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Too many of the same?

Mysterious Sue

Mysterious Sue

Strata Poster
Furie, you locked the Thorpe topic while I was writing a reply, so damn it i'm posting it any way, even if it is pointless! Alright, to be fair it has nothing to do with Thorpe's new coaster, so I guess you saved me from spaming lol!

Pablo237 said:
Thrope is already a nice place. It's awesome with what it's got. It's cool that they are getting another coaster. But I think it has enough already.

Alton is already a nice place. But it doesn't need another first of its kind coaster. It's has plenty of rides to keep people satisfied.

Hiede needs expansion and needs those old coasters thrown out and replaced with new high quality coasters. I am tired of seeing Corkscrews and SLCs at every single park. They hurt on-ride and are an eye sore when you see them. And this park is owned by Merlin! They should know that Hiede isn't equally as awesome as Thrope or Alton.

Here is what they should do if they want it to be awesome as the others:

Put in a Intamin Suspended Coaster to replace Limit and put in a Euro-Fighter or a B&M Sitting Coaster to replace Big Loop. Then you got Krake in there too with new coasters and with those vekoma rides out the door and you got another awesome Merlin park like the others.

"Hey lets go to this park!!"

"Yaaay!!"

"Oh they have..........a Corkscrew and an SLC............I've sure have never seen that before"
Click to expand...

Here goes...
Pablo237 said:
I am tired of seeing Corkscrews and SLCs at every single park.
Click to expand...
I second that! +1

I think that is something that will only change through time. Vekoma make good, standard coasters that have been a staple for many growing parks through the years, and although some are rough nowadays, they will only disappear gradually if a park can afford to bring in something new and better with good capacity.

We are quite lucky in the UK I guess with the diversity of rides available. It's only when you start looking across to Europe that the curse of the SLC starts to rear its head.

As for Merlin in the UK, everyone on this board has a different opinion, but I think most people (including myself, for whom Thopre was my home park for years) think that Thorpe has lost the plot a bit of late. So we go to Thorpe for the coasters, but Chessie for the feel of a great park that's well maintained!

For me, Alton is special: it's up NORTH, it's got a castle, it's in a magical looking valley, and it has really different coasters. So, personally, I rather like the fact that Alton pushes the boundaries and hope it continues. Ok, so Th1356890een was a flop for enthusiasts, but until then they'd been on a winning streak (argue over Air as much as you like...), but I'm proud that we have groundbreaking developments happening right here on our doorstep.
 
Alton ain't up north you softy southerner :lol: Or are we talking the old Watford gap ;)
 
Anything north of the Thames is north. Anything north of Harrow is very north. And anything north of Alton doesn't actually exist. Or might as well not, anyway.
 
That guy was willing to lock the topic to halt an uprising of hate replies?

WOW! This forum is more messed up than the Theme Park Review Forums!! This is pretty funny.

That is pretty cool that Alton get the first of the new designs and concepts. But Merlin didn't put the first Wing Rider in Alton or Thrope. They put it in Gardaland so that park can rise in popularity and guest visits. Alton has gotten a lot of firsts and news. I think they need to stop focusing on the good parks already and spread the love out to the other parks. Why not put the mystery new coaster in Hiede so that Merlin Park can have a rise of guests and visits?? That is if the mystery new coaster is good.

Krake might boost it up for Hiede. But it still isn't enough when it's just 1 inversion!! All parks should be equal in the level of awesome and diversity.
 
Nah, Furie's lovely. He just locked it because it was getting too off-topic.

The general topics splurge all they want, but comments in the construction section usually concentrate on hard fact/educated rumour. We won't know anything more for a while, at which point he'll make a new topic or unlock the old one cool)

ohh and anything north of the Thames is north.
Anything north of the Watford Gap if THE NORTH
Anything north of Alton is wildness - there be dragons there!
 
I don't know what to write.

Well that's my opinion. I come from the West and we always think Quality first. Sometimes we do cheap filler (The Dark Knight Coaster for example) and we to get real disappointed. We get real disappointed if we see the words SLC or Corkscrew even before the track has been fabricated. To us we don't like same over and over and want new quality. We always want something new and no fillers.
 
Good topic Sue, see, the advantages of my big bag of locks ;)

This is something I may have to look into if I get the chance...

