The entire highway/tollbooth metaphor never concerned the roads before or after it. The only thing we care about is the fact that you're waiting in a line.
Imagine that you're in a 20 minute wait for the tollbooth. You pay your taxes, etc. Now imagine that a car drives up from behind you and cuts in front of your line. He doesn't get behind you, he doesn't go to another line, he gets right in front of you. Now imagine that another car gets in front of you. And another one. Suddenly your 20 minute wait is extended by another 15 minutes. Did you not pay your taxes? Why is it you should be waiting additional time because these folks are willing to pay more? Are you saying you wouldn't be put off at all by that? If that's what you're implying, I'm sure you're in the minority. If folks want to pay extra for short waits then that's great, but it cannot add onto the waits of others (who've paid their taxes and done nothing wrong) significantly.
And I also question how much this would piss people off.
Go to a Six Flags park that has Fast Lane and watch on a busy day. I've been there and seen it. Someone actually posted one of their experiences in one of the parent posts.
I'm just suggesting that they extend this concept so that you get *more* of it on a given visit, and that by charging signifcantly more for it you would limit the number of people using it to a number small enough that it would have a negligable impact on the standard queue.
Ahhh, but we already do this to an extent. And it's free. Refer to one of my previous posts in this branch.
Futhermore, there's nothing *unfair* about it -- it'd only be unfair if the passes weren't generally available to people willing to pay for it.
The fact of the matter is that a system that would allow a lot of people to skip ahead of the others is screwing the others out of a ride. I suppose the word "unfair" isn't the correct word to use here in a rigid sense. Let's just say it would be a really shitty thing to do to our guests who expect to get on rides without an extended wait for the money they paid, and we simply won't do it.
It doesn't seem to bother anyone at Disney that some people ride with little or no queuing
Disney does something that's fundamentally different. I don't recall exactly what it is so I won't really comment on it. I BELIEVE they pretty much schedule everyone for a ride and you just come back at your scheduled time or something on that idea. Keep in mind that Disney is a theme park, as well. The rides aren't quite as important as much as the theming.
Or is the "theme" of Cedar Point life in the Soviet Union -- everybody stands in line for everything...:)
I forgot to mention that Cedar Point has a Joe Cool club. If you're a member, you can walk into the park an hour before opening time (although food stands, game stands, etc won't be up and the park will still be in the process of getting setup) and ride a few of the rides. Last year, the rides you could go on included Millenium Force and Wicked Twister. This year will probably be those two and Dragster. This is one of our solutions. You can also walk into the park an hour early if you're staying at one of CP's on-site hotels.
(This post is referring specifically to Cedar Point, not amusement parks in general. Although I'm employed there, I don't speak for CP, these are just my observations)
This is not like EZ-Pass. Assuming you got EZ-Pass so you wouldn't have to wait in lanes (as opposed to just so you wouldn't have to carry toll change in your car), EZ-Pass is only really effective if you have a lane that's only for EZ-Pass; this way, you do not have to be held up by those without it. This doesn't bother other communters, since the EZ-Pass folks are not increasing their wait time by skipping ahead of them. As you mentioned, we all pay taxes to use the roads, so why should it be that those who are willing to pay more somehow have the right to increase our waiting time at toll booths? This is not a factor in EZ-Pass, which is why it is effective. This would not work for a large amusement park ride because the people who are paying extra are adding significant waiting time by legally cutting in front of those who paid regular park admission. I find this unfair to the regular guest who fairly paid their admission. Even if you had an entirely seperate line, premium payers would still use up trains and load/unload time which increases the time that the other non-premium guests have to wait. Essentially, non-premium guests are being penalized for not paying extra money. This pisses people off and is contradictory towards Cedar Point's biggest staple, guest service.
A premium pass that entitled you to much shorter lines would attract more affluent customers, which should make the park more money, which should mean more rides, which should mean overall shorter lines for everyone
In all harsh honesty parks aren't after rich folks and don't really care too much about those with money, since that's a smaller demographic. We won't cater specifically to the affluent even if they're willing to pay more money, because this will piss off the general public who don't want to spend outrageous amounts of money to not have to wait in line. When you're talking about a park as large as Cedar Point, it's going to take a LOT of these passes to actually bring in enough money to make a dent in the budget of a new ride. If you've got that many people skipping ahead of everyone else who didn't pay the premium price, chances are that they're not going to be happy and not want to come back to the park. Not only is this bad guest service, it's also bad money-wise. Bad experiences will not make guests want to come back. Bad park reviews will not help the cause either. No guests=no park.
