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

[DWNitro]

As someone who has battled with @northdetective in the past, I think they are entitled to their opinion on this coaster. Some of the criticisms I do agree with - the most base level being that it is a shuttle, and from what others have said on here, it doesn’t seem like it’ll have the most capacity friendly option even as a shuttle based on the design Mack chose.

Obviously it’s not my forum to run but I think this is the perfect thread for an array of opinions as this is a controversial coaster based on the variety of factors playing into it - another shuttle, it being vs. not being Ka’s replacement, etc.

For me after seeing what’s happening to some of the other parks and being devastated by SFA’s closure, seeing my home park get a new, unique coaster that will set records alongside a new expanded area in the park does make me happy. Whether or not I’m personally a lover of the ride or I think it’s meh, that is yet to be seen until I actually ride it. But I think it will be pretty popular.

 

[warfelg]

I think end of the day, no matter how you feel, it breaks down like this:
SFGAdv is replacing a 1 of a kind (ok 2) coaster with 2 major selling points (launch and height) with a 1 of a kind coaster with 2 major selling points (Inverted launch and spinning).

I get whats lost with Ka, but this is a very fair tradeoff IMO.

 

[northdetective]

I think end of the day, no matter how you feel, it breaks down like this:
SFGAdv is replacing a 1 of a kind (ok 2) coaster with 2 major selling points (launch and height) with a 1 of a kind coaster with 2 major selling points (Inverted launch and spinning).

I get whats lost with Ka, but this is a very fair tradeoff IMO.

I've said before my position on the death of Kingda Ka is that it was an act of iconoclasm, but also that records and world's firsts didn't, and don't, make a good experience. Quantifying tradeoffs like this just doesn't work, because "selling points" (gimmicks) don't always translate into good experiences, and definitely not in a way where they can be compared 1:1. Do I think Kingda Ka being the world/hemisphere's tallest and fastest roller coaster resulted in the best possible experience? No. Do I think something that absolutely superlative naturally has more appeal as a "record" holder than a coaster which is the "most" in a number of subcategories, and that the supremacy of those records contributed to the legendary status of Kingda Ka? Yes. I'm not saying they should've outdone Kingda Ka. I've always said if they weren't planning to do that, they should've done something completely different (and likely cheaper) that did not at all mirror the concept of the roller coaster they just destroyed, because the spire will always lose that comparison numerically, and presumably those stats are gonna be a huge part of marketing it

 

[Zachary]

Food for thought: Opinions of this coaster on this forum are overwhelmingly positive. On average, I'd say the consensus opinion here is far more positive than the consensus opinion regarding this ride elsewhere. (For the record, I think that is a good, reasonable thing as I believe consensus opinion elsewhere has been pretty unhinged.) Whenever there is broad consensus opinion on any matter though, people will appear who disagree and who will push back—whether authentically or inauthentically, it is a natural reaction. The solution cannot be to just ban those dissenting opinions. I know there are people who believe this discussion would be more enjoyable without a consistently dissenting voice, but as someone who has been at this for a long, long time now, I assure you it would not be. Circlejerking echo chambers suck for everyone involved.

Though I have a lot of points of disagreement with @northdetective regarding this project, his destain for this coaster is far better verbalized, far more coherent, and far more consistent than most any I've seen elsewhere. In other words, for that naturally occuring counterbalancing role to be filled by @northdetective right now is, in my opinion, a relatively good outcome all things considered. I hope one day when @northdetective actually rides Phantom Spire, he's still willing and able to give it a fair shake and maybe at that point more common ground can be identified. Until then though, I believe @northdetective is representing a valid (and frankly, widely-held elsewhere) perspective of extreme skepticism regarding Great Adventure's current path and future outlook. I think having that viewpoint represented by someone like @northdetective (vs someone constantly screaming about how Ka was supposedly the greatest coaster ever constructed and crying about how their entire childhood—read: the 3 years prior to their current Instagram comment during which time they were actually tall enough to ride Ka—has been destroyed by Six Flags) is healthy.

Lastly—and this is a place where I often see @northdetective and I in agreement—please can we stop centering the meta narrative here? Let @northdetective state his opinions from time to time and move on. There's no reason to center every disagreement the consensus opinion has with him for a full page of discussion (unless, I suppose, people have money on that 300 page thread benchmark that was discussed earlier). If everyone just expresses their own opinions, @northdetective is VASTLY outnumbered. Anyone reading this thread knows where the community consensus is. That should be enough 90% of the time.

