Every Ride Is Its Own Box Office

What theme parks can learn from the Prater, Tivoli and Bakken

In Europe’s oldest amusement areas, nobody pays to get in – every ride has to win its guests one ticket at a time. That pressure produces lessons that gated parks rarely learn.

By Julian Omonsky · Vienna, Austria

In a theme park, a roller coaster is part of a promise. The guest has already paid at the gate, and the ride’s job is to make that ticket feel worth it. In the Prater, the promise does not exist. The guest walks in for free, with money in their pocket and dozens of rides competing for it. A ride that does not convince within seconds earns nothing.

I have spent several years working in this environment, most recently as lead designer of the Wiener Looping. It has shaped how I look at every attraction, including those inside the gate of a classic theme park.

01

Three ways to sell a ride

Europe’s historic amusement areas run on business models that most of the industry has forgotten.

The Prater is open all year, with rides priced individually at roughly €3.50 to €15. In 2025 it drew close to seven million visitors – more than most gated parks in Europe – spread across around 80 independent businesses.

Bakken, founded in 1583 and considered the world’s oldest operating amusement park, draws an estimated 2.5 to 2.9 million visitors a year without charging admission.

Tivoli, opened in 1843 in the centre of Copenhagen, charges for entry and then sells rides separately. In 2025 this hybrid model welcomed 4.3 million guests.

In both pay-per-ride venues, most attractions are run by independent operators.

Each ride is effectively its own small business, with its own revenue, its own costs and a direct competitor fifty metres away.

Lesson 1

Motion is marketing

The most valuable advertising space in a pay-per-ride park is the ride itself, in motion.

A train parked in the station while it loads is an advertisement that has switched itself off.

That is why we designed the Wiener Looping around short single cars instead of one long train. More dispatches mean more movement, more screams and more reasons for a passer-by to look up. For a theme park, this sounds like a detail. For a ride that has to sell its own tickets, it is the business model.

Theme parks can apply the same thinking to their skyline. Which rides are visible from the paths where guests decide what to do next – and are they visibly running?

Lesson 2

The guest judges value ride by ride

In a gated pay-one-price park, a weak ride is absorbed by the overall ticket. Guests do not complain, because there are plenty of other rides to discover. In a pay-per-ride park, the guest decides after every ride whether it was worth the money – and whether to buy another ticket.

This changes design priorities. Dead time – slow lifts, long brake runs, slow transfers – costs both capacity and visibility. The ride itself has to be balanced so that guests step off with one thought: I want to do that again.

To earn that ticket, a ride has to do at least one of three things: surprise its riders, look so extreme that its sheer appearance stops people in their tracks, or win them over with its history and tradition.

Theme parks rarely measure this, because the gate has already been paid. Yet their guests compare rides too: how good a ride feels, how long the wait was, how well the storyline was told.

Lesson 3

The exit sells the next ticket

The strongest sales argument in a pay-per-ride park is a group of riders stepping off, still laughing. Their energy spills over to the onlookers on the walkway who are still asking themselves: should I go or not?

I see it every day in the Prater: when waiting guests stand right next to riders who step off still buzzing, the excitement passes straight to them. It turns into anticipation – and often into a little extra nervousness, which only adds to the sense of adventure.

Lesson 4

Competition next door forces renewal

In a place like the Prater, the market never stands still. Every operator keeps an eye on the neighbour: what are they building, and are they about to outdo me? An operator who stops investing loses customers within a season, and the feedback is measured in cash at the ticket booth. The result is constant change and steady renewal.

Theme parks have one advantage here: a single team sees the whole park. Ride counts, queue times and, where wristbands or apps exist, repeat-ride rates show which attractions guests actively choose and which they merely tolerate. Someone can act on it across the entire line-up.

In a pay-per-ride park, each operator usually sees only their own numbers. That makes choosing the right ride for a plot even harder.

The limits

Where the model fails

Pay-per-ride is not a model to copy wholesale. Fragmented ownership makes large investments difficult: there is no master plan, no shared budget and no single investor. The Prater, despite more than 40 roller coasters in its history, never had a permanent modern flagship coaster until the Wiener Looping. Shared infrastructure and a coherent guest experience are hard to achieve when every plot is a separate business.

A theme park can do what no midway can: build one coherent world in which every ride is part of the same story.

The two models have opposite strengths. A theme park can build a coherent whole, where every ride, path and view is planned to work together. A pay-per-ride park, with its many operators, brings variety, surprise and a pace of renewal that no master plan would produce.