Even if you're diametrically opposed to premium queuing, how about having one or two days per month where the admission is double but the park limits admissions such that the ride waits will *always* be shorter?
Cedar Point caters to the general public, and doubling prices of tickets goes against that. If you're that opposed to waiting in lines (understandable) then study the park and learn which days tend to have lower attendance and what times of the season to visit. Visit in May on a weekday. I assure you ride times will be minimal. Don't wait until July or August. Keep an eye of the forecast and watch for days when it rains towards the beginning of the day/morning and lets up in the afternoon, but make sure there's no lightning cells in the area.
Anyway, I hope the park people are listening. I and others like me are out there and are willing to pay much more to ride the rides.
We are. This is why we train our ride ops so much, this is why we always run as many trains as possible on the more popular rides, this is why CP is given awards for best park capacity in the world. We design rides around capacity. I definitely understand where you're coming from, and I assure the numbers are crunched and new ideas are always being considered to cut wait times without comprimising the general guest experience.
As far as I'm concerned, they're already selling out their image by doing nothing (at least at Valleyfair) to constrain crowds or waits.
Understandable. I've never been to Valleyfair, so I don't know what the conditions are. I can tell you at Cedar Point we always run as many trains as we can, we're always pushing our ride ops to squeeze in more rides per hour, etc. If that's the case at Valleyfair, they've already done what they can.
An express system would only piss people off if it wasn't generally for sale to everyone. I don't drive a BMW or live in a mansion, but it doesn't piss me off that some people can.
I think the car metaphor would be closer if we were comparing it to a tollbooth. Imagine you were on the highway and you're coming up to a tollbooth. There's a 15 minute line. Suddenly you see 5 BMWs just drive right up and "budge" you in line. The toll people don't care, because they're driving BMWs, and since they paid more for their cars they can get in front of you and make you wait longer, despite the fact that you have done nothing wrong. (I know about EZ-pass etc, but it doesn't fit in with this)
I heard that the reverse is true. Sounds morbid but after there's a death on a ride, everyone wants to go on it.
That's definitely not the case here. Of course a death on a ride might "appeal" to some hardcore folks who love the danger aspect of these, but as far as families and those who aren't seeking truly life-threatening thrills (for example, %99 of the guests in an amusement park), this will scare them away. The numbers you might attract because of a death on a ride is completely negligible in comparison to the amount you lose.
Cedar Point has this in the form of a stamp on your hand with the time you should get there. It's also free. It covered the major thrill rides that were known for long lines.
Other ideas that skip the technology investments would be "premium" tickets for more money that allow you to jump 2/3s of the main queue or something.
Doubtful. The tickets would have to be very expensive and very limited in number (say you can only buy 100 tickets on any given day). Guests do not take well to waiting in a long line only to see a large group of other guests just skip right ahead of them. This would just piss people off at the park for increasing their wait time so that guests willing to pay more cash to the park can budge them. In a way, it's like a park selling out it's guest service image.
The aforementioned express lane CP has only allows a handful of guests to skip ahead, so it's generally not an issue and doesn't add a noticable amount of time to the wait. If you want to skip the line, then you'd better get your express lane stamp first thing in the morning when you enter the park.
Then there's Titan. A hypercoaster (300+ feet). Nice long drop, but then an actual ride. Again, a blast.
Nitpick: Titan is a hypercoaster, but a hypercoaster is a 200-300 foot coaster. Titan is 255 feet. A 300-400 foot coaster is a gigacoaster.
This new one almost sounds like Superman (6 Flags Magic Mountain) - cool concept, but almost a tech demo. (IMHO, Mr. Freeze actually turned the linear induction idea into a real ride.) Cool, and more power to them, but barely a coaster.
Actually the concept idea for this ride came from one of our smaller sister park's rides, the Xcellerator. http://www.rcdb.com/installationgallery1574.htm
A distinct possibility for this ride is that more is added onto it later, after seeing the public's reaction to the basic idea. There is room for expansion in that particular area of the park, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if it were to happen perhaps next year or the year after.
