Will Falcon’s Flight be the roller coaster industry’s “Concorde moment”?

[Matt N]

Hi guys. Over the last few days, hype for Falcon’s Flight at Six Flags Qiddiya has intensified, with Intamin finally revealing an official render of the layout. After years of people debating about whether it would happen or not, and years of people claiming that the initial rendering looked like a bad RCT3 creation, the world’s tallest, fastest and longest coaster will soon be coming to fruition. At 640ft tall and 13,944ft long with a 155mph top speed, this ride will be truly ground-breaking, taking roller coasters to a completely unprecedented scale compared to anything ever seen before. Heck, we’re casually skipping a whole 100ft height category between the current tallest roller coaster in the world, Kingda Ka, and Falcon’s Flight, with Falcon’s Flight measuring nearly another 50% taller than Kingda Ka!

However, there has been furious debate online about the merits and drawbacks of Falcon’s Flight’s record breaking. The ambition of its design is unparalleled by any other recent ride in terms of raw scale, but questions are being asked about whether coasters should be getting this tall, this fast or this long. Questions are being asked about whether we might see any kind of ramifications to building a coaster on this raw scale, or whether Falcon’s Flight will end up being a failed experiment. Prior to Falcon’s Flight, the height record has stayed intact for 18 years (thus far), the speed record has stayed intact for 13 years (thus far), and the length record has stayed intact for 23 years (thus far); is there a reason why coasters have never previously gone beyond this scale?

With this in mind, I’d be really keen to know; do you feel that Falcon’s Flight could be the roller coaster industry’s “Concorde moment”? Could it represent the logical conclusion of roller coasters getting ever taller, ever faster and ever longer, and the moment where the industry finds its limit? Could it be the point where the industry starts to see the ramifications of pursuing ever-increasing scale?

Personally, I feel that we are unlikely to see a ride beat Falcon’s Flight’s records any time soon. Falcon’s Flight is not only beating the current records, it’s positively annihilating them (particularly height and length), and I’m not sure I see too many parks having the planning freedom, space and/or money to beat those records in the immediate future.

Whether Falcon’s Flight starts to show the consequences of ever-increasing roller coaster scale is up for debate, though. On one hand, some of the current tallest and fastest roller coasters in the world have had their fair share of problems as it is, and some of the fastest coasters are already needing things such as safety goggles on the front row and wind shields to protect their riders. On the other hand, however, one could argue that the problems may not magnify to a great extent provided that the scale of the ride and its design accommodate the increased size and speed.

But I’d be really keen to know; do you think that Falcon’s Flight could represent the industry”s “Concorde moment”? Do you think it could represent the industry finally hitting the feasible limits of height, speed and length?

 

[Hyde]

Define "failure". Is it:

• Failure to open due to structural/operational complexity unforeseen? (see Ring Racer)
• Failure to draw park attendance?
• Failure to be a top-rated roller coaster/deliver an outstanding experience? (e.g. not being a top 10 coaster)

On the whole I expect Flacon's Flight to successfully open, be a pretty dang good roller coaster, and maybe weasel into a few enthusiast's top roller coaster billings. From an engineering perspective, the coaster is pretty good to go - there isn't any new technology being deployed, using LSM and otherwise traditional roller coaster design (albeit, on a massive scale) to get the job done. If anything, we're seeing improvement on operating within an arid environment, between the new windscreen design to reduce need of safety goggles (perk on loading logistics) and beefy running wheels with ample cooling capacity.

Yet where I could see "failure" is in Falcon's Flight failing to capture genuine and excitement and spark from us, the roller coaster enthusiasts, who could very-well write off Falcon's Flight as a record-grabbing ploy with an otherwise (dare I say) 6/10 layout. A big caveat to this - the layout could very well end up hauling and dismiss all the hate as an object of pure, unfettered speed - digital renderings and announcement POVs are always hard to judge on.

Between the statistics tweaking and proper, high-resolution release of layout, there are those beginning to question exactly what type of ride Falcon's Flight will be. Particularly the cliff dive drop, which has not become apparent as an RCT2 monstrosity of 1/2 vertical drop, 1/2 gradual slope, and *waves hand in the air* LSM launch to get the train over the 500+ ft. arch. It could be a ride that slaps; it could also be a coaster with weird pacing and bursts of REEEEEEEEEE.

 

[Tonkso]

Despite the renders, I still think there's as much a chance of this getting finished as the London resort.

