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Cedar Point (CP) Discussion Thread

p. 2030 - Top Thrill 2 announced!

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Disaster Transport was at least something you could ride when it was raining, though you'd have to get there quick cause the line would quickly stack up. There was that and the IMAX theater. What does CP have for rainy times now? The arcade? If you live near any big city that should be something you can easily find back home anyway. It'll be nice when a new dark ride that's not Intamin bobsleds makes it's way to CP.

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Hey I liked Disaster Disco. If not much, it was at least something different. Variety is good.

In its last few years, it seemed like DT got its longest lines when the park was packed AND the weather was hot (the queue being air conditioned helped)

The poor capacity of the ride also contributed to the longer lines
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Disaster Transport was at least something you could ride when it was raining, though you'd have to get there quick cause the line would quickly stack up. There was that and the IMAX theater. What does CP have for rainy times now? The arcade? If you live near any big city that should be something you can easily find back home anyway. It'll be nice when a new dark ride that's not Intamin bobsleds makes it's way to CP.

 

It used to close in the rain too because the roof/coverings were so full of holes. Seriously, there were plants growing on it.

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Disaster Transport was at least something you could ride when it was raining, though you'd have to get there quick cause the line would quickly stack up. There was that and the IMAX theater. What does CP have for rainy times now? The arcade? If you live near any big city that should be something you can easily find back home anyway. It'll be nice when a new dark ride that's not Intamin bobsleds makes it's way to CP.

 

It used to close in the rain too because the roof/coverings were so full of holes. Seriously, there were plants growing on it.

Wow, that must have been in later years. I definitely remember a couple of times I rode it while it was raining in the 90s. The more people reminisce about DT the better Gatekeeper looks...

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Hey I liked Disaster Disco. If not much, it was at least something different. Variety is good.

In its last few years, it seemed like DT got its longest lines when the park was packed AND the weather was hot (the queue being air conditioned helped)

The poor capacity of the ride also contributed to the longer lines

Yes, I've heard the trains were supposed to be shorter, which would have made for a more intense ride, but due to capacity concerns they had to be lengthened. One reason it was such a dud.

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I actually passed on Disaster Transport, multiple times. Now it's gone, forever

 

Unless you have a specific thing for intamin bobsleds, you really didn't miss much in my opinion. I've only ridden one mack bobsled (avalanche at KD), but I found it to be far superior to the two intamin versions I've ridden (3 if you count Avalanche Run and DT seperately).

 

Sure, DT was neat because it was a bit different and helped fill the dark ride hole in CP's line up (especially after the pirate ride closed), but I honestly just can't fathom why they sunk a further $4M into a profoundly mediocre and short intamin bobsled ride on top of the $3.5M they spent to build Avalanche Run in the first place just 5 years earlier. That's a total investment of $7.5M (1990 dollars). Back then, 7.5 big ones could have gotten you a ride/attraction that was a whole hell of a lot cooler than DT.

 

And let's please not forget how atrociously ugly DT was and how its presence marred the beachfront at that end of the park. People can say whatever they want about DT's replacement Gatekeeper, taken on its own, but anyone who might try to claim that it wasn't a MASSIVE upgrade would sound like a crazy person from crazy land to me.

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I'd rather read about different experiences people had on a particular roller coaster (or posts from storms for that matter) than alot of the drivel that trickles through this thread...

Amen!

 

I've been LOVING all of these "Magnum Memories" posts.

 

I find them genuinely interesting, as opposed to something like 5 more pages of '17 vs. '18 bickering.

 

Besides, it's the off season. I seriously doubt any of us nerds have anything better to do with our time than taking a little stroll down memory lane.

 

 

 

But perhaps Magnum nostalgia is now getting played out in this thread for the time being, so lets switch gears to something that I think everybody will enjoy: Disaster Transport virginity loss stories!!!

 

 

A Disaster in the Making

 

It was the winter of '89/'90 and the whole world was waiting with baited breath to see what CP would do as an encore for Magnum. I was 14 years old by that time and now a CP veteran. My getaway guide for the 1990 season arrived sometime in early spring and I flipped open the cover to find the big announcement for the year. They planned to turn Avalanche Run into some kind of space-themed dark ride. uhhh, ok. wait, what? Avalanche Run is lame as hell. WHY?

