Extended Closure

And we all know what that little question got Andy. 1 month in the hole!

Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

30th anniversary of release of Shawshank in theaters this September.

Hope is not a strategy though, that's why Andy dug a tunnel. 🙂

Cedar Pointer:

Your sarcasm belies your own point of logic and doesn't address my point.

Nah, I just don't think you agree with my point, and that's fine.

Rumor has it...

Oh, well in that case, let me reconsider my position.

Dvo:

I'm sure all of the other parks with 120+ mph roller coasters are watching this very closely indeed.

I wish I would have said this from the start. It's certainly less obtuse. Potentially just as cute though.

Look, y'all are approaching this like consumers of commodity goods. Not only do very few companies make roller coasters, even fewer ever mess with coasters at this scale. With that in mind, the expectations are not like those for commodities. If Cedar Point doesn't like paper cups, they can source them from somewhere else tomorrow. The same can't be said for a ride like this. Is the park frustrated? I'm sure that they are. It doesn't mean that they're going to blacklist Zamperla after a decades-long, positive relationship that involves dozens (likely hundreds now in the merged company) of solid rides. Customers won't be looking at this project, they'll be looking at the PNE ride, and the new one in China with the Eurofighter-style trains and less expensive track, because that's what they'll be looking for.

All I'm saying is don't confuse consumer/enthusiast sentiment with where industry customers are. That Intamin can still be in business illustrates how different those two things are.

I'm looking at it from the perspective my field of work, which is as an automotive tier 1 supplier of industrial equipment in what is also a relatively small industry - there are only a few companies worldwide that do what we do. And if any one of these companies were to "reach" on a project like Zamperla did and suffer this kind of failure, it would follow us for many years.

Now, this won't spell the end of Zamperla, obviously - plenty of parks need flat rides and wild mice. But, from my understanding, it was clear from the start of this project that this was to some extent Zamperla's announcement to the industry that they were ready to scale up their coaster business in a major way, and to that end, I can't imagine they've achieved that.

Actually the PNE announcement was their coming out. The first Lightning train they showed was for that ride. I can't say for sure if that project started first. I believe the Chinese ride was ordered after this project started, and uses a new track system and 4x2 seat vehicle.

I don't know that there is any intent to scale up the coaster business or what their goals are, but if we're really taking a macro view of things, smaller, more family-oriented rides seem to be the emphasis. Zamperla makes a ton of those little things every year. B&M appears ready to go in a larger family ride direction with Penguin Trek and Phoenix Rising. Their only "big" ride this year is Iron Menace, and they're not doing six big rides a year like they did in the aughts. And that's not surprising, because how many big parks don't already have multiple big coasters?

So again, in context, the problems with a ride that has two 420-foot towers and goes 120mph likely has little influence on the sale and construction of rides for any other application. TT2 is a unicorn.

I love how those of us who have been around here for decades go through stages of completely agreeing with one another and stages of 462 different opinions. But in the end, we are first and foremost coaster enthusiasts, and that's what unites us.

Makes for some great comedy. This forum is alright. I'll stick around a few more decades.

Jeff has a point to an extent in my opinion. While I don’t think other parks will stop going with Zamperla for smaller scale rides, I still truly believe TT2 has the potential to come out on top once the vehicle modifications are completed. The lightning trains were introduced as brand new ride vehicles never used before. Once they are modified correctly and if the reliability is there, TT2 has the potential to shut the nay sayers up and maybe even give Zamperla that introduction to thrill ride innovation they are seeking.

Today on ZamperlaBuzz we have discussed the efficacy of Zamperla and TT2 and how it relates to future contracts, stay tuned for more!

TwistedWicker77:

Jeff has a point to an extent in my opinion. While I don’t think other parks will stop going with Zamperla for smaller scale rides, I still truly believe TT2 has the potential to come out on top once the vehicle modifications are completed. The lightning trains were introduced as brand new ride vehicles never used before. Once they are modified correctly and if the reliability is there, TT2 has the potential to shut the nay sayers up and maybe even give Zamperla that introduction to thrill ride innovation they are seeking.

