Second-chance coasters: they’re more common than you’d think. They’re coasters that have, for one reason or another, needed someone or something to swoop in and breathe life into their trains and track. Sometimes a second-chance looks like a Bolliger and Mabillard stand-up model being refitted with floorless trains; other times a second-chance coaster looks like a ride being plucked from the epicenter of disaster to live a new life elsewhere. Second-chance coasters are underdog stories and knight in shining armor stories. The kind of stories you root for, and the kind of stories you get to be a part of.
Incredible Hulk Coaster, Universal’s Islands of Adventure
The Incredible Hulk Coaster opened alongside Universal’s Islands of Adventure in 1999. This may look at first like your standard Bolliger and Mabillard sit-down coaster, but inside the coaster’s enclosed lift hill, this ride hides a secret. Not only does this ride feature an inclined launch, but a tire-drive launch. This mechanism is more common for gradual accelerations and decelerations you may find on a dark ride or family coaster, but Incredible Hulk takes advantage of it to propel riders to 40 mph in two seconds. Those stats may not stun compared to S&S or Intamin launches we see today, but there’s something about the launch’s incline matched with the story, music, and lights that gets your chest absolutely pumping.
The ride, like so many Bolliger and Mabillards before it and many after it, however, became a rough ride after years of operation. This is one of the headlining rides at a major world theme park; its operations allow for almost 2,000 riders per hour, and it’s not uncommon to find this ride with a 2-3 hour wait in the park’s busier seasons. From 1999 and through the oughts, this ride moved masses—and I mean masses—of guests. And roller coasters, being little more than massive chunks of metal and/or wood, wear over time. They only have a certain amount of rides in them; they have an expiration date, every one of them, right from the start. Bolliger and Mabillards can and have stood the test of time (just look at Kumba an hour down I-4), but with Incredible Hulk moving thousands of guests a year, its aging was sped up.
As mentioned above, roller coasters are glorified chunks of metal. Modern technology allows for track profiling that can provide a smooth ride, but over time, under heat and force of trains traversing the layout, the metal wears and warps. Because of this, trains will not hug the track the way they’re designed to. It’s not dangerous, just not comfortable. Bolliger and Mabillard’s models specifically face this issue, many of their coasters falling victim to the slightly-charming “B&M Rattle,” as it’s called. The Incredible Hulk Coaster was a major offender of the B&M Rattle, and the riders its victims.
So what do you do when a ride is reaching its expiration date? You can scrap it, like Universal did with the dueling B&M invert a short walk away, or you can bring it back to life.
In September of 2015, Incredible Hulk Coaster closed to the public. Universal was tight-lipped about it as Universal so often is, but the reason was clear to anyone paying attention: Incredible Hulk was getting a complete re-track.
Re-tracks are common enough. Plenty of rides will replace small sections of their track in the off-season. But what Universal did here was different. What Universal did here was, essentially, replacing the original Incredible Hulk Coaster with another Incredible Hulk Coaster—almost completely identical, but brand new nevertheless, with revamped trains and onboard audio.
A piece of Incredible Hulk’s original track stands on display today at the ride’s entrance, greeting riders into the history and iconoclast nature of the coaster they’re about to experience.
Batman: The Ride, Six Flags New Orleans
When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, it took with it the area’s largest theme park, Six Flags New Orleans. Opening as Jazzland in 2000, Six Flags acquired and renamed the park in 2003, bringing with it an array of new attraction and upgrades, including their obligatory Batman clone.
You can’t throw a rock at a Six Flags without hitting a Batman: The Ride clone. Batman clones are Bolliger and Mabillard inverts that feature a curved drop straight into a vertical loop, followed by a series of four more inversions over the rides’ roughly 2,700 feet of track. Monotonous as they are, Batman clones are not bad rides, per se; they’re still B&M inverts, and I’d be hard-pressed to admit there’s a B&M invert I don’t like, even the ones that make my ears sore from head-banging.
Six Flags New Orleans’s Batman: The Ride clone was, as the moniker clone would suggest, no different than the rest, from its blue and yellow paint job to its hard over-the-shouler restraints. The ride actually started its life in 1995 in Japan, but was moved over to the states in 2003 along with Jazzland’s acquisition. But when Hurricane Katrina swept through and brought with it a massive storm surge in the area where Six Flags New Orleans sits, the ride stood firm. Firm enough that, though its park would not reopen, the coaster would run again one day.
After 2005, the ride remained standing but not operating until 2008, when it was relocated a couple hundred miles west, to Six Flags Fiesta Texas. You can still take a ride on this coaster today, now operating under the alias Goliath (any Six Flags fan knows that, like Batman clones, a coaster named Goliath can be found at almost every park), at the beloved San Antonio park. And though yes, it’s just a Batman clone, it holds within its supports a story of perseverance and resilience.