 

Thoroughly underwhelmed, I still went back to my parents to plead my case for another summer trip to CP because I desperately needed more Magnum (who doesn't?). They made arrangements for another trip; I was over the moon all over again. We stayed at the breakers again for a two-day stay, and somewhere in the middle of our first day, we made our way down to DT. Anticipation levels were low and for good reason. The line was long, about 90 minutes I think, and as a build up for the ride that followed it, it was a painful 90 minutes. We didn't bother riding it again over the course of that two day trip. And I think I only rode it maybe a small handful of other times on subsequent CP trips.

 

Disaster Transport was probably the most aptly named amusement park ride in the history of amusement park rides. I mean, they put the word "disaster" right in the name of the damn ride, basically warning you ahead of time that it was gonna suck. And starting from an Intamin bobsled, how could it ever hope to be anything other than mediocre. CP spent $4M (in 1990 dollars, mind you) trying to polish that turd and all they managed to do with that sizable investment was take an existing mediocre ride and make it ever so slightly less mediocre and orders of magnitude more ugly. What the hell were they thinking? Avalanche Run was certainly no great shakes, but I could at least appreciate the absurdity of locating a snow-themed bobsled ride right on a bright and sunny beach. However, with the DT transformation, any small amount of ironic charm that the ride might have previously had was obliterated with big giant beige boxes festooned with cryptic lettering hanging in the sky with tubes protruding out of them here and there. ugly, ugly, ugly.

 

As for the themed queue, I guess you could say that they tried, but the story line never made much sense to me (Alaska? Why are we going to Alaska? And through space? WTF?) and despite the vast sums spent on the theming, it was still way beyond apparent that you were definitely not at a disney park. The ride was the ride; I guess it was made a little bit cooler being in the dark where the twists and turns were harder to anticipate, but it was still just a lame old Intamin bobsled coaster: way too many MCBRs and way too short. For 4 million dollars they could have knocked-down Avalanche Run and built a medium sized wood coaster like WoF's Timber Wolf which was built the prior season for $3M (I know Timber Wolf is held in very low regard these days, but when it first opened it received A LOT of high praise from the enthusiast community).

 

To me, the only really surprising thing about DT was that it managed to hang around for as long as it did, though that was probably helped in large part by its former themed queue areas being taken over for halloweekends stuff. Inertia is also a pretty powerful force.

 

 

 

TL;DR: The Disaster Transport transformation has to rank as one of the all-time worst ride investments in CP history.

 

I figured this would be one of those I thought it would suck, but I was pleasantly surprised type stories, I kept waiting for it to get better for you.

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I'd rather ride Wildcat than Avalanche Run/Disaster Transport any day.

 

Ditto, and I got to experience DT when it was fresh and all of the pre-show worked. That was fun, but the ride was tame for me. In my young mind at the time, space mountain was a far superior dark ride. Wildcat was both visible and visceral and far more pleasant to look at lol.

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IIRC Avalanche Run had a dual loading station therefore two bobsleds could load/unload at the same time. The issue with Disaster Transport was they turned what was the second loading platform into the unload only and had just the one loading station.

 

I stopped riding DT a long time before they finally decided to remove it. It became a waste of time. Also didn't help that it was so HOT going up the lift hill.

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I remember my sister and her husband waiting for over two hours in line for DT during opening season and they were PISSED that they waited that long for something that sucked that badly!

 

Me and my friend held off after they "gave us their review" and waited until our next visit when the line was more manageable. I had already ridden Avalanche Run and remembered how badly that sucked (only rode it once), so we weren't overly excited to ride DT. While it was definitely better in the dark, it just felt like a slower, lamer version of Space Mountain.

 

I found it interesting that the queue line theming seemed like it only lasted one or two seasons before it just all sat idle....likely because it didn't have much of a line because the word was out that it wasn't very good.

 

But yeah, on rainy days or really hot days, it could pick up an hour wait easily. I do remember the queue line stinking as well as the hotter than Hades (and equally smelly) enclosed lift hill.