I agree. Even as someone who’s really disappointed it’s closed it’s hard to imagine a company screwing it up so badly that it’s still a maintenance headache years later. I expect this to get solved and that they will learn a great deal from this experience.

I know it’s been said before but other companies were allowed mess ups or growing pains for attraction issues. Dismissing Zamperla as garbage so early is a mistake imo.

Clearly Zamperla should be dismissed as recyclable due to the use of Aluminum.

So much for this not being a summer long thing. Almost in August and no sign of re-opening.

The other thing to remember is that their lightning trains likely won't ever have to deal with a coaster of this scale again. Outside of what's going on in the middle east, no one is going for height or speed records anymore. TT2, in so many ways, is a remnant of the coaster wars, which are going on, but in a very different way. Sure, the trains need modifications for TT2, but we will likely not see another coaster of that scale for a few decades.

Last evening there was someone examining the track in one specific spot.

At least it's something different.

Photo Credit: People on The Facebook

That they are gathering and/or confirming data on the condition of the track in late July does not bode well, in my opinion. Especially if there haven't been any test runs recently.

Our trains are just fine, it’s the tracks fault.

Also, last day of summer is 9/21, so they have time. 😂

yeah, I am pretty sure no one is falling over themselves to sign up Zamperla for another major coaster project at this moment.

They will survive, and may well become a major player in larger coasters.

But this is literally about as bad a start to their high-profile debut into the "big leagues" as you can script, other than some catastrophic failure (but the thing only ran for about a week, so the failure was too quick to even reach catastrophic portions).

I seriously doubt CP management is just shrugging their shoulders and muttering "it's no big deal.. this will all be forgotten soon enough," like others here are. They invested a ton to get decent ROI THIS year on this thing. Sure, they probably still got a healthy uptick in season passes, but the reason you invest $20 million-plus (my guess) is because you expect the ride to give you a good attendance boost.

Is it though? They also opened ThunderVolt and Dinosaur Dream Factory, the former being another Intamin hydraulic do-over.

well, those are not "big league" coasters, Jeff (but also not wild mouses or nothing either - I get that).

Zamperla itself (in their own interviews) have pegged the TT2 work as the key to get into a new line of business of "major" rollercoaster design -- their words, not mine. (Obviously TT2 is an outlier in size -- there aren't many 400-foot coasters, but the TT2 work was to show the amusement park industry that Zamperla can handle substantial sized rides to compete with Intamin, Gerst, Premier, Vekoma, heck, maybe even B&M in those type of rides).

But true: it could have been a worse start: the lightning train could have [ahem] the bed on those smaller coasters too.

Cedar Point took a risk on using a manufacture that had never done something like this before but I am not sure that is the biggest risk in this situation. That I think goes to the fact that they decided to modify a ride that almost killed someone instead of just removing it. So that was a huge risk to begin with, added with choosing Zamperla, and I can't help but put more blame on Cedar Point for being in this situation instead of Zamperla.

Any park watching this because they may want to hire Zamperla for something similar, is going to pay more attention to what happens in the first or second year of full running. That is what they care about because they are fully aware that at some point, a park and manufacture have to break the limits and do something they have never done before. Cedar Point, for better or worse, has been the park to do that a lot which allows other parks to let Cedar Point work out the kinks on rides that will eventually be used at other parks. So, no....nobody with the ability to hire Zamperla for a large project is looking at them as a loser just yet. That will come in a year or two.

And maybe seasonal parks should expand on the testing period when testing a first of it's kind attraction. Finishing everything in one winter and opening in early spring doesn't have to always be a thing. You'd think they would know better by now but...here we are.

djDaemon:

That they are gathering and/or confirming data on the condition of the track in late July does not bode well, in my opinion.

Ok, what are you thinking this might indicate? I don't know what to read into it. It seems odd to me that they are inspecting track in that area as opposed to the LSMs where there were apparent clearance issues with the trains ostensibly in conjunction with the lateral shifting thereof. But I don't see a connection between what we think we've known so far and this section of track.