Ocean Motion: One more year

Did anybody actually read the post? It says that the ride is going CLOSE TO the former location of Demon Drop. I'm sure that this was just part of a contingency plan in the event the ride wasn’t sold. I’d save the tin foil hats for another day; they are very delicate after all.

It's good to hear that Ocean Motion will be staying around longer. I've always felt that it was a victim of sub-par visibility. I guess we'll know for sure after next summer. Hopefully the ridership numbers get a nice boost from the relocation.

With any luck, it would be nice to see them reconfigure the platform so that riders can queue up for the row of their choice instead of holding the oncoming group back at the ride turnstile.

The vacating of Demon Drop's plot of land only to reoccupy it seems just as puzzling to me as it does to CP Fanatic 2400. But following Jeff's word, I'm trying to picture it as more of a cost effective move to produce a new ride elsewhere. It's not as if Demon Drop's maintenance expense has gone away. It's just a burden for another parks accounting books.

Too bad they didn't send Chaos to Dorney instead of DD.

After seeing how a Chaos can go wrong with Michigan's Adventure, I think Cedar Fair just wants to get them all out of the system...

It seems like Cedar Fair is doing the ride relocation program again this year. With the just announced Geauga Lake's Carousel going to ber restored and relocated to Worlds of Fun next year. Glad it will be in use in 2011 after sitting dormant for 3 years. Although I did wish it would make its way across the lake.

^Wee-oo-wee, (sp?) Jeff just said in the first post that OM will be living on the former site of demon drop.

Anyway, I hope they make the ride cycle longer at least by 3 to 4 more swings next year. I still like the ride and it's greeting guests at the entrance sounds neat to me...:)

^Copied directly from the facebook post:

Fans of Ocean Motion, your ship has come in…well actually it never left...but Ocean Motion will be setting sail from a new port in 2011. Look for it near the front of the park close to the former site of the Demon Drop.

What if the idea behind moving Demon Drop "now" was simply that it was a quick, and relatively inexpensive way to get a new attraction into Dorney Park?

I suspect that there have been some changes in plans. Note that Ocean Motion, as was noted in the advertisement, has received a level of maintenance attention which is not normally lavished on rides which are scheduled for removal. The late listing and the recent refurbishment suggests to me that the decision to remove Ocean Motion was a late decision...perhaps Windseeker has a larger footprint than originally expected, or Windseeker was originally planned for a different location. I suspect that the decision to relocate Ocean Motion instead of removing it was an even later decision.

This would not be the first time that Cedar Point had flipped on a ride package decision. I seem to recall several years ago, Kinzel revealed in an interview that the maXair installation, for instance, had represented a reshuffling of capital plans, and in hindsight I wonder if perhaps Shoot the Rapids was originally supposed to open before Maverick...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Nickster said:
After seeing how a Chaos can go wrong with Michigan's Adventure, I think Cedar Fair just wants to get them all out of the system...

That happened over 10 years ago, and yet Chaos has continued to operate at Cedar Point with no sign of removal.

If they wanted to get them all out of the system, they would have been removed immediately.

No sign of removal?

It has not ran for half the summer, and it took them forever to get the thing going this summer. Not looking good for the ride.

Yeah, no sign.

The Chaos Incident at Michigan's Adventure, occurred in 2001. The Chaos at Cedar Point has continued to operate, without issue, every year since then.

Whatever the problems were this year, they indicate nothing more than there were problems with the ride at the beginning of this year.

And certainly no correlation can be drawn between an incident 9 years ago, and removing the ride before next season at Cedar Point.

Could it be that there were issues with the ground / foundation area around Deamon Drop that prohibited Windseeker from being placed there?

I really believe that the management of Cedar Fair were way too involved in the failed Apollo deal to give the attention to this plan that it needed. It's pretty clear that over the past several years they haven't been double checking the vendor's engineering on new attractions (too many G's on Maverick, boats that were simply too long for STR, etc.). This stuff should have been pretty easy to catch if they audit the calculations.