Now can we go back to talking about something productive until we get new photos of this site this weekend? Where did we leave off on that Wawa conversation? Can we pick that back up?

 

[GASM]

(vs someone constantly screaming about how Ka was supposedly the greatest coaster ever and crying about how their entire Ka-riding childhood—read: the 3 years prior to their current Instagram comment—has been destroyed by Six Flags)

This is the part that gets me and why I enjoy my conversations about the ride here far more than anywhere else online. I’d put money on having rode Ka a LOT more than the ones acting like this on Reddit, Instagram, and YouTube comments (not to mention there’s no coaster I’ve been on more), and yet it sits at #26 for me. It was a great ride, but at the end of the day it was a one trick pony even if that trick was pretty damn cool.

It’ll definitely be a strange feeling pulling up to the park next year and, for the first time for me, not seeing Ka from Monmouth Rd, but life goes on and I’m very excited for the future of the park.

 

[RDL]

I know this is slightly off-topic, but I'm curious to see the future of this ride model. It was in other parks ride surveys as well. I can't picture it at a park like Cedar Point or Kings Island, but it does seem like a perfect fit to replace Superman at Magic Mountain.

It’d be somewhat of a PR nightmare if they did that seeing how the public reacted to the Ka closure. Replacing a ride like Ka with something that’ll be cloned elsewhere makes the ride seem less authentic, and while that might not mean much to the average person, people living in this region would certainly pay attention to it

iirc the only other survey the ride was ever featured in was for Kings Island, and that version only went up to about 200ft or so

 

[Clear]

One thing I know for certain

Agree or disagree, a lot of what @northdetective says is at one point or another something we’ve all internally thought. He’s just putting the words to paper so to speak. And to the man’s credit, he’s consistent. I think it’s respectable

 

[Nitro230]

It’d be somewhat of a PR nightmare if they did that seeing how the public reacted to the Ka closure. Replacing a ride like Ka with something that’ll be cloned elsewhere makes the ride seem less authentic, and while that might not mean much to the average person, people living in this region would certainly pay attention to it

iirc the only other survey the ride was ever featured in was for Kings Island, and that version only went up to about 200ft or so

Especially after the initial excuse for building this instead of giving Ka the TT2 treatment was "we want all of our parks to have unique ride experiences" it would feel like a complete slap to the face. I can't imagine there being another ride like this ever, for one reason being there's no way this thing was cheap, and the other being how much corporate officials have said Great Adventure is a top priority. I know Coaster Studios is a very controversial channel (I personally like their vids but I know plenty of people who don't) but you can't deny the fact that they have connections. They've gone on record quite a few times saying that when they talk to those at other Six Flags parks, Great Adventure is a property that is continuously brought up when it comes to the future's they are most excited for. I'm willing to believe that this is true, and if that is true there should be no scenario where another ride like this gets built.

 

[the_pantsmith]

Rename this the northdetective thread and put the Project Purple thread somewhere he can’t find so I no longer have to come here to sift through nonsense meta discussion of a user I’ve ignored (and you are all capable of ignoring too if you’d like)

 

[telamark]

I don't care about northdetectives opinions that get everyone so riled up. Can we bother focusing on the coaster only? Or discussions surrounding it as intended? This happens like every month and every time a new person takes the bait.

 

[ConolyCoasterDesigns]

Just throwing my 2 cents in, i held the same opinion as @northdetective until i actually started seeing the scale of this coaster. Will it be a #1 for me? No, but it will definitely be a fun ride. Am I happy to see back to back shuttle coasters? No, but my home park is Dorney and we had 2 right next to each other for the longest time.

My hope is that this increases attendance and brings future, large investments into the park. If this coaster does that, then it has done its job imo.

 

[Mushroom]

I've said before my position on the death of Kingda Ka is that it was an act of iconoclasm, but also that records and world's firsts didn't, and don't, make a good experience.

Quoting this post not to further the pile-on- @northdetective train, but because I think other enthusiasts might share this same view — that removing Kingda Ka was an act of iconoclasm, and Project Purple’s legacy will forever be tied to it.

