Cedar Point announces Shoot The Rapids for 2010

Before:
"I want to ride something more thrilling than Shoot the Rapids."

After:
"Shoot the Rapids was great".

I don't understand how this ride could possibly cost $6 million MORE than Pilgrims Plunge, which not only is 40 feet taller, but also uses an elevator lift, which surely wasn't cheap. I know that this ride has an extra drop, but that second hill is less than 50ft tall, and uses a traditional lift hill. How does that add up to $10.5 million? =/

But that aside, I think this looks like a great addition to the Point.It seems like it will be in a nice location, and the look of the final drop into those "rapids" will turn out to be really cool, I bet.

Judging by the fact that the Pilgrims Plunge's boats are dropping from an extra 40 feet, and that you rarely get completely "soaked" on that ride, I doubt you will get as wet on STR as many of you are imagining. Of course, if they end up installing that waterfall as it isin the animation, that may cause problems...by you shouldn't pay too close attention to the 3D renderings on a ride like this. (Remember how large they displayed PP's splash as being? Yeah...that's not how it turned out).

With only 7 boats, PP's line never stops moving, and I'm guessing that it also has longer blocking intervals, because of the elevator lift. Therefore, I doubt capacity will be much of an issue on this new ride. Can't wait to ride STR next year!

LostKause said:

Does he now? Did he tell you that? I worked under the guy TWO of the three seasons that I worked at Cedar Point,

OMG, LK, you ARE the embodiment of the magical power of 3. Why else didn't you stop after two years, or not come back for year #4?

DantheCoasterman said:
I don't understand how this ride could possibly cost $6 million MORE than Pilgrims Plunge...

It looks like there is a ton of infrastructure work to be done so I think that is where the extra money is going.

As for all the alleged complaining I don't really see a lot of that myself. I simply see people underwhelmed by the announcement. This is a big ride and deserves an announcement, but the way the were hyping it made it seem bigger than what it is. It's just your average flume ride, no one is going to book a hotel room to ride this thing. I just think they went over board.

They did not go overboard. It was you. And you. And you and you and you. :)

There's a difference between building a ride in a field that's 1,500 feet long and one built with essentially two complete systems of lifts and pumps that's 2,100 feet long in a wetlands area where the "soil" is more like sand.

^ The environmental impact studies alone are going to cost at least a million.

To those who are saying that people only have themselves to blame for being disappointed about this announcement due to the "hype", I don't think that is entirely fair - the Cedar Point marketing department bears some responsibility for that. I can see how a "reasonable" person could be misled by the pre-announcement marketing into believing that there was a serious chance this would be a roller coaster, and therefore be somewhat disappointed.

As an example, if I am telling you I am going to make you dinner, and I say, "we're not having tater tots...we're not having french fries...we're not having baked potatoes...etc." you are likely to think, "OK, it won't be those things, but I am guessing we're having some sort of potato, maybe mashed or au gratin". The clues lead you in that direction.

So if I tell you it is not a Togo, B&M, GCI, Gravity Group, S&S, Mack, or Gerstlauer (all companies known primarily for roller coasters, except maybe S&S), then I don't think it is "unreasonable" for a person to think, "OK, we aren't getting one of those, but I am guessing we're getting some sort of roller coaster, maybe Premier or Intamin or Vekoma." The clues can lead you in that direction.

Add in that there were hints such as "Harnesses? Check. Wheels? Check", which are features overwhelmingly associated with roller coasters. Consider that this is a park known for roller coasters that last added one in 2008. Also consider the fact that the Point Poll question around what would be built for 2010 offered five choices that did not include water ride (and roller coaster was the highest vote-getter by far with almost 70%). And the blog itself felt the need to say right before the announcement that it was not a coaster, meaning that they knew there were people who thought it could/would be that. Add all of this up and I think you can conclude that a "reasonable" person could come away from the blog, twitter and facebook "marketing" for this announcement and think that it definitely could be a roller coaster.

I suppose people are allowed to be disappointed if they want to be, even if there were no indications as to what this would be. Everyone is entitled to their opinions and if everyone agreed on here the conversations would be pretty boring. Most people here seem to be saying "The park has enough coasters, this was a wise decision, it will attract families and fill a park need and everyone should be happy and stop complaining." Well if I were someone who really really likes coasters, I am going to always want my parks to add coasters and will be disappointed when they don't (even when that is irrational as it is detrimental to park success to only add coasters). I think no one should be surprised if someone like that should gravitate toward a place called "Coasterbuzz" and provide their disappointed opinion to the discussion (it happens every time).

