Cedar Point 80's drought?

I was looking at CP's coasters on RCDB and from 1978 when Gemini was built until Iron Dragon in 1987, there was a bit of a drought with the exception of Jr. Gemini in '79. Does anyone know why there was such a lull in those years?

Because building coasters at regular, frequent intervals is a relatively new thing.

The years with 40, 50 or more new coasters being built every year didn't start until the mid-90's.

What drought? Just because there were no new coasters doesn't mean anything. There were lots of major new rides, attractions, and improvements in that time period.

Plus, they did biuld a coaster, Avalanche run. :)

Avalanche Run was installed in 1985...

Other 80's improvements included Soak City in 1988.

And Demon Drop in 1983.

We are living in an unprecedented growth period for coasters... and I'm thankful for it!

Just wanted to jump in again about the whole "period of unprecidented growth" thing again. A lot of enthusiasts don't seem to know how lucky they are to be roller coaster fans in this day and age.

I'll stick with the example of Cedar Point.

1870 is generally considered the Point's first "season".

In the 60 seasons from 1870 to 1929 Cedar Point built 7 roller coasters.

In the next 59 seasons from 1930 to 1988 Cedar Point built 14 roller coasters.

In the last 16 seasons from 1989 to 2004 Cedar Point built 9 new coasters. If they'd continue at that rate they will have built 34 new coasters in a 60 year period beginning with 1989 and ending with 2048.

Rather than asking about past droughts, a more correct question would be "Why the current popularity?"

I was asking myself the same question...after all, coasters suck. Give me a nice park bench any day. ;)

Great, Gonch...bring logic into the discussion! That's so like you ;)

The reason for my question was because I was wondering if CP had plans for Maggie way in advance and they might have been "saving up" for a revolutionary coaster such as that. I didn't intend to imply that I was complaining about the decade of the 80's. Just wanted to know, specifically, what kind of business decisions were going on at the time. Thank you for the input however.

Though this has nothing to do with the topic(and I don't want to start a brand new thread), I just wanted to let everyone know that today is Raptor's 10th Birthday.

I'm a buzzkill, Moosh. :)

Nothing personal, stuey. It is something that I personally find interesting. (coaster building trends)

I often think the internet holds a great deal of responsibility for the current boom in park/coaster popularity.

I know from personal experience that I've always been interested in coasters/parks to some degree. However in the "pre-net" days, I never really pursued it. With the ridulous amount of info available on the subject from fansites, park sites, manufacturer sites, etc - I think it has made more people pursue coasters as a viable hobby than before the online communities and wealth of info was so handily available.

I'd venture as far as to say a vast majority of people involved with online forums, organizations, websites and such have only gotten into coasters in the past 5 or 10 years or so since the internet became really mainstream and accessable to all. On top of this there's just some weird coaster appeal among teens and young adults that doesn't always transfer to adulthood. So you get a younger group of fans who quite simply haven't been around long enough to remember when the local park got a new coaster once or twice a decade.

What you end up with a whole bunch of "enthusiasts" who only know things they way they are now. Parks getting a major new coaster every couple of years. A dozen world class coasters going up each season across the country.

It makes me laugh when people complain that their local park hasn't gotten a new major addition for the past 3 years or the past 5 years or whatever. Pick your local park and check out what things were like before the current boom.

(just some of my ideas/theories :) )

*** Edited 5/7/2004 10:33:24 PM UTC by Lord Gonchar***

Good stuff Lord Gonchar - Thanks. I too, am interested in how and when parks decide to build. I am curious to know when CP decided to start becoming a trend setter or however you want to put it. Did the popularity of Gemini and its record setting height, at the time, start them on that road or was it only until Magnum came along that made them realize that this was their way to be successful and set themselves apart?

Raise your hand if you ever had to resort to scanning microfilm at the library for coaster articles. Microfilm? Anybody? ;)

Like Gonch, I love studying trends. As Best Week Ever would put it, the '90s were the new '20s. And we know what happened to coasters after the '20s... not that that'll happen again, necessarily. But who knows? That's why it's interesting.

But you raise a good question about CP's strategy, stuey. I had never heard of Cedar Point until I saw an ad for it in the Chicago Tribune highlighting Magnum's debut in 1989. Advertising to markets over 300 miles away definitely indicates that they planned to make a big splash with that ride. And it seemed to work. Perhaps they watched the trends of the Arrow mega-loopers in the late 80s, or maybe they were trendsetters themselves.

