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California's Great America | Railblazer | RMC Raptor

gavin said:
Post Gold Striker. The comment about guest services outright lying is because of that ride. It was in the middle of being down for weeks, but when asked they said it "might be open later today". They knew it was down for the count and just flat out lied.

There were so many people complaining that day - not about Gold Striker, but the general awfulness of the operations - and they were just rude and didn't care.

Genuine overheard conversation:

Kid: Dad, whyyyyyy did we have to come here?
Dad: I know. This is why we usually go to Six Flags.
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Oh, that's really too bad. I guess I'm lucky to have visited on good days, because I've never had any of those problems.
 
Two trains on a coaster with eight seats per train. That capacity is going to be really atrocious, even in an absolutely ideal scenario. Let us be extremely generous and say the coaster has a ride time of 40 seconds. It doesn't look like a POV has been posted of neither this nor Wonder Woman yet, but the announcement video of the latter was 52 seconds and showed almost a full cycle with a lot of segments shown twice. Let us assume a cycle of 40 seconds, meaning that one train is fully unloaded and offloaded while the other is on course, with no stacking whatsoever. This lets 12 riders ride per minute, which adds up to a respectable 720 pph. That is rather on the low end for a coaster, but this is under ideal circumstances. If one train dispatches per minute, we're down to 480. With one incident every hour that takes five extra minutes to sort out, 440. Average dispatch frequency of 1 min 20 seconds, one would be hard pressed to reach 300. The coaster needs to run on a really tight schedule to let a meaningful number of people ride per day.

And by the way, why was this thread stickied?
 
^Agree with all of it. Will be really curious how this plays out.
Pokemaniac said:
And by the way, why was this thread stickied?
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I noticed this earlier too. I didn't do it, but seeing as this is being formally announced tomorrow (well, CGA are making a formal announcement about something), I figure I'll just move it into the other forum tomorrow and not bother unsticky-sticky inbetween. ;)
 
I don't recall the dispatch times being atrocious on anything when i was there in 2014. Some staff were rude but that's about it. Still the capacity on this will be bad and that is unfortunate. The park really needs another nice steel coaster and this could very well fit the bill in that regard
 
The extra s**tty thing is that RMC announced/sold this style as an affordable thrill ride for smaller parks, which they're PERFECT for, yet Six Flags and Cedar Fair are being cheap bastards and throwing them into parks for which they are totally unsuitable.
 
I would not be surprised if Six Flags drops a raptor track in half of their parks by 2020 with WWs cloned layout. It will be extremely disappointing if Cedar Fair follows suit. I hope somebody books a full scale T-rex sooner rather than later, or if anything some smaller parks will pick up a custom Raptor...where this no-capacity ride will actually...fit in well. Otherwise RMC single rail seems to be facing a pretty damn questionable start.
 
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Better colours and (to my surprise) integration than the SFFT one. Good coaster that suffers from a little anticlimatic timing announcement to say the least... :p
 
Yeah the color scheme and scenery are truly brilliant... I think we are definitely looking at the superior version here (save for 2 trains).
 
If you watch both of the videos, you'll see that it does have three trains ...the black one with the green front (from the POV) but also a red train and a yellow one. As the train is coming into the final break, you can see a train going up the lift, and a train pulling into the station/turning the corner.
 
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CanobieFan said:
If you watch both of the videos, you'll see that it does have three trains ...the black one with the green front (from the POV) but also a red train and a yellow one. As the train is coming into the final break, you can see a train going up the lift, and a train pulling into the station/turning the corner.
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If that's true... Yay!
 
Okay my suspicions about capacity are still there but this looks so much better than Wonder Woman. The scenery and color scheme are lovely.
 
This really makes me wonder why they're opening two in the same year. As someone said previously, it kind of takes away bragging rights from Fiesta Texas, even though they're on relatively opposite ends of the country, but what's even worse is that, what if it's a disaster? What if the coaster sucks. the capacity is awful, and people hate it? Okay, so obviously that's a bit extreme, but what if they're just a dud and then they've gone and made the same mistake twice without at least testing Wonder Woman out for one season before building a second? I just think it was a poor decision, but who knows, they could be fab and it could be a good choice in the end. I just can't get over the capacity issues and I can't really get excited for it.
 
LiveForTheLaunch said:
This really makes me wonder why they're opening two in the same year. As someone said previously, it kind of takes away bragging rights from Fiesta Texas, even though they're on relatively opposite ends of the country, but what's even worse is that, what if it's a disaster? What if the coaster sucks. the capacity is awful, and people hate it? Okay, so obviously that's a bit extreme, but what if they're just a dud and then they've gone and made the same mistake twice without at least testing Wonder Woman out for one season before building a second? I just think it was a poor decision, but who knows, they could be fab and it could be a good choice in the end. I just can't get over the capacity issues and I can't really get excited for it.
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It actually puts RMC at an advantage - what's better than one test coaster? Two. This is building towards the two-seater T-Rex; as long as they can prove the Raptor design, it gives greater confidence to a larger, T-Rex design.
 
LiveForTheLaunch said:
but what's even worse is that, what if it's a disaster? What if the coaster sucks. the capacity is awful, and people hate it? Okay, so obviously that's a bit extreme, but what if they're just a dud and then they've gone and made the same mistake twice...
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So you fear for what will happen to RMC if this standard model they're offering fails to deliver? Let me respond to your concern with a picture:

640px-Time_Warp_%28Canada%27s_Wonderland%29_06.jpg


To my knowledge, this is one of Zamperla's most successful coaster types, with 9 installments built so far over a span of 16 years (that's only two fewer than the B&M Flyers!). The Volare model is universally loathed, of course, but they keep giving the company projects and contracts, and the parks that build them still draw unsuspecting guests. And no innovation seems to be in sight.

I think the off-the-shelf Raptor coasters will do just fine. They look impressive, they offer a very compact package of thrills in a small footprint, and they make excellent marketing material. Guests will turn up to ride them. Even if they come off the ride hating it (see above), they will already have paid for park entry by then, and new riders will be drawn in by the coaster's enticing looks. If the Volare can succeed, I'm pretty sure the Raptor can too.
 
Whoever does marketing for SFFT needs a raise. Pushing out the announcement before all the other SF parks just to get a jump on Rail Blazer is really quite amusing.
On the ride itself it will be great I'm sure and this looks by far the better version with the landscaping but as everyone has said the capacity will kill it on anything but the quietest days.
 
That looks much nicer than Wonder Woman. Even the theming is rather impressive. Nice that there's going to be two of these popping up in different regions of the country.
 
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