Five Rides Gone at SFNE

^It is fun but I think the "freakout" factor was much higher. The sheer size of the ride and getting thrown upside down like that was pretty wild, at least to me. Quite cool but not the sort of thing you want to ride over and over.

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phoenixphan :-) said:
I don't recall saying that the park was closing. The park is adding a new attraction in 2008, The Dark Knight. It should be a great addition to their coaster lineup, but I would like to see the park keep a great flat ride selection.

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matt. said:
^They were joking, we know the park isn't closing.

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Exactly, it was a tongue-in-cheek comment playing off of the GL stuff.

Personally, I'd rather see the flats there than the coaster - although I even have to admit the Dark Knight coaster concept sounds cooler to me than people are giving it credit for. If done well, it could be a neat little ride.

Always wanted to try Swat/Catapult - never got the chance.

Well, in my support I'm thinking long-term. I'm not trying to imply losing 5 flats for one well-themed wild mouse is a fair deal. However, losing 5 flats for a well-themed wild mouse, better staffing of major rides, a waterpark expansion and a couple more E-ticket rides certainly would be.

Now that I think about it, the one time I did ride Swat at AW, at the end of the ride cycle we got stuck with the arms in the vertical position. We were like that for a couple minutes and then they were able to level us off. After that we were up there for 5-10 minutes. I don't remember how long.

Re: SWAT/Catapult...

If only they had been able to either spin the arms a little faster and longer....or, if they'd been able to *drop/launch* the ride vertically, even about 10-20'. As it was/is, the ride really isn't long enough, fast enough, or flippy enough to justify the LONG load/lift times for the relatively short ride cycle.

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matt. said:

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Intamin Fan said:
Please explain to me how a Breakdance and a Frisbee are in anyway similar.

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They're both spinning rides. I've watched plenty of people marathon on both considering that neither has a significant line most of the time, and there's that certain contingent at parks that enjoy spinning around really fast as much as possible.

There's also a Tea Cup ride in the South End of the park, and there also used to Joker's Wild Card down by Superman and Kontiki is roughly in the same genre, too. It's just too much when you have coasters with huge lines, a massive yet STILL packed waterpark, and lots of flatrides with piss poor ridership. You gotta shift your offerings.

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That's a really bad assumption for all those rides. Wipeout's spin but they give you airtime. Well, at least for they do. The teacup ride has different Forces on you than the Frisbee does. You can also not spin the wheel on the teacup ride.

Some breakdances like to move you fast in one direction, and than spin a little while others move you very fast, and spin a little more. I'm guessing considering it's Six Flags that, that particular Break Dance spins quite slow, and it spins a little. For the Kontiki, are you kidding me?? Yes, it does go in the circle, but you don't get dizzy afterwards, and it has hills in the ride. Your car is also swinging during the ride.

Why in the heck didn't they put the Wipeout back? I've heard the only reason that they closed the Wipeout was because of a fire code in the building. I still think it has something to do with what happend at Six Flags Marine World at the time.

I don't agree with the parks decision of removing a whole lot of flats without getting new ones. People are so worried that the roller coasters are so packed, and than getting rid of more flats means more roller coasters are going to get packed. Six Flags is stuck in this trap as they were at GL.

They take out some flats that people really like, and than they think that everyone that comes there only wants to go on roller coasters. There are people that are scared to death of roller coasters, and won't go there if they have to go on one. Some people are just normal coaster riders.

They want to ride something different than coasters all the time, and thus they might go on some flats when the coaster lines are really long. They need something to do when they aren't on these humongous coasters. I really think these parks need to up there flats to get some of these people to go on there flats. If they cared a lot more about there flats, do you know how much more packed these parks would be!

Six Flags completely ruins the Yo-Yo. Look at Max Air, and what that ride did. It gets the people on a flat ride!! It costs too much money for what it is, but look at what it did. I don't care if attendance was down a million, or so, but it's a pretty packed ride. It's NOT a walk-on at that park, and neither is Sky Hawk. I'm not saying that those rides are the greatest in the world either (I think they are good rides, but they aren't any Spin Out, Zipper, super intense Orbiter, and so on.), but look at the impact those rides give the park.

Also, what they do is, they de-intensify the flats because they think that if it's too intense, people might throw up, but yet they put 9 million loops on a roller coaster that goes backwards, and forwards at 65 miles per hour.

The maximum capacity for each ride on the Kontiki, or Alpine Bobs is 54 with children, and 36 with adults. That's a high capacity! Putting rides in hidden corners is a horrible way for a ride to go. Thankfully, they will put the ride back in.

I have to believe that the only reason they are removing the Catapult is becuase of reliablility. I go to SFNE all the time and its open about 50% of the time. As for the low ridership that has a lot to do with where the ride is located in the park. Its' in the left corner of the park surrounded by rides like the dreaded Cyclone, Time Warp, and the flashback. The only other rides in that area are the kiddie rides with the possible exception of Pendamonium. People don't want to walk all the way to that end of the park just for Catapult. If the ride was located any where else in the park I guarantee it would be far more popular. I have to disagree with most of you here. I found the Catapult to actually be the most intense flat ride I have ever been on. That thing was fast and long enough. Maybe it seemed slow b/c 1. it wasn't going at full speed on that particular day 2. You were not sitting on the ouside where the tangential velocity and centripetal force is the greatest.

