Phantom Theater: Opening Nightmare Construction Progress

[BryanJay]

Historically the facade’s been worked on once the interior of the ride has basically been finished (as in that happened with Scooby Doo, that’s really the most recent example). I am doubtful at this point that the facade will see much of a facelift besides a repaint, but I’d love to be proven wrong. 

 

I’m very curious if we’ll see anymore updates this month from the park. The two unlisted videos have been removed from the YouTube playlist. There’s a Six Flags shareholders meeting on the 19th, but I don’t think the opening date or anything would be released because of it.

[Losantiville Mining Co.]

52 minutes ago, BB1 said:

I've been driving up periodically to see if I can still see the spires of the old castle that was BBOBH, can confirm as of last weekend they still exist. My issue with the current situation is that I remember distinctly that they said work on the exterior would commence after the new year, which it is well into. That being said, we have like what practically 2 months from Opening Day? Plenty of time for the park to get everything done and get some testing in. As, with this attraction it is all indoors thus the progress seen from outside the park is slim to none. 

I remain cautiously optimistic that it opens on Opening Day, previews even. 

They're still there whenever I look at the Planet Snoopy webcam. I've been looking every so often and the most I've seen is a truck or two parked outside of the facade. Whatever is supposed to happen with the facade, I don't think we'll see much of it from the street or the webcams. We're about 2 months and 7 days away from Opening Day. As much as I hope it's open by then, the likelihood does feel low now. 

It also looks like there are more opera box doom buggies in front of the Bandstand.

 

12 minutes ago, BryanJay said:

I’m very curious if we’ll see anymore updates this month from the park. The two unlisted videos have been removed from the YouTube playlist. There’s a Six Flags shareholders meeting on the 19th, but I don’t think the opening date or anything would be released because of it.

I hope we see an update this month. I'd hate it if they did well PR-wise for January only to completely fall flat for February. The shareholder meeting might prompt them to release some updates to pad any bad news that might decrease their stock prices.

[kingsislandfan1972]

A fossil was found during the construction of PT: ON... (a relic of a forgotten time perhaps? 🤔)

[Orion-XL200]

At this point, I know no reason of this attraction not opening "on time," whether it's at the very first day of the season or further into April or even May. 

[Losantiville Mining Co.]

I think the main question is if we will see a return to the standard of a ride opening with the park or not. We'd been so used to new attractions opening with the park that the recent trend of delayed openings have not been sitting well. It might open "on time" but it'd be good to know when that is going to be.

It would be much nicer if the parks would start giving a set opening date again. I feel like they're so scared of setting an opening date only to have to push it back, even though that wasn't an issue for years.

[BryanJay]

To my pain, I don't know if the plan is to open it with the park (though it seems odd to me that it would open the weekend after opening instead of having a soft opening with minor effects or adjustments being made during the weekdays the park is closed) but I also don't think it's likely for it to have been delayed. For reference, two months before their opening, RiverRacers hadn't been fully assembled, and the trains for Soapbox Racers hadn't arrived. Though I suppose I'm just "defending" the April 18th opening date because if manifest it enough I'll be able to ride it sooner. I think the reddit source is trustworthy, but I'm more inclined to believe the April date that has remained on Sally Dark Ride's site.

Perhaps this is more of a personal want, but whether it opens with the park or if they hold a charity event, it would be a shame to me if there wasn't a clearly communicated opening day and if it randomly soft opened without notice a few weeks into the season. The crowd energy from fans at the last performance of Encore and the last day of Boo Blasters (and probably the Rick Bastrup Q&A, I'm still salty about having to miss that) was very fun to experience and I'd love to have it for the theater's grand reopening. 

[DispatchMaster]

8 hours ago, Losantiville Mining Co. said:

I think the main question is if we will see a return to the standard of a ride opening with the park or not.

New rides, in general, are often bigger and more complex than they were back in the day, and the off season is as short or shorter than ever for many parks, with Halloween and other holiday events. 

I think that, in combination with parks realizing that it's not essential to have a ride open when the parks aren't even that busy (the bulk of business is done in July and August), means rides opening during the season has become the new standard.

[robintodd]

14 hours ago, BB1 said:

I've been driving up periodically to see if I can still see the spires of the old castle that was BBOBH, can confirm as of last weekend they still exist. My issue with the current situation is that I remember distinctly that they said work on the exterior would commence after the new year, which it is well into. That being said, we have like what practically 2 months from Opening Day? Plenty of time for the park to get everything done and get some testing in. As, with this attraction it is all indoors thus the progress seen from outside the park is slim to none. 

I remain cautiously optimistic that it opens on Opening Day, previews even. 

