"Carowind's Flyers"

Translation: People in Charlotte aren't spoiled.

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millrace said:

I think it is difficult for you to accept that Kings Island or Paramount or whoever owns the park this week could ever do anything wrong.

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So define 'wrong' for us, will ya?

PKI is a business. That's right--they open their gates with the intent of making money. You know, kinda like why you roll outta bed, brush your teeth and go to a job in the morning. You got bills, they got bills. Clear enough?

When they make a move that costs them guests and therefore income, then and ONLY then is it wrong. Wrong by you isn't wrong by everyone else who'll come to the park, shell out their hard-earned cash and stand in lines much longer than the Flyers queue to ride a new coaster.

-'Playa

Wrong can be defined a number of different ways... ways that don't include making money.

Aww... Moosh I can send ya some snow from Northern Ohio to ice down the marbles if you need them. Of course I'd rather have come out to Solace and get kicked in the balls (apparently the ones that I don't have ;)) than showing up at the office this week listening to people gripe about their email...

*sigh* I promise I'll make it out to California sometime soon...

Rob - It's ended, I don't need to say anymore...

~Rob "Time to go home" Willi

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Den said:
Note to self: Do not visit an amusement park with Charles Nungester, millrace or Homey G.

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That's entirely your choice, but I have it on good authority that I am the coolest guy in the world to hang out with at parks.

My statement really had nothing to do with PKI. I just think that it's a subpar park anyway that got exposed JUST a little bit more with the removal of the best ride in the park. In the same way I think for all it HAS, I don't enjoy SFGrAdv either. But I could still have fun there just like I could at PKI, of SFKK, et. al.

Please note, I could have fun anywhere with friends.

*** Edited 3/17/2005 2:03:09 AM UTC by Homey G.***

Well Rob, if you say it's over, it must be over. My mistake!

Den, I never said that I don't play DDR because I'd look stupid. That's the last reason I'm not playing. The first being the fact that I don't really play anything other than pinball when I'm at an arcade. Secondly, I think it's the dumbest game I've ever seen in my life. Thirdly, I can't stand the crap that passes for music on DDR.

I love to dance. I'm basically a hippie trapped in a fat 28 year old attorney's body. I attend concerts frequently, in fact 3 this upcoming week. I get down all night long when I go to a show and I know I look like an idiot doing it. So that doesn't bother me. But the idea of playing a game that tells you how to dance just boggles me.

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Den said:
Eventually every park you know is going to get rid of something you like. Will you cease to be a coaster enthusiast at that point and just stop going to parks altogether?

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True, Every park needs to remove, move or replace attractions but they seriously look at if its popular or not.

I've long since given up on the coaster enthusiast aspect of it and become a park enthusiast (Which includes, flatrides, decor and overal park experience. If you visit a park just to ride coasters, IMHO your missing half the experience. I rarely hop parks in one day and choose to visit as long as necessary to get the overall feel of it and plan accordingly.

IMHO that ride I cannot mention again was a big part of the overal PKI experience but not the total reason I visit the park. It is however why I visited so often.

Chuck, who likes the fact that people can play and enjoy DDR if thats your thing.

I am so sick and tired and disgusted of this whole "It's a business" crap. I hear it over and over and over. People spout it off like everybody has to back down and get out of the way of "business" God forbid we do anything to upset business. Maybe I'll declare myself a business and then you won't be able to criticize me after all, I'm a business and can do no wrong. There are a lot more important things than business and I can't stand all this pandering to business. Maybe if we placed a little less emphasis on what was good for business and little more on what was good for society we'd all be living in a better world (they may or may not be mutually exclusive).

Removing the flyers was a wrong decision for a multitude of reasons and yes, it was probably a bad business decision too. Kings Island lost a popular ride - real good idea there. Carowinds gained a new ride. Whoop dee do. If 95% of the customers (and yes it is customers not guests) at Kings Island didn't care about it(Jeff's number) then 95% of Carowinds customers won't even notice it showed up. So they pissed off a few enthusiasts and Coney Island nostalgics and went to a great expense to truck a ride across the country all for basically nothing. It would have made more business sense to keep the dang thing in Ohio, buy a new one for Carowinds and everybody's happy. Actually more people would be happy because Larson would have made a sale :)

*** Edited 3/16/2005 10:17:23 PM UTC by millrace***

Will PKI's numbers drop (both attendance or revenue) because of this move? Probably not.

Will Carowinds numbers improve because of the flyer's addition? Maybe.

That's not to say the bottom line is all that matters, but it certainly takes precendence. This looks to possibly help (and certainly not hurt) the bottom line at two parks.

I fail to see the 'stupidity' or 'incomprhensive nature' in the decision in moving a secondary ride (in the overall scheme of things) a few states to the southeast.

Then again, I often wonder if my enthusiast credentials should be taken away from me as I don't have the attachment to any ride that many of you seem to have with rides in general.

In the end this will only affect both parks positively and the only casualties are a couple of dozen hardcore flyers fans. I don't think Paramount is losing sleep.

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millrace said:
easily... easily...

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Just out of curiosity, do you have the figures for ridership or the maintenance budget?

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I think it is difficult for you to accept that Kings Island or Paramount or whoever owns the park this week could ever do anything wrong.

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You're joking, right? I don't think anyone made a bigger stink about the SOB fiasco in 2000 than I did.

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We aren't allowed to complain because the park "bends over backwards" for us?

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You're over-simplifying the issue. There's a real difference between complaining and being an obnoxious nuisance calling the media. Don't take it out of context.

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millrace said:
I am so sick and tired and disgusted of this whole "It's a business" crap.

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Well, in all fairness, people are saying it in response to your assertion that the move was incomprehensible.

