Coaster Kingdom - Magazine

Issue 21: Great Rides... That Weren't

What rides have disappointed you despite looking excellent? And what other examples or reasons can you think of why despite the best of intentions rides might not always turn out as expected?

Also comment on William Squires' An American Adventure article on why American Adventure has a far more interesting history than people give it credit for.

Click here to read the article in full
More topics
Magazine Home

Author: MS Tuesday, August 01, 2006 | Comment | Link

4 Comments:

It's an interesting article, but one thing that did strike me is that articles like this seem to praise parks for playing safe. Most of those rides mentioned were to extents innovative, whereas the parks could have done what Tuassauds are doing and gone for tried and tested ideas. Excalibur has its faults, but it’s original (something you could hardly say for Stealth), has at least attempted humour and in all fairness appears to keep the target audience entertained. As such it seems to have had a lot of effort put in. If every park had rides such as a top scan and launched coaster, these rides would loose their appeal. I’m all for parks trying to do something different.

Author: Neil Wilson on Thursday, August 03, 2006

Yep, exactly. I hope the article didn't come across as praising parks for playing it safe as that certainly wasn't the point I was trying to make - the point, if any, was to sympathise with parks like Drayton who always seem to try, yet more often than not end up with a dud.

Hence I praise rides like G Force for looking amazing, and maintain that Stealth looks like - and is - a glorified Space Shot. As I say, though, a bad ride is a bad ride, but I try and give credit where it's due.

The article was almost a 'Great Rides That Shouldn't Be', rides like Tomb Blaster which are 'accidentally' great - for example, CWOA really did nothing but add about 100,000 LEDs which was as lazy as hell, but it seemed to all work out well and they have a good ride out of it - but I feel awkward saying such and such is a great ride following such a lazy transformation - I don't think parks should be rewarded for being apathetic and accidentally striking gold.

Author: MS on Thursday, August 03, 2006

Cheers, that's exactly what I meant.

Author: Neil Wilson on Friday, August 04, 2006

Great feature again, but this month's Open Mic was also particularly excellent giving airtime to a much ignored park. Good work William Squires and good work on CK for giving them the opportunity to write about it.

Author: Anonymous on Saturday, August 05, 2006

Comment

Archives:
.