I would argue GADV will probably never get a dive coaster now given its proximity to Dorney and seeing as Iron Menace is going to be their premier attraction for maybe 5 more years. Dorney doesn't add coasters very often, now that its the same company why add an attraction that could dwarf Dorney's big draw.
News Project 2027/Purple: Delayed “World Record Breaking Coaster" (Phantom Spire?)
- Thread starter Zachary
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I'm sorry but if a 400 foot tall spinning coaster with an upside down launch isn't enough to get the GP back through the gates and boost attendance than nothing would of and Great Adventure really is a lost cause. I know a lot of people were upset over Ka's closure but this ride is massive and would have a much more positive impact on the attendance than something like Tormenta would have. I doubt even a traditional giga coaster would be able to match the draw this thing will have. Enthusiasts are very whelmed right now but as soon as this thing gets announced it's gonna be all over local news and social media.
I don't speak with this level of surety in my clairvoyance
Enthusiasts have been whelmed, and the "teaser" we've gotten is a hard hat. Excited for the type of marketing campaign Total Mayhem got
And that’s the way it should be. A dive wouldn’t be a good addition to GAdv at all. Supposedly there’s something going around about corporate not believing in OT long term, which leads me to think that Tormenta will be the last thing they’ll get for awhile
I think if anything this paves the way for GAdv to get a tilt coaster sometime in the future, which not only would be a better ride compared to a dive, but would be a bigger draw to the general public.
Doomerism about other parks is allowed. The forced positivity is pretty unique to Great Adventure discussions. Makes some sense as so many locals have been desperate for improvement for so long.
I also don't think Great Adventure should ever get a dive coaster. I don't think it should ever get a tower spinner. I think that if the options were Dive and Tower Spinner, I'd have picked dive. It's a bigger issue to me that whatever product Six Flags had designed to replace Kingda Ka, which was likely Good and Custom, remains unbuilt so an incredibly expensive and short cookie cutter shuttle can get built
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A six flags replacement? My dude there was no replacement planned until this ride came to be. The plan was to go through a multi year renovation that included rebuilding the hydraulic room, refurbishing the train (was already underway), and repainting the entire ride. There was no pre-merger replacement in place. And if there was why the hell would a new company change that, Tormenta to my knowledge was the only major addition planned pre-merger and that is a few months away from opening.
And when it comes to the "forced positivity" with Great Adventure, who the hell wants to sit in doom and gloom about the future of this park? This is our hobby, it's supposed to be our escape from the depressing reality that is the world right now. Sure I have concerns about some things and questions about the future, but why the hell should I try and prevent myself from getting excited over the largest addition I've ever seen at my home park?
You know that Kingda Ka was a "cookie cutter" design too, right? It was just a 45 foot taller, 8 mph faster version of Top Thrill Dragster with a hill that didn't even give any airtime that was somehow inferior to Dragster in every way despite having "better" stats.
Even this stupid spinner will the be first of its kind; Kingda Ka didn't even have that going for it.
Everyone is seriously wasting their time replying to that guy. Just ignore him and move on. They are incapable of actual constructive conversation and we have 10x as many messages in this thread because one person is attention seeking and ragebaiting.
I’m going to out on a limb and say that a gimmick coaster is not only acceptable as a replacement for Ka, but it’s necessary too.
I believe Ka was famous because of its sheer absurdity. The GP across the country who knew about Ka, and put SFGAdv on their bucket list because of it, did so because Ka was the coaster equivalent of clickbait: insanely tall, insanely fast, and a crazy-looking, unique structure. Ka stood out because it wasn’t like every other coaster in the GP’s mind — much like Volcano, it was so outlandish that it assumed its own identity in the public’s eye. It was nothing but gimmick. It was memorable.
I bet the vast majority of enthusiasts would agree that El Toro is a far better coaster than Ka was. But I would also bet you this: far fewer people in the GP knew about El Toro than Ka, and even fewer were booking a trip to New Jersey to ride it. Point being: to most of the GP, a coaster is a coaster. It takes something special like Ka to earn its reputation in the broader public mind.
If Ka were replaced by a coaster like Falcon’s Flight, or Tormenta, or Steel Vengeance, or Fury, or whatever the best “non gimmick” coaster you can imagine is, I think it would be an ill-fitting replacement for Ka. It would lack that madness, that shining beacon that put SFGADv on the map with Ka and made it stand out from all the other parks with really solid coaster lineups. SFGAdv would just become one of many parks with a really good collection of really good coasters.
