[Jarsh]

Here's my take on the announcement date... Some of it is factual, the other is a good guess.

The factual side: Most parks ALWAYS have media things (announcements, media days, etc.) on Thursdays, usually in the mornings. This allows news reporters time to get the information they need and get it ready to publish in Friday's paper. This gives people looking for weekend fun something to plan on doing. If they held it earlier in the week people would forget about it by the weekend. If they held it Friday, it would get into Saturday's paper and people already have their plans for the weekend made by that time.

The good guess side: Based on my conversations with the park, they wanted to hold the announcement when the park was open like Kings Island did but they pushed the announcement back later in the season. The reasons for pushing it back could be...

1. Corporate has given each park a time frame to announce their new rides and that was just when Carowinds fit in. Carowinds has always had their announcements in late August. Maybe Cedar Fair is planning to announce a parks capital for 2015 every few days and they didn't want to cramp all the parks together at one time like Six Flags does.
2. Some things that the park needs for the announcement won't be available until that day (rented items, press kits, etc)
3. For the Intimidator announcement they had a piece of track there. Maybe they are waiting for the track to arrive before they announce it and that's just how the pieces fell into place with regards to timing.

[coasterbruh]

I wonder why they are having the big reveal announcement on a day the park is closed. Maybe there is a reason for that, and the track will show up then.

Kind of sad how possibly biggest announcement in the history of the park will be held while the park is closed.

Well there must be a strategic reason for it.

Actually it is, and its quite simple...I'm not available on the weekends.

Carry on...

[mark40511]

Speaking of LONG lines for the new coaster the entire season. If this is a B&M giga, I wonder if they will have seat belts like intimidator? Did they ever get in the groove moving people along on intimidator quickly when they added the seat belts or are they still stacking? Hopefully , even if there are long lines, it will move quickly.

[Bigcoasterguy]

It all depends on the crew, some crews are extremely efficient and others are lackadaisical

[arby]

I'm 99% confident that the new coaster will have seatbelts. That is the new trend so I expect to see it continue.

While they are an inconvenience they take nothing away from a ride experience and are just one additional safety measure to help keep us safe in the event of some fluke catastrophic failure.

[Firechaser]

If this is a B&M giga, I wonder if they will have seat belts like intimidator?

Leviathan Still Hasn't gotten seat belts so I hope that is true for our Giga as well.

[TheCoasterMan1]

If this is a B&M giga, I wonder if they will have seat belts like intimidator?

Leviathan Still Hasn't gotten seat belts so I hope that is true for our Giga as well.

I wonder if leviathan doesn't have seat belts because the seats are closer together so there isn't as much room for it. On intimidator you have the v-seating so the seats are spaced out. I hope our giga doesn't have seat belts.

[DavidW]

Maybe its because its in Canada?

[Jay]

Nope, because Behemoth has them. I believe the addition of seatbelts were only because of the trains for Behemoth, Diamondback and Intimidator. I doubt next year's addition will have those trains, so I doubt there will be seatbelts.

Of course this is Cedar Fair we're talking about here, so anything could happen.

[arby]

Thanks for the reminder that Leviathan doesn't have them. In that case I am unsure, then.

[offtopic]Now that my company is owned by a Canadian company, I'll finally start making it to the Canadian parks and the ones in the upper northeast. If my boss wasn't flying up there with me in a few weeks, I'd be hitting La Ronde.[/offtopic]

[Chris]

They say the yellow and teal track is for an invert or flyer so we supposedly haven't seen our track yet.

[tylerSC]

For what it's worth they were interested in having the announcement during an operating day, but the timing just didn't work out for it. I assume they aren't going to do it on a weekend for press purposes.

The park has a pretty good grasp on when the best timing for this kind of stuff is. As with any park there are marketing and public relations departments and their jobs are focused on promoting the park and getting positive press coverage. I can guarantee you that barring some unforeseen major event Carowinds is going to dominate the Charlotte area news on August 21 and 22.

I will definitely be watching the Charlotte TV news channels that day. Fortunately I have an antenna in the attic, so I get 3, 36, and 46 news stations in Greenville, SC. Although 18 and 9 only come in at night. But these days you can fortunately stream live the newscasts from most channels. And WBTV, WSOC, and WCNC are the major Charlotte channels for those folks out of the area who may want to watch coverage of the big announcement day.

[TheCoasterMan1]

I will be in virginia the week of the announcment and will be at Kings Dominion the day of the announcment as well. Guess I will be live streaming channel 9 WSOC-TV and best believe I will be refreshing the Carowinds page starting at 10:30 checking to see if the announcment is on their.

Also any pointers about Kings Dominion that I should know? This will be my first time going.

[Jonathan]

Also any pointers about Kings Dominion that I should know? This will be my first time going.

A lot of people here have been to Kings Dominion many times and I'm sure they would love to give you some tips if you would start a new thread in the "All Things Not Carowinds" sub-forum.

[Wolf]

It all depends on the crew, some crews are extremely efficient and others are lackadaisical

99% of the time the crew is slowed down by people who are still putting their belts on or by people who straight up sat on their seat belts. Just an observation.