Take a Virtual Ride on the Next Generation of Stand-Up Coasters

It seems fun enough, but there's not really much variety I can imagine with the theming of this ride system. How many parks want a coaster themed to surfing? Seems like a really niche idea to me.

So make it a snowboard or skateboard... I think there's enough theme flexibility here to sell as many of this model as B&M cares to across the country and around the world. The real test will be, is it a good ride?

This may sound dumb, but if this ride is a success could parks choose to convert their B&M stand up coaster to a B&M surfing coaster? Think a stand up to floorless conversion, but adding the new trains that ‘bounce’. Assuming that the bounce eliminates the discomfort found in the stand ups. Just speculating here, idk if this would be practical or even possible

I am maintaining my stance that this ride is not only a waste of money, but even worse, a waste of space at a destination park that is confined within a city block and has no room for expansion. If you're going to market yourself as "the coaster capital of Orlando," by far the world's biggest and most competitive theme park destination, your coasters need to be world class. It would have made much more sense to re-do the woefully outdated entrance area and build a world class marketable coaster similar to what Cedar Point did. Now they are stuck with this. Nobody is going to go to Sea World to ride this. "Hey, should we go to UO to ride Velocicoaster, or Disney to ride Tron and Guardians, or should we go to Sea World to ride High Surf?"

EDIT: upon watching the video I realized I got the name of the ride wrong. I'm going to leave it that way because it just shows how much I care about this ride, and I am a coaster enthusiast that lives right down the street of this park!

This is going to go one of two ways: 1. It will be way better than most expect and wind up being a major draw for SeaWorld, or 2. It will be a flop that ends the revival of the stand-up before it even really started. Personally, I'm cautiously optimistic about it, and if the new train style ends up working as intended I could see the uniqueness of it being a huge selling point for what would otherwise be a very pedestrian ride.

As I've said before, SWO missed the boat here. Instead of 2 mediocre coasters in Icebreaker and Pipeline, they should have gone full 'Gatekeeper' style, and had one big B&M giga taking up the area used by the 2 smaller ones.

SeaWorld seems to think by putting in coasters every year will make them a must-do for enthusiasts, and it's not going to happen.

Another (yawn) mediocre coaster going in next year .... oh well.

IDK Makorider, we're just not seeing any parks investing in massive coaster installations right now. While I agree with you that a larger Gatekeeper-style coaster would probably draw better than these 2 (soon to be 3) smaller coasters, it might be smarter for SW to not put all their eggs into one basket and try to chip away at the massive difference between them and their Orlando competitors. Sometimes quantity can trump quality, and when you're trying to completely shift your perception in a market and massively alter the focus of your park (from animal exhibits to thrill rides), taking the shotgun approach might be the right tact.

Let's not forget that SW was burned big time when they spent big on a massive addition (Antarctica), and given that colossal failure (FWIW, I really liked the attraction) management would rather take the same budget and spread it across 2-3 projects over 3-4 years instead of relying on one massive attraction being a gate-buster.

Trouble now with SWO is they are fixated on being the roller coaster capital of Orlando. They base that on how many they have, not by the quality, and that is a problem.

Unless they top Velocicoaster, then I don't care how many they put in. IOA, still gets my vote.

Sure, Mako is one of the best hypers on the planet, but ......

Kraken is also one of the best floorless coaster in the world, and Manta is one of the top fliers. They have 3 coasters that are among the best of their type. I think it's unrealistic for a park to have a top tier example of every coaster. By building smaller, less-glamourous coasters, they are able to fill in the gaps of their lineup to offer complementary experiences to their top draws.

It certainly would be good if they added a best-in-class coaster to balance the smaller coasters they're installing in rapid-fire fashion, but there's something to be said for adding 3 decent coasters over one massive one. Maybe if SWO didn't already have 3 best-in-class coasters, it would be more important for the park to hit a home run, but in baseball, 3 straight singles usually score the same number of runs as a solo home run (and sometimes can score more).

Point taken on Kraken, but Manta's a bit of an oddball. Although it's still very popular, but wait times are long due to usually only 1 station in operation, and slow loading/unloading.

And they are still having to cater more for the tourist, than us coaster enthusiasts.

It'll be interesting to see what 2024 brings. Certainly plenty of work going on around the penguin area.

Media day for Pipeline announced for May 11. I will be there and will post a review by that evening.

Something to think about when it comes to coaster collections...

IOA has three outstanding coasters. VelociCoaster is easily in the top couple coasters in the United States, Hagrid's is arguably the best hybrid of coaster and dark ride elements ever created, and Hulk is a fantastic example of an old-school thrill machine. However, all three of these rides are somewhat similar: they all have launches, two of them feature several inversions, and they're all a standard sitdown style.

Meanwhile, over at SWO, they've got arguably the best floorless, best flying, and best hyper coaster in the country, along with a solid (albeit short) family coaster, a water coaster, and a new take on the stand-up coaster. Aside from Pipeline, none of these are one of a kind rides, and I'll admit that Atlantis is a shell of what it used to be, but pick any three of the four other coasters and they're going to be on par with or better than the top three at a majority of regional theme parks out there. Sure, individually nothing at SWO is a top twenty coaster, but they have a strong collection of best in class rides. Plus, every single coaster is unique compared to others at the park, as there is virtually no overlap between the park's rides when it comes to elements, layout, or ride experience. When it comes to drawing power, I think having such a varied collection of quality rides is going to be just as good as (if not better than) having one giant show-stopping coaster.

Those are good points. My issue is I feel like in the ultra-competitive Florida market the big 3 at Sea World are old news (especially Kraken which opened 23 years ago). Their current marketing is "the coaster capital of Orlando" but their newest "good" coaster was Mako 7 years ago and since then Hagrids, Velocicoaster, Iron Gwazi, Guardians, and Tron have opened. If they had built something like Kingda Ka or X2 then they have a chance at drawing people away from Disney and Universal for a day, but Ice Breaker and Pipeline aren't going to do it. In no way am I against building more family friendly rides, I am all for it, the problem is the spot where Pipeline is was the best place to build a super coaster there (or at least right now the only viable place).

Personally i've always felt like making SWO a park marketed around big coasters was going to be difficult long-term because of the lack of space. If they want to build more super coasters its going to come at the expense of something and big coasters take up way more space than the stadiums they will probably take out over time. But taking out the stadiums they will still need to dedicate land to the marine animals so people can see them.

Ultimately my master plan would be to take out the parking lot, build some large garages across the street around the HR building is, and that solves everything. But in addition to the huge financial commitment from SW the politics behind all that would take a long time to work out and its not on their radar right now and probably won't be for a long time if ever.