If there is bad / loose soil, too close a proximity to another attraction, or simply something buried there (pipes, cables, Jimmy Hoffa?, etc.) that they didn't take into account prior to DD's removal, perhaps this is what prompted the waterfront location be used and OM being listed for sale.

The resale market for OM must not have been very good for even a trade-in on something else - so I believe they made the best of the situation, and at the same time used that space up front to keep the ride count up in the wake of loosing the most coasters record to Six Flags MM.

I am glad they are keeping OM, I just fail to see any sort of master plan that ties all of the "boardwalk" and midway attractions together into some sort of cohesive theme like the back of the park at Cedar Point has --- or for that matter, what just about any other theme park has to offer.

We have a gigunda swing next to a rollerskate show, next to a indoor bobsled run, next to an game arcade, next to a swinging ship. Sounds like bad drugs to me - if any theme can be applied, I think Acid Park might be the only real fit.

SteveH said:
It's pretty clear that over the past several years they haven't been double checking the vendor's engineering on new attractions (too many G's on Maverick, boats that were simply too long for STR, etc.). This stuff should have been pretty easy to catch if they audit the calculations.

Why would they do that anyway?

Did you doublecheck your architect's work before buying your house?

How about the engineers work before buying your car?

Or the electrician's work before buying your tv?

Why would you expect Cedar Point to keep a team of engineers handy to double check the work that they are paying the ride manufacturer to do?

SteveH said:
Could it be that there were issues with the ground / foundation area around Deamon Drop that prohibited Windseeker from being placed there?

I think it's unlikely that the ground's composition varies so greatly in such a relatively small area. Plus, Space Spiral is right next door (more or less) to the spot in question.

...I believe they made the best of the situation, and at the same time used that space up front to keep the ride count up in the wake of loosing the most coasters record to Six Flags MM.

I think you give far too much weight to the market value of having more rides than another park 3,000+ miles away.

Perhaps the original plan was to sell OM, and in the absence of a buyer, simply remove it from the park. And maybe the apparent resurgence of the economy, and the boost in attendance the park (supposedly) experienced, led them to decide to keep OM, in order to maintain as much ride capacity as possible. And having a nice open spot in a high-traffic area made that decision a no-brainer, so to speak.

It's also possible that the Starflyer was going to go in DD's former spot and when they bailed at 11:59, something was up with the new Windseeker in that location so they decided to put it in OM's spot, and when they found that there is less than no profitable market for swinging boat rides anymore, they decided to do what they did.

I wonder if maybe something was planned for the Demon Drop spot but with really good numbers and the increase in attendance if someone thought 'hey, maybe we don't need that 2012 attraction until 2013, lets throw Ocean Motion there for now.'

If I were spending the $ that Maverick or STR cost - I would pop for some engineering oversight as well. Not only is the investment at risk, that PR damage the park suffers when it isn't ready on schedule is a major liability as well. This isn't a house, a car, or some wiring we are talking about - it's a dollar amount that has multiple commas in it.

Let's not kid ourselves - there is a major battle to get Kinsel out of the front office because of these sorts of oversights and poor long term planning.

SteveH said:
If I were spending the $ that Maverick or STR cost - I would pop for some engineering oversight as well.

Wait... if you're spending a lot of money on something, you'd rather spend more to make sure your money doesn't go to waste? You have a future in government, my friend. ;)

It would be more efficient to simply contractually obligate the ride manufacturer to fix anything wrong with the design, and contractually obligate the contractors to fix any problems resulting from shoddy construction, and so on.

djDaemon said:
It would be more efficient to simply contractually obligate the ride manufacturer to fix anything wrong with the design, and contractually obligate the contractors to fix any problems resulting from shoddy construction, and so on.

You mean like they already do?

You know what? Yeah, that might be a good model to follow. ;)

JuggaLotus said:

And certainly no correlation can be drawn between an incident 9 years ago, and removing the ride before next season at Cedar Point.

Although it's entirely reasonable to assume that the ride model's catastrophic history was an ongoing negative in management's minds, and that it could have been a factor in its eventual removal.