- April 1st, 2015, 7:41 pm
#75094
Nighthawk is not a good ride, and nothing is going to change that. Because what stinks about Nighthawk is the track is not a fun track. And the waiting time makes that fact all the more apparent, when it is done. Not having a fun track makes the ride un-fixable. But as far as I see it, it does has two redeeming qualities.
1. It simply looks cool. It has a nice paint job. It's in a great environment. It draws a lot of people.
2. Lots of people stand in line for it, for really long periods of time. This makes lines on other rides shorter.
Vortex on the other hand, sucks. I rode it once yesterday, and I might be done with it for the season. I know many people have an emotional attachment to it, because it's been there for a long time. But if they installed that thing at the same time as Nighthawk, your aching head would not make excuses for it out of nostalgia. And what really stinks about vortex sucking (see what I did), is that Vortex could be fixed. Unlike Nighthawk, the track is not the problem with Vortex. It could be a fun little ride to do while walking across the park to the better ones. It certainly could be a fun and positive experience for riders. For regulars at Carowinds, doing that would probably do the most to improve the line-up of coasters for the least amount of money. But it's not a marketable investment...
Come to Carowinds for 2016! Our 20 year old ride, Vortex, doesn't bash your brains against the inside of your skull anymore! And our ride operators don't need to lock and unlock the train a dozen times before each dispatch, vastly improving capacity!
It just doesn't make a good commercial, despite being a considerable and affordable improvement to the park's ride line-up. It just doesn't make a compelling marketing campaign.
So, they'll probably keep building new rides. And at some point, they'll claim that some of the older ones can't be fixed anymore and tear them out, to build new rides that they can make compelling commercials for.
My vote is a compelling commercial for a brand new RMC (and a free squirt gun to make the "big splash").
1. It simply looks cool. It has a nice paint job. It's in a great environment. It draws a lot of people.
2. Lots of people stand in line for it, for really long periods of time. This makes lines on other rides shorter.
Vortex on the other hand, sucks. I rode it once yesterday, and I might be done with it for the season. I know many people have an emotional attachment to it, because it's been there for a long time. But if they installed that thing at the same time as Nighthawk, your aching head would not make excuses for it out of nostalgia. And what really stinks about vortex sucking (see what I did), is that Vortex could be fixed. Unlike Nighthawk, the track is not the problem with Vortex. It could be a fun little ride to do while walking across the park to the better ones. It certainly could be a fun and positive experience for riders. For regulars at Carowinds, doing that would probably do the most to improve the line-up of coasters for the least amount of money. But it's not a marketable investment...
Come to Carowinds for 2016! Our 20 year old ride, Vortex, doesn't bash your brains against the inside of your skull anymore! And our ride operators don't need to lock and unlock the train a dozen times before each dispatch, vastly improving capacity!
It just doesn't make a good commercial, despite being a considerable and affordable improvement to the park's ride line-up. It just doesn't make a compelling marketing campaign.
So, they'll probably keep building new rides. And at some point, they'll claim that some of the older ones can't be fixed anymore and tear them out, to build new rides that they can make compelling commercials for.
My vote is a compelling commercial for a brand new RMC (and a free squirt gun to make the "big splash").
