SDC's 2023 Project(s) and Park Developments

[legoerosion]

One progress step forward is three steps away from "not in Miss Mary's time". I have not been to sdc since 2017 because I just don't like the changes. Color me unimpressed.

I guess this big announcement thing is to try and push season pass sales for this year so people will show up to ride it before it is gone.  This is the first year in at least 10 years I have not bought season passes.  The park is rapidly moving to ward just a roller coaster park.  If that is the case, might as well do Six Flags which already has a much better variety of coasters, and it is cheaper.  Oh wait, that is what I did for this year.  Might perhaps do SDC for 2024 to see the new ride but after that, who knows.

Sounds good to me, that just means shorter lines and less rude people. 

[sanddunerider]

I was in Branson this weekend.  did a drive by on Indian Point..   They are moving a mountaion of dirt. the road, both parking lots south of the "preferred parking" check in ar all gone and are being leveled out.  This area reaches clear to the west where thar smal gravel area was.  This is a massive undertaking for additional parking, I dont see how they can possibly have this area done in 30 days. Time will tell, and should be interesting to see..    Also on 76 west past the work areas, there appears to be the new employee living area.. 1 floor enclosed, looks like elevators on both ends of this building and will be 3 or 4 floors tall..   Further west, the old "mansions" have been leveled, and prelim dirt work and partial street is in process..   No pics this time..  but expect to see huge changes at the parking area... 

[KBCraig]

I watched the full FB livestream.

I was not impressed. I understand why they want an old-timer and a relative rookie for contrast, but... c'mon.

If you never heard of the Baldknobbers before working there, and only spent 1.5 years working at FITH, maybe you're not the best spokesman for ending the ride.

[sdcfan88]

If you never heard of the Baldknobbers before working there, and only spent 1.5 years working at FITH, maybe you're not the best spokesman for ending the ride.

That's was my thoughts too. Kind of a wtf cringe moment. 
I was also thinking with the historical significance of this landmark attraction closing that we would have had Brad or Lisa giving statements.

[Pudgy Jones]

I, too, wonder if the new ride under construction will be something else. I was hoping they would replace our old friend FITH, but I would have thought they would have announced that in conjunction with the closure announcement.

I have zero inside knowledge, so I'm purely speculating. I wonder if the new ride will be a generic fire-fighter themed ride with no connection at all to FITH. I sure hope not, but I wouldn't be shocked at all if that happens.

[shavethewhales]

^Well, it's going to essentially be a replacement for FITH whether or not it carries the name and baldknobber theme. I think the fact that they are celebrating FITH this much and openly talking about the baldknobbers is a good sign though, but we'll see. I still think the new ride will probably be much wilder and miss the original audience of OG FITH, but who knows. Some day soon they need to add an actual family-friendly ride again that a broad range of people can enjoy together.

Buried in all of this though is the mention that they are setting off on a decade long massive expansion similar to what Dollywood started around the time of Mystery Mine. Man, remember DW before they completed the loop? Crazy how much that park grew in a small amount of time.

As sanddunerider pointed out, a huge amount of work is already getting started on the new land. The current massive parking expansion is also a setup for more expansion. I don't think SDC will be very recognizable in a decade. Heck, looking back a decade it's crazy how much has already changed. Will be interesting to follow along with at least.

[History Buff]

Massive expansions can also be derailed by pandemics, economic downturns, Chinese balloons, and alien invasions.

[DollarCityBoy]

If you never heard of the Baldknobbers before working there, and only spent 1.5 years working at FITH, maybe you're not the best spokesman for ending the ride.

That's was my thoughts too. Kind of a wtf cringe moment. 
I was also thinking with the historical significance of this landmark attraction closing that we would have had Brad or Lisa giving statements.

I think the most cringeworthy moment was when the younger guy said "My grandparents rode this ride, my parents took me on this ride, and one day (long awkward pause) i'll bring my family here (another awkward pause) and...we'll find....something."

Yeah...that was not good.

