News Project 2027/Purple: Delayed “World Record Breaking Coaster" (Phantom Spire?)

[fingerblaster22]

*sighs, takes off thoosie hat and puts on CPA hat*

Thank you for this "lesson in economics" @fingerblaster22 there are just several issues with this argument. Tariffs raise the prices for everyone in the supply chain. So if any of those steel mills/pizza shops import literally any of their supplies, their expenses go up which counters a bit of that increased demand they may receive when tariffs are implemented. If tariffs raise the price of steel, Six Flags (buying rides) pays more, possibly raising ticket prices or cutting staff. That hurts the local carpenter's kid trying to go to the park which would be the opposite of your claim. You wanna take about the car salesman? GM reported a $1.1 billion loss on its bottom line in Q2 2025 and blamed tariffs. That's an American company losing money because of tariffs.

Also is your second paragraph referring to a trade deficit? There's nothing that suggests that a trade deficit is inherently a bad thing. It's not like we OWE other countries money because we are in a trade deficit, we just import more goods than we export but at the same time something that is not included in a trade deficit calculation is the exporting of services which the US has become a more service based economy than a goods manufacturing economy, this is why there is a trade deficit. For us to be back to a largely goods manufacturing economy we need to be more like China which has children working in factories. A trade deficit is not a giant pool of money that you've lost to another country.

The USD to Euro exchange rate which has nothing to do with tariffs but since you brought this up, it has gotten weaker in the last 6 months per historical charts. It was 0.972901 on January 20, 2025, today it is 0.85864. The only point in the last 10 years where the USD was actually worth more than the Euro was September-October 2022. A weaker dollar already makes imports more expensive, before tariffs. So if anything, tariffs pile on top of that. Which brings us to the real narrative: tariffs aren’t just a penalty on foreign countries, they’re a tax on our own people and businesses. It’s time we stop saying, “We’re putting tariffs on country X,” and start saying, “We’re taxing our own economy to make a political point.”

You proved just about every point I made in my "lessons in economics", that the companies manufacturing in the USA are the ones that will benefit. Premier, S&S, RMC, and to an extent B&M (since their track is manufactured in the USA).

GM assembles 55% of their vehicles domestically, so probably not the best example to provide.

The $ Six Flags spends with Mack doesn't leave the country, doesn't get paid to the worker in Germany which trickles down to the steel worker, to the Döner Kebab guy, to the car salesman, to the carpenter, then to Europa-Park.

Does it currently work in every instance? No... You're probably never going to see textile manufacturing take off in the USA the way it is in China, India, Bangladesh ect..

 

[warfelg]

Not to veer too off topic, but companies that does everything from raw materials, to manufacturing, to somehow having a distribution network that doesn’t import a single thing, to even making sure the gas they use isn’t imported will be the only ones benefiting. Otherwise something is going to be imported and depending on how important it is or how expensive will massively impact costs.

Premier, S&S, RMC, B&M still import raw steel, electronics, parts for trains, rubber compound for wheels/drive tires made by other companies. On top of that, two of the companies (Premier and S&S) are way behind when it comes to quality of production that it still needs to charge more to put into R&D to overcome these things.

The “upside” here is that parks will likely realize that these things are so expensive they will need to rely on improving their own product to make coming to the park desirable. Make the park more beautiful, better themed areas, better food offerings.

 

[Nitro230]

Want to also point out that these rides typically cost more no matter what because of the cost of actually shipping these rides over in the first place. Meaning that beforehand Six Flags only needed to justify the shipping cost when deciding to go with Intamin or Mack, now it’s the shipping AND the cost of the tariffs.

Judging by the timing of all of this, I think it’s very likely Six Flags was hoping to see the tariff on steel go down with EU deal and began construction. Then when this unfolded Six Flags had to make the difficult decision to put it on hold indefinitely. I believe the reported cost for the ride was $40 million, I don’t know if that’s including shipping or not, either way with the current tariffs the ride would likely see an increase to above $50 million which is just ridiculous for this ride.

All around this is just a terrible situation and I can’t even blame Six Flags for this, do I think they should’ve been transparent about Ka from the start to avoid the terrible press? Yes, totally. But they tried to fix the situation as quickly as they could but problems outside of their control lead us to where we are now.