Phoenix, Knoebels
ACE, American Coaster Enthusiasts, is a membership-based association with a mission to, “foster and promote the conservation, appreciation, knowledge, and enjoyment of the classic wooden roller coaster and the contemporary steel roller coaster; to create fellowship among its members; and to promote the continued operation of roller coasters” (ACE Online). Its dedication to both the innovation of modern coasters and the preservation of classic coasters makes ACE the most popular and highly-regarded coaster associations in the country. Just one of ACE’s many noted “Relocated Coasters” is Phoenix at Knoebels.
Phoenix opened in 1948 as Rocket at Playland Park in San Antonio Texas, manufactured by Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters, a manufacturer perhaps better known for their trains than their coaster creations. It’s a standard out and back layout, barely exceeding 70 feet and 45 miles per hour. This ride is nothing special, not by stats alone, but after closing with the park in 1980, “Dick” Knoebel, of the park’s namesake, joined forced with Charlie Dinn of the Dinn Corporation, another classic coaster manufacturer and trailblazer in the industry, to bring this coaster back to life.
Relocating a wooden coaster is a tougher game to play than that of steel. Wooden coasters of the time were often built and profiled by hand and on site, while modern steel coasters and even some wooden coasters, such as Intamin’s prefabricated wooden coasters, are essentially glorified Lego sets. But with Knoebel behind the charge to relocate this coaster to his family amusement park and a little elbow grease, Rocket opened once again, appropriately re-named Phoenix, after a bird of legend that has a knack for rising out of the ashes.
Phoenix is a fun ride, sure, but it’s not a showstopper. It’s old and rickety and you feel it. But more than a ride, Phoenix is a piece of history, over 70 years old, that you can be a part of. In addition, it led the charge for a multitude of wooden relocations and creations to come.
Mean Streak, Cedar Point
Almost any of Rocky Mountain Construction’s I-Box refurbishments could go in this spot, from Busch Gardens Tampa’s highly-anticipated Iron Gwazi replacing a headache-inducing dueling coaster to the first-of-its-kind New Texas Giant, but Mean Streak is perhaps the most iconic of the manufacturer’s reimaginings. Mean Streak opened to the public in 1991, designed by the now-defunct Dinn Corporation. At 161 feet in height and just under 5,500 feet of track, Mean Streak is one beast (no pun intended, I promise) of a ride, even just in its structure and appearance. But, as is a problem with many coaster, wooden or otherwise, as Mean Streak aged, it began to live up to its name a little too well.
I never scored a ride on Mean Streak personally, though I wish I had—simply as a rite of passage, a feather in my proverbial coaster enthusiast cap. A friend of mine who grew up going to Cedar Point on field trips did have an experience with the coaster, however, and says that a ride on Mean Streak messed with her back so bad that she could not stand up upon returning to the station. This is not the only account of Mean Streak inflicting physical pain on its riders. The ride closed at the end of the 2016 season, but not without hope.
Though Rocky Mountain Construction has birthed a number of ground-up hybrid, single-rail, and wooden coasters, the Idaho-based manufacturer is best-known for swooping in at the eleventh hour to bring worn-down woodies back to life. Giving coasters a second chance is their calling card, their business strategy.
After a year of work on the attraction, renewing rotten wooden supports, adding I-Box track, and revamping the layout, Mean Streak breathed life again on May 5, 2018, except now its name was Steel Vengeance.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that Steel Vengeance is one of the best coasters in the world. Countless coaster enthusiast (admittedly, myself included) have this dizzying yet glossy-smooth ride as their number one. Featuring a 90 degree drop, four inversions, a top speed on 74 miles per hour, and the most airtime on any coaster in the world, it’s not hard to imagine why.
I remember my first ride on Steel Vengeance in vivid detail. It was about hour before closing, and the park had cleared out due to some afternoon rainfall. It was my first day at the park after traveling there from Florida, and Steel Vengeance had been closed all day. I’d returned to Hotel Breakers, Cedar Point’s on-site hotel, thinking it was for the night. But when I looked out the window and toward the back of the park, I saw a sporadically-filled train hauling through the dark red track. I didn’t take my bag—I didn’t even take my phone. I just put my shoes on and went back to the park.
There was no line, not even a station wait. It was in the forties outside—not terribly cold but colder than you’d like—and the rain stung my face and eyes. It was uncomfortable and euphoric, the moment of months of anticipation being rectified in two minutes of ride time. I rode it again, then again, then four more times for good measure (because when you catch Steel Vengeance without a line you really don’t have a choice but to marathon it).
I’ll never stop thinking about this second-chance coaster, of what would’ve happened if Mean Streak never had its Lazarus moment—and of what second-chance coasters are still on the horizon for us.
