The $250,000 figure for painting Raptor sounds realistic based on the the quote I got recently for painting another structure.
A paint salesman who services several amusement parks told me that most of the parks use an alkyd enamel system for steel coasters which is a fairly cheap paint but loses it's gloss after a few years. This surprised me since the paint is the cheapest part of most paint jobs. The major costs for painting structural steel are surface preparation and application. An epoxy paint with a gloss urethane top coat would last much longer while costing only a little more. I can only guess that they parks figure they will change the color in a few years, so they aren't too worried about how long the paint looks good.
Of course, most new woodies dodge the whole painting issue by using pressure treated wood or galvanized steel for the structure. Steel coasters are not galvanized because of the large size of the pieces involved and the need to field weld during construction.