That is why the lesson is not to copy the midway. A theme park does not need its rides to compete, and it does not have to judge each one as if it sold its own tickets. What it can borrow are the tools: rides that are visible and visibly moving, as little dead time as possible, and exits that make the next guest want to ride. The rest is its own strength – a world in which every part is planned to work together.

For manufacturers

What it means for manufacturers

Many products are still designed for the gated pay-one-price world, where capacity per hour is the main argument. The result is capacity machines. Silver Star at Europa-Park runs three trains of 36 riders each. With a ride time of almost three minutes and around 50 seconds in the station, a train leaves roughly every 75 seconds – about 1,750 guests an hour in theory, and still around 1,300 in everyday operation. A pay-per-ride park rarely needs that much – and a long train waiting in the station is exactly the advertisement that has switched itself off.

Pay-per-ride venues – and the many fairs, city parks and family entertainment centres that work similarly – need something slightly different. Capacity still matters, but so does visibility: frequent dispatches, plenty of action and always something happening, so that the ride puts itself at the centre of attention.

• Loading Fast, simple loading and frequent dispatches rather than maximum train length.
• Presence Strong visual presence from the walkway, including the station and unload area.
• Layout Compact, adaptable layouts for irregular, crowded plots.
• Business model Financing and service models that fit independent, often family-run operators.

In short

Takeaways for decision-makers

1. Play to the strength of your model: one coherent world behind the gate, variety and constant renewal on the midway.
2. Make rides visible, and keep them visibly moving.
3. Remove dead time; it is felt as poor value.
4. Design the ending as the sales pitch for the next ride.
5. Measure every ride on its own: ride counts, queue times and repeat rides show what guests really choose.

Planning a ride that has to stand out – inside a gate or on a midway? This is the kind of question I work on every day. Get in touch

Sources

• Prater Wien – Welcome – free entry, open around the clock
• Prater Wien – FAQs – rides paid individually, approx. €3.50–€15
• ORF Wien – Sommersaison im Wiener Prater gestartet – close to seven million visitors in 2025
• ORF Wien – Wiener Wurstelprater – around 80 businesses
• Wikipedia – Dyrehavsbakken – founded 1583, 2.5–2.9 million visitors, free access
• Fever – Tivoli Gardens tickets – opened 1843, entry does not include rides
• Tivoli A/S – Annual Report 2025 – 4,304,000 visitors in 2025

The Most Underrated Investment in the Park

Why the family coaster deserves the spotlight

For decades, the industry measured itself in metres and kilometres per hour. Today the most interesting coaster projects are aimed at the whole family. Here is why that makes business sense – and what separates a great family coaster from a forgettable one.

By Julian Omonsky · Vienna, Austria

From the late 1980s onwards, the coaster industry was locked in a race for records: taller, faster, longer. Those rides still make headlines. But look at the projects major operators are actually announcing, and a different picture appears. Universal opened Epic Universe in 2025 with three family-sized coasters. United Parks has invested in a series of family inverted coasters from B&M. Dollywood presented a family coaster combined with a whitewater raft ride as its next major investment.

The family coaster is no longer the filler between the kiddie ride and the headliner. For many parks, it is the smartest investment they can make.

01

The buying decision is made by the group

A thrill coaster sells to individuals. A family coaster sells to groups – and most park visits are group visits.

When a ride has a high minimum height or a punishing intensity, it splits the group. Some ride, others wait, and the waiting part of the family experiences the park’s biggest investment as a bench. A well-designed family coaster does the opposite: it gives the whole group a shared experience, and shared experiences are what families talk about on the way home.

Demographics reinforce this. Older generations with significant spending power now visit parks with their children and grandchildren. Many of them no longer want the most extreme rides, but they still want to ride.

02

The business case

In my experience, the family coaster wins on almost every line of the investment decision:

None of this makes thrill coasters obsolete. Headliners build reputation and media reach. But for parks that cannot afford a record breaker – and for those that already have one – the family segment is where an investment works hardest.

03

“Family” does not mean “tame”

The most interesting development is the rise of what is often called the family thrill coaster. Manufacturers are bringing inversions, launches and wing seating into the family segment. These rides are not kiddie coasters with a bigger budget. They are complete coasters with a lower entry threshold.

At the other end of the scale, even a small children’s coaster can become a park’s emotional centre. Hilda’s Mini Mountain at Parque Capivari in Campos do Jordão, Brazil, is the perfect example.

