Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/September 25, 2023

Lift hill and barrel roll downdrop of Iron Gwazi

Iron Gwazi is a steel-track hybrid roller coaster at Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida, U.S. The ride first opened in 1999 as Gwazi, a wooden roller coaster with two tracks in a dueling configuration. It was built by Great Coasters International on the former site of an Anheuser-Busch brewery at the park. Although well received initially, Gwazi became difficult to maintain over time, leading to the closure of one track in 2012 followed by the other in 2015. It remained closed until Busch Gardens, in 2019, announced that Rocky Mountain Construction would transform Gwazi into a hybrid roller coaster. Its two wooden tracks were replaced by a single steel track, with portions of the original support structure reused. The ride reopened as Iron Gwazi on March 11, 2022, becoming North America's tallest, steepest, and fastest hybrid roller coaster. Iron Gwazi received positive reviews from critics and won Best New Roller Coaster in Amusement Today's annual Golden Ticket Awards publication. (Full article...)

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blurb length

Adog and GoneIn60, i am admittedly having trouble figuring out how best to trim this blurb down to the required length. tfa blurbs running with images are not supposed to exceed 1025 characters in length, and this one is currently at 1132 characters. could one of you please help me out and shorten the blurb so that i won't inadvertently remove any important details? also, i believe the fact that the roller coaster is in the u.s. should be mentioned somewhere, or else someone may report that the information is missing at wp:errors. thanks in advance. dying (talk) 09:04, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

I've shortened it. Sorry, I had not noticed the edits after my first attempt. Wehwalt (talk) 11:34, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

@Dying and Wehwalt: Thank you for the correction and alert. The changes are good as they are still accurate to the article's contents. :) Adog (Talk・Cont) 13:43, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. Appreciate the trim, which is more succinct without any loss of detail. I made one very slight change, but we are still sitting under 1000 characters. --GoneIn60 (talk) 13:50, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

GoneIn60, I guess I do have one question about the brewery. I was there, in 1979, and my memories of it are vague, but from what I recollect, it wasn't actually in the theme park area but there was a tour and free beer samples either inside the ticketed area or available to those going to the theme park (because I remember touring the brewery), but given that it was a working brewery, the working area of the brewery wasn't inside the theme park at the time. That's why I said "at" rather than "inside". Wehwalt (talk) 13:55, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

That's actually a good point. I have seen descriptions saying it was inside the park, but as you say, a good portion of it was actually separate and not really a feature of the park. The description here confirms that, noting that it was surrounded on three sides by the theme park. I'll change it back, thanks. --GoneIn60 (talk) 14:19, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

I was looking at newspaper.com clippings from 1977 that Adog clipped, and they say the same thing, that the theme park was adjacent to the brewery. I guess my misspent youth comes in handy now and then. Wehwalt (talk) 14:22, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

@Wehwalt and GoneIn60: You may also be interested in some of the research I did the park's history. It is not nearly finished, nor up-to-code (needs to be forked and concise-d), but I did a run-through of a lot of Newspapers.com's archives about the park, painfully checking every year's records (one day it will be FA).

To preface, I think the blurb is still good and its wording. As a hypothetical from my personal observation (of course, no bearing on what is factually reported), I feel like the brewery was technically in the park (or at least surrounded by it). It seems the brewery was enclosed in the theme park with the construction of Stanleyville (initially the "African village"). The Bird Gardens and Stanleyville had (and still have) a bridge connecting the two on the west side of the park where an access road was/is probably used by the brewery workers/park staff. Maybe (as noted above) because the brewery was not fully accessible to the public (possibly only accessible via the "Stairway to the Stars"), the access road makes it not entirely surrounded by the park, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Adog (Talk・Cont) 00:11, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I would be happy to give it a review when you get it to FAC. My contacts with Busch Gardens Tampa are limited, I think I went twice, in 1979 and 1984, but I remember my first visit well, they didn't care that I was sixteen, they just handed me a beer! Wehwalt (talk) 01:25, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Nice! Haha. I would have loved to see how the park was back then compared to now. They brought back the Anheuser-Busch tradition in recent years of (a generous) two free beers each day of the summer, which is a nice touch. Though, Busch Gardens in Tampa now has an identity crisis as it is deviating away from its African theme (or at least lazily; e.g. "Iron" Gwazi) and has a lack of amenities or abandoned attractions/areas. I will hold you to that, even if that FA nomination comes ten years down the line, haha. Having anyone who visited that long ago would bring a fresh perspective to the research of yesteryear! Adog (Talk・Cont) 13:34, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Adog and GoneIn60, thanks for reviewing the blurb. i had three additional questions to raise.

• is there a reason why the blurb mentions that iron gwazi is "North America's tallest, steepest, and fastest hybrid roller coaster", while the article lead only states that it is marketed as such? i admittedly am not familiar with what would be considered the industry-standard lists of roller coaster superlatives (if there are any), so am unable to determine myself if the marketing is accurate. i did notice that sources cited in the article support the claim outright, but i cannot tell if they are simply parroting claims made in press releases.
• i found it unusual that the "Amusement Today" article is targeted twice, with the second instance due to the mention of the golden ticket awards. this wouldn't have been an issue had there been a separate article for the golden ticket awards, but i noticed that there seems to be a years-long disagreement over whether or not the article should be split. would it be more appropriate to remove one of the two links? to me, it seems strange to link to such a long article twice, even though the links are essentially the same. i'm really unsure of what the best plan of action here is, so if either of you prefer to keep both links in the blurb, i'd leave it alone.
• the caption currently uses the phrase "barrel-roll down drop". is a hyphen generally used between "barrel" and "roll" when the term "barrel roll" is used to modify the term "drop down"? this google search suggests to me that a hyphen generally isn't used in the phrase (and if one is, it more commonly occurs between "down" and "drop"). courtesy pinging Ravenpuff regarding this last question.

