Did Rougarou actually save Mantis?

I went to cedar point this week and lines were moderately busy, Valravin had an hour and a half for example. However the Rougarou was nearly walk on, which is the same as you had to wait for the mantis. I don't see a popularity difference here.

The Rougarou line is a funny thing. Some days it's totally dead and then suddenly when you don't expect it everybody and their uncle is waiting an hour to ride the thing. Personally I hated Mantis and couldn't ride it but I ride Rougarou every visit...except when everyone and their uncle get in line because I'm spoiled and I don't like to wait in lines.

Rougarou has much better capacity than Mantis did, so judging the success of a ride by its line length doesn't really make sense. I actually enjoy riding Rougarou and do so on many of my visits. I almost never rode Mantis (although I probably still rode that more than Mean Streak).

I was at CP last weekend and the main part of the parking lot was nearly full on Monday, but the lines (outside of Valravn) were not all that terrible. When everything is up and running well, the park has huge capacity overall.

The Gatekeeper crew was nothing short of amazing when I was watching them on Sunday. Granted, that ride is a piece of cake to work and they have 6 people checking the train so they should be pretty quick, but man were they dispatching trains like CP ride crews did in the olden days! They were doing at least as well as GK's first season and much better than the last couple seasons. Good to see!

Queue length has nothing to do with popularity. If a ride gives a thousand rides per hour, it doesn't matter if the queue is 5 minutes or 5 hours. It still only gives a thousand rides per hour.

Hated Mantis, love Rougarou. The ride is great, the capacity is great. It is actually one of CP's better coasters IMO. Every park needs excellent coasters with great output. This was a home run IMO.

Count me in as one of the few that really liked Mantis. I also like Rougarou and think the conversion was fantastic. That said, it's a capacity monster and is in a part of the park that keeps a nice even crowd spread throughout the day. Don't look into the short lines, the ride is a winner and I feel it has done exactly what the park wanted it to do.

MDOmnis said:

...so judging the success of a ride by its line length doesn't really make sense.

Wait...So that is not how the park will decide if Mean Streak stays or goes?

I didn't like either one of them. The back half sucks and no kind of new train will fix that.

That shows how subjective stuff like this is and why rankings and lists can at times be meaningless. I liked the second half of the ride as Mantis and like it even more as Rougarou. Rather than the typical B&M interlocking corkscrews that are typically the second half of the sit down and floorless loopers, the spaghetti bowl is unique and hugs the ground nicely with some decent forces.

Anyone else find it somewhat ironic that we complain about having to wait in long lines but then if a ride consistently has shorter lines we decide it must be because the ride sucks? Because all I'm thinking is wooHOO!! short line :)

I'm with you on Rougarou's second half, Brett. In fact, it almost feels a little "Mavericky" to me at a couple points with some great snappy turns near ground level.

What Paisley said!

Yes Rougarou does feel quite "Mavericky" through many parts of the ride...but without that pesky Maverick wait time. Like I said earlier wooHOO!!short line.

And also as Jeff pointed out only a set number of rides can be had. Does it matter if the riders walked on or waited in line an hour before they got there? Assuming all trains are filled throughout the day that won't really have much effect aside from how long of a line there is to finish at closing.

Jeff said:

Queue length has nothing to do with popularity. If a ride gives a thousand rides per hour, it doesn't matter if the queue is 5 minutes or 5 hours. It still only gives a thousand rides per hour.

That is true, but as you know at CP the line is cut off at advertised closing time and all guests queued can ride. If the queue is 5 minutes all day about 12,000 riders will ride on that day over the course of a 12 hour day at a thousand riders per hour. If there is an hour long queue about 13,000 riders will ride that day. Over simplified I know, but a longer queue does figure into the popularity of a ride vs. a walk on, at least at Cedar Point.

The most popular rides always seem to have the worst capacity... ;~P

How many fallacies can we pack into one argument?

As for Rougarou, it probably extended the life-span of Mantis by 5-10 years...eventually, it too will go the way of Hulk 1.0.

I think it has a very, very long way to go before that happens. Its service life by comparison is way shorter. I worry more about Raptor, though unfortunately I haven't been on it in a few years, so I don't know how it's doing.

Eh, that pretty new paint should hold it together a while longer.

I rode Raptor the other day, and even though I tend to think of it as one if those old meh rides, when I do get on it I'm always newly amazed at how fast and fun it is. I sat in the front and the trip out to the cobra roll is a never-seen-before close up of the new midway, so that was cool.
I didn't notice any sign of wear or roughness. (I do notice how much smaller the restraints seem to get from year to year. How does that happen?...)

This of course begs the question, what happens in the next 15-25ish years as these rides start to reach the end of their service life? We have seen the removal of so many of the Arrow multi loopers, but that is in part to a less than pleasant ride experience, a more outdated technology, and the fact that Arrow isn't around anymore.

Rides like Raptor (to me) are timeless and still signatures of the park. Raptor is 22 years old but in no way feels outdated and long in the tooth like an Arrow corkscrew from the 70s did in the 90s or early 2000s. It makes you wonder if more rides will receive re-builds like Hulk as the years (and decades go by)

If B&M is smart they'll start recommending it to everyone.

It's hard to imagine a ride like Raptor being anywhere near the end of its life, but I really have no idea. I was rather shocked Hulk "needed" to be rebuilt after 17 or 18 seasons. Raptor has 22 seasons under its belt and although the season is only 5 months or so long, I don't think there are many parks other than Universal and Disney putting the number of cycles on their rides that Cedar Point does.

I know Magnum needs welding on a semi regular basis and they've replaced sections of the rails in several places - probably more than once out at the bottom of the third hill and in the pretzel. To me it appears like they've done a lot of work on Gemini this offseason as well. It's riding a bit better without the weird shimmying this year.

Does anyone know if that sort of stuff is being done with the B&M rides or is it just unheard of or impossible because it's thicker rail and not park fixable?