Not necessarily. This ride is simply about pure, raw speed and height. Millenium Force was also based on this; if it was only half as tall, would it be such a classic ride to you?
Here, anticipation builds for probalby about 15 seconds.
Gotta disagree with you here. Anticipation builds for rides like these as soon as you enter the queue lines. With Millenium Force it really starts when your train leaves the station. With this, it's going to be the same thing. You'll see a light that goes from red to yellow to green, that's obviously for anticipation.
Have you ever been on Power Tower or Wicked Twister? Half of the anticipation on those is just watching the look on those folks' faces before the ride launches. I find it more effective than just the lift hill.
Anohter thing that bothers me is the wait time for this ride
This simply can't be helped more than Cedar Point already has. It's running 6 trains. I'd also speculate that ride capacity on this will be higher than that number (think PR insurance).
I'd much rathter go to Six flags magic mountain next year and ride Scream!
... assuming it's up and running. It's not very often that SFMM has all of their coasters running at the same time, and their capacity doesn't compare to CP's. I was disappointed when I visited their park. Great potential, though, if they got their act together.
The weather is monitored closely for lightning cells. If one is approaching all units with radios are informed, all of the taller rides go down and potential hazards such as umbrellas (basically lighning rods) will go up.
Lighter rain alone will not shut down rides. This may be the exception, as rain hitting you at 120 MPH would probably be a bit painful.
Tricky question. Does one call Superman: The Escape at Six Flags Magic Mountain a coaster? Is Demon Drop a Coaster?
The only way I can "tell" is to have a look at the thing. I would say that a Coaster has to be closed circuit and such, but impulse coasters such as Wicked Twister have put a spin on that for me as well.
Nope. Cedar Point wins awards for best capacity (keeping lines to a minimum) for a reason.
6 trains on this thing coupled with only a 20 second ride is going to be a pretty quick moving line. Besides, what else do you expect when you're talking about the world's tallest/fastest coaster?
Of course there will be long lines, but this means you can hit Millenium or Wicked Twister this year without the lines being quite as bad.
Actually we've got tons of kiddie rides and live entertainment stuff as well that could definitely eat up a day. Sure, our big thing is Coasters, but the park is huge and you simply can't cover everything in one day. When I go into the park on my day off with buddies, we almost plan what kind of CP experience we want. You can go in and do all the thrill rides, you can take it easy and just watch live entertainment or hit stuff such as the Skyride, Ferris Wheel, the flat rides... or you can hit the waterpark...
It seriously takes a good 3 or 4 days to hit everything the park has.
That's an older picture of Monty Jasper, basically The Man when it comes to building CP coasters. He did Millenium, Wicked Twister, and now Dragster. Very cool guy, I've talked with him a few times.
Having worked at Cedar Point as an area supervisor, it surprises me that you're disappointed with the long waits that'll probably go with this ride but bring up Mantis.
Mantis was actually one of the longest waits. Since it's a stand up coaster and the restraints are such a pain in the ass, we can typically only run two trains at a time on that track.
Dragster has 6 trains (and yes, they will all be up and going), and as you mentioned the ride time is short. I'm sure we're going to see some huge lines, but they will move quickly. Keep this in mind before you pass it up. I'm very excited about this one.
Still, there's no reason NOT to upgrade now. This card will run Doom 3 just fine when it comes out (not that I care) and it runs all my current games quite well. There's always something better right around the corner.
I think the whole idea is not to worry about buying a card that will run Doom3, as much as worrying about spending a ridiculous amount of money on it NOW when you can either get the same card for much cheaper or buy a next gen for the same amount of money when the game actually comes out.
I think his whole point was that by the time Doom 3 comes out, a GeForce FX will be much more affordable since NVidia will probably have a next gen card (if NVidia stays on it's 6 month/card cycle). So why not wait until the games come out, where the FX's features are actually being used and the card itself costs less as opposed to buying it as soon as it comes out, paying a shitload, and having a lot of features that won't be used for months/years?
I'm with this plan. I'm only on a Athlon 1.2 and a Geforce 2 GTS, but no really excellent games have come along that want me to spend the kind of cash it takes to upgrade. When Doom 3 comes out, I'm going to buy hardware. I figure on spending around 175 for the video card and 300 for a new motherboard/processor. That should probably be plenty too, seeing as the hardware seems to be outrunning the software. This makes sense when you consider that developing times for games now stretch into years instead of months.
