- May 5th, 2004, 6:35 pm
#5586
Jonathan, you're thinking JUST like me on that one. Aren't we the only Paramount park without Flying Scooters now? I love those things, although have only gotten a few flights at PKD and PKI and haven't really learned the tricks to snapping them, etc. - but I still have a blast on them. Abso-freaking-lutely perfect location would be the old Whirling Dervish spot, beside / under Top Gun's Immelman. If not there I vote for Thrill Zone, which needs something else there.
I think we've about exhausted all the small coaster possibilities at the park - we have a junior woodie, Taxi Jam, junior inverted, family inverted/water coaster, and a wild mouse. All that's left among current coaster types that would be a realistic possibility (i.e. we're not going to see any more Arrow suspendeds) are a hyper, floorless, impulse, Intamin rocket, or some sort of other full-circuit launch coaster. None of those would be a small investment so I'm 99% sure we will see none of the above next year.
Ok so the hyper rumor will have to wait at least one more year, and the other large coasters are also pretty much out of the question. There isn't anything small they could put in coaster wise without having serious duplication of what we already have, so that leaves.....
Flat rides, and / or waterpark re-theme / expansion. My thinking is we'll get a major flat ride like PKI's Delerium or one of the ones at PCW, plus maybe the Flying Scooters or something else smaller along those lines, and a minor retheme of WaterWorks to Boomerang Bay, with maybe another slide or two. This would be similar to 2001, when the park added Scooby's Haunted Mansion, Pipeline Peak to the waterpark, and 7th Portal to the Action F/X theater. These would be the kind of additions that would add value to the park experience without being big enough to upstage BORG, which should still be a good draw into next year.
They might skip the flats and just do a big makeover to the waterpark, but I don't see it as necessary myself. While the lines there do get long in the summer, they'd have to double the amount of slides to have any real impact on the lines - and even then I bet there would just be that many more people that would wait in line for them. Another thing that will help the waterpark lines is keeping White Water Falls up and running, as that can suck in a huge number of people that want to get wet. Oh, and even bigger - keep the lazy river up - that's in the waterpark and will occupy a large group of people as well - and it's my favorite thing to do on a summer day when I head to the park after work.
I think even if the waterpark is the 2005 improvement, they'd add something else elsewhere in the park. I hope so, anyways.
KenB