Attendance numbers won't drop for sure but in my opinion the quality of the experience has.

TV viewership goes up all the time but I can't seem to find anything I'm willing to spend my limited time watching. We are constantly bombarded with everything bigger, faster, louder, etc. and I'm not so sure it adds much, if anything to quality of life and in fact, probably distracts from it.

As the years go by I find I enjoy the big parks less and less and the small parks more and more. And it isn't because I'm an old fart looking for a slow leisurely experience, it's because the new hyped up fad-of-the-moment rides seem to be mostly flash and marketing and product tie-ins and it sickens me and wears me out.

When people think of a wooden coaster they think of something like Son of Beast. How sad is that? How many people are learning to hate woodies because "they are rough and painful" and will never have the chance to experience a quality ride?

Yeah it's only business. No thanks.

Jeff - I have not been calling the media but it might not be that bad of an idea. The ride has some historic significance for the Cincinnati area and what's wrong with calling people's attention to it? What if they sold off the carousel piece by piece? Might make good business sense but it's an outrageous idea.

Could it be that you felt free to make a stink in 2000 because you weren't holding BeastBuzz at that time? *** Edited 3/16/2005 10:33:41 PM UTC by millrace***

Meanwhile in the REAL world? Happens all the time.

As if CP didn't knock off the Pirate Ride or Earthquake or the Jumbo Jet or send their previous Wild Mouse to VF who replaced its Schwarzkopf goodness with a friggin' ARROW model and dismantled the Bayern Kurve and left it in pieces or WoF didn't sell off Zambezi Zinger and just plain crushed Orient Express just like DP did Hercules or SFGAM did Shockwave just to name a few and guess what? Nobody's world came tumbling down because they did it.

GET OVER IT. At least it's still operating somewhere.

-CO

*** Edited 3/16/2005 10:36:25 PM UTC by CoastaPlaya***

And that's why I largely don't give a crap anymore. If you depend on business to make you happy you'll die a sad man.

And now work is over so I don't give a crap about this thread anymore either :)

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millrace said:

The ride has some historic significance for the Cincinnati area and what's wrong with calling people's attention to it?

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The fact that every decision isn't driven by dollars and cents. There's no real financial benefit to any park granting ERT, behind-the-scenes tours or any perks whatsoever to coaster dorks...it's a warm and fuzzy nice thing to do.

Frankly, each and every one of them are underwritten by Joe Sixpack--who looks at your beloved flyers and snorts 'boooooooooooring' as he walks to another ride he'd rather board.

To create negative publicity to a park that graciously extends a hospitable hand is just...plain...stupid. Its one thing to throw an online tantrum and quite another to affront them in the press.

-CO

Practically every corporation in America donates some money to charity each year. Does that mean they shouldn't be criticized for anything that they do? I can see the discussions now...

"Wal-Mart forces their employees to work overtime without paying them, prevents women from receiving promotions and engages in business practices that erode our economy on a daily basis, but they contributed a few thousand dollars to breast cancer research so they're forgiven."

HA!

For those of you with their heads stuck in mindless business mentality, let me try to explain something here. PKI sells a PRODUCT. Regardless of their charitable ways, people pay them money to spend a day on their grounds. If they do something that makes some portion of those people unhappy, regardless of how small that portion is, those people that pay to get inside the park have every right to complain about it. Online "temper tantrums", writing letters to the park, whatever... as customers, that is their right. Sure, PKI extends a generous hand to enthusiasts, but the bottom line is that the majority of those enthusiasts are paying customers and as long as they are paying for a product, that gives them the right to speak their mind in a constructive way.

And as for parks extending a hand to enthusiasts, that's called PR. Generally, ERT or special discounts aren't offered because the CEO felt some kind of warm feeling in the bottom of his or her heart, it's because good public relations often go a long way. More or less, it's cheap advertising. Enthusiasts talking positively about what the park did for them, a reporter writing an article about the coaster nuts that rode the Beast all night- that's called advertising. Marketing. Public relations. Or whatever you decide to call it.

As long as people aren't standing outside of PKI's gates with flaming torches and a battering ram, they have the right to come on this site and speak their mind. If that bothers people, then maybe they should re-evaluate their decision to take part in a coaster forum.

We clearly have different opinions about what constitutes immoral business practices. The Wal-Mart actions you mention hardly have the impact or importance of anything Paramount Parks has ever done. Ever.

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Rob Ascough said:
Generally, ERT or special discounts aren't offered because the CEO felt some kind of warm feeling in the bottom of his or her heart...

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Precisely the reason for my kick-in-the-nuts comment.

Someday enthusiasts will realize they account for 0.01% of the park-going population. Probably not until they stop offering us ERT.

This lil' forum hardly constitutes negative publicity...kinda why I said what I said in my final sentence.

Frankly, even press coverage of an enthusiass tantrum is effective as a vegetarian fringe group picketing a Burger King. Most people who even bother to read it will only think, "Hey! I wanna greasy sammich!"

But onions and pickles aside, those vociferous few do accomplish a lot--if you consider shooting themselves in the foot a lot. And causing bad blood between the majority who don't act like that and park management who doesn't owe you ba-diddly.

Which is why many others on this forum have told you--and will continue to tell you--that the whiney whiney's getting kinda high-pitched and squealy. I mean, really. It's spring already!

-CO

All this *****in' and i've yet to hear the one complaint I expected when the ride with a classic name "Flying Eagles" was slapped with an unfamiliar Nick toon theme. And speaking of which am i the only one who thinks Fairly Odd Coaster is about the dumbest name and theme for a ride since, oh I don't know, Italian Job Stunt Track.

Damn that's dumb