I've been moving over the park guides to new CF, and the number of "Corkscrew" and "SLC" coasters across Europe and the States is incredible. They do seem to be tied in to park chains though. It's like the chain wanted a standard "coaster backbone" for their parks. The SLC was a "big coaster" at the time and came at a great price (especially when bought in bulk I imagine).

The UK is a real oddity though. Most parks developed very rapidly through private ownership and the "theme parks" boomed as the coastal parks (which had been around often for the best part of 100 years) died. Even Tussauds didn't grab their "majority" three parks until the late 1990's. It's such a different market over here. We're very keen amusement park goers, and those coastal parks have always bolstered that. They've always competed in the past because we're so small too.

So I think it's this kind of mix we have. The high number of parks competing in such a small space has led to the parks being forced to be more innovative.

I've often harped on about the competition between Alton and Blackpool being a coaster "arms race" that really fuelled the development of UK parks (and allowed for parks like LWV and DMP to get in with some major development). You just simply can't be buying off the shelf to keep up, you need to really invest.

Oddly, Alton didn't do that until Tussauds were at the helm, but when they did, they pretty much steam rolled Blackpool for the latter part of the 90's.

The issue of course is that a coaster is for life, not just for opening season. The parks that took on Corkscrews and SLCs aren't now suddenly going to ditch them, it's just not to their advantage.

No matter what we think as enthusiasts these coasters are solid attractions. An SLC IS a good coaster. Yeah, it's a bit rough will bang your head, but they're an exciting coaster... If you only go to a park once every year or two. You forget about how much it hurt last time, and only remember it being exciting.

Yes, as rides get older, they get more ignored as people flock to the new. That's just a natural thing. As long as a ride is still clicking through a decent number of guests, then it's not wasting space. To simply chuck out a coaster that serves a million people a year because "it's the same as another park 600 miles away has" just doesn't make sense. Especially when an investment of £12,000,000 on a new one one will have a payback period of about 15 years or something.

If you look at Heide Park, it's main issues are the old coasters it inherited. Tussauds/Merlin as advancing the park in the same way they did Thorpe, they're just a few years and a couple of recessions behind.

Believe me though, very few people look at the quality of the coasters, rather the number. So, if you have an SLC/Corkscrew filler, nobody cares, it's "ANOTHER COASTER!!! THIS PARK IS GREAT!!!"
 
"All parks should be equal in the level of awesome and diversity"...


You see, this is where this falls down, not every park has the financial clout to build anything massive, and in several cases a B&M or Intamin may not even suit the park in a way...

Let's take Knoebels... Would a 150ft B&M Wing-Rider be a good ride? Quite likely yes, but would it suit the park's atmosphere? No, as they focus on the old classic rides...

And then what if we replace every single Corkscrew or SLC with a B&M or Intamin? Firstly, each park with one would be removing what can be seen by the GP as a 'family coaster', as the general restriction for these two is 1.2m... Knock them down and you can easily lose half your target audience and really shun them away...

Why generalise that everyone gets disappointed by 'filler'? There's a reason parks build Wild Mouses, SLCs, Mine Trains and the like, because not only are they often quite popular rides, but they plug into the family demographic easily... If parks built 300ft coasters every year it would be sooooo boring and they would lose so much money (a la Six Flags)...

When Pleasurewood Hills announced a Boomerang people here thought "Oh, good for the park because they can't invest in much else" Boomerangs are a cheap solution for a thrilling ride for the general market and that's why you see so many... Often they are seen as "Training Coasters" for those too small for bigger rides or for wusses, and parks NEED coasters like these because of having to reach towards as many people as possible... Simple business...


There's nothing wrong with parks building staple rides like these in the slightest... So what if we don't like them? The fact is that guests do still ride the 'fillers' that we apparently hate so much means that it's rather pointless removing these things for completely different rides... Parks require low restriction thrilling coasters, and SLCs and Corkscrews fit the bill of these perfectly...

And if/when parks remove them, they'll probably replace them with similar family based attractions, no matter how they decide to market the replacement...
 
I did notice this when looking through the parks in Italy. It does seem here in the UK we are lucky in the fact we dont have many for the off the shelf coasters and most seem custome built.

Near enough every park now owned by Merlin in Europe have an SLC and a Vekoma loop coaster (yes I know they never installed these they took the parks over).

