Top Thrill Dragster 2022 Status

They should build a 500' tall Jumbo Jet around it. It didn't use a chain or cable to get to the top. That way you would also be able to take in the view as you went up coiling around the tower. It could be designed for safer and easy evacuations if needed (hopefully not)

The Jumbo Jet sure does look like it was one hell of a fun ride. Too bad it was removed a few years before I was born.

XS NightClub said:

If you remove it any date before the full amortization the full amount comes off the books anyway.

So they could've called it quits years ago and saved all the risk of cable deaths.

If that were the case, they'd take a charge for the remaining cost against their revenues for that year, generally not something they would want to do.

The Jumbo Jet was a blast!!!!! It was so cool to see when you parked! That on the right and Blue Streak’s turnaround on the left!!! I bummed when they took it down.

You can still ride Jumbo Jet next time you are in Belarus.

Story on Cleveland.com today about Top Thrill Dragster "incident" and it's relation to CP Police and public records compliance issues.

From the Sandusky Register:

State finds no fault in Top Thrill Dragster accident

I'm confused. Was the sole purpose/finding of the report that Cedar Fair wasn't at fault? Nothing about how the accident happened or recommendations for the future?

Can the public access the report itself?

EDIT: I see that the ABC 6 article linked to in the News section provides a bit more info:

• A mechanic confirmed inspecting the flag plate the night before the accident
• Lab tests revealed that "one of the capscrew fasteners backed out of the bogie frame, resulting in failure by instantaneous overload fracture.” I wonder if that's all the "cause" we're going to get.

Dragster will remain closed for 2022

^ Wow.

As someone who loves this ride, I'm sad. And, of course, I continue to be saddened that someone was hurt by something I've enjoyed so much.

I honestly wasn't expecting the ride to be SBNO for all of 2022. I thought the park would either reopen or remove the ride in fairly short order--since it seems like the report doesn't include any groundbreaking info the park wouldn't have known immediately following the incident.

But it sounds like the park wants more time to digest the content of the report, which may perhaps better inform the ride's future.

I know not everyone agrees, but I do hope that the ride has a future!

I'm getting Son of Beast vibes: another huge, problematic ride that had an accident that they were found to be not at fault for, but was left sitting idle for awhile before eventually being removed when they had replacement plans. Granted this is a much different ride, but there are parallels.

Son of Beast, they would of had to replace the whole ride with new wood in order for it to be properly fixed. Dragster, it's just figuring out why that part came off in the first place / not happen again.

I'm guessing the track likely needs replacing at the end, and they're waiting for enough budget / track to be made to fix it.

If any track needed replacement there is plenty of time for that to get manufactured and installed without calling it for the entire 2022 season. And the cost of something like that would hardly be something to paralyze the rides department budget for such a major ride.

My guess is the park needs more time to figure out what exactly happened and/or if the ROI of reopening is worth it

Rest in peace, my friend. 191 launches, 4 rollback. 19 seasons of memories, from August 2003 to July 2021. Damn it all.

WKYC has shared the state's full accident report.

I've only just skimmed it, but the report confirms that its goal is to establish whether CP/CF is at fault for the accident, not the cause of the accident itself.

So, the park could still be working with Intamin to determine why the flag plate detached and how to prevent it from happening again.

For what it's worth, the report also includes photos of the damaged track sections. I have no idea how serious (or not) the damage is...

When was the last time a ride at CP specifically was SBNO for an entire season?

I feel like how they present the queue/that entire side of the midway is going to be reasonably telling. Without knowing how long it takes to train a ride crew from scratch, I imagine this also makes planning out ride host assignments a little easier if they're taking TTD off the list completely.

Will also be curious if it ends up being omitted on the park map or not. Then again, they could have "DRAGSTER IS CLOSED THIS YEAR" in big light up letters over the main gate and they'd still almost certainly have guests constantly asking if it's going to open this year.

I’d say it’s pretty telling that the ride won’t open this season. I wouldn’t place bets on it reopening again at this point. The park is moving forward with its future improvements by Wicked Twister and is now likely looking at what options they have for removal of TTD. As unfortunate as it is, there’s not a great justification as to why the ride wouldn’t be able to reopen at some point this season unless the park has already committed to removing it. In which case that type of announcement has to be carefully planned and timed.

Of course this could be the park “buying time” to come up with a solution to re-open the ride. But I seriously doubt that.

Well, Maxair was "SBNO" per se in 2021 and is expected to reopen this year. Certainly a different situation here though. I wasn't sure what to expect for this year, but I'd been hoping it wouldn't turn out this way...

I can accept the conclusion that CP/CF was not at fault, but it is interesting how the post-accident inspection revealed "all 5 other trains left prox flag plates show some wear marks on outer edge. Blue train did not run on 8/15/21 yet still had minor wear marks on outer edge. Purple left prox flag plate was found loose". (Page 188 of the report). Is this component ever supposed to show "wear marks" or be loose under normal operation?

There are other parts of the report that make a simple bolt failure seem like a possibility, but it still just seems like a "perfect storm" type of freak accident scenario with multiple contributing factors.

I do enjoy at the end of the report that the brass at CP had to e-mail Sandor Kernacs directly to get his "approval" for the abbreviated maintenance schedule in the '20-'21 offseason.

I'm still hoping this isn't the end of the story!

The fact that the same part on other trains had similar wear leads me to believe it wasn't just a one in a million freak thing and that there is reasonable evidence this *could* happen again.

Let’s bring in the GCI in this location