Rocky Mountain Construction. The very name leaves coaster enthusiasts gushing, ranking, and daydreaming. Yep, there may be no coaster manufacturer who’s more transformed the amusement industry in the 21st century than “RMC.”
Today, we’re taking a cross-country roadtrip to look at six landmark RMCs of the past and present – including rides that redefined what roller coasters can be. Then, we’ll dip our toes into some forecasting, looking at two high profile projects that lay just over the horizon for the cutting-edge, industry-changing coaster manufacturer… and for all of us who love thrill rides. Strap in and hang on!
1. New Texas Giant (Six Flags Over Texas)
Opened: 2011
It all began in Texas. That’s where Rocky Mountain Construction – at that point, a manufacturer no one had heard of, and with no coaster projects in its portfolio – took on one hell of a fixer-upper. Like many wooden coasters of the late ’80s and ’90s, Six Flags Over Texas’ Texas Giant turned out to be a big problem. Built in an era when “woodies” were racing to keep up with their steel sisters by growing to untenable heights, Texas Giant was big, violent, and generally aging like an old tomato… basically, a giant, unpopular liability.
Though no one had any context for what it meant, we can now understand in retrospect that the Texas Giant project would be the debut of RMC’s patented I-Box track. Make no mistake – by replacing Texas Giant’s stacked, laminated wooden track with I-Box, it unquestionably became a steel coaster. It also became a very different coaster, using some of the original ride’s wooden supports, but vastly altering the ride’s elements to include steeper drops, wilder turns, and an iconic 95° over-banked turn.
New Texas Giant doesn’t have any inversions – soon to become an RMC staple – but it still established the beginnings of the company’s familiar customized layouts. And more to the point, the first RMC blew the coaster community away, turning the old, lumbering woodie into a headliner once more. Over the next five years, five more Six Flags woodies would be “RMC’ed” from wood-to-steel using I-Box track (Fiesta Texas’s Rattler to Iron Rattler, Mexico’s Medusa to Medusa Steel Coaster, Magic Mountain’s Colossos to Twisted Colossos, New England’s Cyclone to Wicked Cyclone, and Discovery Kingdom’s Roar to Joker). But in the meantime, RMC’s innovations didn’t end…
2. Outlaw Run (Silver Dollar City)
Opened: 2013
After smashing onto the scene with their wood-to-steel conversion via I-Box track in 2011, RMC shattered all expectations with Silver Dollar City’s Outlaw Run just two years later. Outlaw Run doesn’t use steel I-Box track, but RMC’s next patented technology – Topper Track. Essentially, Topper Track takes the idea of classic wooden coaster track (made of seven layers of stacked, laminated wood with a thin metal strip that train wheels roll along) and modernizes it.
Topper Track keeps the first five layers of stacked, laminated wood, but replaces the top two layers with a thicker, steel running rail – theoretically, an up-sized evolution of that metal strip that a wooden coaster’s wheels run along. Though debate at the time was fierce, ultimately, the dust seemed to settle with an agreement: roller coasters that use Topper Track do count as wooden coasters. That’s a very important distinction to arrive at because if Outlaw Run is wooden, then it does things no other wooden roller ever had.
That includes its record-shattering 81° first drop and… drumroll please… inversions. Yes, just months after the Lost Legend: Son of Beast met the wrecking ball (and seven years after it had lost its record-breaking vertical loop), Outlaw Run opened with not one, but three inversions – an incredible 153° overbanked turn, and a double heartline roll. In addition to leaving coaster enthusiasts salivating over the idea of what Son of Beast could’ve been at RMC’s hands, the debut of Topper Track on a from-scratch coaster proved that RMC wouldn’t just subtract woodies from the world via I-Box conversion, but add them via Topper Track.