 

[nyxmike]

Want to also point out that these rides typically cost more no matter what because of the cost of actually shipping these rides over in the first place. Meaning that beforehand Six Flags only needed to justify the shipping cost when deciding to go with Intamin or Mack, now it’s the shipping AND the cost of the tariffs.

Judging by the timing of all of this, I think it’s very likely Six Flags was hoping to see the tariff on steel go down with EU deal and began construction. Then when this unfolded Six Flags had to make the difficult decision to put it on hold indefinitely. I believe the reported cost for the ride was $40 million, I don’t know if that’s including shipping or not, either way with the current tariffs the ride would likely see an increase to above $50 million which is just ridiculous for this ride.

All around this is just a terrible situation and I can’t even blame Six Flags for this, do I think they should’ve been transparent about Ka from the start to avoid the terrible press? Yes, totally. But they tried to fix the situation as quickly as they could but problems outside of their control lead us to where we are now.

They said in the email the construction for the coaster has begun so how can it be on hold indefinitely if there's active construction and rebar for footers. Something still seems off...

 

[RDL]

They said in the email the construction for the coaster has begun so how can it be on hold indefinitely if there's active construction and rebar for footers. Something still seems off...

People are thinking the decision to delay the ride was made after this construction started taking place

 

[fingerblaster22]

People are thinking the decision to delay the ride was made after this construction started taking place

I guess someone that visits the park soon will need to see if work is being done. That could have happened and said welp let them digg the footers since they started.

I personally think they never intended Spring 2026 then they put out a statement when its getting pushed back to, which they kinda didn't, all to avoid seasonpass holders sueing later on if they promote the new coaster as being open in 2026.. In my mind, its open when its open. Could be July 2026, could be September 2026, coudl be Spring 2027.

Then there is the theory they pulled the Mack Tower and went with something else months ago. It could hold water, backlash on the Mack Tower was bad. It would explain why it got pushed back. There was a decent chunk of time from when the KA demolition ground was cleared to when the broke ground last week. Why not start the Mack tower right away versus in July?

 

[Krusty]

I guess someone that visits the park soon will need to see if work is being done. That could have happened and said welp let them digg the footers since they started.

I personally think they never intended Spring 2026 then they put out a statement when its getting pushed back to, which they kinda didn't, all to avoid seasonpass holders sueing later on if they promote the new coaster as being open in 2026.. In my mind, its open when its open. Could be July 2026, could be September 2026, coudl be Spring 2027.

Then there is the theory they pulled the Mack Tower and went with something else months ago. It could hold water, backlash on the Mack Tower was bad. It would explain why it got pushed back. There was a decent chunk of time from when the KA demolition ground was cleared to when the broke ground last week. Why not start the Mack tower right away versus in July?

I feel like the statement they put out heavily leans towards a spring 2027 opening without explicitly saying it. They wouldn’t mention wanting to have it open for spring if they were going to turn around and just delay it a couple months farther into 2026.

All depends on what‘s going to happen with the site now. It’s so incredibly strange to me that they’d have started groundwork just a week before announcing a year long delay. I’m still leaning towards the tower spinner being what we’re getting, and previously mentioned FAA clearance / other legal red tape (on top of tariffs and cost uncertainty on imports) being what’s behind the delay.

 

[GAcoaster]

They’re covering all bases and not committing to any specific year/season yet. Apparently steel imports from Europe are 50%, and could change again based on random postings from a syphilitic lunatic. They could ship half a coaster expecting a $30 million price tag that suddenly balloons to $40 million.

 

[SweetBabyJames]

They’re covering all bases and not committing to any specific year/season yet. Apparently steel imports from Europe are 50%, and could change again based on random postings from a syphilitic lunatic. They could ship half a coaster expecting a $30 million price tag that suddenly balloons to $40 million.

Keep the Trump bashing to the political thread please. There's both pros and cons to tariffs.

 

[CoasterAuditor]

Tariffs are relevant to construction timelines being moved around for roller coasters which would be on topic for this thread. Nobody here has mentioned the president specifically by name and @GAcoaster is not expressing an opinion on politics in his post in any fashion.

 

[SweetBabyJames]

Tariffs are relevant to construction timelines being moved around for roller coasters which would be on topic for this thread. Nobody here has mentioned the president specifically by name and @GAcoaster is not expressing an opinion on politics in his post in any fashion.