 

[Pokemaniac]

Define "failure". Is it:

• Failure to open due to structural/operational complexity unforeseen? (see Ring Racer)
• Failure to draw park attendance?
• Failure to be a top-rated roller coaster/deliver an outstanding experience? (e.g. not being a top 10 coaster)

I'd say failure to be a net asset to the park, in costing more to operate than it brings in as revenue.

Any cursory glance at the stats tells you that this thing will cost an absolute fortune to operate. Miles of track to inspect, six trains to maintain, three LSM launches, custom running wheels, and speeds so high that the wear and tear from aerodynamic forces alone would be a concern. Plus the harsh desert climate, with all the thermal expansion/contraction forces acting on the coaster all year. I don't think any coasters out there can feasibly compare in terms of operating costs. Even Expedition Everest is a relatively modest expense compared to Falcon's Flight. That means it would have to pull in a fortune to be worth keeping in operation for long.

And let's be realistic: will it?

The operations costs have to be clawed back at some point for this to be sustainable, and I doubt they can rely on government subsidies to keep a roller coaster running. Necessarily, the gate price at the park would have to be quite high. However, that will probably keep many potential customers away. For all its flashy extravagance, Saudi Arabia isn't a very wealthy country, with a GDP per capita roughly on par with Estonia. Even though Riyadh is a city of seven million inhabitants, I doubt there are enough locals who'd regularly spend $150 a pop on amusement park tickets, to keep the attractions running. That means they'd have to rely on tourists.

And that begs the question: What tourists? Qiddiya is in the middle of the Arab desert, in a repressive dictatorship with pretty poor tourism potential aside from religious tourism (at the other side of the country, that is. Mecca is 500 miles and a mountain range away). For half the year, the heat is too unbearable for out-of-doors leisure activities. Heck, even Dubai struggles here, and that's at the relatively balmy coast. It seems unlikely that Riyadh could pull the necessary millions of people through the park gates to pay for the operation of such a large coaster (plus the other attractions at the park, plus the adjacent water park).

Heck, look to Dubai again. It's a well-connected city with lots of leisure activities, a huge international airport, comparably well-developed public transport, and plenty of international businesses have their Middle East office there. It welcomes millions of tourists per year. And still, its amusement parks are ghost towns. Dubai draws people to its beaches, its shopping malls, its luxury hotels and its highly effective money laundering system (plus some activities that should not be discussed on a family-friendly coaster forum). And it also has opulent amusement parks that practically nobody seems to bother with, despite the high influx of tourists to the city as a whole. Riyadh has a harsher climate, no beaches, less tolerance in its strict social law system, and no well-known tourism amenities. At the moment, it's hardly a tourist destination, even if it tries to become one. And I doubt a fancy amusement park is going to do the trick overnight.

In another example, look to Disneyland Paris. Located smack-dab next to one of the biggest, wealthiest, and most-visited cities in Europe, with transport links all over the continent. It seemed like a no-brainer to build a fancy amusement park there. Disney did. It bled money like a broken colander for years before they managed to turn it around. "Buying stock in EuroDisney" was a punchline for a long while. Even with the immense tourism draw of Paris, it took many years for DLP to establish itself as a must-visit destination - and they're still not at the point where there's money left over to develop the park substantially beyond what it was on opening day (everything has gone into shoring up the under-developed sister park instead, while DLP proper has barely received anything in the past decade and a half).

The list of examples goes on: Myrtle Beach is a tourism powerhouse, but Hard Rock Park crashed completely. Cedar Point is one of the biggest parks in the world, and they badly regretted the expense of Top Thrill Dragster. Wonderland Eurasia invested heavily in an amusement park with great draw from the six million residents in the immediate vicinity ... and closed after only months. The various Dubailand parks never made it out of the planning phase, even though the city was in the middle of one of the greatest construction booms in history. Even a Vegas casino like Buffalo Bill's couldn't keep its big coaster running in the long run. You can even draw parallels to Lightwater Valley and The Ultimate here. "Build it and they will come" has never been a guarantee for success.

It seems to me that Six Flags Qiddiya has splurged on an attraction that needs vast numbers of customers to make financial sense (and I mean, this is way beyond anything dreamed up by even the most-visited parks in the world), in a location that hardly receives tourists, in a region where amusement parks are doing unusually poor business, and they're doing this before the place has had time to mature as a destination. I struggle to see how this can be kept in operation for more than a few months at most, losing money all the way.