TombRaiderFTW

I'm not trying to be difficult here--there's every possibility that you're 100% correct--but you do have to admit that there have been many posts over the years that claimed to factually have insider knowledge of what's coming and going that are still active posts on this site. Not to mention that if the person claiming The Bat is on its way out is correct, there wouldn't be equipment on site in December 2024 if it's being removed in late 2025 or early 2026. You've got me as far as the whistleblower thread goes. I'm not enough of a conspiracy theorist to be sure of myself here, but there's a part of me that wonders if, since the ride removals are allegedly being done without warning in order to minimize loss of season passholders, the park would have a vested interest in not letting that story gain a lot of visibility. It IS odd that one thread stayed while the other disappeared.

Neither. A post was made here claiming to have insight that, much like how Kingda Ka's, Green Lantern's, and Nighthawk's removals were handled for SFGAdv and Carowinds this year, The Bat will be quietly removed in the 2025-2026 off-season. It could easily be someone making something up, but it does track for how things are currently being handled by SF corporate, which is why I think it's reasonable to expect a statement from either KIC leadership (e.g. "we have asked the park for confirmation and will share responses"), KI's PR, or both. Instead, the thread was quietly deleted. I've been around here long enough to know what pressure from KI PR often smells like.

^ I agree so much with your post, but I do want to talk about one thing: Where is the idea that outsiders are making these calls coming from? I was under the impression that the leadership team of the new Six Flags was entirely made up of legacy Six Flags and (especially) legacy Cedar Fair execs.

Love this new era for the industry, where the biggest seasonal park operator is operating under the notion that selling a season pass means only vaguely selling access to a theme park. Don't worry about the fine print. You'll receive what experiences and availability they determined is financially good for them during yesterday's meeting, effective immediately, integrity be darned. Heaven forbid any kind of stink gets raised about a ride being quietly removed so people don't notice until passes are bought and it's a dirt pile.

To me, the interesting question out of all of this is, "What happened to the situation at Six Flags to where they needed to axe their most maintenance-heavy and/or least reliable and/or less-popular older rides rides across the chain in the course of a single winter?" That's what's happening--La Vibora, Kingda Ka, Nighthawk, SFGAdv's Twister and Sky Ride, Snake River Falls, and potentially our Invertigo and Congo Falls all meet those criteria. It's a bad look at any park to remove rides without warning. It's an especially bad look to remove some of the most well-known and unique rides without warning. It's a colossally bad look to knock down a quarter of Great Adventure and the only way anyone knew beforehand was rumors on Reddit. And the Six Flags management team is smart enough to know that. So what happened financially behind the scenes to force this to happen? Surely this wasn't the plan the entire time, right? Isn't maintaining the status quo with fewer people the entire shtick with a merger line this? I was braced for a decade or more of all parks but the top of the top performers to get small flat rides every few years until smaller properties get unloaded--not this. EDIT: And like that, context was provided: https://KICentral.com/forums/topic/49150-the-bat-closing-in-2025/

Cedar Fair does not exist. And no, they don't. Six Flags doesn't operate how YOU play Planet Coaster. You didn't read what I said.

Yeah, it's definitely weird favoritism for literally no reason (the current Six Flags CEO was GM of Kings Dominion from 1998 to 2007, a.k.a. a time in which Paramount Parks was in competition with Cedar Fair and in which Kings Dominion added things like Volcano, Hypersonic, and Tomb Raider: Firefall, which were big deals at the time) and not because Cedar Point is the closest thing to a destination park in North America outside of Florida and California. YOU think Orion and Leviathan are lackluster, and YOU think getting a smaller RMC is a sign of disrespect or whatever. That you think those things does not make them correct. Coaster enthusiasts do not know how to run amusement park chains. Intamin hydraulic launches are unreliable and always have been. They've shredded launch cables multiple times and injured riders. They have more moving parts than any other launch type in the modern era. Intamin's spare parts availability seems atrocious. That they've lasted as long as they have is honestly surprising--I think if the upfront cost wasn't as large as they were, we'd have seen them go away sooner because parks wouldn't have bothered trying. Note that when a train on TTD shed a part that hit a rider, CF didn't bother with, for instance, building barriers between the ride and the adjacent guest areas, which surely would've been cheaper. Cedar Fair tried an alternative on Top Thrill 2, the ride they sold passes and tickets based on the promise of riding, that worked so well that it operated for a few weekends in May and then closed for the rest of the year. I think that, very understandably, was the last chance for the industry to try to make the stratas sustainable. I expect that SF will do what they can to make TT2 work for 2025, but if something major comes up, it'll get removed and fall into that The Bat-Son of Beast-Hypersonic XLC category of rides where in 10-15 years, people on social media will incessantly post things like, "Who here got to ride TT2 while it briefly existed? What was it like compared to the original? Don't you think Six Flags should've tried harder to make it work/shouldn't Cedar Point rebuild TT2?" In the meantime, I honestly understand the decision to remove Kingda Ka, and I think Xcelerator is ABSOLUTELY on borrowed time. Amusement parks are businesses.