As for the Doulbe Trouble its about Time! I've been looking forward to that rides final day for sometime b/c now I don't have to be tempted to ride it anymore.

Here is a video tribute to the rides last day of operations;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHKLGURQ68s

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Lord Gonchar said:
Removing five rides!?

Oh my God, they must be closing!

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SF just bought the park to close it! That was their plan all along!

-Tambo :)

"That's a really bad assumption for all those rides. Wipeout's spin but they give you airtime. Well, at least for they do. The teacup ride has different Forces on you than the Frisbee does. You can also not spin the wheel on the teacup ride."

I'm making generalizations. The park was overloaded with rides that spin around that weren't that popular. Same with flat rides that flip. I realize that they're all different but for your average member of the GP the intricacies are pretty much lost. Granted, I'm sure quite a few people will be disappointed to see Rodeo or Kontiki or whichever next season but there's plenty of other options in the park.

By the way in my justification of the ride removals before I also forgot to mention the park has a Scrambler which tends to be pretty popular, too, so that's even another one.

"I don't agree with the parks decision of removing a whole lot of flats without getting new ones. People are so worried that the roller coasters are so packed, and than getting rid of more flats means more roller coasters are going to get packed."

It's not going to be a direct cause and effect, I don't think. Even on the busiest days I've never seen more than a one or two cycle wait for Rodeo, never saw any wait for Double Trouble because it never ran, rarely saw much for Catapult except towards mid-day because of the location, etc. If lines aren't significant for these rides to begin with you're not going to see a major increase in lines for the coasters. In fact if they're staffed better I'll bet you'll see lines for the coasters go just the opposite way.

They'll still have Nightwing, Houdini, Tomahawk, Bumpercars, Twister, Crimewave, Buzzsaw, Teacups, Time Warp, and Scrambler to suck up the difference, too. To my untrained eye that still seems like a big number to me, at least relative to the capacity of the coasters, and the huge demand for the already huge waterpark. *** Edited 10/29/2007 1:51:20 PM UTC by matt.***

Capacity for most flat rides are 300-400 pph, and the capacity for a lot of coasters are 1000 pph. One coaster equals about 3.5 flat rides which isn't a whole lot of flats. Of course the Boomerang, Catwoman's Whip, Great Chase, and the Pandemonium don't get 1000 pph.

The park has a lot of low capacity coasters with yet another one coming, and I'm sure that's why the coasters always have lines. SLC's only gets 20 people per train.

^That's assuming that the soon to be removed flat rides run at capacity all the time at SFNE, and they virtually never do. And then that's assuming that the alternative to riding these 5 flat rides is only standing in line for a coaster, 100% of the time. Your math is just way over-simplified.

I can tell you from first hand experience something like Rodeo on a average day is not doing anything close to 300 riders an hour, every hour. Even in the middle of the day the ride frequently runs with empty cars.

You're right about the capacity issues of the coasters, but it has nothing to do with the flat ride selection in the park. The parks offerings are simply lopsided. Not enough coasters, not enough trains running on existing coasters, often not enough water park. Tons of flat rides with low ridership. Simple decision to me as long as we're trading the flats for improvements elsewhere. *** Edited 10/29/2007 3:10:43 PM UTC by matt.***

One of the reasons we liked SFNE so much was their collection of flats. Most of them were unique, so we rode them and had a blast. It was a nice change to some of the other parks where we just ride coasters because the flats are the same as every other park. Rodeo was one of our favorites.

It doesn't seem like they want to put Kontiki back up. It also looks like the Tilt-A-Whirl from SFMM, and Round Up from SFGAdv are going.

http://www.irmpri.com/product.htm *** Edited 11/5/2007 2:30:31 PM UTC by Spinout***

This really sucks. SFNE is my homepark, and the flat selection was really awesome...now they are slowly turning it into a SFGadv.

There is hope, though. I have heard that a couple of these rides will return in 2009. Several of them had very poor locations, so I can understand moving them. I am really hoping that this rumor is true...the flats were the reason SFNE was so good (along with Superman...of course).

Wow, they're really unloading the rides on that page!

I recognised the Mack sea storm and paratrooper from La Ronde, the Great Escape Rainbow and an unknown Hopskin shoot the chutes in addition to all the previously mentionned rides.

Looks like CP's Chaos is also on the way out, hmm thats right by the Peanuts Playground isnt it...

^It's been for sale a year ago already. If you go to maps.live.com, you will see that the Peanuts Playground is farther than you think from Chaos. The problem is that they have a huge building in the way. I don't know what that building is.

I thought it was determined that was just a "stock photo" and Chaos at Cedar Point wasn't actually for sale?

Absimilliard, are you sure that Huss Rainbow is from the Great Escape? SFKK sure has had a lot of trouble with their's this season........