The Xbox is obviously the same price as far as the consumer is concerned, but as far as production goes, MS is losing more money on each Xbox than Sony or Nintendo
Who cares? I don't care what MS is losing. I'm a gamer, not an MS analyst. I have never really cared. None of my posts reflected my caring of MS losing money (which most people know must happen nowadays for a while until profits are made back with games, accessories, and so forth). Hence your troll moderation.
Oh yes, incorrect. (perhaps you should do a little research, yourself)
Uhm. You obviously have no idea what the console business strategy is. What sane business would sell a console at a loss and not plan on profiting later? Or are you implying that XBox isn't sold at a loss? Or maybe you think that MS planned on XBox profits coming from something besides games/accesories? Are you sure you know what you're talking about? Do you expect me to think you know what you're talking about after you say It doesn't make a shit bit of difference; let's see anyone play online without buying a Live kit first? You're telling me to research when you didn't even know you can play XBox games without Live, nor do you think that MS makes it's profits in games?
Who would have thought that a piece of hardware released a year after another would be about a year's worth of development better?
Who said anything about development? I was merely pointing out that XBox generally has superior capability compared to a PS2 and can be bought at the same price. I'll specify here that I'm talking about CONSUMER price (like if you as a customer went into a store to buy an XBox), not MS' cost to manufacture an XBox, just to avoid any further confusion.
If you have any other impressively insightful commentry such as that, please share it. I'm sure people are far too stupid to figure that kind of thing out.
No need to take things personally, bub. I was just posting some opinions and a few facts, not going out of my way to start a flame war with the PS2 nerds from that Wal-Mart commercial. I don't ususally feed the trolls, but when it's this easy (especially with the added irony of your URL) I can't help it. You may indeed know what's going on with consoles, but if that's the case then your basic comprehension skills need some work.
Please give me a link where MS states they're going to charge 10 dollars a month set in stone. You might have trouble digging it up, and I wouldn't be surprised if you don't respond to this post. Please, prove me wrong on this.
No, but being an owner of an XBox I have never heard of this before (and I read the reviews, browse the forums, etc), and this being Slashdot it wouldn't surprise me if someone was spreading FUD.
That's nice. The Xbox lost MS $117 million last quater.
I don't care how much money they lost; the product they've put out has satisfied me. Besides, everyone knows that consoles start at a large loss and profit later on through games.
The review was shite, it tried to put forward that since the Xbox's ethernet port is built in, that the Xbox is far superior to the GC and PS2 in terms of connectivity
It is vastly superior in terms of connectivity as far as not spending more cash goes. You can play any game that has XBox link over the internet using tunnels- that's a lot of games. But you already knew this.
Having ethernet built in simply ups the price of the overall console.
And this explains why XBox costs more than PS2. Oh wait no, XBox comes with a harddrive and the hardware is a year ahead of PS2. And whaddya know, they both cost the same amount.
(which might not be a piece of cake, considering that MS do not seem to understand that with consoles, unlike software or one-off hardware sales, you have to keep the customer happy).
XBL has proved to work well. Most of the reviews on it are positive, and everyone I know who has it (personally and through forums) is loving it so far, and XBL has become a selling point when purchasing a game for most of us. I highly doubt that many folks are cancelling it already, but feel free to prove me wrong and provide a link.
that people really are dumb enough to pay upfront for the device, and pay ongoing amounts for the functionality.
Do you have a basic understanding of the XBL service? Do you understand why a subscription fee is required? Do you understand that all you have to do is pay this fee and you can play any XBL enabled game without extra cost? If not, then I suggest you RTFA. That's like complaining that you bought your cable modem, why should you have to pay ongoing fees to get online?
It should be noted that apparently the basis for this entire parent post is that you have to give a credit card to Microsoft.
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The entire highway/tollbooth metaphor never concerned the roads before or after it. The only thing we care about is the fact that you're waiting in a line.
:)
;)
Imagine that you're in a 20 minute wait for the tollbooth. You pay your taxes, etc. Now imagine that a car drives up from behind you and cuts in front of your line. He doesn't get behind you, he doesn't go to another line, he gets right in front of you. Now imagine that another car gets in front of you. And another one. Suddenly your 20 minute wait is extended by another 15 minutes. Did you not pay your taxes? Why is it you should be waiting additional time because these folks are willing to pay more? Are you saying you wouldn't be put off at all by that? If that's what you're implying, I'm sure you're in the minority. If folks want to pay extra for short waits then that's great, but it cannot add onto the waits of others (who've paid their taxes and done nothing wrong) significantly.
