What's new

Rita question?

Possibly because it wasn't a new coaster type? Or new to the UK? Just guessing.
 
I own CF, so yeah, sort of, but team members take turns.
 
It wasn't a secret weapon because it was essentially bought "off the shelf" at the Intamin coaster shop.

It's a bit more complicated than using the express checkout till at Asda (I assume you have problems with those?) - but that's pretty much it.

Alton went in to Intamin, said "we need a coaster about... THIS BIG"
Intamin said "Here you go"
And off they went... Well, after they got a till assistant to come over and deal with the "Unexpected item in baggage area" error....

With all that noise, no wonder it wasn't a secret :)
 
I also think that the speed with which the decision was made probably prohibited any extensive 'Secret Weapon' marketing.

I was told recently that Tussauds actually visited Knotts and Cedar Point and chose Stealth for Thorpe before Rita was even thought of, even though Rita actually opened first. So basically they had Stealth on order and thought, "you know what, we'll have a quick 'below the tree line' version of that for Alton too" and Intamin delivered a short time later so no time for any SW campaign.
 
Top