But keep in mind what "new" attraction CP introduced the year after Magnum (Disaster Transport). They might not have been entirely sold on the record-breaker concept just yet, and maybe wanted to dabble in the multi-dimensional rides, too (themed rides with effects, or a story).

I'm always blown away when I look at the 1990 map of Cedar Point, though. It was pretty uncrowded back then.

I was just thinking the same thing the other day, Gonch. When my family started going to Carowinds(pre-Paramount. and the reason I was thinkin was cause I'm going friday), there were like, 4 coasters. Thunder Road, Carolina Cyclone, Scooby Doo, and Goldrusher. Now, those are all decent coasters, mind you, but then, when we started going, they added Vortex one year, and a couple years later they added Hurler, and taxi Jam, as Paramount took over.

But in the past 6 years(counting 99), they've added 5 good(in my opinion, but i know that isn't what most paramount 'fanboys' think) coasters, and a great dark ride. And yet we complain cause of no Hyper?

Makes me wonder how many people are doing this for the love of coasters, or bragging rights...

What would we do without the internet?

I grew up with my family visiting Cedar Point every year. And I loved roller coasters from the start.

However it wasn't until the internet that I really got into them. For years I just read articles/reviews on coaster sites, dreaming of riding coasters I never thought I would.

In the past year or so since becoming an enthusiast I've ended up going from one visit to Cedar Point a year, to trips across the continent to LA, multiple trips to CP, and nearly any other park I could hit within reason.

Without the net I still would be making my yearly trip to Cedar Point and nothing else.

Interesting...Before the net, I used my copy of "Roller Coaster Fever" (no longer in print) to find parks and coasters. But in my opinion, Cedar Point has been caught up in the bigger, better, most, and *first* hype, since they built the Corkscrew in 1976.

Wood Coaster Fan Club - coming to a park near you

just think if CP had never gotten rid of any coasters, then they really would have a space problem(and not have to worry bout competing with SFMM;)).

I have to agree with Gonch that the Internet has expanded the enthusiast hobby, myself being a prime example. I used to go to CP every year as a kid, and occasionally to King's Island when we got down that way.

In 1988, my buddies and I planned to hit several parks for our Senior trip. Our spots? CP, PKI, and BGW. Why BGW? Because I knew about it from a prior family trip to colonial Williamsburg, and we were into military stuff at the time and wanted to see the shipyards in Norfolk.

Kennywood? At the time, we'd never heard of it. King's Dominion (just a few miles away from BGW)? Never heard of it. Hershey, Dorney, SFGAdv? You guessed it, never heard of 'em.

It wasn't until the Internet (I got on in '98 or '99) that I learned where all the good stuff was. I think back to those years before I was married, thus having a boat-load of free time, and wonder how much traveling I would have done if I only knew about all these places....

Oh, well. I can't complain too much, because now I have something to look forward to, as I've set a goal to visit at least one new-to-me park each year. I've been going strong the past five years. Now, to just figure out where to hit this year. Hmmmmm........

Later,
EV

I agree wholeheartedly that the internet has fueled the enthusiast community as well as (partially) the coaster boom of recent years.

NWith more publicity beyond the local areas, parks can pull in more out of town guests which "fattens their wallets" giving them more to spend on improvements - which then in turn brings more customers through the gates.

Unfotunately, some chains (which will remain nameless) put the cart before the horse and determined that if they "build it, they will come." Without making sure to keep other aspects of the park up at the same time. So unfortunately, they were alienating as many customers (if not more) than they were bringing in new.

Perhaps (hopefully) they have "seen the light" and are correcting those earlier mistakes. Only time will tell.

When I was younger, and before I had internet access, I knew about alot of parks on the east coast due to 2 things: We traveled alot(thus passing and/or visiting parks on the way) and I used to hit up brochure stands where ever we went insearch of coasters. I had the newest brochures every year for CP, PKI, PKD, PCar, everything in myrtle beach, Hershey, and a few others. And people that would travel would tell us of other parks they had been to, like Kennywood and Six Flags.

Never in my wildest dreams as a kid did I realize just how many there were, and that I would hit some of the far away parks(SFGaM) that I'd heard of, but knew nothing about.

This started for me really about 2 years ago, when I stumbled upon some good coaster sites while looking for RCT downloads, and now I know what I was missing.