dying (talk) 23:18, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

A hyphen is often useful with compound modifiers (like "barrel roll" in this case) – cf. the guidance at MOS:HYPHEN. But if I have misunderstood the phrase, feel free to remove it. — RAVENPVFF · talk · 00:37, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

1. For this point, Iron Gwazi (per RCDB's database records) is the fastest and steepest hybrid roller coaster in the world (and the North America region by default), while tied as the tallest with Zadra at Energylandia in Poland; making it the tallest in North America (Steel Vengeance in Ohio is a foot shorter). Regarding the article's contents, the park (Busch Gardens Tampa Bay) did start marketing in 2019 that Iron Gwazi was the tallest, fastest, and steepest. When the roller coaster eventually opened in 2022, Iron Gwazi set the two aforementioned records and tied the third. The article reflects these statements with the lead: The refurbished ride was marketed and opened as North America's tallest, steepest, and fastest hybrid roller coaster, ... and the prose Busch Gardens promoted the attraction as North America's steepest, fastest, and tallest hybrid roller coaster. & Iron Gwazi debuted as the tallest hybrid roller coaster in North America, as well as the fastest and steepest hybrid roller coaster in the world. For reader's clarity, I can insert what the RCDB has into the prose. As a personal opinion, I do agree it is usually a hazy superlative, but height and speed are important here because of how hybrid roller coasters are drastically changing in the last decade; steepness an added bonus per sourcing. I do wonder the same sometimes if newspapers mimic a park's claims, but I do trust the reporters due diligence for fact-checking and finding when we can verify this on our own in some capacity. If it is a silly marketing/gimmick record, we would not include it. Whether it is worth mentioning for TFA, I do not mind its inclusion or exclusion, but it could get readers attention on the defining change between the current version and its wooden predecessor.
2. I am 50/50 on this one. The discussion needs to be followed through, but I am in the camp that would want to split the two because they are distinct in their own right. Though they do link to the same article, I think individual links to each properly guide readers unfamiliar with the trade journal Amusement Today to differentiate from its Oscar/Academy Awards-esk annual "Golden Ticket Awards". Though, again, I do understand it is not split right now (or may never), so a link may be dispatched from the TFA caption.
3. This one is tricky, since it is essentially jargon. I rely on RCDB again here, which states "Barrel Roll Downdrop". Admittedly, it is a "barrel roll that drops down", but for simplicity I think the jargon was created to fully accentuate what that element exactly is differentiating from a regular barrel roll element. That may be the proper title, but if it is too overly detailed or fan-crufty, it can be modified to reflect a longer description type.

• @Dying, Ravenpuff, and GoneIn60: Sorry for the lengthy explanation/ideas. Thoughts? :) Adog (Talk・Cont) 04:29, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
• Also, I appreciate the feedback! Thank you! Adog (Talk・Cont) 04:42, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

  oh, many thanks for this response, Adog! i love good lengthy explanations.

  • i think including the superlative in the blurb is fine. my main question had been the curious discrepancy between the blurb and the article lead, so i just wanted to make sure that at least we had done our due diligence verifying the claim. i've seen superlatives that are obviously incorrect parroted by sources generally considered reliable at wp:rsp, so i tend to be wary of such statements. thanks for providing those links to rcdb; they look pretty solid to me. (i admittedly would have considered a 90° angle steeper than a 91° angle, so am assuming that "steepest" has a slightly different definition than usual in the context of roller coasters.)
  • i think we are in agreement regarding the links to the "Amusement Today" article. i also think the article should be split, but am unsure of what to do since all the previous attempts to split the article have been reverted. i don't feel strongly about removing one of the links; i had only mentioned it because i had thought the inclusion of both links was unusual and was unsure if it was intentional. if you have thought it through, i'm fine with leaving the links alone.
  • oh, i just realized that "downdrop" actually doesn't have a space in it! i'm not sure how i missed that; the article itself uses the word multiple times. also, this google search suggests to me that "barrel roll downdrop" is used much more often than "barrel roll down drop". i'm actually not sure how that space ended up in the caption. do you think it would be a good idea to replace "barrel-roll down drop" in the caption with "barrel roll downdrop"?

  dying (talk) 12:50, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

  @Dying: Sounds good to me on the points above! Steepness (to me) is kind of an arbitrary record in some cases, but is commonly denoted as "the angle of descent of the rides' primary [drop]" quoted. For example, the steepest steel roller coaster now is TMNT Shellraiser, with a 121.5 angle of descent (video, 1:40). Wooden is Switchback with 87.0. Steepness looks like this. Beyond 90 degrees is where the track starts to curve in on itself. Even a degree beyond raises public attention, since you are dipping into the drop's support structure. Links are good either way with me. To the third point it should be "barrel roll downdrop"; not sure how to change it at this point. Adog (Talk・Cont) 13:32, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

  I've changed "down drop" to "downdrop". Wehwalt (talk) 13:58, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

  Does the hyphen get excluded? Wehwalt (talk) 13:59, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

  @Wehwalt: For sourcing, I would say yes since it is a specified term. :D Adog (Talk・Cont) 15:07, 24 September 2023 (UTC)