Ka’s replacement needs that WTF factor. It needs to create talk. It needs to make waves and get people talking around the water cooler, states away. And just as coasters like Ka and Volcano dominated Travel Channel coverage in the early 2000s, this coaster needs the modern equivalent with social media virality. You don’t accomplish that with a slighter better multi-launch coaster or a slightly bigger dive coaster. You accomplish that with something crazy that people have never seen before. Siren’s Curse captured that spirit, I think, but it lacked the scale to replace Ka. An absurdly tall spire with spinning cars flinging riders around 400 feet in the air, and then falling back through the course backwards, not only captures that spirit but also accomplishes the near-impossible task of doing so in a way that gets close to the scale of Ka.
I for one would be sorely disappointed if Six Flags did go the “safe” route and just try to build a nice, big, solid coaster. They can build one of those anywhere. I’m much more excited, and almost a little surprised, that they’re taking the risk with something a little crazy. That’s what a true spiritual successor to Ka needs.
I believe Ka was famous because of its sheer absurdity. The GP across the country who knew about Ka, and put SFGAdv on their bucket list because of it, did so because Ka was the coaster equivalent of clickbait: insanely tall, insanely fast, and a crazy-looking, unique structure. Ka stood out because it wasn’t like every other coaster in the GP’s mind — much like Volcano, it was so outlandish that it assumed its own identity in the public’s eye. It was nothing but gimmick. It was memorable.
I bet the vast majority of enthusiasts would agree that El Toro is a far better coaster than Ka was. But I would also bet you this: far fewer people in the GP knew about El Toro than Ka, and even fewer were booking a trip to New Jersey to ride it. Point being: to most of the GP, a coaster is a coaster. It takes something special like Ka to earn its reputation in the broader public mind.
If Ka were replaced by a coaster like Falcon’s Flight, or Tormenta, or Steel Vengeance, or Fury, or whatever the best “non gimmick” coaster you can imagine is, I think it would be an ill-fitting replacement for Ka. It would lack that madness, that shining beacon that put SFGADv on the map with Ka and made it stand out from all the other parks with really solid coaster lineups. SFGAdv would just become one of many parks with a really good collection of really good coasters.
Ka’s replacement needs that WTF factor. It needs to create talk. It needs to make waves and get people talking around the water cooler, states away. And just as coasters like Ka and Volcano dominated Travel Channel coverage in the early 2000s, this coaster needs the modern equivalent with social media virality. You don’t accomplish that with a slighter better multi-launch coaster or a slightly bigger dive coaster. You accomplish that with something crazy that people have never seen before. Siren’s Curse captured that spirit, I think, but it lacked the scale to replace Ka. An absurdly tall spire with spinning cars flinging riders around 400 feet in the air, and then falling back through the course backwards, not only captures that spirit but also accomplishes the near-impossible task of doing so in a way that gets close to the scale of Ka.
I for one would be sorely disappointed if Six Flags did go the “safe” route and just try to build a nice, big, solid coaster. They can build one of those anywhere. I’m much more excited, and almost a little surprised, that they’re taking the risk with something a little crazy. That’s what a true spiritual successor to Ka needs.
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What I've heard repeatedly is that Kingda Ka was to be extant until at least the end of 2025 after which its future would be reevaluated. It's hard to believe there was nothing at all on the horizon in terms of additions.
Yeah, I do know. I don't sit here and blindly sing its praises, I acknowledge its outsized cultural importance for what it was and see its untimely death as an act of iconoclasm rather than the end of the Best Coaster Ever
It would be the really good collection of really good coasters in the New York City metro. That's all it needs to be.
They cannot build nice, big, solid coasters everywhere, but they certainly COULD in a place with this much land and this many potential customers. They are choosing instead to build something that was quite literally designed for another property.
Hey everyone. This is my first post to this forum ever. I’ve been following outside the forum and on Facebook for the few months.
I have an odd thought: what if this coaster is only around 300 feet? Tormenta is also utilizing a 450 foot crane for a 309 foot coaster.
The spacing of the footers around the inverted stall look like they aren’t as far apart as I guess I’d expect either, then again, I’m not an expert on that.
I have an odd thought: what if this coaster is only around 300 feet? Tormenta is also utilizing a 450 foot crane for a 309 foot coaster.
