Shoot the Rapids?

Speaking as someone who has worked in this business since the early 1970's, I can tell you that the attitude that Intamin's management has taken in the last decade or so does not endear them to it's customers, and potential customers. If they want to continue to sell product in this market, they have to adjust their products to the market. "Well it works in Europe" is no excuse. Custom rides are just that, built to suit the customer's needs and requirements. I've seen parks drop manufacturers from the "buy" list for far less headaches than what Intamin's rides produce. You can bet that Mondial is being scrutinized now too.

I think the former management (that is, Dick Kinzel) would put up with Intamin because they were, relative to other manufacturers, cheap. In such a small industry with so few players, you can bet that you get what you pay for. What good is a new ride if it's not open? If you think STR was awful, imagine how the folks at Busch Gardens Tampa are feeling about Falcon's Fury. Holiday World was so disappointed with their ride that they took it down (and against all predictions, bought a first-of-its-kind B&M).

Serving beverages at their IAAPA booth I doubt is going to help them.

So do they start testing Shoot the Rapids in the month of April or is it too early?

Since it doesn't open until Memorial Day, probably not.

I can't say that it is a ride that they look forward to testing. You know with all the problems it has had. ;)

I actually had a dream I was on STR last night and my boat sank.

Sink?
On a boat that basically can't float and rides on wheels for the most part?

I love Intamin, but am I crazy to think that they are going the way of Arrow?

Are you crazy? I don't know, are you? As far as Intamin is concerned their "my way or the highway" attitude hasn't made them many friends in this country over the last couple of decades. There was some kind of agreement with Cedar Fair which made them a pretty chunk of change over the years. However the issues with the last few rides they sold them (plus their reluctance to correct the issues with Shoot the Rapids) coupled with a major change of management has effectively dried up most of their potential business in North America.

Just from an outsider's perspective, the comparative lack of major new Intamins since I want to say 2010, seems to imply they've burned most of their bridges in the US at least.

I also feel like they may have overextended themselves in the sense of the water rides such as STR and Pilgrim's Plunge, in the sense of "look at us, we can build these too!" and then when their receptions were as mediocre as they were, they got all huffy and defensive versus trying to correct.

That outsider perspective pretty much matches the insider perspective.

For what it's worth, I thought, huh, I'm going to check out the Intamin website.When I tried to click through, I got:

A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.)

I'm Internet-savvy, but not Internet tech-savvy, if that makes sense, so this may mean nothing.

That would mean that there is an error in a database connection. It looks like they cheap out on web services like they do with their ride installations. Maybe they couldn't pay their website bill because they aren't getting any new jobs.

It doesn't prove anyone is cheap, it just means that something is malfunctioning in a server configuration you know nothing about. That's grasping for straws; Intamin gives enough reasons to question its products.

I'm a web designer, so I know about server connections. I don't know what the exact problem is in this case since I don't run that website, but it appears to be a database-server connection issue. My post above was actually a joke. But their website isn't doing them any favors right now.

Haha, they must have just paid the bill, haha? It's working fine for me...

Having a site show the error to people instead of a generic error page is one of the things you're not supposed to do because it gives potential hackers context about how your system works under the covers. Of course, I'm not even sure how much that matters these days, considering how much open source software we all use anyway.

For an example of the right way to do it, visit [Point|Coaster]Buzz while Jeff is updating the back end, or when his data host is experiencing an outage. I realize that's an insanely difficult thing to do (how many 'nines' are you up to now, Jeff? 8-) ) but on the odd occasion that it does happen, you will get a site error page rather than a database error message.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Like this

Back to the original thread (kinda)...

I was at King's Island on opening day. I ran into Shawn Meyer! :) Super, super dude. :)

Anyway, I noticed that Congo Falls was running. I think it's interesting that KI starts opening their water rides immediately, where CP staggers it.