And I also question how much this would piss people off.
Go to a Six Flags park that has Fast Lane and watch on a busy day. I've been there and seen it. Someone actually posted one of their experiences in one of the parent posts.
I'm just suggesting that they extend this concept so that you get *more* of it on a given visit, and that by charging signifcantly more for it you would limit the number of people using it to a number small enough that it would have a negligable impact on the standard queue.
Ahhh, but we already do this to an extent. And it's free. Refer to one of my previous posts in this branch.
Futhermore, there's nothing *unfair* about it -- it'd only be unfair if the passes weren't generally available to people willing to pay for it.
The fact of the matter is that a system that would allow a lot of people to skip ahead of the others is screwing the others out of a ride. I suppose the word "unfair" isn't the correct word to use here in a rigid sense. Let's just say it would be a really shitty thing to do to our guests who expect to get on rides without an extended wait for the money they paid, and we simply won't do it.
It doesn't seem to bother anyone at Disney that some people ride with little or no queuing
Disney does something that's fundamentally different. I don't recall exactly what it is so I won't really comment on it. I BELIEVE they pretty much schedule everyone for a ride and you just come back at your scheduled time or something on that idea. Keep in mind that Disney is a theme park, as well. The rides aren't quite as important as much as the theming.
Or is the "theme" of Cedar Point life in the Soviet Union -- everybody stands in line for everything...
AH! But Cedar Point is NOT a theme park!
I forgot to mention that Cedar Point has a Joe Cool club. If you're a member, you can walk into the park an hour before opening time (although food stands, game stands, etc won't be up and the park will still be in the process of getting setup) and ride a few of the rides. Last year, the rides you could go on included Millenium Force and Wicked Twister. This year will probably be those two and Dragster. This is one of our solutions. You can also walk into the park an hour early if you're staying at one of CP's on-site hotels.
(This post is referring specifically to Cedar Point, not amusement parks in general. Although I'm employed there, I don't speak for CP, these are just my observations)
This is not like EZ-Pass. Assuming you got EZ-Pass so you wouldn't have to wait in lanes (as opposed to just so you wouldn't have to carry toll change in your car), EZ-Pass is only really effective if you have a lane that's only for EZ-Pass; this way, you do not have to be held up by those without it. This doesn't bother other communters, since the EZ-Pass folks are not increasing their wait time by skipping ahead of them. As you mentioned, we all pay taxes to use the roads, so why should it be that those who are willing to pay more somehow have the right to increase our waiting time at toll booths? This is not a factor in EZ-Pass, which is why it is effective. This would not work for a large amusement park ride because the people who are paying extra are adding significant waiting time by legally cutting in front of those who paid regular park admission. I find this unfair to the regular guest who fairly paid their admission. Even if you had an entirely seperate line, premium payers would still use up trains and load/unload time which increases the time that the other non-premium guests have to wait. Essentially, non-premium guests are being penalized for not paying extra money. This pisses people off and is contradictory towards Cedar Point's biggest staple, guest service.
A premium pass that entitled you to much shorter lines would attract more affluent customers, which should make the park more money, which should mean more rides, which should mean overall shorter lines for everyone
In all harsh honesty parks aren't after rich folks and don't really care too much about those with money, since that's a smaller demographic. We won't cater specifically to the affluent even if they're willing to pay more money, because this will piss off the general public who don't want to spend outrageous amounts of money to not have to wait in line. When you're talking about a park as large as Cedar Point, it's going to take a LOT of these passes to actually bring in enough money to make a dent in the budget of a new ride. If you've got that many people skipping ahead of everyone else who didn't pay the premium price, chances are that they're not going to be happy and not want to come back to the park. Not only is this bad guest service, it's also bad money-wise. Bad experiences will not make guests want to come back. Bad park reviews will not help the cause either. No guests=no park.
Even if you're diametrically opposed to premium queuing, how about having one or two days per month where the admission is double but the park limits admissions such that the ride waits will *always* be shorter?
