New Iron Dragon Height Requirement

I don't think this one is restraint driven.

Just about anybody could be accommodated, unrestrained, in Iron Dragon's train, or for that matter in any of the suspended coasters. I think this particular ride is one where the height requirement is being used as a surrogate for age, and I wonder if part of this comes down to a realization that young children are getting *taller*.

Although based on some of the things I am seeing this early season, I wonder if there isn't just some new executive director of corporate ride safety at Cedar Fair trying to come up with ways to make his presence felt. The level of safety theater going on at amusement parks has been ridiculous for a long time now, but is really getting very far out of hand.

Over the weekend, I got to see a Kings Island regular's reaction to Knoebels. He still hasn't quite recovered from the shock of boarding the Phoenix, dropping the lap bars and rolling away. And I even showed him my 1991 video of the Blue Streak being loaded and dispatched. (Check it out if you haven't seen it; it's only 47 seconds...)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Disney has challenged everything I thought I knew about ride safety. Yes, I've shot reverse-POV of my kid on Big Thunder Mountain because it wasn't prohibited, and I was confident that I could do it safely. I've taken a huge, backpack-style camera bag on Rock-n-Rollercoaster. On every coaster, a no ride op checks my restraint, they simply ask me to tug on it and visually see that it's locked. It's a totally different world.

Love those last two posts. Summarizes all my thoughts about some of the ridiculousness that is Cedar Fair "safety"

Yeah, many European parks are the same way. I can't think of a ride at any of the Disney parks I've been to where I was told I couldn't do on-ride video. That being said, I didn't ask on every ride. I'm not comfortable doing it on every ride. And not every ride would be worth recording. Nothing would turn out on Rock n Roller Coaster or Space Mountain unless the lights were turned on. I think cameras may be prohibited on Tower of Terror.

The video restrictions at Disney are usually based more on copyright issues.

For those old enough to remember, CP's safety culture was a lot like Disney's back in the 70's. I'm not exactly sure when things changed, but things were very different in the 90's.

RideMan said:

Although based on some of the things I am seeing this early season, I wonder if there isn't just some new executive director of corporate ride safety at Cedar Fair trying to come up with ways to make his presence felt. The level of safety theater going on at amusement parks has been ridiculous for a long time now, but is really getting very far out of hand.

If this is the case, the only presence I'm sensing is someone with the wrong occupation. I would encourage him/her to actually ride the rides before making anymore "important" decisions. You don't need to go as far as Disney, just another chain in general to see how much a child can actually ride safely.

It's one thing to be lax, akin to a local fair or carnival level of safety (depending on the fair, of course). It's another to be overly cautious.

This change is just absurd.

Pete said:
For those old enough to remember, CP's safety culture was a lot like Disney's back in the 70's.

I'd be curious to see the stats on this. But I'm willing to bet Pete that its less that 5% of the users here who were even alive in the 70's.

Let alone been to CP. :)

Gee Rob, thanks, now I feel old! Kidding of course, I actually feel like the Jimmy Buffet song that goes "growing older but not up"! :)

Fun last night explaining to my dare devil peanut eight year old that the height requirement for ID had changed...she is concerned about not quite being 48 inches tall this summer ( as I said, peanut). She wanted a good reason why the height had changed. Fun explaining to her that I did not know of a good reason and sometimes people make changes that don't make any sense.

She's been wanting to ride the big coasters for years now. Eat you veggies, kid.

I'm so glad I have tall kids so this was never really an issue for us.

I thought my daughter Kylah (the one who is just over 46" now) had a great response:

"I can't wait until we go to Disney where they actually let kids ride the rides that they can ride."

Yep.

And when she hits the magic 48" / 52" / 54" height marks let us know if she still wants to go to Disney to ride their rides or if she then prefers CP and it's slightly more thrilling offerings.

