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Somewhat Hidden Similarities of Rides in Amusement Parks

bmac

Giga Poster
Alright I might be very vague with the topic here, but bear with me. I've been to about 26 different parks in the United States and as a rather observant person I noticed similarities between a good chunk of the rides in a park. What do you mean by similarities, you ask? I'm talking stuff like type of coaster, manufacturer, elements, etc.

If you still don't get this I'll drop some examples to help you get a grasp at what I am talking about. How about Hersheypark? Nothing can really be hidden between most of those rides, right? Wrong, Hershey's last 3 roller coasters (in order Storm Runner, Farenheit, Skyrush) have all been built by Intamin. How about Cedar Point? Well 5 of their coasters were built by Arrow Dynamics and another 5 were also built by Intamin (especially the last 4!). So more than half of the park's rides are split between two manufacturers.

Now there can be simple explanations to all of this like the park being comfortable with the manufacturer, but how do you get around a park like King's Dominion? The park has had 5 different launching coasters in its history, all coming from 4 different manufacturers (Premier, Intamin, S&S and Schwarzkopf). So how do you explain something like that?

Don't leave it just to the three parks above, there are definitely more parks than the ones I mentioned.
 

madhjsp

Giga Poster
I think you've pretty much already answered your own question with the bit about parks and companies being 'comfortable' with a manufacturer. If a park orders a ride that works well and sells tickets, they're going to be more likely to order a ride from the same manufacturer in the future, so long as it fits the park's needs.

Take Busch Gardens Williamsburg for example. After installing a few smaller Schwarzkopf coasters, they went with Arrow Dynamics for their first large-scale custom looping coaster. When Loch Ness Monster proved to be a big hit, they went with Arrow again for their next coaster, this time ordering a new ride design that at the time was on the cutting edge of coaster technology. Again, they struck gold with Big Bad Wolf. Years later, when looking to add another major coaster, they nearly went with the promising upstart company in B&M, but eventually decided to take another Arrow ride, since they had yet to be let down by one before. However, after Drachen Fire's short-lived and problematic operational life, they changed directions and installed 3 straight B&M coasters, each one becoming a bigger hit than the last.

When looking at a park like Kings Dominion that has coasters from a seemingly random assortment of manufacturers, it's important to consider context & think about what the park was trying to accomplish with their new ride. Even if you only look at their launched coasters, the reasoning behind each isn't hard to understand. They ordered from Schwarzkopf for King Kobra because Schwarzkopf was basically the only company doing launches back then. The FoF clones were the world's first LIM launches and some of Premier's first coasters, so it's obvious that KD again wanted a totally unique ride experience that no other manufacturer could offer. Volcano used the same LIM technology, but filled the role of being the park's large-scale, big-launch, marquee thrill coaster, and KD probably went with Intamin to fit this niche because of their experience building larger-scale attractions. S&S's Hypersonic XLC again represented a unique and extreme ride that no other manufacturer at the time could deliver (remember, this was before Intamin got into the hydraulic launch game), and really put KD on the map as a launch coaster destination. Finally, with 3 major launched coasters already in the park, Backlot Stunt Coaster provided a milder launch experience to appeal to a broader range of riders and round out the park's collection. By this time, Intamin's hydraulic launch designs had outgrown rides this size, and Premier had proven that they could design LIM launch coasters on both large and small scales, so KD went with the manufacturer and launch type with which they were most familiar and comfortable.
 

furie

SBOPD
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
There'll always be some kind of sweetener in there somewhere too.

You do build a working relationship with a company you deal with (sometimes it can be a personal thing between the project leader and their contact in the company, other times at a higher level).

However, I think that often it's simply "well, you have two parks, we can do you two of the same ride and you get an extra 20% discount if you order both, or a 30% discount on the second ride if you promise an order based on how good a job we do on the first install".

I think other times it's quite simply "which company does what we want at the price we want?" Look at Hershey, they could have managed a little floorless where Fahrenheit is, but you get more "bang for your buck" with the Intamin than you would with B&M, quite simply because Intamin said "we'll do a vertical lift for you and beyond vertical drop saving you a lot of space to fit in more coaster". When you then think that it also gave them a pretty rare coaster type too, it's worth considering over a cookie-cutter B&M.

Likewise B&M wouldn't do a launch and they certainly generally avoid doing coasters that are "forced" into a tight space in and around rides and structures already in place (how many B&Ms ever do this? Genuine question.)

So yeah, it's a whole mixed bag of reasons, but I don't think it's as simple as "we've always used them (used them before) so will always use them".
 

tribar

Mega Poster
Cedar Point has wanted the biggest baddest thing for decades. Arrow used to be the company to go for that stuff but when they went out of business Intamin became the parks go to guy.
 

bergochdalbana

Mega Poster
furie said:
Likewise B&M wouldn't do a launch and they certainly generally avoid doing coasters that are "forced" into a tight space in and around rides and structures already in place (how many B&Ms ever do this? Genuine question.)
Dæmonen at Tivoli Gardens would be the obvious answer to your question.
 

metalhead7

Mega Poster
Not sure if this is totally on topic but I noticed today Hershey loves to do hidden similarities in the names of rides. I don't think that its a coincidence that they built the Wildcat and the Wild Mouse 3 years apart and put them right next to each other. Same goes for building Lightning Racer, then Storm Runner 4 years apart.
 
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