RollerCoasters

They took the site down but it's still available on the archive page.

• 420ft vertical spike
• 120mph forwards
• 109mph backwards

I hope to God the name isn't really Top Thrill 2..... That's terrible.......

The park is not confirming but also not denying that another crack exists. We'll see how this plays out I guess.

Cedar Point's response was pretty abysmal which is starting to be a trend it seems. First Aid released the guest after cleaning his wounds.... The next day he ended up in the ER and found out that he had a concussion.

If parks don't start prosecuting people who aren't responsible enough to properly secure their articles this problem is going to keep getting worse. There is very little incentive to follow rules when parks generally don't seem to take action when the rules are broken..... Charging people for lockers and removing platform bins make this problem worse (although not an excuse for Maverick which still does have bins). To be clear, this isn't Cedar Point's fault but they do have a responsibility to take action against those that broke the rules..... Likely they'll just remove the bins from Maverick and punish everyone following the rules while the culprit goes free.

Bottom line is if you start showing others that you're in serious trouble if you don't secure your articles then people will start taking this seriously. They have no reason to care otherwise.

Drones have been spotted in formation after hours in the park. With the closure of their previous night show could we be seeing a new drone show take it's place?

Interesting brief I ran across from a month ago. Someone was scared by an actor at fright fest, ran away, and in doing so they tripped and fell and later sued Six Flags because of the action. I can kind of see how this could be somewhat controversial but at the end of the day the decision to side with Six Flags seems reasonable (though I admittedly haven't read the whole case).

I'm curious how everyone else feels. Do you think this is an inherent risk guests need to be aware or do you think Six Flags should have some responsibility?

A duck rode Millennium Force and was safely removed from the ride afterward.

Likely the rumored B&M dive...... But I'm still secretly hoping that they reverted back to the Gravity Groupb shuttle despite all the evidence suggesting otherwise 😂

I know it is controversial but I am enjoying keeping up with park progress here Themeparx

We kind of already knew this but Universal has now officially announced that a DreamWorks themed land will be replacing the closed KidZone area at Universal Studios Florida.

It appears that this will enable a VR experience to respond to your facial reactions.

Are we about to see a boom of new parks? Interestingly the image in the article reminds me of a "future" park that we talked about on our show a couple years ago that never seemed to materialize but I'm drawing a blank on the details.

B&M not having a good year

Alternate link: https://bird.makeup/users/eltororyan/statuses/1681362016345137152

Inspired by an Airtime Thrills video on the fifteen biggest coaster buzzkills, what would you consider to be the biggest coaster buzzkills in your opinion?

And how would you rank them from the least awful to the most awful?

It looks like Cedar Fair is shaking up their passes again for 2024 but this one makes sense. Instead of having varied levels you basically have your gold pass and then the access to all parks is an add on option. If pricing remains similar this should simplify things while keeping it affordable.

For Cedar Point, Carowinds, and Kings Island these parks will have two choices of passes with Gold or Prestige but the add-on option remains the same even if you get the Prestige pass.

This is likely our first official confirmation that she did survive but also that she had serious complications as you would expect.

Indiana Beach was the final stop on a 10-park road trip I conducted this summer, and I was hoping that this recently saved classic park would end things on a high note. I might get some hate for this, but spoiler alert: It did not.

Driving up to the park from Indianapolis, I was first amazed that this place can even support an amusement park in any capacity. It is literally in the middle of nowhere with corn fields as far as the eye can see, the only civilization around being small, if charming, country towns. And then here is Indiana Beach, a literal oasis in the fields, as if someone picked up a Victorian seaside resort and decided to put it back down as far from the sea as they possibly could.

That is to say there is a definite charm to this place. It exudes a nostalgic energy that made me feel right at home, despite never setting foot in the park previously. Part of that as well is the awe inspiring sight of coasters and rides built on top of each other, seemingly entangled together, like something out of a park one would build in RCT when limited in space in a scenario.

With the park opening a good hour before any of the rides, we took a stroll around taking everything in, until the park's pinball room caught our eye and we headed in for a few rounds of play to wait out the rides. This was one of the high points of the park for me as they have a great varied selection of pinball tables, including a couple all-time classics, all well loved and in excellent condition. I highly recommend anyone visiting to set some time aside to check out their collection.

