added.
Screenshot_20200529-091622_Instagram.jpg

Screenshot_20200529-091803_Instagram.jpg


As to be expected VR is currently not being used on Crazy Bats and now the experience of Temple of the Night Hawk has come back to haunt us. They have reactivated the speakers in the hall to play the Crazy Bats theme.
20200529_092213.jpg

Source Bleibneugierig.podcast Instagram
 
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Hard to tell out of context of what the park is doing, but does this mean that - under these restrictions at least - Berlin street will be the only way to enter the queue for Fly? Presumably there will still be multiple ways to enter Rookburgh, but if an entrance is marked there, it will end up being used.

I noticed in another photo that Taron's queue extension out of the entrance, along one of the main pathways, has an entrance marker, so it could just be indicating a set route to the entrance, but presumably with social distancing, Fly will have long queues which could reach the entrance and beyond.
 
Yeah its either they expect the queue for F.L.Y. to stretch out so far with distancing in place. Or as was done with Klugheim at opening its for area crowd control maybe? Suppose you could queue a decent number along that tunnel from the Berlin street to Rookburgh, and let people out of the area at the gate on the Fantasy/Wuze Wall side.
I'm just wondering if they've already got the tape down will it be opening sooner than July then? Or are they just very well prepared in advance?
 
JoshC. said:
I noticed in another photo that Taron's queue extension out of the entrance, along one of the main pathways, has an entrance marker, so it could just be indicating a set route to the entrance, but presumably with social distancing, Fly will have long queues which could reach the entrance and beyond.
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Yes taron is currently 100 minutes, so dread to think what FLY’s queue time will be like ?
 
CSLKennyNI said:
So Phantasialand reopened today and just incase anyone was still having summer 2020 doubts - at the entrance to Rookburgh tape to mark an entrance and queue has been stuck down.
FB_IMG_1590739555888.jpg

FB_IMG_1590739558353.jpg

Source Facebook

Elsewhere as previous shared in this thread Hotel Matamba has received a direct to park entrance (the hotel remains currently closed however) and with this the African area has been expanded essentially with an extra path loop around and through Black Mamba's loop. Additionally a new African bar has been added.
Screenshot_20200529-091622_Instagram.jpg

Screenshot_20200529-091803_Instagram.jpg


As to be expected VR is currently not being used on Crazy Bats and now the experience of Temple of the Night Hawk has come back to haunt us. They have reactivated the speakers in the hall to play the Crazy Bats theme.
20200529_092213.jpg

Source Bleibneugierig.podcast Instagram
Click to expand...
I think it is 90% confirmed now that fly will open this year if they are allready taping the queue line for it. It would be stupid if they make room for a queue line from a attraction thats not opening this season.
 
Those markings are actually the queue for "Lili's Cafe" which is now entered through the smaller side entrance

However i noticed that they worked very quickly over the last few days to finish the last part of the wall that is visible from within Rookburgh.
Work has not even started on the rest of it, which is actually visible from all over the Berlin area.
This suggests to me that the priority is to get the views from within Rookburgh right for a foreseeable opening - if it wouldn't open soon it would be much more sensible to first finish the part that guests would actually see.

rideonblog.jpg

Source: RideOnBlog
 
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