Why does SF do this??
Hello, Hello! (hola!) I rode a ride named Vertigo!-with apologies to U2
Chitown said:
I noticed from RCDB that Scream at SFMM and Superman at SFGAm were opened in the same year.Scream was put on a lot without removing the lot and Superman was also put on a lot but the lot was either removed or covered with landscaping.
Shockwave was on this same site before with the lot intact.
Funny - when Shockwave was built - they said the ground would be landscaped soon!
I think they should have just left all the large and small chopped up asphalt/concrete under Superman. It it just kinda a nasty swampish thing now - lots of little puddles and floods. I mean, if you're gonna do something do it right.
Leaving all the sharp broken rubble would have made the ride probably a little more interesting... (or course, my retro vote is still in for a Phantom's Revenge makeover of Shockwave - could have been a HUGE hit...)
Having never been at either park, let me ask this question. When they construct a coaster over asphalt like this, do they have to replace the parking spaces now occupied by the coaster? Can they just say that they don't need as many spaces now? I would think the opposite would be true-- a new attraction supposedly would attract more people, who would require even more parking.
roadkill said:
Look at all the flack Disney's Animal Kindom gets about Dino-Rama- they purposely themed the ground to look like a parking lot, to give the area a "traveling carnival" atmosphere, and guests seem to hate it, often reffering to it as "cheap" and "Un-Disney-like."
Who are the people that really hate it? Who? The people that really can't stand it are the only "Disney people." I don't care for that mouse coaster, but that ride did have a line everytime when I was there.
Look at California Adventures. I think it's a fine park. People complain that it's a messed up park. Why? I'm guessing that people don't care for it because it's not a unique park.
Most of those rides are amusement park rides that you can find at Six Flags, or Cedar Fair. If people are forking over tons of money, they want to be treated to something they have never been in contact before. I'm a tourist, and if I'm spending thousands of bucks, and thus I want to go to Disney's Unique World!
Look at Universal Studios. Which park does better? The regular Universal does. It's more unique than Islands. Islands is pretty unique with Spiderman, and Jurassic Park, but other stuff are clones you can find elsewhere. It's only 700,000 greater in 2006 attendance, but it still does better.
They simply wouldn't build the coaster at all.
matt. said:
The parking used up by these coasters is simply excess. I can't think of many major parks that regularly fill up their existing parking lots more than a few days a year. 90% of the time it's just space.
Then maybe the question is why go through the expense of paving it in the first place? I remember reading a few years ago that when Hersheypark wanted to put in some attraction, the township required them to add a certain number of parking spaces.
RatherGoodBear said:
Nobody's expecting a putting green down below, krax, but they could have done something to make it look more like the natural surroundings. If water and the environment are concerns, paving does nothing to help. Whatever rain they get either puddles and evaporates or just runs off, and the dark color of the macadam holds heat.
How does rain evaporating on pavement have anything to do with environmental concerns or water conservation? The park having to install an irrigation to keep the grass alive beneath a big roller coaster and using up water resources is the problem.
Having never been at either park, let me ask this question. When they construct a coaster over asphalt like this, do they have to replace the parking spaces now occupied by the coaster? Can they just say that they don't need as many spaces now? I would think the opposite would be true-- a new attraction supposedly would attract more people, who would require even more parking.
Scream! was built over the park's former employee parking lot. It has since been relocated to another lot that is adjacent to the administration buildings behind Batman. So no, they actually never lost any guest parking areas when they built Scream!.
Spinout said:
Does it really matter about Scream? Is that why you ride a roller coaster to look at the ground below it? It doesn't make didly squat to me if I want to ride the thing or not. Of course, it would be nice if they tore out the lot, and put something else under it, but it's not a reason why I ride that ride.
Are you seriously telling me that Kumba is in no way better than Scream, then? Kumba is one of the most lavishly-landscaped rides I've ever been on and is in my top 10, whereas Scream - a coaster that has the exact same inversion chain, and is essentially the same ride, is way down maybe in my 40s or 50s. Heck, even Medusa at SFGAd (the EXACT same ride only mirrored) is somewhere in the 25 to 30 range. Scream sucks.