With that, I disagree. In short, I believe calling Ka’s death “iconoclastic” is dramatic. To liken Ka to an important cultural institution vastly overstates its significance, in my opinion. It was a roller coaster. Its “achievements” are notable only to people who care a lot about roller coasters; the fact that it broke some records has no meaning beyond enthusiast circles. And it only existed for about 20 years, hardly making it a deep-rooted part of any place’s history. It, like most roller coasters, was a hunk of metal.

This all might come down to a more fundamental disagreement I have with @northdetective: their contention that roller coasters are forms of art. I think this would be a great discussion to have elsewhere, because defining “art” is a notoriously difficult and enduring philosophical question. I don’t believe roller coasters are inherently art. They’re impressive feats of engineering, to be sure, but they don’t necessarily do one thing that I view as a defining trait of art: they don’t evoke emotion through the expression of an idea. Most coasters are a carefully engineered curation of elements strung together to elicit sensations of fear, joy, etc. — but they don’t accomplish that by expressing ideas, and those feelings of fear and joy are rooted in primal instincts, not deeper emotions. I love roller coasters, but I would liken them to a well-produced slasher film, or a funny comedy movie that relies on cheap laughs — the feelings they elicit are based on how they play with our human wiring, not by challenging our emotions.

To be clear, I think theme parks and theme park attractions, including coasters, can be art. Spaceship Earth is art. Droomvlucht at Efteling is art. Cheetah Hunt’s iconic tower filled with abstract designs, I think, is art. But they are particular expressions designed to draw particular emotions from us. Many coasters merely elicit amusement, and amusement is not emotion.

I realize I’m getting way too deep for this thread, and I don’t claim to be an arbiter of what’s art and what isn’t. But I do think treating Kingda Ka as more sacred than it was needlessly sours one’s view of Project Purple, and I suspect that sentiment has partially shaped the dialogue in this thread.

 

[sharpr1]

Quoting this post not to further the pile-on- @northdetective train, but because I think other enthusiasts might share this same view — that removing Kingda Ka was an act of iconoclasm, and Project Purple’s legacy will forever be tied to it.

To that, I disagree. In short, I believe calling Ka’s death “iconoclastic” is dramatic. To liken Ka to an important cultural institution vastly overstates its significance, in my opinion. It was a roller coaster. Its “achievements” are notable only to people who care a lot about roller coasters; the fact that it broke some records has no meaning beyond enthusiast circles. And it only existed for about 20 years, hardly making it a deep-rooted part of any place’s history. It, like most roller coasters, was a hunk of metal.

This all might come down to a more fundamental disagreement I have with @northdetective: their contention that roller coasters are forms of art. I think this would be a great discussion to have elsewhere, because defining “art” is a notoriously difficult and enduring philosophical question. I don’t believe roller coasters are inherently art. They’re impressive feats of engineering, to be sure, but they don’t necessarily do one thing that I view as a defining trait of art: they don’t evoke emotion through the expression of an idea. Most coasters are a carefully engineered curation of elements strung together to elicit sensations of fear, joy, etc. — but they don’t accomplish that by expressing ideas, and those feelings of fear and joy are rooted in primal instincts, not deeper emotions. I love roller coasters, but I would liken them to a well-produced slasher film, or a funny comedy movie that relies on cheap laughs — the feelings they elicit are based on how they play with our human wiring, not by challenging our emotions.

To be clear, I think theme parks and theme park attractions, including coasters, can be art. Spaceship Earth is art. Droomvlucht at Efteling is art. Cheetah Hunt’s iconic tower filled with abstract designs, I think, is art. But they are particular expressions designed to draw our particular emotions. But many coasters merely elicit amusement, and amusement is not emotion.

I realize I’m getting way too deep for this thread, and I don’t claim to be an arbiter of what’s art and what isn’t. But I do think treating Kingda Ka as more sacred than it was needlessly sours one’s view of Project Purple, and I suspect that sentiment has partially shaped the dialogue in this thread.

This is basically my view of Ka, and rides in general. Kingda Ka was memorable and it was a bragging right GAdv had over other parks. It was also arguably the symbol of an era when the park was at its peak, 20 years ago. But it was a gimmick and flawed. The manufacturer was trying something new and unprecedented. It was an experiment. And it did work, to a degree. But it wasn't anywhere among my top coasters because of its flaws, though I love that it was at "my" park and it was "my" flawed landmark, dammit! I can't count how many hours I spent standing in line only for it to go down before I got to the front of the line. But like Lightnin' Loops or other groundbreaking coasters, it had its day and there are other uses for the space, literally and figuratively, in the park lineup. It deserved a classier sendoff, but I'm not that upset it's gone. I don't think any thoosie would've said "no," even back in the day, if you were offered another hyper or giga full-circuit coaster but we have to tear down Ka to make room for it.