You can see the back of the castle top from the Camp Snoopy and Planet Snoopy cam on their website.

[CoasterJack]

I've been told this is on the park's Instagram page I believe. So if anyone has any burning questions about the original PT, now's your time to ask!

[Losantiville Mining Co.]

13 hours ago, DispatchMaster said:

New rides, in general, are often bigger and more complex than they were back in the day, and the off season is as short or shorter than ever for many parks, with Halloween and other holiday events. 

I think that, in combination with parks realizing that it's not essential to have a ride open when the parks aren't even that busy (the bulk of business is done in July and August), means rides opening during the season has become the new standard.

I agree with you on this, I just also wish the parks would give us a set opening date more than two weeks out. Construction projects have deadlines and it mostly just takes good planning to ensure each opening date is reached. AlpenFury didn't open until the middle of July and left Canada's Wonderland Silver Pass holders with only 1.5 months to experience it instead of the full 4-ish months formerly afforded.

My questions would probably be better asked this way: Aside from major construction delays, why do the parks feel fine with not announcing an opening date for their "big new thing" until a week or two before it comes?

 

2 minutes ago, CoasterJack said:

I've been told this is on the park's Instagram page I believe. So if anyone has any burning questions about the original PT, now's your time to ask!

I can confirm it's on their Instagram page!

[Orion-XL200]

5 minutes ago, Losantiville Mining Co. said:

My questions would probably be better asked this way: Aside from major construction delays, why do the parks feel fine with not announcing an opening date for their "big new thing" until a week or two before it comes?

My guess is that people are going to come either way and/or they don't want people to hold off on coming (especially early in the season) to have $$ coming in early.  Just my guess.

[DispatchMaster]

13 hours ago, Losantiville Mining Co. said:

Construction projects have deadlines and it mostly just takes good planning to ensure each opening date is reached.

Are you familiar with the "fast, cheap, good - pick two" axiom? The idea is that a project/product can be any two at the expense of the third:

1. It can be done fast and cheap, but it won't be good.
2. It can be done cheap and good, but it won't be fast.
3. It can be done fast and good, but it won't be cheap.

Obviously the park cannot sacrifice the "good" component, so you're left with options 2 or 3. And considering park installations are meant to provide entertainment value for decades, it's hard to justify spending significant sums of money to achieve "fast", when all that really means is opening a few weeks earlier for a product that is expected to operate, say, 400 weeks over its lifetime. Does it make fiscal sense to increase a budget by several percent to achieve an additional <1% of operating weeks? Parks seem to have settled on "no" for that answer, which makes sense.

14 hours ago, Losantiville Mining Co. said:

AlpenFury didn't open until the middle of July and left Canada's Wonderland Silver Pass holders with only 1.5 months to experience it instead of the full 4-ish

I don't recall the announcement. Was AlpenFury ever announced to be opening on the park's opening day? Or was it announced to be opening "this summer" or whatever? Because if it's the latter, it makes no difference what pass holders expected. They were provide what the park announced - a new coaster that opened in the summer. 

[Losantiville Mining Co.]

16 hours ago, DispatchMaster said:

Are you familiar with the "fast, cheap, good - pick two" axiom?

I'm far too well acquainted with it, unfortunately. 

As it's probably clear by now, I'm bad at articulating what I want to say with these kinds of things. Meanwhile my prompting of thought comes off as me being dumb. (That won't stop me though, y'all are fun to respond to either way.)

16 hours ago, DispatchMaster said:

Because if it's the latter, it makes no difference what pass holders expected. They were provide what the park announced - a new coaster that opened in the summer. 

This point was more just to say that I think it's unfair to leave Silver Pass holders hanging like they did. Does it really matter? No, but I think the guests would appreciate attractions opening before July. I also think the Silver Passes should actually be a lower tier of a standard season pass instead of a Summer Pass (go all year with blackout dates and such instead of ending at Labor Day), but that's another conversation.

On 2/12/2026 at 9:32 PM, Orion-XL200 said:

My guess is that people are going to come either way and/or they don't want people to hold off on coming (especially early in the season) to have $$ coming in early.  Just my guess.

I'd think these parks would want to get projects done around Memorial Day so they can get the bugs worked out before the big summer crowds come in July and August. If the chain and execs don't want that, then fine. They can work out the kinks during the busiest time of the season.

 

Anyways, I'll be diligently watching that webcam to see if they start to do any visible work on the facade and if more ride pieces come in like the doom buggy opera boxes.

[kingsislandfan1972]

Not a construction update but Kings Island just released this Phantom Theater Opening Nightmare Valentine on their Facebook page! 😀