WoodVengeance

Thundervolt at PNE Playland opened back in July, and that also has the lightning trains. It seems whatever issue is plaguing the trains on TT2 have to be specific to that ride, otherwise Thundervolt wouldn't have opened.

It's true that Intamin has been problematic when it came to rides like Top Thrill Dragster and it's definitely possible that several of those issues may still be plaguing Top Thrill 2. I cannot confirm this to be the exact cause of TT2's issues, but it definitely appears that at least some of the issues stem from the new lightning trains provided by Zamperla. If this is the case, then I don't think it's really fair to blame Intamin for this, as they had no involvement with the lightning trains.

It also helps that Kings Island currently does not have a coaster with a vertical or beyond-vertical drop. (Orion is the steepest drop in the park at 85 degrees) That makes it easy to market as "Kings Island's first and only beyond-vertical drop coaster". However, I would prefer if we got a different model as I don't really think the park needs another B&M at the moment. A Gerstlauer Infinity like Hangtime or Vekoma Tilt could work well as a coaster that holds you over the first drop and features a lot of inversions in the layout.

I expect Cedar Fair (now part of Six Flags) may still contract Zamperla to build future flat rides and smaller-scale coasters like Wild Mouse. I don't think they're going to completely blacklist Zamperla like they've done with Intamin and RMC.

Imagine showing this to someone from a year ago with parks like Kings Island and Cedar Point on the Six Flags website.

I think those rides should be fine as far as reliability is concerned. Unlike TT2 that uses completely new trains and other systems Zamperla hadn't used before, Rapterra and AlpenFury are both ride models that both manufacturers (B&M and Premier) had experience with before, and they aren't doing anything too crazy or different compared to similar rides like Thunderbird or Full Throttle.

My bad, then. I only just now noticed them yesterday and thought they were new.

I don't know if it's been discussed here or not, but I noticed that several rides now have a sign towards the exit that informs guests that if they've lost an item on the ride, they have a qr code that they can scan in order to report it to lost and found. It's good that the park is making this more clear for guests that might not know exactly how their items are going to be retrieved, but I can't help but feel disturbed knowing the context of why this was done.

It became enough of an issue that park staff working at the Eiffel Tower's elevator have to explicitly say not to spit over the railing. Sometimes people do the strangest things for little to no reason, like how people throw their armbands and other belongings on roofs throughout the park.

I have two recent thoughts regarding our next major coaster. 1) Is Kings Island going to care that much about capacity for our next coaster? I know capacity has been prioritized with past major additions and I definitely would prefer it if the park continued to do that. However, we just saw that Canada's Wonderland is only putting two 18-person trains on their new-for-2025 coaster, and that park gets even more crowded than Kings Island from what I've seen. If Canada's Wonderland is willing to "skimp-out" on capacity for their new coaster, who's to say Kings Island won't do the same for whatever comes next? 2) Also paying attention to the other parks in the chain, it seems that the chain no longer does in-person announcements for any of their major new coasters. Top Thrill 2, Iron Menace, Rapterra and AlpenFury all had online announcements that were posted early in the morning, and I expect this will be a thing going forward for the foreseeable future. I know it's not the biggest deal in the world, but seeing this type of atmosphere whenever Kings Island announced a new coaster is something I looked forward to with each "decoding season" I've been involved with, and I feel a lot of charm and personality is really lost when they just post whatever it is online.

Most, if not all of the thrilling new-gen Vekomas have a 48" requirement, so that would be a good fit.

The renders show that the trains do not have comfort collars, only lap bars.

Yep. I imagine people are going to start saying this is more of a Volcano replacement than Rapterra is.

If it was anything like Alpen Fury, that would be great. Just as long as they put more than 2 trains on it.

It definitely looks like it's going to be the best coaster Premier has ever built.

A while back, I made this fan concept for a Gerstlauer Infinity coaster that was themed to the Shooting Star at the old Coney Island. The general idea was to include 10 inversions and have the ride split into two parts, with the second lift hill taking place after the fifth inversion as a middle section. (Similar to what Smiler does with its two lift hills) I also included a Coney Mall retheme to Coney Fair, which also included a Gerstlauer Sky Roller and a Jukebox Diner retheme. I hadn't shared this concept before as I wasn't really sure how feasible a Gerstlauer was going to be in terms of capacity, but I'd figure it would be a good time to share it since this type of ride was included in the recent survey.

It'll probably depend on the reliability of Georgia Surfer and the straddle coaster going to SFNE. If new Six Flags sees that both of those coasters end up being pretty reliable, then maybe they will have a change of heart and give them more projects. In addition to that, this also makes me wonder what new Six Flags's relationship with Gerstlauer will be. Although Cedar Fair was okay about working with them, the incident that happened on New Texas Giant pretty much ruined the relationship Gerstlauer had with old Six Flags and if that's going to carry on at all.

Apparently there was another option in the survey for a Gerstlauer Infinity coaster with 10 inversions. In my opinion, something like that or a Mack Stryker would be a far better fit for that plot of land compared to The Beast 2.0 concept.

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to bring that up here. As insane of an idea as this is, I really just feel Kings Island should just leave The Beast alone and have whatever goes in The Vortex plot be its own thing. The concepts from the previous survey seemed to be designed without a specific park in-mind, and this is the first concept that is obviously specific to Kings Island, with the concept directly involving The Beast and even being shown in The Vortex plot. This is just speculation on my part, but it could be possible Kings Island is using this to gauge the general public's interest in a new wooden coaster (probably from Gravity Group) with a 184ft drop in The Vortex plot. If this is the case, I don't think that's what Kings Island really needs at the moment. They have plenty of wooden coasters as-is and the park is currently lacking in coasters with inversions. I think the best course would be to add a new steel coaster with inversions in The Vortex plot, but that's just my personal opinion. With all that being said, I think the one thing that's clear from this is that, from my observation, it does appear to me that Kings Island is starting to plan what's finally going to go in The Vortex plot. Here's hoping it'll be 2026, but I'm not going to hold my breath until we get more concrete evidence.

Cedar Point specified they're removing Snake River Falls for "future expansion", which means they already have something in-mind for that area that's likely going to be for 2026. If the reason was because of something specific to the ride like parts or maintenance, they probably would've said it "reached the end of its service life" instead of "future expansion".

Yes, Snake River Falls is an Arrow shoot the chute. By comparison, Congo Falls is an Intamin shoot the chute.

Cedar Point is removing their equivalent of Congo Falls for "future expansion". https://x.com/cedarpoint/status/1819389062186246567

I hope that's the case, but we'll have to wait and see. Cedar Point hiring Zamperla for TT2 didn't really pan out too well, and I hope that doesn't shy Kings Island away from working with new manufacturers. Granted, Vekoma is a far more reliable manufacturer than Zamperla, so hopefully they're still on the table.

It's possible that the final name and logo for the Project 305 retheme hasn't been finalized yet. I still think it's going to be a 2025 addition, as there was test paint on P305 a while back. Also, there were cheetahs in one of the teasers for Rapterra if that means anything.

Seems leaks like this are quite common, though this time it's from the park itself and not the manufacturer.