I get that you are not happy with CP and I agree that this height change makes no sense based on the reason that has been given by the park. But I can also see the safety aspect of it as well and I suspect this is the real reason for the change. I work for a company in which the majority of the employees work behind a desk and will never see a job site. Regardless, we start every meeting off with a safety minute, our safety scorecard is prominently displayed on our intranet site, and safety is always the first metric that gets discussed at our quarterly results review meetings. Safety is a huge deal because it means huge dollars to businesses for, I assume, insurance and liability reasons. Do you really expect the park to come out and say that this change is being made to save them money? Not going to happen. Just move on.

I have also struggled with some of the comments above concerning recording while riding at Disney. We're pretty consistent on this site about screaming at people who try to do this at CP. Is this just because it is the rule at CP? What if CP suddenly reversed their stance and said record away - would we be OK with it then? Given the vast difference in the intensity of the rides at CP vs Disney I would argue that it is not safe to record at CP regardless of whether or not the park says it is OK. And while the argument can be made that the rides at Disney are much tamer let's be honest, how many people have flung their cell phone across the room on accident? Now instead of flinging their phone across the living room they just happen to wave to grandma as they pass her as they go around the circle on the magic carpet ride and they fling their camera at me who happens to be sitting behind them. In my opinion there should be no on ride photography/video period. Too easy for a needless, but painful accident to occur.

I just wanted to chime in and say, like the others that this change sucks. Much like Kevinj, my daughter turned 46" this year. She is already a coaster enthusiast in training. She literally has been having me check her height all the time, because she knew the height requirement was 46" on Iron Dragon. Explaining to her that the requirement has been raised 2", when any other year 46" would have been enough was tough.

Like others have said this lame excuse for changing the requirement doesn't make sense. Especially when you look at the direction the park has been heading. They know the park lacks family rides, so they start adding things like Pipe Scream. Then they make a complete opposite change and increase the height requirement on the only ride to bridge the gap between Woodstock Express and the 48" rides. The fact Iron Dragon now has the same height requirement as Millennium Force is just plain stupid.

While most things we argue about here the general public will never notice, this is something they will. I can't imagine having to tell kids who were tall enough to ride it last year, that suddenly they are not tall enough. It seems like a bad idea to piss off the true money spenders in the park, but hey it's not my company.

Okay that will end my rant. As stupid as this is I will still enjoy my time with my daughter at the park, and I'm sure this will be a great season.

Aaronosmer said:
It seems like a bad idea to piss off the true money spenders in the park, but hey it's not my company.

Luckily for CF, most of the affected folks will likely have already handed over their money by the time they realize the change has been made.

Yeah, but they might not come back for another visit this year to give CP any more money.

That's possible.

Though as much as this move irritates me (in that it's likely not justified by a legitimate safety concern), I doubt there will be any measurable impact on the park or its guests. Sure, there will be a few disappointed people, but in the scheme of things, I don't think it really matters.

But it's still maddeningly counter intuitive given all their family friendly efforts as of late.

You could always try a letter, email tweet, facebook etc campaign to get them to change it back. It worked back between the joe cool club days and platinum pass days when they decided to go to sticker only parking passes. This situation has a much lower chance of working because of the legal and pseudo-safety issue but a few hundred crayon drawings of sad faces from kids might make them think twice before doing this again in the future.

Shades said:
And when she hits the magic 48" / 52" / 54" height marks let us know if she still wants to go to Disney to ride their rides or if she then prefers CP and it's slightly more thrilling offerings.

For what it is worth, my son just hit the >54" mark this past winter. He rode MF, Magnum, etc. when he hit 48" and loved them! That said, he is way more excited about our Disney trips in June, July, and Christmas than riding Gatekeeper, Maverick, etc.

I realize that he is probably in the minority, but you put the question out there. :)

I don't know. The more I think about it, if you just look at rides I would guess that most kids are going to chose CP. But since a trip to CP is likely a day trip or at most a 2 day trip that is not going to compare to a 7 day experience that most people probably do for Disney. Heck even me who goes to an amusement park solely for the rides would rather go to Orlando for a week than CP for 1 day. It simply is not a comparison when looking at the total experience.