The spacing of the footers around the inverted stall look like they aren’t as far apart as I guess I’d expect either, then again, I’m not an expert on that.
I take it you have just as much of an issue with the existence of Superman, Batman, Dark Knight, Skull Mountain, Harley Blackbeard's Lost Crazy Treasure Train, and Joker, and the former existence of Kingda Ka, Great American Scream Machine, Lightnin' Loops, Shockwave, Ultra Twister, and Sarajevo Bobsled as you do with Phantom Spire....right? Because all of those were clones (or near-clones) of already existing rides before they were built. Each of those rides was literally designed for another property then sometimes adapted to SFGAdv, sometimes plopped down exactly as it was.
Phantom Spire was proposed for another property in a survey. That's it.
If your offense at the ride is the fact that it's not a "custom, original design for SFGAdv," then you should be equally offended at almost the entire rest of the coaster lineup. Are you?
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The problem with this thinking is that it seems to assume this will be the last coaster that SFGAdv will ever build. Which I find unlikely. Why can’t they build that nice, big, solid coaster you’re looking for in another part of the park in a few years?
What I do find likely is that this project and this location is their one shot at getting the Ka replacement right. The public will always view the big coaster going into Ka’s old plot as the Ka replacement. So while they have plenty of years and plenty of space and plenty of chances to build plenty of nice, big, solid coasters in the seasons ahead, they only have one shot to try to recapture the status that Ka gave the park. Why blow that by playing it safe now?
That's half true, yes being a very good park in the NYC area is all it needs to be, but this park has burned so many bridges with locals. Just building some solid coasters isn't going to be enough to bring people back, New Jersey residents have other options. A certain chocolate themed park in Pennsylvania has essentially stolen Great Adventures target audience and they won't be going back unless given a VERY good reason to. Hershey already has an excellent coaster lineup, is an all around great park, and has IP recognition that Great Adventure will likely never be able to match. Great Adventure needs to do something with a such a wow factor that people give it another chance.
Sure but at the same time.....they're not building another one of these, it's a one and done. Does it really matter if it was originally intended for a different park if in the end it's still a ride unique to Great Adventure?
I think the general fear is that the park doesn't meet expectations and goes further down the pecking order. But honestly, the worst case-scenario I can see is Great Adventure being relegated to something like Kings Dominion. That was a park I think Cedar Fair really wants to grow but can't make it happen, they come back every 5 or so years and add something, reassess the situation and see if continued investment is worth it or if they should try again in a few years. Which honestly.....is a better situation than what Great Adventure has been in since the 2008 recession. And again, that's assuming that this new addition doesn't meet expectations, if it does.....investment will be coming in rapidly. I would say Great Adventure's ceiling right now is something like Kings Island, while the floor is something like Kings Dominion.
From an isolated roller coaster perspective? I think custom designs would be better, yes. From a practical standpoint, I don't commonly ride batclones, haven't ridden Dark Knight in years, just got the Blackbeard and Joker credits as an adult a few months ago. So while I wouldn't say they "offend" me, I don't particularly value any of them (besides Skull Mountain. Love u King) for the qualities of their layouts. I don't know what point there is in being "offended" at existing coasters. They could be better, but I don't want them removed because they will not be replaced with anything better.
I am trying to hold the same sentiment for Phantom Spire. There is nothing that can be done. Resignation is difficult when a person is so impassioned
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That's definitely possible, but I think the crane used for Tormenta is just bigger than normal for a 300 foot coaster, for example Fury 325 used a 350 foot crane. I think the common expectation right now is that this coaster will be exactly 400 feet tall, which a 450 foot crane should be capable of doing.
It makes for a worse roller coaster in my opinion. It's not just generically "clone bad," it's "I think good roller coasters are inherently works of landscape architecture that respond to or interact with their environments."
We are so far below the floor of what King's Dominion has to offer, and I would argue KD and KI are roughly equivalent in terms of the quality of the experience and their coaster lineups. I would love to have a park like either of them to be proud of again.
As someone who visited KI, KD, and GAdv within the span of a week last year, this is quite possibly one of the most absurd takes I think I’ve ever heard. In fact, I’d go as far to say I enjoyed KD the LEAST, and the people that went with me agree with me on that sentiment. GAdv is most definitely a superior park to KD, and KI is better than both of them at the moment. Then again, you have brown grass, so I guess that kinda explains things
