I'm not saying he's only going to add family rides. I'm saying he's obsessive over it now, when not every park needs it right at this moment. Not every park is in need of family rides right now, some of them are desperately in need for their thrill ride (Great Escape, SFA, etc), some need infrastructure renovations, some need flats (both thrill and family), some simply need a year of basic renovations (painting, fixing scenery, adding scenery, etc). Many have waited rightfully long for their share of the capital money that Burke funneled into only select parks and now Shapiro is just giving them mass produced clones. The chain as a whole needs to be balanced, but not only in the family rides aspect. Basically, what I'm saying is that Shapiro needs to look at what each individual park's needs after careful examination, not what he feels they need after a brief two hour walk through (which is how long I heard he spent at each park)

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Shapiro took the momentum of family attractions and went with it. He went through with it. Why wait for each individual park? Get it over with he might be thinking. We're looking for him to switch gears into another channel. I don't think we need to hang him so quickly over two years.

There's plenty of us hanging onto SFGADV freefall tower dreams, as grim as it looks like with the debt and the embarrassing and unfortunate SFKK incident.

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Thrillnetwork Moderator - Rookie Year CHILLERLC1
Philadelphia Phillies - the 2008 World Champions!!!
Me and my crumbs of playoff hopes.

And do you know why Shapiro is going for the family rides? It's because they're A LOT LESS expensive than the coasters that Burke was dishing out that's why.....I mena look at the additions for this season at SFGRADV,SFGRAM & SFNE,all essentially indoor wild mouse coasters...same thing applies to all those THBS clones that've been going up lately.

The whole problem is that SFA hasn't seen a single ride addition in the theme park since 2003 & that was a water ride that turned out to be not all that popular with the crowds.They havn't seen a new coaster in 2001 & now SFOT is getting their first since 01 leaving us the ONLY park in the entire chain not to recieve a new one since then.

KD has seen new ride additions EVERY season to the park:HSXLC in 01,Ricochet & Triple Spin in 02,Drop Zone in 03,Scooby Doo Haunted Mansion in04,TRFF(the crypt) in 05,IJTC(BLSC) in 06,waterworks additions in 07 & now Dominator in 08 while all SFA has seen in that same time span is Batwing in 01,nothing in 02,PBR in 03(the LAST ride to be added to the theme park side BTW),nothing in 04,HH additions in 05,nothing in 06,nothing in 07(sorry,skull mountain doesn't count) & now another medicore addition to HH in 08.

Jerry, only a few of us get it. I gave up. We'll just feel smarter for not jumping to conclusions after 2 years, when the chain's been freefalling from grace for a decade.

Coasterman, the funny thing is that what you're complaining about is exactly what's being done. There was an article linked to earlier in the thread talking about the major infrastructure improvements that are being done at SFA, and the major upgrades to come, such as solving the water pressure problem keeping there from being restrooms by Batwing, the low amount of eateries, the lack of a PA system which they just remedied, and other things. At SFA, those things would all have to be fixed to build a foundation for a successful park. SFA is nowhere near as neglected as people make it seem to be. I thought it was as well, until I found out the work they are doing to the park. You don't fix the infrastructure amd make long term investments in something you're about to sell.

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^Yeah like the put in a park wide sound system last year that still doesn't even work.

My stance on SFA has reverted back to what it was before ever opening this topic: Sell it. Why?

http://www.bizjournals.com/washingto...4/daily38.html

I thought that they were neglecting it because they wanted to sell it and weren't going to invest rides into it when they will be lost soon. Then I read about the infrastructure improvements here. I never saw the ride part being razed, and this just makes that feeling stronger. It also IMO makes the infrastructure improvements and cut hours make more sense. Maybe they aren't improving the infrastructure because they need a good foundation to make additions, but because you can't sell a lemon of a park, as a park, for a good price.

Food for thought...

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Lets back up or a second, rule number one...Don't use Wikipedia for a source of ANYTHING!...okay thats pretty much all I have to say about that. For those of you who think that you shouldn't improve things before you sell them, are you serious? Have you ever tried to sell a house? Well I am sure its a lot like selling a theme park only on a much smaller scale in this case. They can improve the park in order to get a higher price for it than they would if it was left unattended, kinda like how a good kitchen and bathroom investment in a house can raise a lot of extra money. I am not saying they are or aren't selling it I am just open to either possibility and wouldn't be surprised however it ends up being played out. Business is a changing thing anyway.

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Top Gun:The Jet Coaster at Paramount's Carowinds is the best invert yet!

I agree,they may be trying to improve the infrastructure to make a possible sale of the park to another company more enticing...or they could simply be leaving the ride side of the park to rot because they plan on closing it just like CF did with GL.

Another reason why they've been adding to the waterpark lately is because those attractions cost far less than even a flats package would....let alone a new coaster,that said they only have a limited amount of space for waterpark expansion however unless they want to bulldoze all of nantucket & expand the waterpark to the north into the existing ride park.The only real areas that SFA has for expansion is to the west of superman/Batwing so you certainly can't put waterpark attractions all the way over there.

It is very possible that the Improvement are more to make the property more marketable. i don't see them pulling a GL, on the property. The infrastructure improvements wouldn't raise any bids to buy he park for anything other then a water park. they wouldn't be needed.

as for the hater park thing that statement is so empty. It's an excuse. Slides are not cheap in any way. Nor are many of them cheaper then flats. They are cheaper then coasters. But a large play structure is over 1 million . the Master blasters are close to 2 million. A slide Tower can run from a quarter million to a million. Flats start at 200,000 and go up. The thing is water parks are another very popular form of Family entertainment. by combining the 2 normally seporat forms you create a higher value for guests.

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Michael C - Speedzone Editor

What? Where did that come from?

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I agree, Wikipedia isn't a bad source. Many German & American magazines/newsparers said that it was more reliable than some encyclopedias! Think about it though, Webster or World Book has 10 people in a room for 30 years putting together 1 encyclopedia. This can be edited gy people who witnessed an event, plus, Wikipedia has qualitie standards and is removing any bad articles.

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AC/DC - January 21st

I was wondering what Wikipedia had to do with anything period. I don't really care about how accurate it is and all that jazz. I'll save defending Wikipedia as my choice for preliminary research for another conversation.

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He was actually quoted saying he loved SFA's atmosphere because he thought it was one of the more family friendly parks. SFA already has a very large relatively new family area, its not really an area of major concern I think

But like you said, with the proper changes it could be a top park. Obviously the park is making money, and the time to sell would have been a couple years ago when the market was better...

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Rebel Yell is better backwards.

^Word has it that SFI may be looking to sell off a couple more parks to raise capital for expansion into the Indian,Middle Eastern & Asian markets....if this is true then there may be a good possibility that SFA may become one of the parks put up for sale.

The article I read also mentioned removing inefficient rides from the parks so it looks like Batwing & SKM might be next on the chopping block as both of those rides have horrible downtime issues.

That's not quite right. SFI would not need any capital. SFI isn't going to be building any parks anywhere. They would sell off Naming right sand have some say in standards and themes. Just like Disney and the Foreign Parks. Disney doesn't own those parks. But i don;t see the SFI name having much value outside the US. they Failed in Europe.

The sales of parks would be just like the sale before. Dropping parks that can be sold off to generate capital to invest in the parks they feel will be the most successful.

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Michael C - Speedzone Editor