Cedar Point caters to the general public, and doubling prices of tickets goes against that. If you're that opposed to waiting in lines (understandable) then study the park and learn which days tend to have lower attendance and what times of the season to visit. Visit in May on a weekday. I assure you ride times will be minimal. Don't wait until July or August. Keep an eye of the forecast and watch for days when it rains towards the beginning of the day/morning and lets up in the afternoon, but make sure there's no lightning cells in the area.
Anyway, I hope the park people are listening. I and others like me are out there and are willing to pay much more to ride the rides.
We are. This is why we train our ride ops so much, this is why we always run as many trains as possible on the more popular rides, this is why CP is given awards for best park capacity in the world. We design rides around capacity. I definitely understand where you're coming from, and I assure the numbers are crunched and new ideas are always being considered to cut wait times without comprimising the general guest experience.
As far as I'm concerned, they're already selling out their image by doing nothing (at least at Valleyfair) to constrain crowds or waits.
Understandable. I've never been to Valleyfair, so I don't know what the conditions are. I can tell you at Cedar Point we always run as many trains as we can, we're always pushing our ride ops to squeeze in more rides per hour, etc. If that's the case at Valleyfair, they've already done what they can.
An express system would only piss people off if it wasn't generally for sale to everyone. I don't drive a BMW or live in a mansion, but it doesn't piss me off that some people can.
I think the car metaphor would be closer if we were comparing it to a tollbooth. Imagine you were on the highway and you're coming up to a tollbooth. There's a 15 minute line. Suddenly you see 5 BMWs just drive right up and "budge" you in line. The toll people don't care, because they're driving BMWs, and since they paid more for their cars they can get in front of you and make you wait longer, despite the fact that you have done nothing wrong. (I know about EZ-pass etc, but it doesn't fit in with this)
I heard that the reverse is true. Sounds morbid but after there's a death on a ride, everyone wants to go on it.
That's definitely not the case here. Of course a death on a ride might "appeal" to some hardcore folks who love the danger aspect of these, but as far as families and those who aren't seeking truly life-threatening thrills (for example, %99 of the guests in an amusement park), this will scare them away. The numbers you might attract because of a death on a ride is completely negligible in comparison to the amount you lose.
Cedar Point has this in the form of a stamp on your hand with the time you should get there. It's also free. It covered the major thrill rides that were known for long lines.
Other ideas that skip the technology investments would be "premium" tickets for more money that allow you to jump 2/3s of the main queue or something.
Doubtful. The tickets would have to be very expensive and very limited in number (say you can only buy 100 tickets on any given day). Guests do not take well to waiting in a long line only to see a large group of other guests just skip right ahead of them. This would just piss people off at the park for increasing their wait time so that guests willing to pay more cash to the park can budge them. In a way, it's like a park selling out it's guest service image.
The aforementioned express lane CP has only allows a handful of guests to skip ahead, so it's generally not an issue and doesn't add a noticable amount of time to the wait. If you want to skip the line, then you'd better get your express lane stamp first thing in the morning when you enter the park.
Then there's Titan. A hypercoaster (300+ feet). Nice long drop, but then an actual ride. Again, a blast.
Nitpick: Titan is a hypercoaster, but a hypercoaster is a 200-300 foot coaster. Titan is 255 feet. A 300-400 foot coaster is a gigacoaster.
This new one almost sounds like Superman (6 Flags Magic Mountain) - cool concept, but almost a tech demo. (IMHO, Mr. Freeze actually turned the linear induction idea into a real ride.) Cool, and more power to them, but barely a coaster.
Actually the concept idea for this ride came from one of our smaller sister park's rides, the Xcellerator. http://www.rcdb.com/installationgallery1574.htm
A distinct possibility for this ride is that more is added onto it later, after seeing the public's reaction to the basic idea. There is room for expansion in that particular area of the park, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if it were to happen perhaps next year or the year after.
Wrong.
New Jersey put a ban up on coasters with high G's, not the ones that are big and scary looking.
This one won't even hit 2, which is fine by me- experiencing high G-forces isn't fun.
If you're afraid of it, don't ride it.
What makes a good coaster is pacing.
... assuming it's up and running. It's not very often that SFMM has all of their coasters running at the same time, and their capacity doesn't compare to CP's. I was disappointed when I visited their park. Great potential, though, if they got their act together.
