I'll add Medusa to that list. What came along in '99 were some of the best things to happen to this park in a long time but what it is left from the mainstream rides of that year is not so much. With Houdini closed, Blackbeards is the only hot ride left from '99.
What Six Flags forgot about over the years was that their parks are local parks, like the parks I mentioned above. The parks were built on mainstream spin, flat and other "family" rides. Along the line in the Time Warner era, the company saw itself as theme park operators comparable to Disney. All was well from a marketing stand point, until it got carried away with steel loopers toward the end and Premier pushed it over the deep end. Disney does well with big attractions-- geared towards everybody, save for an occasional height restriction. Busch parks truely are destination parks. Their parks have a reasonable amount of spin and other non-coaster mainstream rides. Six Flags forgot about these type of rides, especially at its flagship parks.
Shapiro seemed to agree that it wasn't only the price of the excessive B&Ms and shuttle and launch coasters that caused Six Flags problem. By his "no more Goliaths" statement, he seemed to agree that it was the price of telling their guests that if they didn't like extreme coasters, they needed to go elsewhere.
Shapiro added to the problem by adding $25 million worth of coasters at parks that already have a well balanced ride collection. That price could have bought allot of replacement attractions (or parts) for SFGAdv and SFMM, and maybe a mainstream ride or two for SFoG and SFKK. People may not come to Six Flags to ride the tilt-a-whirl, but I think it brings in more than a cabana, a locker or product placement ads.
Topic: 48 CENTS (Read 7144 times)