And then of course, there’s the ride that mixes both… Read on…
3. Lightning Rod (Dollywood)
Opened: 2016
The introduction of Outlaw Run leads us to one of RMC’s most legendary (and complicated) attractions: Dollywood’s fabled Lightning Rod. Opened in 2016, Lightning Rod used Topper Track (remember, classified as wood despite its very sturdy ride experience) to be what few could’ve imagined: the world’s first launched wooden roller coaster. Rocking uphill via LSMs, Lightning Rod was one of a kind. It was also… well… temperamental.
After years of intermittent operations and continuous adjustments to the track, train, launch system, and operations, Dollywood made a big move in 2020. Basically, Lightning Rod became the first RMC to be RMC’ed. A park spokesperson announced that 2,160 feet of the ride’s 3,800 foot long course (about 57%) would be converted from (wooden) Topper Track to (steel) I-Box track. That would include the ride’s more problematic zones, including the uphill launch. So technically, it would be misleading to say that Lightning Rod was still a launched, wood coaster. But it did gain a new notable element: becoming a Mutant Coaster – the first to ever literally have some wooden track and some steel track!
Lightning Rod’s story got even weirder when, in September 2023, the park announced that after consultation with RMC, they’d decided to scrap the launch altogether. Instead, the ride would convert to using a “high speed chain lift,” propelling a new set of trains up the lift hill at a continuous 13 miles per hour (about the same as Intamin’s cable lifts on Millennium Force and El Toro, for example). The park suggests that the lift will be fast enough that riders might even feel a “pop” of airtime as it crests the ride’s first hill. But more importantly, it’ll probably be open to guests a lot more often.
4. Wonder Woman: Golden Lasso Coaster (Six Flags Fiesta Texas) and RailBlazer (California’s Great America)
Opened: 2018
In 2018, Six Flags’ other Texas park and Cedar Fair’s doomed Great America served as the co-test-beds for a whole new kind of coaster: not I-Box or Topper Track, but the new “Raptor” track design. The “Raptor” make uses a single rail set-up with narrow, in-line-seating trains that essentially leave riders straddling the track spine itself. Visually stunning, Raptors like Wonder Woman: Golden Lasso Coaster and RailBlazer are like modern works of art. They look beautiful, delicate, and simple.
But once you step aboard, you quickly learn that they are major thrill machines. With its serpentine, streamlined trains, Wonder Woman and RailBlazer positively tear through the layout. It’s relentless, cramming in RMC’s by-then signature combinations of weirdo maneuvers, insane overbanks, and mixed-up inversions.
A point-of-view video of the ride (above) practically feels like it’s being played in fast motion as the coaster fluidly flies through its course without so much as a breath. Chaotic, unpredictable, and compact, it’s no surprise that Raptors have become well-loved additions at Silverwood (Stunt Pilot), Six Flags Great Adventure (Jersey Devil), and Six Flags Magic Mountain (Wonder Woman: Flight of Courage), and there’s no doubt that the ride’s adaptability, small footprint, big thrills, and relatively low cost will mean plenty more of this RMC appetizer are coming.
5. Steel Vengeance (Cedar Point)
Opened: 2018
Though it wasn’t necessary a “first” like New Texas Giant, Outlaw Run, Lightning Rod, or Wonder Woman, it’s now time to switch our list from RMC prototypes to RMC legends. And among them all, few can stand up to Steel Vengeance. Like Texas Giant, Cedar Point’s own overbuilt ’90s woodie (Mean Streak) was a real mess. Incredibly rough, the walk-on ride was a waste of real estate at the “Roller Coaster Capital of the World,” and after years and years of fan speculation and daydream, the ride’s impending RMC process was finally made official in August 2017.
Steel Vengeance is a monster of a ride. Using every tool RMC learned in the wood-to-steel I-Box conversions that came before, the ride used the bones of Mean Streak and expanded skyward. The result is RMC’s first hypercoaster, rising more than 200 feet over the park. Steel Vengeance is phenomenal. One of the longest roller coasters on Earth (5,740 feet), it screams down a vertical 90° drop, through four inversions, and through countless insane elements that embody all the best of RMC.
