Cedar Point (CP) Discussion Thread

[grsupercity]

1 hour ago, Jason Maier said:

How many LSM's/how much power would been needed for TTD to make it over the top hat?

And yeah .... no wonder Cedar Fair don't like Intamin!

Cedar Point thrived with Intamin in the early 2000's

[coasternut]

^ That was a long time ago. Lot's of Intamin Major issues everywhere, especially at C.P.

[_s3_]

Everyone knows they are taking that launch track, turning it 45° and re-supporting it to become lift track that way they can be the tallest non-launching roller coaster in the world.

Lift, turn, drop/spiral, brakes. Just renamed "Coaster".

[pryonisys]

Themed, protected, and air conditions building queue along with a name change.

You'll now be launching into space on LSMs with new generation Intamin trains and coming back in Alaska (for some reason)
Disaster Transport 2.0

I'm sure the park would love to brand the ride to a disaster... that would go over great

[Doppel Looping]

It will free up some space to install some of the rides from california’s great america. 
 

[pianojohn]

If all of these whiny entitled enthusiasts on Twitter and Facebook truly "never come back to CP," think how AWESOME that would be!
I have read so many asinine comments like "first Wicked Twister now this! I refuse to EVER go back to the park."

Cool bro! Enjoy Six Flags (while you can!)

[AmyUD06]

9 minutes ago, pianojohn said:

If all of these whiny entitled enthusiasts on Twitter and Facebook truly "never come back to CP," think how AWESOME that would be!
I have read so many asinine comments like "first Wicked Twister now this! I refuse to EVER go back to the park."

Cool bro! Enjoy Six Flags (while you can!)

If only they would follow through.... Shorter lines for the rest of us.

[BitterOldHag]

1 hour ago, Doppel Looping said:

It will free up some space to install some of the rides from california’s great america. 
 

I don’t know why, but this made me legitimately lol.  
 

Personally, I would have been fine if they removed it, but now I’m curious to see if that “swing launch” theory is actually true.  Should be interesting to see what they have in store for the ride.  

[AmyUD06]

13 minutes ago, BitterOldHag said:

I don’t know why, but this made me legitimately lol.  
 

Personally, I would have been fine if they removed it, but now I’m curious to see if that “swing launch” theory is actually true.  Should be interesting to see what they have in store for the ride.  

This is the first I've heard of this "theory."  How exactly are they going to do a swing launch without constructing a massive rear spike for the train to "swing" onto?

[JT325]

One guess I heard is the CP might take this chance to "take back the record" from Kingda Ka.  Really?  Why bother.  Cedar Point cares about a quality experience.  I *LOVE* TTD.  Rode Ka once in 2006 and I'll be fine never riding it again.  It was enlightening to see how much different such similar coasters can be.  Presentation, station, operation, maintenace (and restraints!) mean a lot with this sort of ride.

[AmyUD06]

14 minutes ago, JT325 said:

One guess I heard is the CP might take this chance to "take back the record" from Kingda Ka.  Really?  Why bother.  Cedar Point cares about a quality experience.  I *LOVE* TTD.  Rode Ka once in 2006 and I'll be fine never riding it again.  It was enlightening to see how much different such similar coasters can be.  Presentation, station, operation, maintenace (and restraints!) mean a lot with this sort of ride.

This!  Everything about Dragster made it the better ride than Ka, who cares about 8mph and 45 feet?  In addition to all of the things you listed, what really pushed Dragster over the top for me is the "all force at once" launch, as opposed to the "okay, lets go....now lets go a little faster....now lets go full speed" launch of Ka.  Dragster also kept its smoothness through its entire life, as opposed to Ka which got horribly rattle-y after the first few years.

And since we're wildly speculating with ideas that will never ever happen, I would not be upset if they put a vertical loop on top of the spike to reclaim the height record.

[ricklap77]

3 hours ago, _s3_ said:

Everyone knows they are taking that launch track, turning it 45° and re-supporting it to become lift track that way they can be the tallest non-launching roller coaster in the world.

Lift, turn, drop/spiral, brakes. Just renamed "Coaster".

Yes!  It will be the world's tallest full circuit roller coaster with a 90 degree drop. 

[John Peck]

My question is... is this a big enough project that would take this all the way into 2024, or could this reopen in 2023? I feel it's the latter.  My guess is new trains, LSM's,  a tunnel and a play on the old name.

[thrillseeker4552]

2 hours ago, AmyUD06 said:

This is the first I've heard of this "theory."  How exactly are they going to do a swing launch without constructing a massive rear spike for the train to "swing" onto?

Even if they did construct a spike, a swing launch would totally destroy the ride's capacity. It would greatly lengthen the ride and only one train would obviously be allowed on the swing at a time.

