Waldameer adding spinning coaster in 2004

At the bottom of the article it said a temporary spinning coaster will be placed behind the Sea Dragon before the main spinning coaster is built. Interesting!

What kinda bronze statues are we talking? They haven't asked me to be a cast for one yet, I'd better keep the line free!

Sounds like the park is renting a carnie version and also bought a larger, permanent one. Smart thinking -- he's guaranteed that the local enthusiasts will go up at least TWICE this year ;)

(I love Waldameer anyway, so that's not a problem.)

Yeah... that part made me read twice! I would normally associate that statement to a writer that got his/her facts mixed up, but the article was very well-written so I'm left wondering if there is some truth in that. Is it possible that Seabreeze's coaster will make a temporary stop at Waldameer before going to Rochester? It sounds silly at first, but could make sense, as the Seabreeze coaster is the travelling one that toured Germany, is it not?

If that is the case, does this mean that, by visiting Waldameer twice this summer, you can count the ride twice?

My guess is that MS could not make the deadline Waldameer wanted for the fabrication of a new ride so they offered to have the new ride ready by mid-summer and have one that was in stock put there on a temporary basis. Perhaps a German showman like Schneider traded his in for something so MS had it sitting unsold. While it is expensive to container ship a coaster back and forth across the water it is probably cheaper than losing the contract. I heard that Chance did the same thing with IB. Supposedly since their Chaos was not ready Chance took an extra trailer-mounted one up to the park for a few months and it spun at the end of the ride area until theirs was fabircated and installed.

Adam

Interesting arrangement, although I'm impressed that the park would make such an effort to have their new ride open on time instead of making people wait. Good business decision, if you ask me.

WOW!!! What a surprise! Who knew they were building a spinning coaster? The article on January 15th left you wondering. Was it the Ravine Flyer or something else? Even though it's not the Ravine Flyer it's still looks really cool. I can't wait to visit Waldameer in my hometown Erie, PA this summer!

The bronze statues look good, they did show them on the local news (WJET-24 [Erie, PA]) yesterday... i love the quote Paul Nelson made "After Our 9% Attendance decrease last year, most people would run away, we are going for it head on".

I just hope the community doesn't name it BORG Assimilator...

Again, Coasterbuzz also gets in the limelight...

...although whom they quoted this time in Coasterbuzz was MUCH better than that article about birds flying into a tower in California or something.

That's because Waldameer isn't located on a beach in Santa Cruz, Kahl-E-forn-ya!!

I think the reason for the loss in attendance was due to the fact that nothing has been added since 2001, which was Ali Baba... This will definately bring in some more people for the 2004 & 2005 seasons... and after that current plans 2006 is the year of the R' Flyer 2's entrance into the park...

I thought Ali Baba was built in 1999.

Either way, still, its been a long time since an new ride... Modifying an old ride might be nice though, I'm all for a loop being added to Comet ;).

*** This post was edited by Rctycoon2k 1/16/2004 9:09:28 PM ***

I have never bought into the theory that says you need to add a new ride every year to keep attendence up. There are alot of factors that go into attendence, which were laid out pretty well in the article, namely last year people were not comfortable with the economy and, more immoportanly, the whether was lousy, with it raining most every weekend for the first half of the season. I don't think a small regional park has to worry about adding a ride every year, if they have a decent PR and marketing department as well as good, clean facilities and friendly staff (all of which I found on my visit last year), then they should have no trouble bringing the locals in year after year.

Thats the thing, the have always had a clean park, friendly staff, great service, everything. Yes the weather was poor this past summer, but not that bad. 2001 was a lot worse than last year, yet had a pretty good attendence. I still thing that no additions (besides midway games) between 1999 and now had some factor it, due to the fact that why should people come back when they have seen everything / ridden everything... Yet, again, I say this isn't the complete reason, but it does ring into the 9% decrease...

I have pictures of the old Quantom Loop @ Seabreeze in pieces in the parking lot. They have already began prepping the site for the new spinning coaster so i don't think the temp one @ Waldameer's isn't this one.

I'm the one who plugged coasterbuzz.com.

Ahhhh, bless you Kevin... ;)... right now I'm talking to Nelson about doing construction updates on waldameer.com, but he doesn't know if he could do that, so he might be sending me photos which I can post on my site as "official" construction updates.

Maybe the temporary model is a ride like this:

http://www.rcdb.com/installationgallery1551.htm

Thats the first Maurer spinner, and actually the only one I would call a spinning mouse. It pales in comparison to the compact version which will come later. However, even the bigger compact just can´t be compared to a freeform model.

I have no idea how many of these small versions have been built and if there´s a "spare one" in existance for Waldemeer.