If you haven’t ridden Steel Vengeance, move it to the top of your roller coaster bucket list. But don’t let that discount the other must-see rides on this list… As a matter of fact, keep the RMC roadtrip going with the last iconic additions on the last page…
6. Iron Gwazi
Opened: 2022
Long-delayed by the pandemic, the wait for Busch Gardens Tampa Bay’s own RMC was worth the wait. And boy, was there a wait. In keeping with the park’s African stylization, Gwazi opened in 1999 as a unique “dueling” wooden coaster. Named for the supposed, park-invented, chimera-like mythical beast with the head of lion and the head of a tiger on one body, the dual-tracked ride was an early GCI.
Perhaps in part due to Florida’s humid climate (and maybe because it was the only woodie in SeaWorld’s collection), Gwazi aged very poorly. In 2011, the ride got new trains. But in 2012, the Tiger side was closed. In 2015, the Lion side followed. But Gwazi wasn’t demolished. Instead, the dueling, intertwined woodies were left standing but not operating for years, silently standing over the park.
Ultimately, the RMC reimagining – Iron Gwazi – made its entry in 2022. Painting RMC’s I-Box track purple, the new ride reinvents the made-up mythological Gwazi as a crocodilian creature. It’s appropriate here, because Iron Gwazi’s got quite a bite. It’s got a more-than-vertical first drop of 206 feet (six feet more than Steel Vengeance, and twice as high as the original Gwazi), and dives through 2 inversions. A true legend, this perfect fit for Busch Gardens inspired us to think about the “New Coaster Wars,” standing as an icon of the next big era and the race to build custom, personality-filled rides that build on parks’ legends and lore.
7. Fire in the Hole (Silver Dollar City)
Opening: 2024
A beloved ’70s classic, Fire in the Hole (like its sister ride, Dollywood’s Blazing Fury) is an indoor combination dark ride / roller coaster where trains are electrically powered and travel continuously through an initial layout of dark ride scenes before plummeting down three gravity-powered drops (including an iconic final splashdown).
Disappointment ran high when Silver Dollar City announced that the 50 year old ride would officially be retired in 2023, ending generations of memories… or so it seemed. In actuality, Fire in the Hole would be replaced by… Fire in the Hole. Yep, Silver Dollar City had quietly been constructing an even larger, five-story showbuilding to house a brand new, refreshed, updated version of the ride.
The most surprising part was its manufacturer… RMC! Returning to the park where they pioneered the Topper Track technology, RMC will construct the new Fire in the Hole, serving as the manufacturer’s first distinct family coaster and its first dark ride…! If it works well, we just may see a whole new side of RMC emerge… Speaking of which…
8. Wild Moose (Unbuilt)
Opening: None (so far)
RMC shook the industry with its wood-to-steel I-Box conversions; it re-wrote the rules of wood with its Topper Track; it created a whole new must-have model with the Raptor; it’s even entering the dark ride market with the new Fire in the Hole. But RMC’s ambitions for the family market clearly go even further…
There are dozens upon dozens of “Wild Mouse” style roller coasters across the world, and though they’re not everyone’s cup of tea, they’re dependable family-sized rides that can be found from Cedar Point (Wild Mouse) to Disneyland Resort (Goofy’s Sky School). But just as RMC salvaged a generation of woodies with I-Box, it’s now offering an alternative to update an aging army of Wild Mice around the globe: the Wild Moose.
Designed intentionally to fit in the footprint of a Wild Mouse roller coaster, RMC’s Wild Moose is meant to be a high-capacity, high-reliability, and high-enjoyment family alternative that could theoretically sweep the globe, gradually replacing Wild Mice and becoming the new default, compact family thrill ride. Though none have been built so far (RMC only just announced the model in August 2023), we have no doubt that the Wild Moose will make its debut before long… the only question is, where?
