Mine Ride having problems?

^ Thanks WaterDummy!

And when I was there last, Mantis got stuck on the lift hill. TEAR IT DOWN!!!

I <3 Mantis, I just wish it wouldn't hurt my legs. Also, it might not have been stuck, maybe someone was trying to take pictures and the ride attendents stopped it. (And somehow I'm always on the same train and have to wait for the guy to walk up and take it away *rolls eyes).

Yes, the park is on a peninsula, but that's not necessarily the limiting factor here. Because attendance at the park is relatively static, so too is there revenue (to an extent). As such, the park can only spend a certain amount on maintenance, and that maintenance crew can only work so many hours every week.

Every spring, the park sprints to the finish in order to get rides running by opening day. And often times, rides won't be running at full capacity until weeks into the season. That seems to indicate the maintenance staff has neared the limit on quantity of rides.

In short, the park will run out of maintenance staff before they run out of room, in all likelihood.

With that in mind, it's not a guarantee that replacing CCMR with something new would lessen the demand on maintenance. In fact, it's conceivable that a new ride on that plot would have a higher maintenance demand than does CCMR. After all, CCMR seems to run more reliably than, say, TTD or Maverick, probably because the latter two are newer, more complex rides.

And maybe that's why the ride is still there, after more than 4 decades.

I know there's reasons that they've kept MR. And like I said, I admit that saying I wish it was gone or that it would be in the park's benefit for it to be replaced was something that I can't factually back up.

What I'm getting at when I nag about the park's size is a way of me showing how I realize that new things don't come in with out old things coming out. And if I had a choice, I would rather MR be removed to make room for something new as opposed to anything else because of factors relating to ride experience, not maintenence. I'm sure I'm not wrong when I say that bettering ride experience with the implementation of new rides is certainly an important factor on top of other things, such as Maintenence and Land Size.

Titandwedebil said:
I'm sure I'm not wrong when I say that bettering ride experience with the implementation of new rides is certainly an important factor on top of other things, such as Maintenence and Land Size.

That's true, but how does the park capture "ride experience"? My guess would be in the ride's popularity. After all, "ride experience" is about as subjective as one can get in terms of describing a ride, so measuring the number of rides given provides an indication as to how popular the ride experience is.

If CCMR is giving a lot of rides, it would logically follow that a lot of guests enjoy the ride experience as-is. And while I'd love to see a Mystery Mine-type installation in that area, is the new ride going to attract enough "extra" guests to justify the $20 million cost?

If CCMR is giving a lot of rides, it would logically follow that a lot of guests enjoy the ride experience as-is. And while I'd love to see a Mystery Mine-type installation in that area, is the new ride going to attract enough "extra" guests to justify the $20 million cost?

That's a very good question, one that I definitely can't answer.

However, it's interesting to note that in the year 2008, Mine Ride gave the third least amount of rides (as far as current coasters go), right above Blue Streak. You can see that by using the data on this website: http://www.themeparker.com/Geekly/cedar-point-ridership-data/

Comparing it with a coaster like Iron Dragon, which is also a family coaster, there is quite a large gap in the numbers of rides both have given. If CP invested in a coaster that attracted as many people as ID does, then I can see there being some logic to the idea.

I suspect a major contributor to ID's ridership being that high has to do with its location. That is, if you swapped CCMR and ID, their ridership numbers would also swap. In that light, the "quality" of the attraction can only do so much, and location plays a major role. So maybe a "better" ride in CCMR's spot wouldn't be any more popular than CCMR.

It's also worth pointing out that the installation of Maverick likely pushed CCMR's numbers higher in recent years.

I suspect a major contributor to ID's ridership being that high has to do with its location. That is, if you swapped CCMR and ID, their ridership numbers would also swap. In that light, the "quality" of the attraction can only do so much, and location plays a major role. So maybe a "better" ride in CCMR's spot wouldn't be any more popular than CCMR.

Right, so if they ever wanted to build on MR's plot, an extra effort would have to be put into making it heavily attractive to the crowd. This is something that ID does not need as much of because of its central location.

I think quality can trump location in some cases, especially if you look at rides such as Maverick and Millenium, which are primarily in the rear of the park. In 2008, Maverick gave more rides than CS, a ride that is much more visible and traveled by than Maverick, hidden until you are in the very back of the park.

Back to my original paragraph about having to overcome a less popular location, I would think that a ride of high quality, high theming, and high visual impact would perhaps break the boundries of location and actually increase ridership on MRs plot. But of course, that kind of thinking is risky because I don't know if any sort of family ride could actually do that, like what happens in the case of new large coasters, such as Millenium and Maverick.

Titandwedebil said:
Comparing it with a coaster like Iron Dragon, which is also a family coaster, there is quite a large gap in the numbers of rides both have given. If CP invested in a coaster that attracted as many people as ID does, then I can see there being some logic to the idea.

Cedar Creek Mine Ride probably only has 1/2 the capacity as Iron Dragon which. Plus, more people can ride Iron Dragon due to it's harness design. If CCMR used 2 Gemini type trains, the capacity would be adequate. Also, if CCMR had a Magnum-XL-200 station braking system, the ride would have stellar hourly capacity. It is kind of sad that it takes 30 seconds to park a train on the pre-Magnum rides.

^ I thought Cedar Point was thinking about replacing Cedar Creek Mine Rides trains? Remember this past off-season, they had Gemini trains on Mine Ride? Did that fall through?

^I would love that. Mine Ride's lap bar hurts my legs.