All that said, I am not one of those people and am sure this will be a fine addition that makes business sense and should please the general public. I am just playing devil's advocate in long-winded fashion (although I do think the point about the culpability of the Cedar Point marketing department stands pretty well - any disappointed backlash they get on facebook is just reaping what they have sown, in my opinion - and I do recognize that said backlash is probably from like less than 100 people and that they could care less).

Pretty good points, mbd07. I, for one, didn't understand how the so-called "hints" had anything to do with the new ride. I'm pretty sure that the next time they pretend to be hinting around about a new attraction, I won't pay as much attention.

It's not a traditional log flume, but I still think it's pretty close to exactly what they need.

edited for spelling

I don't even know if what Cedar Point was doing qualifies as hinting.

mdb07 said:
To those who are saying that people only have themselves to blame for being disappointed about this announcement due to the "hype", I don't think that is entirely fair - the Cedar Point marketing department bears some responsibility for that.

They're responsible for getting people interested and talking about a somewhat less capital intensive new attraction? The nerve of them!

If the task at hand is to get as many people aware of what you're doing, then mission accomplished. What coaster enthusiasts think couldn't matter less.

The only people that were paying attention to them at this point were the coaster enthusiasts. Families were most likely not following twitter and facebook postings.

Do I need to drag the waaaaaahmbulance over to this topic now? Geez.

If they had said that it would be a water ride, not hinted at anything huge, and anounced it before two much larger things then I don't think there would have been a bad reaction. Their marketing failed on this announcement. I don't think many people have a problem with the ride itself just the manner in which it was announced.

I say "responsibility" in a different sense here. I agree that they have no real responsibility for anything other than promoting their product, Cedar Point. My point here was that their actions in doing that contributed to people thinking it might be a coaster. So in that sense they are partly responsible for that, as opposed to it being entirely the workings of an enthusiast's imagination, as was being stated or implied by several posts.

a_hoffman50, that's a fair point. Let's call it "teasing".

BDesvignes said:
The only people that were paying attention to them at this point were the coaster enthusiasts. Families were most likely not following twitter and facebook postings.

I'm gonna go ahead and call BS on this right off. I follow CP on twitter, and I can assure you, that 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999% of the followers aren't enthusiasts.

You know how I know? .a) They're happy with the new announcement (much like myself) and b.) When they post comments saying how much fun things were and the like, they don't concern themselves with the minutiae that most of the tools would get caught up in. They simply enjoy the park, live in the area and whatnot, and follow them like they follow all sorts of other things they like. That's how social networking/marketing works these days.

mdb07 said:
My point here was that their actions in doing that contributed to people thinking it might be a coaster.

On the contrary. They weren't actually saying anything - in fact, one could argue that the coaster manufacturers that were posted were merely hints at what wasn't wasn't coming.

I can say with absolute certainty, that someone knows how to push buttons within the enthusiast community, and it provides with quite a few chuckles.

I doubt that 99.9% of people following CP on twitter aren't enthusiasts. I don't really follow twitter though and can't really comment on that though; however, on facebook I have seen a lot of disappointed comments. They hyped the ride too much and now people are disappointed. They over did it and hopefully they learn from that and don't do it again or people will stop carring as much. I don't care what they get, but i was hoping from what they were saying that it would be something really big. What they announced didn't match up with what they hyped though.

Just because you "had hoped for something big" doesn't mean that's what they were making you think.

It's called marketing, and they're damn good at it.

edit: Oh, and about that 99.9% thing - It's true. How much of the annual visitor percentage do you think "enthusiasts" really make up, anyway?

Raven-Phile said:

mdb07 said:
My point here was that their actions in doing that contributed to people thinking it might be a coaster.

On the contrary. They weren't actually saying anything - in fact, one could argue that the coaster manufacturers that were posted were merely hints at what wasn't wasn't coming.

I can say with absolute certainty, that someone knows how to push buttons within the enthusiast community, and it provides with quite a few chuckles.

You're contradicting yourself here. One the one hand you are saying that the Cedar Point team knew what they were doing and were pushing enthusiasts' buttons through their "teases", but then you also say that only .000000000000000000000000000001% of their twitter followers are enthusiasts. Seems like a disconnect to me. Why bother if so few will understand what you are posting? They would dilute the impact of their substantial posts for the general public by including a stream of posts that 99.9999999999999999999999% would not really understand.

Again, I am not an "enthusiast", and am not disappointed in this, I just found it interesting that there seemed to be a consensus here that it was ridiculous for someone to have thought this could have been a coaster announcement. In my opinion, that is clearly not the case.

[I apologize if I butchered the quote function, by the way - I hope it works out ok.]