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I'd rather ride Wildcat than Avalanche Run/Disaster Transport any day.

Oh for sure!

 

Wildcat was a great little ride, as are most things Herr Achterbahn had a hand in creating.

 

My main beefs with DT were:

1. So very goddamn ugly

2. Terrible investment

3. Intamin/Giovanola bobsleds just weren't very good in my opinion. They're neat and add diversity to a coaster line-up, but there's a reason why only 5 of them were ever built worldwide over the span of 2 years in the mid-'80s. I rode two of them: AR/DT at CP and Rolling Thunder at SFGAm, and whether outdoors or enclosed, the ride experience just seemed very short, lackluster and disjointed to me. Shallow drop -> turn-turn-turn -> MCBR -> shallow drop -> turn-turn-turn -> MCBR -> shallow drop -> turn-turn-turn -> End.

 

They're not terrible or objectively bad or anything like that, they just never really dId it for me.

 

A Schwarzkopf Wildcat on the other hand, now you're talking!

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I think they will complete RMC Mean Streak and run a few test cycles. Then just to troll us all they will tear down the entire thing and put the Boomerang from Knotts in its place.That would literally be the most hysterical thing to ever happen, imagine how many but hurt fanboys there would be, they might start a riot.

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I think they will complete RMC Mean Streak and run a few test cycles. Then just to troll us all they will tear down the entire thing and put the Boomerang from Knotts in its place.That would literally be the most hysterical thing to ever happen, imagine how many but hurt fanboys there would be, they might start a riot.

Or maybe RMC Mean Streak will be their new dark ride. They'll hide that beautiful structure in a butt ugly beige airplane hangar just like they used for Disaster Transport

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I think they will complete RMC Mean Streak and run a few test cycles. Then just to troll us all they will tear down the entire thing and put the Boomerang from Knotts in its place.That would literally be the most hysterical thing to ever happen, imagine how many but hurt fanboys there would be, they might start a riot.

 

Everything about your post makes me need a drink. Or 12. My liver hates you.

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I'd rather ride Wildcat than Avalanche Run/Disaster Transport any day.

Oh for sure!

 

Wildcat was a great little ride, as are most things Herr Achterbahn had a hand in creating.

 

My main beefs with DT were:

1. So very goddamn ugly

2. Terrible investment

3. Intamin/Giovanola bobsleds just weren't very good in my opinion. They're neat and add diversity to a coaster line-up, but there's a reason why only 5 of them were ever built worldwide over the span of 2 years in the mid-'80s. I rode two of them: AR/DT at CP and Rolling Thunder at SFGAm, and whether outdoors or enclosed, the ride experience just seemed very short, lackluster and disjointed to me. Shallow drop -> turn-turn-turn -> MCBR -> shallow drop -> turn-turn-turn -> MCBR -> shallow drop -> turn-turn-turn -> End.

 

They're not terrible or objectively bad or anything like that, they just never really dId it for me.

 

A Schwarzkopf Wildcat on the other hand, now you're talking!

 

I never cared for Wildcat...whether on the beach or over by Iron Dragon. I think I rode it a grand total of 2 times during my visits in the 80's, 90's and up until it's removal.

 

I just remember it as an okay transitional coaster (along with Iron Dragon and CC Mine Ride) with one good drop, a horribly abrupt brake at the end and it being very noisy with all of it's clunking and clanking. It always felt a bit too "carnival" to me and seemed horribly out of place at CP - just my opinion though.

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Wildcat was in my top 10 (#9) up until it closed. I only allow operating coasters in my top 10. So I dropped it down to #20 along with Big Dipper from GL. I was so sad when they removed Wildcat from the park. I liked it better than any other coaster in the park. And I'm a grown man with El Toro and Phoenix on the top of my list. I only ever rode Wildcat once (2009), but it really surprised me how much fun it was.

 

FYI, Wicked Twister is my 2nd favorite coaster at CP.

 

I hope to get back to CP this year, I really want to see if the different restraints on Maverick can bump it up from #18 on my list to a top 10.

 

Back in 2009 I had 2 days at the park, but heavy lightning storms kept the rides shut most of the day (both days). So I was scrambling to get from ride to ride while they were open.

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