Shoot the Rapids: "The boats didn't fit the flumes"

Article says:

Translation:

"Intamin. Oh, how I love Intamin. Intamin builds such big, fun rides. Their rides are so super-dooper. I love their rides. They made me a new super-dooper ride. It's perfect. But some bad people made the boats. They made bad boats. But it's not Intamin's fault. I love Intamin."

How do you build a ride and have the boats too big? I hope that Cedar fair doesn't have to pay to replace the boats. If it is the ride manufacturers flaw, then they should pony up new boats pronto.

I used to work for a supermarket, and various companies would get them to try out their latest mechanical marvel, and all you can do is marvel at the fact that the piece of crap doesn't work. but, instead of getting rid of it, they keep using it, even thought it's totally worthless and has to be repaired every other day. And, guess who gets paid...the company that sold the piece of crap.

Like an endless cirlce of pay and repair.

The only way the park is paying is with negative publicity or customer dissatisfaction. But, even at that, I don't think it's affecting them to much yet. From what I've seen during several visits to the park this year, the GP I seem excited about the ride and are asking when it will open. But, when the park says, they don't know, most people are just shrugging it off and moving on to the next ride.

Exactly what I saw as well, Jason.

Sometimes I think we overestimate that sort of thing when we sit here at home and play armchair business analyst instead of getting out to the park and actually seeing what is happening.

Sure, this is in no way like Rock'it in terms of the park desperately needing the one new attraction...

...but on the other hand, a WATER attraction would sure be nice to have running in the hot weather. The Midwest was cooking when I was up for HWN - assuming it hasn't cooled too much since then?

It's been a very comfortable week in Northern Ohio. Mid 70's to low 80's over the next 10 days with a chance of rain this weekend.

^^ It cooled down for a few days, but is climbing back up this weekend. Heat index should be in the upper 90s, at least in northern Ohio. In fact, some friends and I are driving past Cedar Point to go to Geauga Lake's Wildwater Kingdom!!

Actually we live between the two, so it's just a matter of driving east rather than west. Just being a smartarse. ;)

That commercial always made me laugh.

I'm confused. I thought that GL/SFO/SFWOA didn't actually compete with Cedar Point?

(Being the even bigger smartarse here. ;))

I always thought that was the point of why that commercial was so laughable - they were trying to create a competition that didn't exist...

...and one that they'd lose by a long shot.

Kinda like challenging the bully who had left you alone up until now.

Even if there was competition from people in the western Cleveland suburbs who were basically equidistant from either park, Cedar Point is quite the symbol of pride around here, and I think that commercial was seen as an attack ad on something everyone loves. Never mind that, if one's marketing strategy is to draw comparisons to CP, one's park had better deliver. :)

Kinda like the old "Genesis does what Nintendon't" ads. When Nintendo was the top dog and everyone loved it, here came this other game console to take a swipe at them. Regardless of whether Genesis was better or more powerful than the original NES, a negative campaign against something people have an emotional attachment to probably wasn't the best tactic.

How can Dick or park reps continue with the "the boats don't fit" explanation when video of boats - empty, with water dummies, and with employees - have been widely available on YouTube? Sounds to me like there are bigger issues they're trying to work out.

Well, they said they were retrofitting the boats on site to try and get them to work. They obviously got them to work. At least to a certain extent. They had issues with the pumps. Which may or may not have been resolved. It's possible that they did everything they could to make the boats work and just weren't satisfied with the results. In turn they gave up and asked for new boats or for the manufacture to do a better retrofit off site. Maybe that should have been done from day 1. But, I think they were trying everything they could to get the ride going as soon as possible. And assuming an on-site retrofit would have worked, it would have been quicker than sending it back to the manufacture. That didn't happen though. It's easy to say now they should have just sent the boats back from the beginning. But, we have the benefit of hindsight.

Of course these are just my hypothesis based on assumptions and shouldn't be considered fact. So don't quote me on any of this. If you do, I'll catch you, I have eyes everywhere. :)

My guess is they got a boat or two to "fit" and by the time they realized how much money it took to retrofit they went back to Intamin and said "we need new boats and you need to pay for them." It could have also been a safety issue (so much tinkering compromised the integrity of the boats?).

As many know, Shoot the Rapids opened to the public this weekend. It has already been observed on Pointbuzz that the height requirement was changed from what was announced last month. You must now be 46" with an adult, rather than 42".

In summary, I guess you could say "The boats now fit the flumes" but "certain people no longer fit the boats."

What was the height requirement for the log flume ride that this was a replacement for? That's pretty disappointing.

From what I've seen so far, I do not like anything about this new ride. It's not a log flume, it's less family friendly as it excludes the smaller kids, the second drop is larger than the first (poor design), It took forever to open, It caused the removal of a lot of classic and interesting scenery from Paddlehweel Excursions, and unlike the ride it supposedly was a replacement for, it's a soaker. I'm not impressed in any way.

You probably need those few extra inches so you can still breathe in the event that the boat settles on the floor of the trough. :)

White Water Landing had the same height requirements as StR does now...46" with an adult.

What is disappointing is that CP was definitely shooting for the more family friendly 42", which is seemed they finally got. Obviously that changed in the last month.

You missed the part about WWL's requirement of 46" or accompanied by a responsible person. That went for those who were 36" to 46".

I vented the same frustrations on PBuzz that this isn't a replacement of WWL. I'm still excited about riding it if it ever runs consistently. So we'll see.

~Rob

I'm not in any way excited to ever ride this, Rob. It kind of looks boring, and anticlimactic.