I dunno, I'm not really on board with the whole "Vortex's replacement has to be an inversion-heavy coaster" thing folks have been saying on here for a bit. I'm not judging because I am FULLY guilty of doing the same thing, but I think it's easy for us to fall into a pattern of wanting certain things to not change, even when it might not make business sense to keep them the same. I feel like whatever goes in a well-loved attraction's place has to be marketable as a distinctly new ride from what was there before. (Not to mention, the next coaster doesn't necessarily HAVE to go in Vortex's spot... but it does seem the most obvious place, right?) Problem is, without jumping into theming-heavy stuff that already wasn't Cedar Fair's schtick, ever, and especially probably wouldn't be Six Flags's thing right now with the legacy CF parks, I don't know of anything that jumps out particularly well for the park. We're more than good on wood coasters, and I think our bases are more or less covered on launches, inversions, and anything inverted. The trend right now for most big names in the industry? Intamin's and Zamperla's and Gerstlauer's and Premier's multi-launch coasters, Vekoma's new looping coasters and family inverts, GCI and Gravity Group's new wood coaster technology and designs with inversions, RMCs with inversions, Mack's launch coasters, and B&Ms with launches (and sometimes also inversions.) We don't have a lot of those things exactly, sure, so we COULD add them, but I fear they'd end up a bit lost in the lineup. So like, if I HAD to choose something that actually seems semi-likely for the state of the chain right now, I'd probably pick a 10-across B&M Dive. I'd put a first drop facing towards the walkway around where Vortex's batwing was, tunnel it under the path, and come up into an Immelman over the walkway right about where the basketball game currently is. I have no idea what to add to it after that point to make it stand out, though--we've already got a B&M with a splashdown, and I don't know that there are many other quirks that B&M does these days that aren't already represented on our other B&Ms. I'd hate for us to get something unremarkable. We've got lots of quality supporting players in our lineup, but I think it's important to also take a few risks to make some headliners, lest we develop what I lovingly think of as "the Canada's Wonderland problem." So, what I'd rather see happen, if we're sticking to coasters, is a Firechaser Express-like ride that's debatably more theming-heavy than Mystic Timbers. We've got the bases covered as far as base models go from most manufacturers, so it's time for something more than a fresh-out-of-the-box coaster. That's not me just really liking theming--I think doing Dollywood-level theming on a family coaster, which aligns with KI's current target audiences, would be the right move for a standout attraction in both the park and the market. Unless I'm forgetting something, no major players in the seasonal park world except United Parks and Herschend are doing themed coasters right now. Heck, you could even go so far as to have a drop track like Verbolten. (If we're considering options besides coasters, I'd absolutely put a themed log flume in Vortex's spot. But that's not this thread, so I'll keep that to myself! )

Intamin and Universal have been working together a lot over the last 10+ years, so I wouldn't be shocked to see it happen again. As far as what it could be or where, I feel like the only thing semi-certain is that it won't be for Epic Universe if something is getting built in the next 3 years or so. All the other details are anyone's guess. There's been extra speculation elsewhere recently that Hollywood Rip, Ride, Rockit will be removed in the near future. A lot of people on social media want it to be replaced with an Intamin with a vertical launch. While I get that draw, putting something like that on HRRR's footprint would result in something that seems like it'd be difficult to market as a different experience to HRRR to people who don't know coasters intimately. I thiiiink Blue Man Group stopped performing in their residency sometime mid-pandemic, which means there's a large empty building immediately adjacent to HRRR's footprint. That's a lot of potential new space that also has a lot of "storefront" within CityWalk. I don't immediately know of anything in Intamin's catalog that comes to mind to put on the front doorstep of USF that would be exceptionally showy on its own, but it's Universal. I'm sure they'd think of something and use it well. If I'm tossing in pipe dreams here, it'd be neat to see some additional buildings between USF and IOA moved and that space used for some kind of dueling coaster where one side loads guests from IOA (in the Lost Continent) and the other loads from USF, somewhere along HRRR's footprint. Yeah, I know Stardust Racers is opening at EU next year, but this is MY pipe dream, dang it.

I love that Herschend is at least aware of the area around Mile High Falls in future planning. I made it back to KK this year for the first time since 2014, and yeah, the triangle between the carousel, Storm Chaser, and Thunder Run has definitely suffered from a lack of master planning over the years. Focusing there is smart.

I don't know how to name which turn it is, so here's a mental picture: You come off of lift 1 on Adventure Express and head down the long, sweeping drop. You cross under the lift and turn left. You then drop into a CCI-like swooping turn to the right that ends with bonkers laterals. My answer is that turn. Honorable mentions go to the turn into The Bat's brakes, Banshee's heartline roll, Backlot's drop off the MCBR, Beast's double helix + the drop into it, Mystic's trick track, and the drop out of Son of Beast's station.

Giga coasters and water coasters have also been industry trends for the last 15-25 years, and the park chooses their rides from the same catalogs we're looking at. I was/am not suggesting the park ignores enthusiasts entirely, but my point was that the park does not exclusively consult opinions on the KIC forums when deciding what to add. Nor should they.

Great! I had the exact same experience. That doesn't make it necessary OR okay to put down other people.

Respectfully, this is a bit rude. Trust me, I completely understand your passion for the things you'd rather see in The Crypt's building, but it's really not necessary to shoot down anything anyone else wants. The park doesn't make capex decisions based on opinions on KIC.

I think whatever happens at Great Adventure is going to be the defining event for me of Zimmerman's era at Cedar Fair/Six Flags. I've kinda gotten the vibe for a few years that, post Ouimet, Cedar Fair never had a strong sense of direction. Ouimet attempted to aggressively attract families while improving the value of what your ticket got you, which is where semi-themed new rides, non-typical shows (e.g. Cirque Imagine and the like), LARP-based experiences like Ghost Town Alive, (a mild attempt at) new dark rides, and higher-quality food offerings came from. Zimmerman at CF seems to have lopped off the more pricey parts but otherwise attempted to keep that status quo. Then COVID happened, and I feel like the goal was to position the company for the merger through cutting costs to make the books look good. At this point, I feel like they've announced the immediate closure of a third of Great Adventure. If Six Flags and Zimmerman are serious about bringing a quality experience (to stay in line with the Ouimet philosophy), in my opinion, we'll see more than just a coaster in that area. We'll see!