Top Thrill Dragster 2022 Status

^^ We don’t know for sure that they’ve been sitting there all off season?

My uncle works for Nintendo and he said we are getting GTA 6 with a 500 foot top hat and roll back

CPVet:

^^ We don’t know for sure that they’ve been sitting there all off season?

We don't, of course. But there's no reason to pull them out of storage now when there probably won't even be a track for them to go on until next offseason.

So I’m sitting here trying to think of what even counts as “something no one else has done” small list of things that come to mind:

Tallest backward element in the world (launch facing the spike and go over the tower backwards) (could also count depending on how high the entire train goes on the spike)

first Hydraulic Launch to LSM conversion

first 100 mph+ Multi-launch coaster in the world

first coaster will multiple 100+ mph launches (similar to last but more specific)

first 500+ Exo/Strata/Whatever-Coaster

First coaster with yellow supports and red and white track in northern Ohio that originally debuted in 2003 to receive an LSM launch.

Brandon, I never said anything about a height increase in the post where i quoted Tony, and I've also never suggested tophat height increase anywhere.

And it is irrelevant that Red Force was designed with an LSM.

I am simply taking Tony's statement at face value, and applying marketing logic in combination with observable evidence that IMO we are unlikely to see a simple LSM conversion as you suggested in your post.

DA20Pilot:

I highly doubt that Tony would make this statement if all we're going to see is an incremental height increase (taller existing tophat) over Red Force.

Then I'm unclear on what you meant with this statement, because to me it reads that you believe Tony's statement indicates they're going to increase the height of TTD's tophat. But I guess on second reading it could mean that an LSM conversion would make TTD2.0 the tallest LSM launched tophat coaster.

Nevertheless, I'm not saying that all they're doing is an LSM conversion. I'm saying that the marketing speak is so completely meaningless that it could accurately describe a simple LSM conversion. Reading anything into it beyond that is fantastical.

Now, had Tony said something like "well, everyone knows CP loves to break records" then yeah, I would see how that could lead to some wild speculation. But what he said is utterly meaningless.

Do people like backward coasters? I'm trying to think if I would prefer to go over the tophat forward, or backward. But would certainly be unique if they flipped the train around and you went up the rear spike in the forward direction, and then went backward over the tophat. It's hard to beat looking down at MF as you go over the top though.

a few notes:

• Tony said the Wild Mouse was designed in Charlotte. (my guess: Carowinds will soon overtake CP as the flagship park)
• He scoffed at the 17 second ride length of TTD1.0 (my guess: TTD2.0 will improve upon that by half that, 8.5 seconds, 240 MPH)
• He said "we're working on something big" (my guess: TTD2.0 will be bigger than TTD1.0, how tall do you have go to get up to 240MPH?)
• He said "im a coaster enthusiast, but not a Crazy coaster enthusiast" (my guess: ZING! He secretly hate-reads this forum)

So here's a question; everyone seems to think (or at least most people) that this redesign to TTD came about because of the incident, but... is that really a possibility? When you look at what they removed (Wicked Twister) and then you look at what this might become (a swing launch like... Wicked Twister), it seems to be that this was probably in the planning stages long before the incident, no?

I think if the incident was the true deciding factor they might've just removed the thing altogether

I think the incident just moved up the shutdown date. Hard to believe that work of this magnitude wasn’t already in the planning stages in August 2021.

I think they were always planning some kind of "renovation" of Dragster, because that ride and Wicked Twister had some of the highest operational costs per rider. The amount of energy that was required to run them was extremely high, not to mention the frequent downtime and creeping maintenance costs. The incident just accelerated the timeline.

I’m not sure that LSMs are going to reduce Dragster’s energy usage.

Are we really dissecting the words of Tony Clark, the man who proclaimed "lagoon maintenance....."

He's a cool guy, a good marketer, and he is not in the business of literally revealing necessarily accurate information.

If TTD in fact includes something "never" done before, my guess is that it will be something like world's first multi-launch 100 mph coaster (it will be launched twice or three times to cover 100mph each time?) or world's first coaster with two 300 foot plus drops (double giga).....

It’s funny you say he isn’t in the business of revealing accurate info. (I agree with you but:) Because some in this forum were talking about how Tony and CP have a track record of not lying when the “lagoon maintenance” remark was made.

Most of you don't know what a Gonch-Back is, but here is a thread from back in 2007 where we talked about Maverick being billed as "the world's first Terra Coaster".

And wouldn't you know it, Brandon had the first reply.

Creative marketing, indeed.

No. Not at all. Just take the idea that they will do something unique with a realistic perspective.

Brandon, what I was saying is, TTDs existing tower is taller than Red Force.

And, simply adding LSMs and claiming that they had done something nobody else had done before simply by making the tallest LSM launch seems to me like an overstatement.

One wants to build hype and excitement and tease, etc., but if you build expectations above and beyond what you deliver, then the announcement is a letdown.

I personally doubt Tony would have used that wording if all we are going to see is LSM.

Retrospectively I can see how my verbiage may have been ambiguous, but that was my point

The only thing that really struck me as odd was him volunteering the information, or bringing up TTD 2.0 without anyone asking first.