Tricoart

Idk, anything under $15 and I’d just prefer to wait in the queue for a normal seat & spend the money on a different experience (Glass Bottom Boat, or save it for a back-of-house tour).

The joke is that they’re about as unreliable as hydraulic launches are becoming, meaning they’d be SBNO (Standing But Not Operating) just as commonly, if not more so.

Intamin did redesign the SurfRider in 2021 w/ new trains that utilize their modern lap bars, so they could hypothetically switch to those new trains if the track gauge is the same on both models, but the newer model's track seems wider to me which'd make a switch impractical. Also, the new trains were designed with greater capacity in mind, which meant more seats per rotational set (10 instead of 6), meaning the redesigned train had to be substantially wider than the older models, and as such there'd need to be a completely redesigned station to allow for said train. So it remains to be seen whether they use the same trains or not, but I doubt they'd pay for new (somewhat prototype, seeing as they haven't been used before) trains & a completely redesigned station just for a ~100pph boost on a ride they probably don't expect much ridership from, even if you assumed that they could do so in the first place.

Don't really get what's wrong with it's paint job tbh, it's just a simple red-coloured car on a kids ride. Is it the little bit of roughness above the wheel?

Yeah, that's still way too much. Tonnerre 2 Zeus @ Parc Asterix has the gimmick seat from Levi (though it technically opened earlier, thanks Sea World mismanagement), and that opened with an upcharge of ~$18, but quickly changed it to ~$12 in just over a week due to poor guest feedback (and as far as I can tell, it operated smoothly on opening and didn't have any 'purchase on the barely functioning app' tomfoolery either). I know they're different markets and all, but with how universally disliked the experience is, anywhere under $15 is a ripoff IMO (and I'd only personally consider riding it if it was $10).

Big Dipper isn't an LSM launch, it's a tyre drive launch like that on Jet Rescue. Just remains to be seen if Zamperla can pull off a kicky launch on Senzafiato/TTD (still feels weird saying that).

There could be a myriad of reasons for both why it closed so abruptly, and why it's taking longer than originally stated for it to reopen. But the matter of fact is that nobody knows until VRTP are more transparent, and in the meantime all that's going to happen is people (meaning anywhere from us fanatics who know way too much about the ride, the news, or just normal visitors of the park) will be left wondering what the reason is, grasping at straws & making conclusions based on mere hearsay. And that inevitably leads to hysteria (see "crack in the track" or "Leviathan's sinking"), especially when the last thing people remember happening about the ride is "Guests trapped in complete darkness, 10 meters in the air for over an hour after ride suddenly stops, fire department called to rescue".

Definitely seems that way, with the topper (Crown? Roof?) of the carousel being substantially different from the one in this concept art (you'll have to zoom in a bit to see it): If it is the case that this is the finalized design, and it strays that far from the concept art, even though it's just a carousel IMO that reflects very badly on the rest of the retheme, and crashes my expectations for the few decisions I thought they'd made that were good.

I don't think I've seen a single person, on these forums or not, that doesn't dislike Levi's backwards seat for one reason or another. Haven't been on it myself just 'cause I'd rather save the money for a DCR or ST gimmick seat instead, but I can envision why it'd be really not worth the purchase.

Dean's argument is misplaced & looking at things the wrong way, but there's absolutely zero reason to make it as serious & personally insulting as you just did. Disregarding if you meant to imply what you've implied or not, the simple act of bringing up deaths on attractions to prove a point, even if it was a real statistic (it's obviously not), is taking it way too far. Bad move.

I meant pre-2019 SV (or whenever it was before they added pouches on the ride & other updates to the system).

Yeah, and a lot of modern train designs flat out wouldn't accommodate any backpacks onboard anyway, either because they'd just slide right off the side of the train, or because there'd just be no room for them. In Superman's loose articles case, there's much worse examples of loose article policies with other coasters & parks (first one that comes to mind is Steel Vengeance). At least here there's trays for glasses & the like in the station, and the lockers are free to use for an hour.

And parks have switched entire trains backwards with no added cost or known general maintenance needed.

Nah, the only thing that changed with the update is the year, pushing it back to after WoO. https://web.archive.org/web/20230127114231/https://themeparks.com.au/blog/whats-new-with-scooby-doo

But I thought it was ridiculous for “here” to add strict policies for rides that travel over guests, and the correct way to go about things was the Disney way where they’ll happily allow guests to stow entire backpacks loose in the train? That’s what this current escapade of yours started as, anyway. And I haven’t even mentioned that you switched from using the originally referenced coaster (California Screamin’ @ Disneyland, which, if I might add, seemingly also has revised their loose article policy, way before Tron’s opening) to one at a park on the other side of the continent (Space Mountain @ Magic Kingdom) to further your inherently incorrect and nigh on dangerous argument. Also, if you can’t tell the difference between California Screamin’/Space Mountain’s intensity and every given example of a thrill coaster in Australia’s intensity, there’s something very wrong. Because, disregarding the fact that countries have different safety standards, a coaster with an average positive force around 2G’s and ‘negative’ force around 0.5G’s aren’t forced to be held to the same safety standards & regulations as one that commonly passes 3.5G’s and -1G’s.

Thank god that isn't the norm at our parks, or else they definitely would be.

Additionally,

Idk if others feel the same way, but I understand that COVID has (& will continue to have) lasting impacts on most industries, including the manufacturing of rides. Nonetheless, being almost 3 years into it & having so long to work around these impacts, using it in one such explanation would just seem like a lousy excuse for poor planning nowadays.

I wonder if VRTP or DW have actually put any time/research into their pricing & how they could get max profits from their gimmick seats, or if they’re both just choosing to play off of the number they conjured up for DCR. On second thought, it’s not even worth wondering about, the answer’s clearly the second one.

There are these little things called ‘negative g-forces’ that our parks use pretty commonly, but Disney’s yet to invent.

You’ve heard of ‘Bananas in Pajamas’ and ‘Rat in a Hat’, now get ready for ‘Horsettes in Corsets’

And the theme’d have already been talked (argued) about so much that, by announcement time, everyone would have already grown to dislike it for one reason or another, and the only responses to the announcement would be told-ya-so’s.

Maybe they should transition from handing out wristbands to handing out reusable RFID chips for the ride ops to scan.

As much as I dislike the route they're going with Pandamonium, at least they're attempting to put an (albeit miniscule) amount of effort into it by adding minor details to it's new paintjob. Wait til they keep the exact same Asia-themed facades throughout the area but just paint them the same shade of blue, then there'll be a real issue.

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