Ride Selection

I'm wondering how Mr.Ouimet will effect the types of rides going to parks. Will we see more expensive additions to some of the smaller parks or will we see the return of the dark ride to parks like Cedar Point?

It's not an either-or proposition, and putting expensive rides in smaller parks that generate less revenue doesn't make sense.

I'm not saying its either or, I was asking two questions. Just hoping to start a conversation topic.

I will say Kinzel loved him some hypers. First the Morgan/Okamoto ones (with Arrow then Morgan) and then the B&M ones with the Paramount acquisition. I can't fault him for it though, as Magnum was a huge step forward for Cedar Point, and I don't know any park where the hyper isn't the most or very close to the most popular ride.

Why did Paramount put off hypers in their parks for all those years?

I talked to a former PP'er, and he said that the company really wanted to differentiate itself with more diverse rides to some degree, but also had plans to do more film tie-ins. Tomb Raider at KI was probably the biggest risk they took on that strategy before being sold. Honestly, when it was running well, I think the risk was excellent. I loved that ride the way it originally ran.

Yeah, that ride was really great when it first opened. I'm afraid I haven't experienced it in its recent form, so I don't know how badly they've destroyed it.

Sad as the current ride may be, The Crypt is still a fairly unique attraction. Are there any other Giant Top Spins out in the world? And how many of them are indoors?

Tomb Raider: The Ride was an ambitious and relatively cost-effective way to get a large themed attraction. I always appreciated that they were thinking outside of the box (so to speak) and attempting something different for a seasonal park.

There are none, and at this point it's a safe bet that there won't ever be any more.

Yeah, weren't there huge issues with the ride system completely independent from the themeing or movie tie in?

I'm pretty sure that there's issue with most top spins.

The biggest issue that they had was that the ride shuts down when the two arms get slightly out of sync. Something that big and heavy is not something you want twisting and torquing in a bad way. The computers would try to reduce instances of this by sensing the disparity and compensating by pushing or slowing the motors to get the arms matched again. They just weren't fast enough (the computers and motors) to adjust quickly. That's how it was explained to me, anyway.

The solution was to not load the outside seats. I suppose the thinking there is that if the load is primarily at the center, it's unlikely that the one end of the gondola would be heavier and pull an arm out of sync.

For BeastBuzz, the year that they opened the ride, we had ERT and did several cycles, and one of those had the ride shut down. It was kind of weird... the gondola was at the top, inverted, then the ride went limp, and the sound and lighting program stopped. It turned into a big swing until it stopped.

I dunno, that ride was always screwed up. Back when it was new (and occasionally operational) people got off of it complaining that it was "too short", when it was in fact the second longest ride run time in the park at over 3:00. A huge part of the problem was that it spent 0:30 in that miserable head-down face-down position over the "lava pit". It was easy to get the impression that the cave ceiling (actually on the back wall) and the lava pit were the only real ideas they had for the ride cycle, and the rest was all filler. People who knew what the little Top Spin was capable of (and figured the Giant could do similar stuff) were immediately disappointed because Tomb Raider didn't do much of anything...and it took 25 seconds to park itself at the end of the ride.

What they ultimately ended up doing was removing one of the rows of seats from the gondola and possibly taking seats off both ends, so now it's just as big as it used to be, but I don't know if it carries as many people as the "normal" Top Spin.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.