These coasters were so popular in the 80's/90's as they were cheap and worked well. Plus there was not really that much else out there, and these hit what people wanted at the time. They had a drop, they inverted.

Now days most parks seem to be moving away from clones and are going for custome builds.

Now days people want more, yes even the public want more and parks will not get away with just filling the parks up with clones.

There do seem to be a lot of Rage clones out there though.
 
Pablo237 said:
WOW! This forum is more messed up than the Theme Park Review Forums!! This is pretty funny.
Click to expand...

There is no greater insult than that! Pretty inaccurate, though.

It's okay, I've PM'd explaining and it's all fine. - Furie
 
Pablo237 said:
WOW! This forum is more messed up than the Theme Park Review Forums!! This is pretty funny.
Click to expand...
I went there once *shivers*

Looks like my ickle reply has, rather awesomely, created a lot of discussion! I'ts been on my mind since reading through the Alton topic, that there has been a lot of dissing of Alton's enthusiasm for embracing the new, and I thought I'd speak up against it!

I found what Furie said very interesting, about the UK being in a unique position due to its small size and competitive nature, and about the speedy growth of our parks during the 80s/90s compared to our friends across the pond. That goes a long way to explaining our unique spectrum of rides.
 
I'd love to see a Vekoma at Lightwater Valley. They're also the key things at smaller parks such as Pleasure and Fantasy Island.

I'd love to see Alton Towers work with Vekoma on the next SW :lol:
 
^^That's not what this topic is for, dear.

Um, I don't actually think there ARE too many of either SLCs or the standard Vekomas. Not every park has either or both by ANY stretch, I think I've probably been on about 10 of each, and I've been to more than 100 parks, so, that's like, 1 in 10...

I'm a bit sick of them, but, there's enough of everything else that I don't really care.
 
I think, as is often the case, this is one of those subjects where we have to remember that as enthusiasts we are very different from the general public.

I bet you could take two identical coasters at different parks and, so long as they've got very different names and are painted different colours, the general public wouldn't realise they're the same. Conversely, I wonder how many people out there think that Nemesis and Nemesis: Inferno are identical. Anyway, that's beside the point.

It's also important to remember the limited experience and frame of reference that most members of the GP have. The majority of people will go to a park once or twice a year. Then, it's probably mostly to the same park, maybe to one other occasionally. Therefore, unless the clones are in parks really close to eachother (ie Thorpe/CWoA/Lego or LWV/FL for example) which have the same catchment area, then people are unlikely to und up riding more than one anyway.

(The following is in no way a dig at Marc, I'm just going to take a point he happened to make and run with it...) Lets take eurofighters, and the rage clones, as an example.

For a second, lets talk Eurofighters in general (ie, not just clones). There's 3 in the UK, 2 are less than 2 hours apart, and one is in a different country altogether. OK, so a lot of people who have been to AI will have also been to Thorpe, however, I bet most visitors to Thorpe have never even heard of AI, so they really won't care. Very few people apart from enthusiasts will have been to Oakwood unless they live locally, in which case they're less likely to have been to TP/AI.

Now, looking at Rage clones. There's only actually 2 in the world (plus Rage itself). 1 is in the states (so again, unless you're an enthusiast...) and the other is at Duinrell in Holland. Yeah, Duinrell gets a fair few British holidaymakers, but its still a relatively insignificant number, and I doubt many of them would notice it's identical anyway. Again, in that case, there's a non-cloned Eurofighter at BobbeJobbieLand 2 hours from there, but the same point stands as per AI/TP.

So erm, yeah. To summarise, the general public probably don't notice when two rides are the same, and are unlikely to visit two parks with identical rides anyway.
 
^ Picking up on that point, I went to Flamingoland when I was a child and rode Corkscrew. Then, after I became an enthusiast, I went to Alton Towers, but didn't realise until further research that Corkscrew at Alton and Corkscrew at Flamingoland were the same ride model. They had the same name and everything. Furthermore, I distinctly remember really enjoying Corkscrew at Flamingoland when I was however old (probably somewhere around 8 ) but when I went to Alton Towers, I'd become more accustomed to good intense rides, so I didn't enjoy it as much. Even after returning to Mingo, it wasn't any better. Just goes to show that whether you are/aren't the target audience makes quite a difference.
 
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