[coalesce99]

I just started a petition. Help me save Fire in the Hole! Please sign and share!

https://chng.it/8F8hDkhn

[Swoosh]

I just started a petition. Help me save Fire in the Hole! Please sign and share!

https://chng.it/8F8hDkhn

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Sorry kid FITH has been on borrowed time for awhile now. 
You’d be better served trying to save Flooded Mine… oops that wasn’t supposed to be public knowledge yet

[ThemeParkFan]

I guess I'm not really sure what some of you were expecting, or if there's any way to make some of you happy.

The deteriorating state of FITH, and the knowledge that the building and ride were going to need to be replaced sometime soon, have been discussed on here for years. People spent a lot of last year speculating that 2022 would be the last year for the ride, and it turns out the ride is getting one more full year with an appropriate send-off. That's not something to just take for granted from any park. It's far more common for rides to get closed with minimal notice (a la Lost River) or no notice at all. So the park should be commended for handling the closure in a way that appears to be, at least at this juncture, about the best way they possibly could be.

In terms of why they aren't just announcing the replacement right away, that's typical too. It gives people time to focus on what's most important in the short term-the old ride is leaving-and then they can pump up the new ride after people have had some time to digest the closure and they can hype up new season passes, as was already mentioned.

As for various statements of park grievances-my experiences with the park only go back so far (2005), so I wasn't there for the old days. While I can't ever fully understand what I missed out on, or how the park differed then vs. now, I still think you all have an outstanding park in your backyard and that they have been doing a mostly outstanding job at sheperding the park forward.

"Not in Miss Mary's Time"-Mary Herschend has been gone for forty years. At this point the park has operated far longer without her than with her. I'm not saying this to be harsh, or to say that there weren't undoubtedly things that were done better then or that everything is perfect now, but to point out that this expectation that things remain unchanged forever and stuck in amber is and was never going to happen. Life doesn't work like that, and parks, companies, and places all change over time. It's not always great, but that's what happens.

And I'd still say a lot of what's there is still pretty good and done pretty well. And it seems to me like the general pattern over the years I've spent reading and lurking on this forum has been skepticism at a lot of the changes, only for people to be surprised, again and again, at the level the park is still operating at and the work they are still doing that a lot of times goes unacknowledged. As of now, I still trust them to to a good job with this. I am absolutely bummed that FITH is leaving, but I'm also realistic that this is something that has been planned for a long time, and unless they open the new version and its a total bust, they will retain my trust. They are still operating at a much higher level than most other parks around the country and to my eyes are doing a good job at working on needed infrastructural changes while retaining the feel and many of the touches of the park's history.

As for "I'll go to Six Flags instead of SDC" comment-you do you I guess. To me the notion that Six Flags St. Louis does literally anything better than Silver Dollar City is insane, but if that's what makes you happy, who am I to stop you?

[palallin]

I would never go to Six Flags for any reason, but it does do one thing better than SDC at this point:  Six Flags is honest about its nature.  It is a nasty collection of lousy food offerings followed up by machinery designed to make people sick in an effort to relieve those people of all the money they have.

SDC started off as something different, something special, but it has slowly been dragged into emulating Six Flags, but it isn't honest about it, at least not yet, and the transformation isn't quite complete yet, but it is getting there.

Three things keep me coming back to SDC:  FM, the Silver Dollar Line, and the Pickers.

Now, the word is that FM is in jeopardy.  People are whining about the train being somehow unsafe.  And the park is replacing all its its decent music with garbage.   

No new memories to make; soon there will only be memories made years ago.

What would make me happy?  An SDC that evolved without turning into Six Flags over Branson.  A place for mature people to go and enjoy the time and atmosphere, not an orgy for thrill-seeking children.  As it is:  SDC is on borrowed time for me and my family, including the 20-somethings, who demonstrate that not all youth object to the time and atmosphere.

[shavethewhales]

I just started a petition. Help me save Fire in the Hole! Please sign and share!

https://chng.it/8F8hDkhn

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Sorry kid FITH has been on borrowed time for awhile now. 
You’d be better served trying to save Flooded Mine… oops that wasn’t supposed to be public knowledge yet

LOL, well there's still time to advocate for a worthy FM replacement. Specifically a disney quality type ride that families can actually ride together and is indoors and reliable. That's the dream at least.