"Phantom Spire" is another coaster in the same vein. It's unprecedented from Mack, with gimmicky features. It should become a landmark, even if it has flaws that'll drive some crazy. Maybe it'll last, maybe it'll run into problems within a few years and endure with increasing annoyance at its shortcomings for 10-15 years before it gets knocked down for the next big thing at the park in 2044. Who knows? I'm interested in what it is, even though I'm disappointed in what it could've been with just a few little tweaks. It's not a clone, yet. Maybe other Phantom Spire-style Mack rides will pop up at other Six Flags parks in the coming years. For now, it's unique and only at Great Adventure. My park still has bragging rights for another new kind of huge ride. I'm glad I can say that again after almost 20 years. That's a good sign for the park's future, even if it doesn't answer all our long-term concerns by any means. Small steps.

 

[Nitro230]

Quoting this post not to further the pile-on- @northdetective train, but because I think other enthusiasts might share this same view — that removing Kingda Ka was an act of iconoclasm, and Project Purple’s legacy will forever be tied to it.

So I do think that term may be a bit dramatic.....but there's no denying that the ride was a New Jersey landmark. And from that perspective....I don't think I'll ever get over its removal. I along with so many people grew up with the ride and it became a right of passage as a kid growing up to ride "the king of all roller coasters". I've accepted the fact that its gone and the new circumstances were not the same as when Ka was built....however when people go on and say "the park is better off without that ride eating up the maintenance budget" I personally have to disagree just because I think having Ka in the lineup was worth the cost.

 

[GASM]

Given the choice between a well maintained park with actual effort put into it and Kingda Ka, I’m taking the first option every time. I loved Ka, but look where we are right now.

We’re getting the park’s first new area in 9 years, the park’s first flat package in 14 years, and the park’s first truly unique coaster in 20 years. Saw Mill Log Flume is getting what appears to be an actual, not horrifically botched refurbishment (still baffled by the previous one). Boardwalk is getting a near complete overhaul, several restaurants have been fully revamped, and Main Street has gotten a ton of love. El Toro is FINALLY being retracked, Rolling Thunder was repainted and no longer looks like an abandoned overgrown pile of shit, and we’re about to go 3 years straight with new coasters in a shitty economy, even if one was planned for 2024 and was meant for another park originally, and one was scooped up from a park that closed.

All things considered, the park is in the best shape it’s been in since El Toro opened. Not saying this couldn’t have happened in an ideal world where Ka was still around, but this is reality.

 

[NYCityBoy]

I agree 100%. I'm happy with the direction of the park. I think if the park added two more unique roller coasters after "Project Purple" the status of the park would be back on par with the other great parks across the country. I'd like to see a Vekoma tilt roller coaster and an RMC hybrid like Cedar Point's Steel Vengeance. The park could really hit a home run by naming one of the next coasters after The Great American Scream Machine.

 

[GASM]

A tilt with the GASM name is my absolute biggest dream for a new coaster at the park right now. It’s too great of a name for there to only be one coaster in the chain using it, even if the one using it is my favorite PTC.

I just might be the tiniest bit biased towards that name, though.

 

[northdetective]

Quoting this post not to further the pile-on- @northdetective train, but because I think other enthusiasts might share this same view — that removing Kingda Ka was an act of iconoclasm, and Project Purple’s legacy will forever be tied to it.

With that, I disagree. In short, I believe calling Ka’s death “iconoclastic” is dramatic. To liken Ka to an important cultural institution vastly overstates its significance, in my opinion. It was a roller coaster. Its “achievements” are notable only to people who care a lot about roller coasters; the fact that it broke some records has no meaning beyond enthusiast circles. And it only existed for about 20 years, hardly making it a deep-rooted part of any place’s history. It, like most roller coasters, was a hunk of metal.