It stands just 3 metres tall with 60 metres of track, pulled by a locomotive-style train with Hilda, the park’s mascot, clinging to the smokestack. Yet for the park’s family audience it is the highlight of the visit.

Size is not what makes a family coaster a centrepiece – fit is.

04

Six design rules for a great family coaster

A family coaster is harder to design than it looks. It has to satisfy a six-year-old, a teenager and a grandparent in the same car. These are the rules I work with:

1. Design for the most cautious rider, delight the boldest Forces stay gentle, but surprise moments – a short burst of airtime, a near miss, an unexpected turn – make the ride exciting for everyone.
2. Pace it like a story A family coaster lives from rhythm: build-up, release, a moment to breathe, a final surprise. One continuous rush quickly feels monotonous.
3. Let parent and child sit together Seating should make it natural for an adult and a child to share a row. That moment of looking at each other mid-ride is the product.
4. Plan loading for real families Families load more slowly than groups of teenagers. Station design, restraints and dispatch intervals must account for that, or capacity on paper becomes a queue in reality.
5. Make it visible A family coaster that can be seen from the main paths sells itself – to children first, and through them to their parents.
6. Build in substance for the second ride If a child has seen everything after one ride, the coaster is outgrown within a season. Details, theming and dynamic variation make it worth riding again.

05

Where family coasters go wrong

The two classic mistakes sit at opposite ends. Some rides are so tame that children outgrow them in a single season. Others are so intense that parents lose trust after the first ride. A third mistake is quieter: the generic off-the-shelf layout dropped onto a plot without regard to sightlines, guest flow or the park’s existing line-up.

The ride itself may be standard. Placement, pacing and the overall experience should not be.

06

What it means for manufacturers

The growth in this segment is not only in large theme parks. It is in mid-sized and family-run parks that need a strong new attraction but cannot finance a record breaker. For them, adaptable layouts, compact footprints, clear service concepts and realistic financing matter as much as the ride itself. Manufacturers that design products and sales processes for these operators are addressing one of the broadest markets in the industry.

Thinking about your next family attraction? I help parks find the right ride type and turn it into an experience the whole group remembers. Get in touch

Sources

• Blooloop – The era of the family coaster is here – Epic Universe family coasters, demographic argument
• ACE – Barracuda Strike, SeaWorld San Antonio – B&M family inverted coasters for United Parks
• Fox Business – US parks focusing on family – Dollywood NightFlight Expedition
• Coaster101 – Family coaster renaissance – the end of the record race

Rides Are Mortal

Every roller coaster has two days that enthusiasts and guests remember: the day it is announced and the day someone decides it has to go. The first one gets fireworks, ribbon cuttings and a press release. The second one usually arrives as a short statement on a Tuesday afternoon – and the fans are already mourning in the comments before the park has finished its sentence.

Nothing in a park is permanent

We like to think of steel as eternal. It is not. Track wears, wheels wear, control systems age faster than the structures they run on, and spare parts for a thirty-year-old train can become a project of their own. At some point every operator faces the same quiet calculation: how much does it cost to keep this ride alive – and how much does it still give back?

That question is rarely about technology alone. A ride can be in perfect condition and still have lost its place in the park. Queues get shorter, guests walk past, the area around it has changed. Sometimes the ride did not get worse. The park simply moved on.

Renewal is a design task

The interesting part begins after the decision. Tearing something down is easy. Replacing it with something that matters is not. The best renewals I have seen did not start with a catalogue but with a question: what is this spot in the park supposed to do? Pull people to the back of the park? Give families a ride they can share? Create the image that ends up on every postcard?

Only then does the hardware follow. Sometimes the answer is a brand-new coaster. Sometimes it is a refurbished classic from another park, which brings a second life and a lower budget. And sometimes it is an existing structure that gets new track, new trains and a new story – the same footprint, a completely different experience.

What we lose, what we keep

Still, something gets lost every time. The first ride with your father. The adventure that took all your courage – and that you went on anyway. The hours with friends in a queue that seemed endless, until you finally got on. These memories do not show up in any business plan, but they are the reason people care at all – and good parks know it. Some keep a train as a photo spot, reuse the name, or let the new ride quietly nod to the old one.

For me, this is the part of the industry I find most fascinating: watching parks age, change and reinvent themselves. Every closure is also an opening – for a new idea, for a ride that travels to a new home, for the next generation of riders who will one day miss it themselves.

So the next time a park announces the end of a classic, look closely at what comes next. That is where the new story begins.