there was a pretty-credible looking post on reddit late last summer from someone who claimed to know the issues and they essentially boiled down to issues with the structural supports/ excessive stress on certain segments of the ride. Essentially the ride was engineered very close to the margins for cost savings (not unsafe), but that resulted in tons of maintenance and ongoing structural strain, especially since it's possible the forces on the serpent roll (for example) were slightly higher than anticipated. Apparently one "temporary" fix was S&S recommending only one train operation. the current plan is to extensively replace and shore up certain supports of the ride.
Looking at the structure and the $9M price tag for a coaster that size, it doesn't surprise me, if true.
Sometimes, you do get what you pay for.
We don't see a lot of non-launched, steel coasters have these sort of extended issues these days. It makes me wonder if it isn't somehow the foundation or the ground under footers not being strong enough.
Pretty amazing how they only figured out it would be down for the whole year 3 days before opening, after plenty of people had paid for their season passes. Coincidences all around, I guess.
I'd have thought you'd be all over the Ren Fest scene, Bert.
This is something I'd have loved to have done. Easy enough to tack onto a Lagoon trip. Hopefully it can come back in some form.
If you watch Youtube and search for closed or abandoned amusement parks there are tons of them. They all seem to have the same things in common:
1. They were the next Walt Disney,
2. They underestimated the cost to build their park by at least one-half,
3. They overestimated the attendance by quite a bit,
4. They had no extra funds when things went wrong, and
5. The failure was always something or someone else’s fault.
I am not sure about this one but I am sure there will be a video soon with many of these factors being an issue. Don’t even get me started about friends that thought they were good cooks so they should open a restaurant 😉
“According to the National Amusement Park Historical Association, there are approximately 1,000 defunct amusement parks in North America, with a significant number being in the United States.[1]”
Thanks @ajfelice. Good insight to have.
I guess my memory failed me but not all that surprised as the years seem to fly by anymore and COVID seemed to throw a weird time gaps and strange relativity into my recollection as of late.
The Spider used to be the favorite ride of my wife and I when we were dating, though that was over a decade ago now. It was one of the few "thrill" rides I could get her on (somehow I married a non-enthusiast).
Wasn't there a season where the Spider was out of commission almost the entire season for maintenance, or am I mixing this up with another ride?