Let’s face it: there are few roller coasters on Earth that loom as large as Top Thrill Dragster.
Sure, Cedar Point’s legendary ride opened as the tallest, fastest roller coaster on Earth; the first to shatter the 400-foot height barrier; the undisputed king of ride manufacturer Intamin’s boundary-pushing Accelerator ride model, using compressed hydraulic fluid to rapidly accelerate riders from 0 to 120 miles per hour in just four seconds. But we aren’t just talking about Dragster’s physical size. It is also an icon; a landmark; a rare member of the Coaster Pantheon, unanimously understood as a legend by any who proclaim to be coaster junkies.
In fact, the story of Top Thrill Dragster is so high-octane, we told it in a standalone entry in our in-depth ride history series – Lost Legends: Top Thrill Dragster. That entry follows the ride from high-octane origins and through years of frustrating teething pains that led Cedar Fair’s CEO to call the ride “the worst mistake we ever made.” It’s almost as if he could see the future – when, in 2021, a piece of the ride’s Intamin-made trains broke loose, severely injuring a queuing guest. After nearly two decades, Dragster was officially retired, ending the problematic ride’s life with one final, monumental mess-up… Or so it seemed.
Race On…
In 2024, Cedar Point put the pedal to the metal once more with Top Thrill 2 – the long-anticipated overhaul of the record-breaking ride. The rebirth of Top Thrill Dragster had been a long time coming. But as we all know by now, the industry as a whole had changed a lot since Dragster’s birth in the heart of the Coaster Wars that spanned the 1990s and early 2000s…
For example, after years of partnering on boundary-pushing, ultra-extreme, and often-temperamental rides, Cedar Fair (and Six Flags) more or less swore off of Swiss ride manufacturer Intamin, with one-too-many operational hurdles, design flaws, and even dangerous accidents seeming to plague their rides. (The “final straw,” it seems, is when Cedar Point’s Shoot the Rapids – an innocuous log flume – fell backwards down its lift hill, flipping the ride vehicle and trapping guests underwater in over-the-shoulder restraints. Only the quick action of onlookers who leapt into the flume to right to ship saved riders’ lives.)
Sure, it’s true that today, Intamin has reformed its previously-over-the-top ways and – in fact – has reached a new critical and commercial crescendo with rides like VelociCoaster, Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure, Pantheon, and more. But suffice it to say that Cedar Fair has been pretty stalwart in its distance from Intamin.
Especially given that it’s a piece of Intamin’s Dragster train design that caused grievous injury to a guest in 2021, we can imagine that even if Intamin did submit a proposal for the ride’s reimagining, Cedar Fair opted to go elsewhere. Unfortunately, it’s who they chose instead that’s become a problem…
Zamperla
Coaster enthusiasts know their manufacturers well. The graceful curves and four-across trains of Bolliger & Mabillard; the classic mine trains and multi-loopers of Arrow; the wood-steel fusions of RMC; the wacky, wild creations of Gerstlauer; and yes, the launched, inverting, personality-filled projects of Intamin. But if you were to associate Italian ride manufacturer Zamperla with anything, it would probably be… well… flat rides, and kiddie coasters.
To date, Zamperla has manufactured 391 roller coasters – as many as B&M and Intamin combined. Nearly all, though, would slot between “kiddie coasters” and “family coasters.” A plurality are powered “Dragon” coasters that populate family fun centers. The only real divergences are a series of truly awful cloned flying coasters (Zamperla Volares) and the sizable Thunderbolt – a 114-foot tall installation at Brooklyn, New York’s Luna Park, which Zamperla manages and stocks with its much more well-known products: its flat rides.
In the last half-decade, Zamperla has been thinking big about its future, though, introducing lots of new concepts it deemed its “Lightning” model – launch-powered, high thrill rides meant to inject the Italian manufacturer into the larger thrill ride conversation. Clearly, the years they’ve spent building up their portfolio of Lightning offerings jump-started Zamperla’s ambitions and – we can imagine – lead to them responding to Cedar Point’s request for proposal with an offering of their own: converting Top Thrill Dragster with its instantaneous hydraulic launch into their new, LSM-powered electromagnetic system…
No one could’ve imagined that Top Thrill 2 would prove the naysayers wrong, generating incredible reviews (including our own review here at Theme Park Tourist!) suggesting that the multi-launch, multi-pass, forward-backward ride may indeed provide a better overall experience than Intamin’s rapid, 0-to-120 mile per hour launch ever did to begin with. Zamperla, it seemed, has done the impossible. They’d graduated from kiddie coasters to one of the world’s most iconic rides overnight. Until…
Flash forward
Well… it’s June 2024. And despite about a week of glowing press and excitement, Top Thrill 2… is closed.
Cedar Point hasn’t officially said much about their brand new ride’s closure mere days into its operation. But they have been pretty clear about whose fault it is. In the few rare statements Cedar Point spokespeople have made regarding the ride, they’re quick to point out that the issue rests with Zamperla, and with the engineering of the “Lightning” trains that Top Thrill 2 employs.
Allegedly, brackets stabilizing the trains’ wheels showed significant wear and tear upon opening, requiring Zamperla to reengineer the wheel design altogether and add new, reenforced structural elements. To be fair, I bet neither you nor I could design a roller coaster chassis and wheel assembly able to roll forwards and backwards up to 120 miles per hour, tearing up a vertical incline and spiraling straight down to Earth every three minutes or so.
But for Cedar Point, there could be no greater frustration than having their brand new, much-touted, new for 2024 ride standing-but-not-operating for weeks after its debut.
Trust us – Zamperla doesn’t want this, either. Separate from whether they “bit off more than they can chew” in the Top Thrill project, Zamperla will now need to contend with its aspirations of being a major thrill supplier being stalled or even stopped altogether by this embarrassing mishap.
And surely, fans, too, lose out. Countless thrill ride enthusiasts booked tickets, hotels, or even flights to Sandusky, Ohio expecting to emerge as the first riders on the reborn form of one of the most legendary coasters of all time. Now – and for the immediately foreseeable future – they’ll be heading home without that sought-after coaster credit to add to their spreadsheets.
In short, this situation is a lose-lose-lose. Period. A lot of people are to blame… but who do you think deserves the embarrassment? Let us know in the poll and comments below…