How does rain evaporating on pavement have anything to do with environmental concerns or water conservation? The park having to install an irrigation to keep the grass alive beneath a big roller coaster and using up water resources is the problem.
Actually the pavement poses a few questionable concerns depending on how you feel.
First there is Urban Heating, an abnormal increase in temperature due to urbanization. Mostly caused from vast paved areas or areas where buildings obstruct higher views causing heating due to it not being able to escape. (This is not meant to be argumentative and there is plenty to support the following theory. Do a google search if you don't believe me.) Many people theorize that Global Warming is actually just Urban Heating near weather stations.
Second, when the rides are maintained oils and other materials that become hazardous fall to the ground. They have nowhere to go so the rain falls and when it evaporates it takes the contaminates with it. Though vegitation would not completly help this it would assist in cleansing the water it returned to the air through transevaporation. Also the vegitation would help make clean air. Six Flags could invest in plants that do not require maintenance and are extremely hardy and would not require an irrigation system. Due to the lack of theming I would not think that this would conflict with any image of the rides they were going for.
Third, water falling from the sky and immediatly evaporating back into the air hurts the water table because it is not being absorbed into the ground. This creates a bigger need for irrigation, not just at Six Flags, but anything near by that may use a well (Which I understand in California that there are very few wells).
And lastly, at $15mil a pop for the rides tearing the pavement out and adding a little vegetation is pennies in the bucket. ~$100k for the whole job. I have done similar jobs for under ~$50k on most of the east coast.
Like I said, it depends on who you are as to weather you think that there is a concern. There is certainly a major enviromental impact, but honestly what isn't?
Six Flags not adding any vegetation does not come down to any codes or issues in California, it's a lack of investment in the overall experience. The ride has been the key to bringing people through the gates. Case in point, Kingda Ka. Look at Aerial photos of the base of the tower to about 1/3 of the way through the hill. Still a parking lot, they just took the time to cover the lines on this one.
***Edited to change "<" to "~". I didn't mean it was greater than $100k and $50k respectively. I meant it would be in that approximate range.*** *** Edited 3/11/2008 2:39:35 PM UTC by ldiesman***
CoasterComet said:
Funny - when Shockwave was built - they said the ground would be landscaped soon!
Yeah, they did. SF promised lots of stuff like that in the past. I remember the first several years of Shockwave, not only did they not dig up the parking lot and left the stripes, they left the signs too. I distinctly remember rolling through the corkscrews and seeing "Porky Pig row F" flying by. Actually I cut them a little slack for Shockwave, but only Shockwave. The ride was installed on short notice, supposedly 6 months or less. The coaster was intended for Great Adventure in '88 and was switched to Great America very late in the game. They didn't have a lot of time for site prep, let alone find a site. That's why it was on the parking lot. Great Adventure got their Scream Machine a year later anyway.
ldiesman said:
And lastly, at $15mil a pop for the rides tearing the pavement out and adding a little vegetation is pennies in the bucket. <$100k for the whole job. I have done similar jobs for under <$50k on most of the east coast.
Not to ignore the rest of your excellent post, but this highlights my problem with this kind of thinking. If you're going to spend so much money, what's a little more to make it right? It's this kind of attention to detail that makes me fall in love with a park.
Someone compared Kumba to Scream, and while I personally prefer the Busch ride to the Six Flags ride, it has nothing to do with the landscaping beneath the coaster. The landscaping affects my impression of the park as a whole and will play a big part in whether or not I return. My wife and I go to BGA pretty much every year when we go to Florida, and part of the reason is because it's obviously a quaility experience. One could go to the park, not ride anything and still enjoy the surroundings. As for SFMM, I'm not sure I'd ever return because the attention to detail wasn't there.
If I want rides placed in a parking lot, I can go to the local carnival. If I'm going to spend a couple hundred parks in a theme park, I have much higher expectations.
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