So far I've been singing the park's praises but unfortunately that's not going to be the case going forward thanks to the worst ops I have ever seen. Rides began opening an hour after the gates opened (this wasn't mentioned anywhere BTW so we spent the first few minutes of our day wondering why nothing was open until we asked an employee), and knowing how unreliable Lost Coaster of Superstition Mountain is we headed there first. It wasn't open. No biggie, I half expected that, so we headed back to Tig'rr, which was open and running one car. One car. Each car holds a maximum of 4 people. One car. All I'm gonna say is I'm glad we got there first. Capacity woes aside, this was my first time on a Jet Star and it was a surprisingly intense ride. No airtime but the mnimal restraints (just a seat belt) plus wild laterals had me holding on for dear life. The Jet Star is an iconic Schwarzkopf model and I can definitely see why.

Following our ride on Tig'rr we headed over to the only other open coaster, Hoosier Hurricane. Coming into this park, the only thing I really knew about their coasters was that one of their CCI woodies was supposed to be good, and the other one... Not. I figured right away that Hoosier Hurricane was the latter. My first ride was in the back and I spent the whole time getting jackhammered. It looks like there should be decent airtime on the course but there was none to make up for the roughness. I tried again in the front hoping it would at least be smoother, but it amazingly rode exactly the same as in the back. The ride does give a nice tour of the park, so it at least gets a point for that.

And that was it for the time being. Lost Coaster still hadn't opened, Cornball Express was going to open late, Steel Hawg was broken, and there wasn't a peep room Cyclone. We played a round of Fascination, which was fun although their Fascination tables are in a markedly worse state than their pinball tables. This was followed up by the antique cars that provide great views of Lost Coaster and Hoosier Hurricane, the dark ride which was in quite poor shape with many targets not working, and the sky ride for a nice view of the park. I thought about riding Tig'rr again but the first time I passed back by it had a long queue due to the one car ops, and the second time I passed by it was broken.

Mercifully Lost Coaster finally opened up after a while and we hopped on its first train of the day. Good thing too because this again one was running one train and quickly built up a sizeable line. This thing is weird... The caged cars are super claustrophobic and some of the turns it makes as it winds down the mountain are impossibly tight. It's some bastard child of a wild mouse, wooden coaster, and mine train, and I'm glad it exists. I got one ride facing forwards and if I'm ever back I'd love to try it in one of the backwards facing seats.

Cornball Express also opened up right after we got off Lost Coaster to our good fortune, as it was also running one train and we managed to be among the first in the station. We started off with a back seat ride, and honestly I came off rather unimpressed. There was some good airtime, even a couple nice ejector pops, but the jackhammering made it impossible to appreciate. We also got stuck on the brake one and one of the mechanics (who had been running around all day trying to fix everything, poor guy) had to come out and manually adjust something with the brake system to release us. Undeterred we went around to try the front. What a night and day experience that was. There was somehow when more airtime in the front, including some super intense ejector moments, wild laterals, and I didn't come off in pain. Finally a real winner! Cornball was definitely the surprise of the day and I genuinely love this coaster.

We fruitlessly wandered over to Steel Hawg a few times after this, and throughout the day, hoping to get on our first El Loco, but with no luck. There was plenty of activity in the station but whatever was wrong with it had no chance of being fixed while we were there. Their Galaxi, Cyclone, showed no signs of life either, so after a few hours in the park we hit the road.

I really want to say I enjoyed Indiana Beach, but the operational challenges make that difficult, especially with our limited time in the park. It has so much potential, but beneath the nostalgic charm it is quite run down looking, and the operations are atrocious. Between the one train ops on everything and rides constantly breaking (at any moment during the day at least 3/4 of their coasters were down, with only Hoosier Hurricane operating at one point) I felt like I couldn't be spontaneous and just relax and enjoy the park if I wanted to actually get on rides. Now I think I understand why it's taking so long for them to get their Schwarzkopf looper open. Good luck to them because they will need it.

And that was a wrap for my 9 day, 10 park coaster trip. Not necessarily how I hoped it would end, but I'm still glad I got out to this unique park, especially considering that in an alternate timeline Indiana Beach is nothing but a memory.

With no raptors built last year, one ground up and one conversion, which coasters are you hoping for RMC to look at for next year? I don't have high hopes for RMC/Boss with Selim but, I can only hope. It's so rough even with the trackwork that gets done on it. I think it has the potential to be the best RMC conversion yet. Or do y'all think titan track would be a better route? I'm also hoping for a park to get a custom/terrain raptor but ehh.

It seems PHP means Project High Point (and not horse power) which is the project turning TTD into.... whatever it's going to be.

I personally think the spike is where things are going but my mind is having a tough time envisioning a taller spike than the top hat unless they use a trim brake rather than a launch boost on its final charge over the top hat.... But maybe I'm not thinking about it correctly.

What's everyone else expecting the new TTD to be?

Here's a really good segment that 1A from WAMU (part of NPR) did on Roller Coaster safety. Both ASTM and Gravity Group are represented in the conversation.