I understand, however, without stating his name he implied Trump is a "syphilitic lunatic". That's also not the only post here slandering the president's decisions in some way either... While I know tariffs may be playing a role here, I just prefer to have a break from the politics when I'm looking for updates on the new coaster. Moving on now.

 

[DWNitro]

Joe Biden would’ve built the coaster himself

 

[Zachary]

Tariffs—effectively a tax paid by the importer of a good—are highly relevant to the discussion of most new attraction projects in the industry today. We can't realistically segregate these discussions from broader discourse about these projects.

That said, I would ask for people to try to limit the usage of more "electorally-charged" commentary where possible outside of the Dumpster Fire thread. Anything particularly inflammatory—particularly if it spirals—will likely be moved to the politics thread from here on out—and I really don't want to interrupt discussion like that.

Even if you think an individual in the government is reprehensible/stupid/morally bankrupt/insane/"a syphilitic lunatic"/whatever else—regardless of whether or not that is true—for the sake of maintaining the usefulness of discussion in non-politics-specific threads, please try to attack the policy rather than the individual wherever possible.

That being said, @GAcoaster was making an ultra-valid point about how the unilateral actions of one man (often via a sudden social media post) are creating a horrendously unstable business environment for parks right now. That is not an issue @GAcoaster could have framed as a "political disagreement on policy" for the sake of this discussion as, unlike with a tarrifs-heavy policy broadly (which two other branches of government and huge swaths of politicians/media figures/voters/etc are enabling), these social-media-based, sudden, often-seemingly-arbitrary up-endings of international trade really are, for all intents and purposes, a personal decision by one man.

So yes, we can't ALWAYS ONLY criticize the policy while ignoring the prime movers, but for the sake of civil and useful discussion, do please try to wherever possible. If you want to go further than that, we have the Dumpster Fire.

 

[telamark]

What boggles my mind is that when the merger was finalized, and the decision to shut Ka permanently was made during the early summer, why would Cedar Fair ever think that this replacement would happen in such a short timespan, or even logical? A Trump victory was all but imminent leading up to November with many major businesses, corporations and world leaders preparing for his return to office. Yet CF seemingly never thought of the tariff implications a year ago, despite Trumps posts and remarks about how major they are before the merger. I get that the merger was messy and on a large scale, but insight and analysis would’ve helped that this was never going to happen to how they hoped, and now with the current state of project 2026, and the entire chain, why would they ever think this was a good idea to begin with?

 

[Bring Back Questor 87]

So, when are we getting a Ka replacement again?

 

[harry580]

move all of the talk of tariffs to dumpster fire thread (unless its relates to a coaster)

anyways, like Zachary says:
"You cannot know wherever or not a coaster layout is full-circuit based on the total construction area"

 

[AmyUD06]

Keep the Trump bashing to the political thread please. There's both pros and cons to tariffs.

Stating facts about how tariffs affect prices and how they are being applied in an unpredictable, spur-of-the-moment fashion, is "Trump Bashing?" Sorry, I thought this was ParkFans, not FoxNews.

 

[SweetBabyJames]

Stating facts about how tariffs affect prices and how they are being applied in an unpredictable, spur-of-the-moment fashion, is "Trump Bashing?" Sorry, I thought this was ParkFans, not FoxNews.

I thought this was ParkFans, not MSNBC

For the record, I don't mind facts being stated about tariffs, not my beef if you read the subsequent post.

 

[GASM]

Just got back from a much needed weeklong vacation, what did I miss—oh.

 

[Nitro230]

What boggles my mind is that when the merger was finalized, and the decision to shut Ka permanently was made during the early summer, why would Cedar Fair ever think that this replacement would happen in such a short timespan, or even logical? A Trump victory was all but imminent leading up to November with many major businesses, corporations and world leaders preparing for his return to office. Yet CF seemingly never thought of the tariff implications a year ago, despite Trumps posts and remarks about how major they are before the merger. I get that the merger was messy and on a large scale, but insight and analysis would’ve helped that this was never going to happen to how they hoped, and now with the current state of project 2026, and the entire chain, why would they ever think this was a good idea to begin with?

You know that’s a great question and I can’t honestly come up with a good answer. If I had been the one in charge I wouldn’t even taken the risk. My assumption is that they just fell in love with the design of the ride and didn’t even consider how tariffs could come into play.