Extended Closure

^^ there may be no proof, but there is circumstantial evidence. Other rides have limped through the season with bandaids or lipstick on a pig.

I wondered why there were so many extra page views last night. Never thought to actually look at the site. 😆

There is a lot of speculation here, but the only new information we have is that it ain't gonna open this year. We don't really know the specific reasons.

Regarding questions of cost, ride manufacturers are not big enough to shoulder huge cost overruns. I'm sure they can absorb smaller things, but I don't know if a million dollar train would sink them. It's possible that there could be performance bonds in the contract, which would entitle the park to money, but I don't know what the conditions might be to claim against it.

Sucks for everyone. The tallest and fastest curse continues.

The incremental marginal cost of producing an additional unit of each train with some design revisions would likely be a fraction of the sunk cost in the original development.

This thread got more action than TT2 this season.

^^incremental marginal cost, but after you add in the expensive third party contractors involved here — they’ve performed NDT, hired Adena to help remove seats, bogie changes, etc — several times now, to boot, in addition to the sensor tests. I doubt that work is cheap.

Aluminum is to coaster trains as carbon fiber is to submersible hulls?

I am a little surprised Zamperla hasn't (apparently) changed a single thing about the wonders of the Lightning Train (with respect to TT2 at least) on their website:

https://www.zamperla.com/pr.../lightning

I get marketing it for PNE and the other installation, but I might have discretely removed the TT2 stuff at this point ....

What could have been: El Toro dude on youtube said that Cedar Point originally contacted Intamin for the Top Thrill redesign. Intamin proposed an extended layout that would have required the removal of Iron Dragon. Cedar Point did not want to remove the family coaster Iron Dragon, so they asked for another design. CP then went out to other manufacturers for proposals. As Intamin dragged their feet with a 2nd design option, CP liked Zamperla's spike design and went with that.

If he can't cite a source, he's making **** up.

Interesting thing about one's own thinking, it's the sole property of its owner.

El toro dude on YouTube is one of my two favorite shows. The other is Bassmasters (it’s a fishing show)

So far that El Toro guy has a good record predicting the length of the TT2 closure. A few days after the ride closed it was testing and he posted a video that the ride could re-open anywhere from the next day through next season.

Jeff:

If he can't cite a source, he's making **** up.

To be fair, he was the first person to name Zamperla as the manufacturer behind the reimagining in November of 2022 with information from likely the same "sources".

And "citing your source" when it comes to inside information is the easiest and fastest way to lose any further inside information.

Does he actually have sources? Who the hell knows, but his track record isn't necessarily bad.

If anyone throws enough garbage at a wall something is bound to stick from time to time.

I wonder if we will be hearing a "New for 2025" announcement soon, or if whatever they had planned will get bumped another year due to the TT2 fiasco. Maybe we will just see a replacement slide complex at Shores?

I would guess (with TT2 now being "new again" in 2025) that whatever they had planned for 2025 will simply remain what will happen. And, given the planned success of TT2 in 2024, that probably would have been the new slides...

...and maybe a tease of future development (but nothing specific) at the Snake River Falls site and hopefully the broader area including the abandoned Forbidden Frontier.

It could easily mean absolutely nothing, but I wonder if the shrink-wrapped boats still all being on site means integrating them somehow is still in the cards.

I was thinking the same about the boats. But don't put any basis on my thoughts as I was previously all-in on "Team Lagoon Maintenance. Another random thought; wonder if the removed Frontier Trail sign is needed for dis-assembly equipment to help with Sake River Falls. Probably not, unless when they work this off season they are re-fashioning that whole area all the way to, and possibly including, abandoned Museum. Perhaps eliminating the bridge that connects SRF concrete patch with Maverick pond.

New for 25....

I was figuring more aligning with Six Flags ideology and corporatizing the parks with even less local uniqueness that has already been happening under Zimmerman.... and that's about it.

CoasterLine:

Does he actually have sources? Who the hell knows, but his track record isn't necessarily bad.

Track record aside, does the claim make sense?

We know from previous installations that the park approaches multiple vendors with some sort of framework for a bid on a project, weighs each proposal, and eventually settles on what the park thinks is the best overall choice. Maverick, for example, was weighed against a B&M that journeyed out to and back from the then-Soak City parking lot.

So, does it make sense, even if we ignore the acrimonious relationship between Intamin and CF, that the park would approach only Intamin for this project, only to be forced to go elsewhere when they didn't like the proposal?

Or, does it make more sense that the park, as is their M.O., approached multiple parties for their proposals on what their version of a "re-imagined" TTD would look like, and weighed those proposals, ultimately choosing Zamperla because, among other reasons, their concept didn't require them to remove a coaster? I mean, multiple quotes are imperative when getting a bathroom remodeled, so it would be downright foolish for CP to set out to get only one quote for such a massive undertaking, and from Intamin, no less.

In fact, I'm pretty sure Tony mentioned the park approaching multiple parties during a TikTok or FB Live or some such live TT2-related Q&A, but I'm not inclined to go digging for it. In fact, I recall that after explaining that the park approached multiple vendors for this project, Tony immediately followed up with something like "and no we won't tell you who the others were or what they proposed," in order to head off the follow up questions he could see coming.

I can confirm, per sources, that the Intamin design was not chosen for Top Thrill 2.