Top Thrill Dragster 2022 Status

All of the rides are temporarily closed. It’s February.

I am wondering if we have something like Vortex at CW that was removed in part while they built Yukon Striker, then put it back. So do we see new part of dragster interacting with Iron Dragon in 2024…

Sure enough, it’s right in line with what was (and will be) the launch track.

I can't believe Google maps somehow updated that one spot without other scans of the park being updated.

Based on this from CP Food Blog, I think at least one additional segment and support were removed downtrack of what's shown on Maps. You can see that track has been removed all the way to the other side of this path and to the lagoon's edge.

TwistedCircuits:

I can't believe Google maps somehow updated that one spot without other scans of the park being updated

It baffles me as to why Google maps would go through the trouble for one section of roller coaster track. Whole sections of the park have been out of date before. Maybe the park and Google are in cahoots 🤔🧐

^ That is odd. I live about 5 mils from Cedar Point and Satellite view in GM still shows a vacant lot where my house sits. We've been updated twice on Street View but never Satellite. Been here almost 6 years now.

Curious to know how many people still think it's just a new launch system and re-theme.

I guess I'll be the conspiracy theorist of the bunch. Just checked Google Maps linked from the website, Corkscrew is now temporarily closed! Hahaha

CPVet:

sections of the park have been out of date before. Maybe the park and Google are in cahoots 🤔🧐

So this leads me to believe a suspicion I've had for a while.

Interesting link along the lines of this point: https://earthengine.google....timelapse/

So some napkin math here but if we take the orbital time of the ISS as a minimum (90 minutes) that means that if Google is getting imagery data from satellites with a similar orbital period (which they probably aren't, but I'm trying to establish a minimum) they would have 16 global passes, 8 of which on average would cover daylight (not 8 consecutive but just half of the 16 orbits worth of imagery). That's a good chunk of data coming in for just one satellite. And I know they get imagery from more than one satellite.

So my initial (what I would consider safe) assumption is that Google on average has new imagery for the entire globe daily. Personally that's a terrifying concept but that's a different conversation.

Now we can scratch off a good part of that imagery for weather and other things that could cause a less than desirable image quality. In fact, and this may very well be documented somewhere and I just haven't read it, I imagine Google at this point is using something similar to HDR+ stitching like phones have now at a global level. That is they will take a large collection of photos and average them out to get a higher quality image, some of the things they would be focusing on in this case would be daylight and no obstructions. If you look at older images in the above link you have a higher probability of seeing clouds but it seems like more recently there's a lower and lower chance of that in satellite imagery. If you look at the midways you can see what looks like crowd ghosting but you don't ever actually see the crowds and I think this is why. All things considered let's say once a month they could completely update the Google image globe with a decent quality image if they wanted to. I've also looked around Norfolk shipyards before and found the ghosts of ships like Gerald Ford under construction. It's obvious something has almost been erased from the image but not quite and I think it's this stitching going on.

With that in mind, and assuming cedar point has had some of iron dragon's track out for a while as has been a conversation and I think we've seen in some other imagery. I imagine Google has had that imagery for a while. Queue conspiracy theory.

My guess is Google has a base timeline that they update most imagery on and it's not that regular. Especially private property like cedar point at a large scale. But I think the company can request it be updated publicly and I'm wondering if that's what we're seeing. Note the kind of cloudy fogginess that stands out separate from that section of track on iron dragon that's missing. To me it looks like stitching of multiple images of different quality from the ones around it. In which case cedar point really is teasing us all quite thoroughly if they intentionally requested Google update one specific section of track just to keep everyone talking.

TL;DR: I imagine this is actually correct, Google has the imagery to update much more frequently and cedar point may have actually made a request to have this updated and keep everyone talking.

It's not an updated satellite photo, it's just part of a low poly 3d tree that was rendered over top of that section of track.

Edit: Not sure if this will work, but try the link, then click and drag downwards

https://earth.google.com/web/@41.48226693,-82.68503996,188.69188191a,125.60249355d,35y,-0h,0t,0r

This whole project has gotten me totally perplexed. Anyone still wondering if Zamperla is still the company doing this project? At this point it seems more likely that Intamin would be involved but who knows.

Hudson I was wondering about it being part of a tree scan but that didn't add up to me. It didn't seem consistent with other spots that I've seen that.

This is what Hudson is talking about:

The time-travelling Google satellites don't debut until 2024.

Maybe A New Point of View got out his eraser.

Kevin I haven't accessed it from anything other than mobile yet. That makes a lot more sense!

You guys cant actually believe those few pixels are updated to the day while literally the entire dragster track is still showing on the top part of the photo.

Per my understanding, the removed track is (approximately) this.

Is that about right?

I believe the track and the support columns are as well. Depending on the project here are a few guesses for this general area.

1. They are going to move the station to the old unloading area.
2. They want to move the station back to have more room for the launch
3. Swing launch around where the photo booth is
4. This is the new area of the queue and things need to be moved around

I would love to hear any other speculations. This is a really interesting development.

I'm also interested to see if they rebuild this section of Iron Dragon the same, or if it's rerouted.

It's a fun time to speculate!!!!

It's interesting, yes, but it was also confirmed that Iron Dragon will operate in 2023. That means the reason the track was removed will be taken care of relatively quickly.

It's March in 3 days.