Ah yes, I'm glad you're so privy to their financial expectations relating to building the tallest, fastest, longest traditional steel coaster in the Americas. I'm sure their ROI will be "bleak" since people will avoid the park in droves because this ride isn't an Intamin masochist machine. What this boils down to is that this ride will be a massive hit. The GP will eat it up, I'll enjoy it and I'm sure the majority of enthusiasts will too. If you think that building a B&M gigacoaster will somehow result in less return on investment vs an Intamin one, you're just delusional. You know what keeps people away from a new ride?
Off putting due to discomfort: Stand at the exit of Intimidator 305 for a few cycles, and you'll see plenty of people getting off of the ride saying "HOLY SH%T THAT'S A CRAZY RIDE, I'm getting right back in line". You'll also hear just as many people saying "HOLY SH%T THAT'S JUST TOO MUCH, I DONT THINK I'LL EVER RIDE THAT CRAZY THING AGAIN, IT'S JUST TOO MUCH". And then they'll walk over to Dominator or Volcano and stand in a 60-90 minute queue to enjoy those rides more.
Reliability Issues: People will avoid going if the big new attraction is closed, and those who still go will be upset/disappointed. I305 was closed for an entire month last season, and during it's 1st season had significant reliability problems.
As for actual "return on investment"... replacing thrashed wheels that cost over $1000 on a daily basis isn't good business sense, neither is having to rebuild a part of your brand new coaster because it placed too much stress on the train and it's riders.
Ridership: I305 is obviously the king of the park- the big new flashy ride, yet it garners less of a wait running 1 train than Flight of Fear, Volcano and Dominator do running multiple trains every single day. Want to talk about bad return on investment? No brand new record breaking ride should ever be a constant walk on while the "old hat" rides around it garner lengthy queues- but that's exactly what happens on I305.
Those are the issues that any park actually cares about with their new attraction, which is why parks will continue wait on a several years long wait list just to have the pleasure of building a crowd pleasing, massive capacity, 99% uptime ride that costs a fortune. At this point I think parks know whether or not B&M's have a good "return on investment".
For everyone else... yes I know it's juts such a "disappointment" that you're going to be punished with a top 20 coaster that doesn't thrash you around and have huge reliability/safety problems. Honestly this sour attitude over any park that chooses not to build the craziest most unique Intamin ride on earth is really getting old. Complain all you want about B&M and their lack of innovation/solid rides but over the last few years they've brought Giga coasters, new style inverted coasters, wing coasters and launched coasters to the market yet they're still "stale".
At this point lets just have establish a standard response to all rides every built in the future:
Every single park should be ashamed of themselves for even considering things like guest feedback, return on investment, reliability, maintenance cost or safety- they should have just built a mega lite, an aquatrax or an I305. Anything else is just boring/disappointing/not worth your time. Which is fine, because luckily not a single park on earth needs to cater to the 1% of visitors that comprise bitchy enthusiasts- it's such a negligible demographic. "Events" for enthusiasts amount to nothing more than a company picnic for the parks bottom line, and that's about the only thing the park ever bothers to care about with regards to enthusiasts beyond Holiday World.
Banshee at kings island is always a walk on....