Not necessarily. This ride is simply about pure, raw speed and height. Millenium Force was also based on this; if it was only half as tall, would it be such a classic ride to you?
Here, anticipation builds for probalby about 15 seconds.
Gotta disagree with you here. Anticipation builds for rides like these as soon as you enter the queue lines. With Millenium Force it really starts when your train leaves the station. With this, it's going to be the same thing. You'll see a light that goes from red to yellow to green, that's obviously for anticipation.
Have you ever been on Power Tower or Wicked Twister? Half of the anticipation on those is just watching the look on those folks' faces before the ride launches. I find it more effective than just the lift hill.
Anohter thing that bothers me is the wait time for this ride
This simply can't be helped more than Cedar Point already has. It's running 6 trains. I'd also speculate that ride capacity on this will be higher than that number (think PR insurance).
I'd much rathter go to Six flags magic mountain next year and ride Scream!
The weather is monitored closely for lightning cells. If one is approaching all units with radios are informed, all of the taller rides go down and potential hazards such as umbrellas (basically lighning rods) will go up.
Lighter rain alone will not shut down rides. This may be the exception, as rain hitting you at 120 MPH would probably be a bit painful.
High winds will also shut down the bigger rides.
Nothing surprising, really.
Tricky question. Does one call Superman: The Escape at Six Flags Magic Mountain a coaster? Is Demon Drop a Coaster?
The only way I can "tell" is to have a look at the thing. I would say that a Coaster has to be closed circuit and such, but impulse coasters such as Wicked Twister have put a spin on that for me as well.
Nope. Cedar Point wins awards for best capacity (keeping lines to a minimum) for a reason.
6 trains on this thing coupled with only a 20 second ride is going to be a pretty quick moving line. Besides, what else do you expect when you're talking about the world's tallest/fastest coaster?
Of course there will be long lines, but this means you can hit Millenium or Wicked Twister this year without the lines being quite as bad.
Actually we've got tons of kiddie rides and live entertainment stuff as well that could definitely eat up a day. Sure, our big thing is Coasters, but the park is huge and you simply can't cover everything in one day. When I go into the park on my day off with buddies, we almost plan what kind of CP experience we want. You can go in and do all the thrill rides, you can take it easy and just watch live entertainment or hit stuff such as the Skyride, Ferris Wheel, the flat rides... or you can hit the waterpark...
It seriously takes a good 3 or 4 days to hit everything the park has.
That's an older picture of Monty Jasper, basically The Man when it comes to building CP coasters. He did Millenium, Wicked Twister, and now Dragster. Very cool guy, I've talked with him a few times.
Having worked at Cedar Point as an area supervisor, it surprises me that you're disappointed with the long waits that'll probably go with this ride but bring up Mantis.
Mantis was actually one of the longest waits. Since it's a stand up coaster and the restraints are such a pain in the ass, we can typically only run two trains at a time on that track.
Dragster has 6 trains (and yes, they will all be up and going), and as you mentioned the ride time is short. I'm sure we're going to see some huge lines, but they will move quickly. Keep this in mind before you pass it up. I'm very excited about this one.
Won't this also remove a lot of "labour-intensive" jobs at the same time?
Still, there's no reason NOT to upgrade now. This card will run Doom 3 just fine when it comes out (not that I care) and it runs all my current games quite well. There's always something better right around the corner.
I think the whole idea is not to worry about buying a card that will run Doom3, as much as worrying about spending a ridiculous amount of money on it NOW when you can either get the same card for much cheaper or buy a next gen for the same amount of money when the game actually comes out.
I think his whole point was that by the time Doom 3 comes out, a GeForce FX will be much more affordable since NVidia will probably have a next gen card (if NVidia stays on it's 6 month/card cycle). So why not wait until the games come out, where the FX's features are actually being used and the card itself costs less as opposed to buying it as soon as it comes out, paying a shitload, and having a lot of features that won't be used for months/years?
I'm with this plan. I'm only on a Athlon 1.2 and a Geforce 2 GTS, but no really excellent games have come along that want me to spend the kind of cash it takes to upgrade. When Doom 3 comes out, I'm going to buy hardware. I figure on spending around 175 for the video card and 300 for a new motherboard/processor. That should probably be plenty too, seeing as the hardware seems to be outrunning the software. This makes sense when you consider that developing times for games now stretch into years instead of months.
