El Toro ties The Voyage

I did not expect this... El Toro has tied The Voyage for the #1 spot in the CoasterBuzz 100. That's totally strange.

Every vote counts... make sure you rate your track record today!

That IS surprising. But, they're both great coasters. I know many people who prefer Toro. I prefer Voyage. But it is to aggressive for some.

Toro would be my #1 if it wasn't for the stapling that is required to get my fat ass in the train. Even with that I can ride Toro all night long. Voyage is tough to marathon and if your crazy enough to try you will pay for it the next day. (37 laps in one day)

As someone who is thin and loves Toro and hasn't taken the poll yet, I'll be sure to give ET some love!!

I much prefer Toro, regardless of the stapling. No surprise that it tied to me, They're both tops.

I'd definitely rate them equally. Which means if I went through the trouble of rating my track record, that it wouldn't change anything.

Another case of my vote not making a difference. ;)

I definitely rank El Toro above Voyage, but they both map to 5 stars it the current system and would both map to 10 stars. You'd probably have to go to a 20 star system before they'd diverge and that would be stupid for comparing Mean Streak and Texas Giant. Maybe a log scale is in order!

That sums it up well, Andy.

Being forced to choose Toro's probably better, but for all intents and purposes, it's a wash.

Until I get some magical nighttime ERT on Toro (first attempt failed since GAdv only got half the registrants needed for the event)....The Voyage remains my baby. HWN '09 was so unbe-credible, I really have doubts that I will ever get wooden coaster rides like that for as long as I live...

Voyage appears to have the edge again.

I assume the Blue arrow indicates a coaster that just made it onto the list. Is there any way of having some kind of indication of what is bumped from the list when a new coaster makes the list? Even if it's just for the one week after being bumped.

I hope that made sense.

Haven't been on either, yet. I'll be on Voyage way before I even think about handing SFGAdv my hard-earned money.

What I find strange is that more CoasterBuzzers have rode The Voyage than El Toro, seeing that SFGAdv is a much larger and more attended park than Holiday World. Over twice as many of us have rode The Voyage.

Could bad word-of-mouth about how sickeningly terrible SFGAdv's problems are have pushed people away from trying the park out? It's in a much more populated area than HW. It gets many more guests than HW, but less people who visit this site have visited the park since El Toro was built. Strange.

^I don't get the hate for SFGAdv. Probably the best customer service I've had at a regional all season. All rides running at full capacity with stellar crews possessing friendly attitudes, and that was just the ride side of things.

As has been said by others before, I think a lot of the people who complain about SF parks haven't actually been in a while. Most of the negative TR's I've read aren't about SF parks.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, SFGAdv gets a bad rap from most people, when in reality it isn't that bad of a park. Granted, I haven't been there when it was ultra busy, but I have been to other similiar sized parks when it's ultra busy, and that sucks regardless of which park you go to.

LK is only hurting himself by continuing to not go, though. SFoG and SFGAdv are the only 2 SF parks I've managed to hit at least once in the last 2 years, and I'm glad I did.

I think it's getting less and less, but people still consider all SF parks to be bad parks, regardless of their standards and operations. That's the difficulty with branding sometimes. The name alone sets the opinion.

If you flip things around, Disney is 'good' and despite the issues with DCA and Paris Studios, the parks are looked upon in higher regard than if they were run by a different operator because they're Disney parks.

The fact that SF *still* gets the bad rap.....is PRECISELY what we were warning about 12-15 years ago.

Takes forever to build a good reputation, and only a couple subpar seasons (being kind here) can really put you in a bad position for years and years down the road. Shoot, I'd even suggest that Red Zone (Shapiro/Snyder) coulda-shoulda-woulda....if only they weren't toting the enormous baggage from the prior administration. (Not entirely unlike Obama getting blamed for the economic disaster that he inherited).

Both are absolutely fabulous rides IMO....just one coaster belongs to a chain with an EARNED bad reputation. The fact that SF isn't the same terrible company it had become...will probably take another 5-10 years to fix.

LostKause said:
What I find strange is that more CoasterBuzzers have rode The Voyage than El Toro, seeing that SFGAdv is a much larger and more attended park than Holiday World. Over twice as many of us have rode The Voyage.

Could bad word-of-mouth about how sickeningly terrible SFGAdv's problems are have pushed people away from trying the park out? It's in a much more populated area than HW. It gets many more guests than HW, but less people who visit this site have visited the park since El Toro was built. Strange.

Jeff has stated many times that CB's members are highly skewed to the midwest area of the country.

It's completely reasonable to think more midwesterners get to HW than SFGAdv.

Good try though.

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As far as the SFGAdv hate - it only comes from people who don't know what they're talking about. That is to say, people who haven't been there in so long that their opinion of the park isn't relevant in the real world of today. It's typical vocal minority stuff.

If you sort through the Trip Reports from the past 3 seasons - they're overwhelmingly positive.

It wasn't a "try" at badmouthing SF. I was simply stating that perhaps people on CoasterBuzz don't go to SFGAdv because of the bad-mouthing that it gets (including from me, which I can admit to).

Thanks for helping to answer my questions though, Gonch. I really wasn't fishing for more bad-mouthing. I seriously wanted to discuss the reasons that more of us have visited HW, a smaller park, than have visited SF, a much larger park, in the recent years.

I wasted so much money going to SFGAdv in the past, that I am still upset about my bad experiences there. I have learned over the years, from my many mcjobs, that it is very, very difficult to bring a customer back if they have had a bad experience. Getting you customers to consider patronizing your business through advertising can be very expensive, so to let your customers leave unhappy is not beneficial to being successful.

Am I stubborn about that? Yes, I'll admit it. But, it is very a common practice in the business world to not patronize a business because of being mistreated as a customer in the past, new management or not.

Every time I think about SFGAdv, I am reminded of how many times I handed over all that money, and didn't receive what I was believed that I was paying for. It's kind of difficult for me to consider doing it yet once again. It's a "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me" kind of thing.

I'm kind of thinking that the reasons above could have been what kind of killed Geauga Lake. Every time people though about visiting the park, they remembered what a bad time they had there when it was SFO, and they went to CP or KI instead, no matter if GL was "under new management" or not.

I'm not completely feeling super negative about all SF parks. I have yet to visit SFoG. Visiting that park is in the plans, someday, because they haven't had the chance to screw me out of my hard-earned money yet. :)

It is very good for SFGAdv that El Toro is getting such good reviews.

No only is it saying bad things, but it's using colorful language to effect. Forgive me for misreading the intent of a comment like "how sickeningly terrible SFGAdv's problems are..."

I admit that those were words showed my bias. I thought of that when I typed them, but I meant it. It sickens me to think of giving SFGAdv another dime, because the park's terrible problems may affect my enjoyment there, thus making me feel like I wasted my money.

I can't visit 50 parks a season, give or take, like some people here can, so every park trip that I take is a very valuable experience to me. I want the risk to be as small as possible.

Luckily for SF, the park is very close to two (or more, depending on your definition of "close") of the largest cities in the country. They can find new customers very easily, so they don't really need to try to make the park experience enjoyable, in my opinion.