[shavethewhales]

ThemeParkFan, I agree with your sentiment. There is a lot of negativity on here because most of us are crotchety older fans who have been around long enough to see the park evolve in so many ways. I still remember when Thunderation was the "big ride" that seemed out of place in the park. I remember when most of the buildings had trees growing through them, and how you could hardly see the park from the outside, even flying over it because the foliage was so dense. I remember when crafts/shopping/shows were arguably the biggest draws and people came for the tongue-in-cheek immersive experience. That's probably the part I miss the most.

The park is indeed the best theme park in the US in my view, even after visiting Orlando and LA. I am still skeptical as a fan whenever they do things because I've seen the forces at work that drag everything towards mediocrity. I know the budget constraints and the business forces, and as a recent MBA grad I can sympathize with management and their huge challenges at balancing so many things - especially after the nightmare of the last few years. Still I always hope and strive for that age old balance of immersive theming and fulfilling family experiences that made me fall in love with the park in the first place. As they have been completely tearing out and replacing entire swaths of the park in the last few years it's definitely a lot of change to watch all at once. Seeing the classic rides finally fall away and be "replaced" is hard as a long time fan.

There's a few things as a fan to be critical of with nuance. Mystic River Falls is a nice ride but it was and still is a massive clusterf*** with ridiculous operations that missed the mark of truly replacing Lost River since it added an "extreme" element that made it less family-friendly. Time Traveler is an excellent coaster, and they gave it an interesting back story, but aside from a couple of things on the second level of the building they completely half assed the theming and abandoned the story as soon as it opened. It has also been an operations nightmare. The new rides they are picking to add/replace old ones just aren't great choices in some ways and I wish they'd go back to focusing on experience and story telling first. That's why I'm hesitant to get excited for the 2024 coaster. It'll probably be a fun coaster in a box with minimal theming that has a rough first season and then gets mostly forgotten about as they move on to the next thing.

But all in all we have to remember that it's a business, and we are extremely privileged to be able to follow along with the going-ons of a popular vacation destination. No harm in having preferences and stating them though.

[ThemeParkFan]

Shave, I agree with a lot of that. They definitely have taken a turn towards prototypical ride systems that don't always work the way they should, and that can definitely get in the way of things functioning properly. That said, I don't feel like Time Traveler is all that different in level of theme from any of the other coasters (other than perhaps Wildfire), even if not everything that was supposed to be built made it into reality. Sure, the first floor is bare, but how often is it even used? Maybe it is and I just haven't seen it, but it does seem like the popularity of the ride has settled somewhat, and I can't imagine that most of the time they can't fit everything onto the second floor, which has never struck me as particularly bare. Then again, I'm not super familliar with what was promised vs. what was built.

I think for the most part the redone areas of the park have been tastefully done and have helped solve crowd flow issues. I wouldn't say that there's any part of the park that's been ruined by the changes.

Palladin: I don't agree with the contention that Six Flags is honest about what they are and SDC is not. Silver Dollar City is a theme park, and so far as I know have always advertised themselves as being one. It has rides and shows and eateries and all of those things-just as a theme park does. They had all of those things in 2005 and they still have them now.

The balance has changed, and I can understand longtime visitors not being happy about that, but I feel like the core of the park is still there. But changing focus happens to every business on some level. Six Flags itself used to be much more heavily themed and strive for a higher quality experience; it wasn't fully until the late 90s that Premier bought the parks and the modern "Six Flags day" became reality. Just because Silver Dollar City is adding more rides than it has at any other point in its history doesn't mean that SDC will at some point fully become just another Six Flags. A park can have several roller coasters without being "an orgy for thrill-seeking children", and I'd argue that SDC has taken efforts to make sure that they're building coasters that aren't just that, and if they haven't always been entirely successful, they are at least trying harder than most other parks to retain some level of balance.

Granted, as I said, I'm a relative newbie in all of this, so I can't possibly know all of the little things, nuances, etc. that had meaning to other people that no longer exist. But the park I first visited in 2005 (and have continued to visit roughly twice a year for a decade) still appears to be very much intact to my eyes, and most of the changes have been for the better in my view. But from my context (which includes visiting an average of 20 different theme parks a year), both the death of the park and Six Flags-ification of it have been greatly exaggerated.