The waiting game seems to be the smart game.
The Xbox is obviously the same price as far as the consumer is concerned, but as far as production goes, MS is losing more money on each Xbox than Sony or Nintendo
Who cares? I don't care what MS is losing. I'm a gamer, not an MS analyst. I have never really cared. None of my posts reflected my caring of MS losing money (which most people know must happen nowadays for a while until profits are made back with games, accessories, and so forth). Hence your troll moderation.
Oh yes, incorrect. (perhaps you should do a little research, yourself)
Uhm. You obviously have no idea what the console business strategy is. What sane business would sell a console at a loss and not plan on profiting later? Or are you implying that XBox isn't sold at a loss? Or maybe you think that MS planned on XBox profits coming from something besides games/accesories? Are you sure you know what you're talking about? Do you expect me to think you know what you're talking about after you say It doesn't make a shit bit of difference; let's see anyone play online without buying a Live kit first? You're telling me to research when you didn't even know you can play XBox games without Live, nor do you think that MS makes it's profits in games?
Who would have thought that a piece of hardware released a year after another would be about a year's worth of development better?
Who said anything about development? I was merely pointing out that XBox generally has superior capability compared to a PS2 and can be bought at the same price. I'll specify here that I'm talking about CONSUMER price (like if you as a customer went into a store to buy an XBox), not MS' cost to manufacture an XBox, just to avoid any further confusion.
If you have any other impressively insightful commentry such as that, please share it. I'm sure people are far too stupid to figure that kind of thing out.
No need to take things personally, bub. I was just posting some opinions and a few facts, not going out of my way to start a flame war with the PS2 nerds from that Wal-Mart commercial. I don't ususally feed the trolls, but when it's this easy (especially with the added irony of your URL) I can't help it. You may indeed know what's going on with consoles, but if that's the case then your basic comprehension skills need some work.
Please give me a link where MS states they're going to charge 10 dollars a month set in stone. You might have trouble digging it up, and I wouldn't be surprised if you don't respond to this post. Please, prove me wrong on this.
No, but being an owner of an XBox I have never heard of this before (and I read the reviews, browse the forums, etc), and this being Slashdot it wouldn't surprise me if someone was spreading FUD.
That's nice. The Xbox lost MS $117 million last quater.
I don't care how much money they lost; the product they've put out has satisfied me. Besides, everyone knows that consoles start at a large loss and profit later on through games.
The review was shite, it tried to put forward that since the Xbox's ethernet port is built in, that the Xbox is far superior to the GC and PS2 in terms of connectivity
It is vastly superior in terms of connectivity as far as not spending more cash goes. You can play any game that has XBox link over the internet using tunnels- that's a lot of games. But you already knew this.
Having ethernet built in simply ups the price of the overall console.
And this explains why XBox costs more than PS2. Oh wait no, XBox comes with a harddrive and the hardware is a year ahead of PS2. And whaddya know, they both cost the same amount.
Research before you post such "shite."
(which might not be a piece of cake, considering that MS do not seem to understand that with consoles, unlike software or one-off hardware sales, you have to keep the customer happy).
XBL has proved to work well. Most of the reviews on it are positive, and everyone I know who has it (personally and through forums) is loving it so far, and XBL has become a selling point when purchasing a game for most of us. I highly doubt that many folks are cancelling it already, but feel free to prove me wrong and provide a link.
that people really are dumb enough to pay upfront for the device, and pay ongoing amounts for the functionality.
Do you have a basic understanding of the XBL service? Do you understand why a subscription fee is required? Do you understand that all you have to do is pay this fee and you can play any XBL enabled game without extra cost? If not, then I suggest you RTFA. That's like complaining that you bought your cable modem, why should you have to pay ongoing fees to get online?
It should be noted that apparently the basis for this entire parent post is that you have to give a credit card to Microsoft.
Found out the hard way that old Xboxes don't work with Xbox Live.
This is simply wrong. There might be an error with your XBox or perhaps you have modded it, but XBox Live should work with all unmodded xboxen.
Please mod this parent down, as it's not true.
Poor testing and pervasive bugs have never stopped MS from releasing anything
You obviously weren't a beta tester, nor had any experience of how well the beta test went.
The XBox team has their shit together at MS. It's one of the few parts of MS that I think is doing a fine job.