Park websites what could be done to improve them?

My first thought is adding photographs of all the rides in the parking instead of a marketing description.

Look at CP's site. Now thats a good official site.

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I go to the point each year to have their new coaster break down, thats my life. Dragster and WT may have been closed, but MF is always there to fulfill my thrill needs

To the general public, the websites are fine. They do not care about roller coaster photographs. All they need to know is where the park is located and what a few features of the park are.

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http://www.bgtguide.com

To me, the basics are:

Schedule, pricing and a good map of the park. I don't care how flashy a site is as long as it has those three things.

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Kind of hard to take a post as objective if a park or coaster name is part of the "user name"

Since I can get all my coaster info from rcdb.com all I want to know from a park's website is admission costs, operating schedule, and where the park is located. Maps and a ride list are nice but not a requirement for me. A list of hotels and motels in the area is nice, too, but also not a requirement.

It's hard to do better than Holiday World or Knoebels.

mOOSH

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A random Mooshter's Dawntionary listing: Circumvent [n.] The opening in the front of boxer shorts.
*** This post was edited by Mamoosh 7/11/2003 11:50:00 AM ***

I think it's important for a park to put the same level of professional development into their web site as they do with the rest of their advertising. For many parks, the web site is an afterthought.

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Walt Schmidt - Virtual Midway

Well, they could pay me to troubleshoot their websites....that's why our office's website (data entry/reporting program) is SO good....cause I get PAID to do it...;)
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It seems today, that all you see, are violins in movies, and sax on TV....

While CP's is nice I'd like to see a streaming Video instead of a still pic and how many different angles of TTD do you really need? Maybe one of MF and Maggie and maybe just maybe the midway from the front gate would be nice.

For me one of the most frustrating things I found when researching and planning my trip to Texas was things like no show times and just description of the rides (not necessarily coasters) and no pictures. Sure RCDB does a good job with coaster pictures and stats but it doesn't handle flat rides.

Cedar Point's website may be nice now, but you guys didn't see it a while ago. Around the time that Power Tower was being built, the site was so simple. In fact, it was so simple that it was ugly. Guide to the Point...which was rollercoaster.nu or popworld.com/guide.html or somethin like that was the best place to go to learn about Cedar Point.

But I definitely think that sites need to have photos. More often if I am looking at a amusement park website, I have to come to unofficial sites to see if the roller coasters are worth riding.

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"Do what you believe in and believe in what you do," Jeffrey E. McCants

http://web.archive.org/web/19980506133546/http://www.cedarpoint.com/

Remember that?

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2002/2003
KWTM

Hey Gator, I wanna see! Or is it your intranet? I do that too ya know... ;)

By the way, I don't think parks would spend millions on rollercoasters if the general public weren't interested. Whether the public wants it or not, there's gotta be a pitch, and directions and schedule ain't gonna do the job...

Then again, if the goal of the site is strictly informational, then forget all the cool pix. I guess it probably comes down to a good balance of both.

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"SOME people have NO class!" - Mom from the Whizzer queue
*** This post was edited by janfrederick 7/11/2003 1:35:22 PM ***

I really like the Hersheypark website because it tells you made every ride in the park. But, they don't have a button labeled "Directions" for some reason. The directions were hidden in one of the other links.
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If you have a problem with clones, the solution is real simple—Stop traveling.

I think it would be helpful if parks made an effort to publish and update scheduled events accurately, particularly company picnics and such. Some websites list major events like concerts, ethnic-festival-weeks, etc. but fail to mention company outings. It may be nitpicking, but it would also be nice if park websites used pictures of coasters that are actually in their park instead of trying to pass off Medusa as B:DK (for example).

1) Make it load quick. I don't want to wait for enormous flash animations to load, I want to get to the information.

2) Put the admission prices, operating dates, and hours of operation where I can find them. Preferrably with a single click from the homepage.

3) USEABILITY! USEABILITY! USEABILITY!
I want all the information I could possibly want when visiting the park, and I want it easy to get to, and I want it easy to read. If you have a light blue background, do not use dark blue text (not to name any offenders, Paramount Parks...)

4) SPECIAL TO SIX FLAGS:
PLEASE either register a domain for each park, or give each park a top level directory that's easy to remember...say, for instance, "www.sixflags.com/greatamerica" or "www.sixflags.com/wyandotlake" so that we don't have to click through nine layers of "PICK A PARK" flash interface just to get to our home park!

The bottom line is, I don't want to search for information, I want to find it. I don't want to hunt all over a site to find basic information. I want the navigation to be clean and obvious

And yes, the Cedar Point site is pretty good, though some of the categories are a little ambiguous. The old Six Flags site with the little black dots, though, was awful...can't tell what any of the buttons are until you roll over them, assuming it works right on your browser. Ick!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

beeman65 said:
http://web.archive.org/web/19980506133546/http://www.cedarpoint.com/
Remember that?
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2002/2003
KWTM

Oh GOD, make it stop...the horrible memories of that site...

That's a pretty cool site though. It has the old Guide to the Point site on it.

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"Do what you believe in and believe in what you do," Jeffrey E. McCants
*** This post was edited by Jephry 7/12/2003 1:04:15 AM ***

http://web.archive.org/web/19980506133546/http://www.cedarpoint.com/
Remember that?

Heh. I thought I knew so much because I had the scoop on their new attraction for 1998. Long before I dove headfirst into enthusiast-land.

And I have to agree with Rideman on the SF site(s) - they've always been over the top bad. Spectacularly bad even. The current one is a maze of stupidity that's the single slowest loading site I visit from time to time. If someone on a cable line has to wait 10 or 20 seconds for a page to load - then there's something seriously wrong.

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www.coasterimage.com
Dorney Park Visits in 2003: 13

RideMan you used to be able to type www.sixflags.com/greatamerica and it would go to the Great America Home page. But they have recently changed it (about 2 weeks ago) so you cannot do that anymore. I used to do that all the time and it would work. But now you have to type: www.sixflags.com/parks/greatamerica

Carlo