^^I guess it was postponed or fell through. They were not in sight on opening day.

Cedar Creek Mine Ride probably only has 1/2 the capacity as Iron Dragon which. Plus, more people can ride Iron Dragon due to it's harness design. If CCMR used 2 Gemini type trains, the capacity would be adequate. Also, if CCMR had a Magnum-XL-200 station braking system, the ride would have stellar hourly capacity. It is kind of sad that it takes 30 seconds to park a train on the pre-Magnum rides.

But is capacity really a core reason of poor ridership in MR's case? I think dJ's idea of Mine Ride's location explains MR's low ridership a bit better than capacity does. I'm sure capacity is a reason, but I also have a feeing that MR occasionally gets gaps of empty rows due to low attendance.

Just look at Mean Streak, it has almost an identical ridership to that of MR. Does that also have a poor capacity like MR, or is that more likely due to location and bad reputation?

Corkscrew Follies said:

Super Stew said:

Corkscrew Follies said:
It must be on the chopping block, thats why it's closed.

Cute ... But since MR falls under the "at least it doesn't totally suck" category, which is more than can be said about the Corkscrew, I think it's safe.

I thought it was cute also, but I was being sarcastic. I am just sick of threads on here that people seem to think this ride or that ride needs to be torn down because they don't seem to fit some peoples ideas on here of what CP's standards are.

Granted, I voiced my opinions on MS's roughness enough, and my refusal to ever ride it again no matter what they do to it. IMO that is the primest real estate on the peninsula. But, CP seems to keep sinking money in to it year after year so obviously it isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and I have come to terms with that.

Sarcasm .. ON HERE ?!?! Not a chance!

Relax big fella - no one is trying to destroy rides, shatter your coaster hopes and dreams, or intentionally trying to pis you off by creating bogus threads because they have an agenda ... Just discussing and debating the issues at hand like the site was created and intended for. I was only merely throwing it out there in the other thread, that when it comes to CP's track record (wow, now there's a cool pun), one cannot ignore that the very real possibility exits that a ride like the Corkscrew could be on its way out in the not so distant future. Not to say at all that it SHOULD leave - although I certainly won't be broken hearted if it does, provided they replace it with something awesome of course ... So when you start coming to terms with those kinds of things, you'll realize there is no sabotage plot here in the works and you'll probably be less inclined to make unnecessary wise cracks. But for the record ... I forgive you! ;)

Titandwedebil said:
But is capacity really a core reason of poor ridership in MR's case?

Again, on what are you basing your presumption that CCMR has "poor ridership"? Without knowing the cost/rider (as well as comparative numbers for other rides, as well as what threshold CP sets for rides of that type, etc.), you simply cannot make that judgement. Seeing a few empty seats/rows doesn't mean anything.

I take no issue with your dislike of the ride. That's your personal preference, and I can dig that. But you don't know that CCMR has "poor ridership".

Again, on what are you basing your presumption that CCMR has "poor ridership"? Without knowing the cost/rider (as well as comparative numbers for other rides, as well as what threshold CP sets for rides of that type, etc.), you simply cannot make that judgement. Seeing a few empty seats/rows doesn't mean anything.

By "poor" I mean in comparing it with ID, that's what we were talking about correct? You're the one who claimed that if ID and MR switched places they would also swap ridership, and that was recently refuted by someone else saying it mostly to do with capacity. Having been to CP 10+ times this year, and never seeing a line for it (I pass by it all the time to get to Skyhawk) I figured your reasoning made more sense because there are times when it does not run full trains, which would make capacity a bit less of a factor and perhaps location and reputation more of one.

But that's not really important, MR is on the lower rung of ridership according to the fun facts. Like I said before, despite me ranting about how it would be great to see something new there, I realize it would have to be grand enough (as a family coaster) to make up for the lack of any benefit in its location. When Maverick replaced WWL, surely they felt Maverick would attract more ridership than WWL, right? I'm thinking about the same scenario, replacing an older ride that has a lower ridership with one that they KNOW would attract more riders.

I visually place this in the same category as the people who think the park would benefit from replacing Mean Streak and Corkscrew. What's the difference? Of course the new rides would have to attract more people, do we doubt that CP's design team can't do that?

Titandwedebil said:
By "poor" I mean in comparing it with ID...

Again, you can't really compare the two in order to reach the conclusion you're trying to reach. Not only do you not have actual ridership data (no matter how many times you go to the park), you also do not have the operational cost of the rides, which would provide the cost/rider for each.

In short, just because you don't see people riding CCMR doesn't mean the ride isn't meeting or exceeding its cost/rider target. In fact, it's possible that CCMR's cost/rider is lower than that of ID.

Okay, so because MR might be some sort of goddess (or god, not sure of its gender, I'll ask next time) in terms of maintenence cost, that would mean it's safe as long as Corkscrew and Mean Streak are still standing?

Is it doubtful that Cedar point could create something so amazing that it would be more cost efficient and would gain more ridership than a previous ride? Is the idea of replacing Corkscrew and Mean Streak also unjustified?

Titandwedebil said:
Is it doubtful that Cedar point could create something so amazing that it would be more cost efficient and would gain more ridership than a previous ride?

Maybe not doubtful, but I don't think it's as much of a slam-dunk proposition as you assume it to be.

But you have me wrong, I'm not saying it would be I'm saying it could be. I have faith in the possibility but I can proove nothing. I think of candidates and MR comes to mind, just as MS and CS come to mind for others.

Why do you think of candidates? There is no rule that you have to get rid of something to add something new.