Something I noticed is Cedar Fair's terminology. With Montezooma, they said it was undergoing "major refurbishment" which will actually turn out to be almost an entirely new ride. They didn't say Montezooma was "retiring" like they are here for TTD. I feel like if we are seeing some kind of LSM/new train/track makeover to TTD, they would word it in a similar way as a "refurbishment" rather than the ride retiring? I don't know? Obviously Knott's and Cedar Point are separate parks and could say it however they'd like but it's something to think about.

[BitterOldHag]

2 hours ago, AmyUD06 said:

This is the first I've heard of this "theory."  How exactly are they going to do a swing launch without constructing a massive rear spike for the train to "swing" onto?

Think I may have seen it on Reddit or one of the other forums, and I realize it’s just a rumor.  But yes, a vertical spike and a switch track would be installed like on Pantheon.  I thought it was a crazy idea.  But now, who knows.  As long as I have Maverick and Millennium Force to ride still, I’m fine with whatever they end up doing!

[CP_RULES]

I’m here for this thread. I have nothing to add. Just here for the spectacle.

[Zand]

10 minutes ago, CP_RULES said:

I’m here for this thread. I have nothing to add. Just here for the spectacle.

Keep arms down, head back, and hold on.

[boldikus]

1 hour ago, BitterOldHag said:

Think I may have seen it on Reddit or one of the other forums, and I realize it’s just a rumor.  But yes, a vertical spike and a switch track would be installed like on Pantheon.  I thought it was a crazy idea. 

I thought people stopped doing flakka.

[Zack44]

Just give it to Dorney Park. That place has been relying on Cedar Fair's table scraps for years now.

[coasterbill]

I have no idea what they're doing, but it's definitely interesting. I would imagine that they announced it when they did because with the park closed on weekdays now they might really start making some pretty-obvious changes pretty quickly.

[Pedrinho]

They don't need announcements. Just some fences, some markings and three garbage cans next to it and the fanboys will go full crazy.

[_s3_]

Just a couple of thoughts I've had the last couple two days. Mostly throw away but nonetheless...

Wicked Twister used LIMs which required a very large amount of power to run. Since it's been axed, they could extend it's power line (which is a much higher voltage, dedicated line run to mainland) over to TTD if it were to get an LSM conversion. Definitely would alleviate a large chunk of infrastructure cost comparative to if they needed to run a brand new high voltage line entirely. Any sort of change to LSMs is going to require a much larger infrastructure cost than just track, trains, stators, controls, etc. (which are large in and of itself).

If Intamin is involved in this (and it's not some other manufacturer), could it be possible that some of the cost of this could be part of a differed settlement between CP and Intamin? I can't imagine there weren't any discussions between the two, legally, after the accident last August.

Curious to see if anything decent, change wise, will be visible this weekend. When it has come to "renovating" coasters, CP tends to wait until the last second to announce it before it would be way more widely recognized as happening. Rougarou was already being painted in more remote, non-highly-visible areas prior to the announcement, which afterwards they immediately started attacking it with new paint. Mean Streak had markings everywhere but cranes showed up immediately after it's send-off.

Feels like déjà vu right now back to 2002 with speculation over layout, launch, etc. Can't wait for months or year (if CP pulls another Mean Streak/SV and this is for 2024) of speculation ahead.

[BotanicalStig]

I think if CP wanted to convert the ride to LSM (and it could be done) - they would do it. Regardless of any potential infrastructure challenges. 

 

I doubt they're converting it to an LSM launch, but maybe the technology has evolved to a point where they could do that. 

 

Regardless, wasn't the accident related to a brake fin? Wouldn't it make more sense to convert the brake system? Just leave the sort-of-reliable launch system in place? 

 

In order to reopen TTD as is (as was) would mean to fix the ride so that the brake fin system couldn't fail again. My guess is that they couldn't do that, or didn't want to do that. Hence TTD being converted into Top Thrill Observation Tower. 

[_s3_]

The problem wasn't the brakes, it was the flag plate on the train detaching. It damaged brake fins, but they weren't the issue. The brake run fins that were damaged are stationary and should have been quickly and easily replaced and recalibrated if they were just "fixing" the issues from the accident.

[coasterbill]

^ This. My assumption is that they took this as an opportunity to evaluate everything about the ride even if it had nothing to do with the accident and weigh the costs / liabilities and headaches with ROI and guest satisfaction.

I was dead wrong, I expected them to do the absolute bare minimum and keep on chugging along with an unreliable and expensive (but popular) ride. I'm impressed that they're (seemingly) going beyond that. I guess they don't want to throw a ton of money at fixing this issue just so they can wait for next year's unrelated customary breakdown that makes the news and takes a month to fix, only so it can go back to only being closed 25-50% of every other operating day once it reopens.

It's also possible that they're doing something that they've wanted to do for years that may lead to long-term cost savings and more uptime but never did it before because it's a time consuming fix and they didn't want to take the ride down.

Who knows?