Knotts gave up painting Xcelerator?

[BP317]

Was looking at the update from West Coast Bash this morning at Knotts Berry Farm and noticed this picture:


Now look at this picture I took in October



Looks like they havent made much progress painting the ride in the past 5 months . The only thing that makes it look worse than not painting it is painting the bottom of the supports then leaving the rest of it looking like this.

[Goku1910]

wow, that's terrible.

[w00dland]

Look Brad, their ladder can only go so high. Give em a break.

[6Flags4Evr]

Thats Cedar Fair for ya.

[monsterfan99]

Looks like Mr. Freeze at SF STL during Fright Fest 2008. Only difference is SF actually finished.

[FParker185]

Kinda like what SFGAm did in Whizzers station 3-4 years ago, you can barely tell now, but they repainted everything only at eye level and below.

As for Cedar Fair, they have a habbit of letting their coasters get to look really really horrible before repainting, but when they decide to repaint, they have always finished all in one shot.

[BLADE]

I asked Joey, who was the director of ride operations at Knotts during the West Coast Bash in 2010, why Xcelerator wasn't being painted when it was down from the accident. He told me it was $500,000 to repaint it and and implied that no one could make a decision what to do, and there was no sense of urgency. It seems like a very poor business decision to not have painted this ride when it was down. $500k had to be spent to do it, whether it have been in 2009/10 or 2011. Now if they finish it, the ride will have to be shut down again or pay 3rd shift labor to paint it and keep it open. $500k should not be that much of an expense for Knott's. Unless Cedar Fair doesn't want to pay for it, because they are broke.

[Director_Guy]

They should have finished painting it when it broke last year.

[FParker185]

The more I think about it, the weirder it seems...

Did they pay some painting company to come in and paint the bottom 10 feet of every support? Usually when you sign a contract with a painting contractor it's for the whole job.

And if they did it themselves in house, why not do the whole ride in house? Most painting firms won't accept a partial job like this. They will paint over whatever the park did so it all matches and so they can issue whatever kind of warranty they offer.

Something is fishy. I get the feeling they have no intention of painting the rest, and just don't want to explain the fact and their reasons to people who it doesn't affect outside of it looking retarded in pictures.