This all might come down to a more fundamental disagreement I have with @northdetective: their contention that roller coasters are forms of art. I think this would be a great discussion to have elsewhere, because defining “art” is a notoriously difficult and enduring philosophical question. I don’t believe roller coasters are inherently art. They’re impressive feats of engineering, to be sure, but they don’t necessarily do one thing that I view as a defining trait of art: they don’t evoke emotion through the expression of an idea. Most coasters are a carefully engineered curation of elements strung together to elicit sensations of fear, joy, etc. — but they don’t accomplish that by expressing ideas, and those feelings of fear and joy are rooted in primal instincts, not deeper emotions. I love roller coasters, but I would liken them to a well-produced slasher film, or a funny comedy movie that relies on cheap laughs — the feelings they elicit are based on how they play with our human wiring, not by challenging our emotions.

To be clear, I think theme parks and theme park attractions, including coasters, can be art. Spaceship Earth is art. Droomvlucht at Efteling is art. Cheetah Hunt’s iconic tower filled with abstract designs, I think, is art. But they are particular expressions designed to draw particular emotions from us. Many coasters merely elicit amusement, and amusement is not emotion.

I realize I’m getting way too deep for this thread, and I don’t claim to be an arbiter of what’s art and what isn’t. But I do think treating Kingda Ka as more sacred than it was needlessly sours one’s view of Project Purple, and I suspect that sentiment has partially shaped the dialogue in this thread.

I have long referred to roller coasters as "infrastructures of fun" and much of my academic work focuses on the intersection of infrastructures and art, so I'm fairly unyielding to that suggestion. There is a loooooooong tradition of glorifying infrastructures and other unsung systems in both artistic depictions and writings, and there are many systems more mundane than roller coasters.

My issue with the argument a given roller coaster layout is not art is the implicit division/snobbery that must follow. It cannot be some are and some aren't, in my opinion. As much as many people hate the Garden State Parkway, it was designed with sweeping curves and large medians to keep drivers awake and engaged with a park-like atmosphere. In my opinion, the resulting product has a uniform character and carefully-enough planned form to be considered a work of art. You might not agree, but that's my assessment. Contrast this with the NJ Turnpike, an extremely straight road with few exits that exists to facilitate thru truck traffic essentially. It lacks all character and is boring to drive. Though my knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss it as an uncreative means to an end, I don't think one can say it's any less of a work of art than the Parkway. The Turnpike inspires feelings all its own. Maybe it has fewer exits and is less form-focused in a way that makes detours frustrating and uninteresting. Maybe you hate New Jersey and the Turnpike makes your journey through it quicker and less painful. Maybe you're Tony Smith and it makes you question the limits of art itself. But it's an intentionally designed system that makes you feel something. It grows into a cultural touchstone as a shared experience, whether that's the intent or not. I see that as artistic.

I also think any exclusive definition of art at a large scale has to differentiate between the worker/builder and the designer/artist, which is a distinction that almost always is just classist and ego-based. See: Donald Judd hiring fabricators for his minimalist sculpture work. I've heard much debate on whether he's entitled to claim himself as the artist of what are publicly called his own sculptures.

Many beautifully designed, widely-adopted consumer products are considered artistic (See: Red Dot Design Museum). By this line of thinking, my roller coaster museum would almost certainly have a boomerang because of its ubiquity and utility. That doesn't mean I think it's the most gorgeous work of art in the world, but I think it's a shared experience in so many people's lives that it'd be worth preserving once the rest of them are gone.

Or like when u watch an old lady at the museum village churn butter. That's performance art, but it's very mundane.

Thank u for ur intrigue everybody ! Book coming soon

 

[Nitro230]

I have long referred to roller coasters as "infrastructures of fun" and much of my academic work focuses on the intersection of infrastructures and art, so I'm fairly unyielding to that suggestion. There is a loooooooong tradition of glorifying infrastructures and other unsung systems in both artistic depictions and writings, and there are many systems more mundane than roller coasters.

My issue with the argument a given roller coaster layout is not art is the implicit division/snobbery that must follow. It cannot be some are and some aren't, in my opinion. As much as many people hate the Garden State Parkway, it was designed with sweeping curves and large medians to keep drivers awake and engaged with a park-like atmosphere. In my opinion, the resulting product has a uniform character and carefully-enough planned form to be considered a work of art. You might not agree, but that's my assessment. Contrast this with the NJ Turnpike, an extremely straight road with few exits that exists to facilitate thru truck traffic essentially. It lacks all character and is boring to drive. Though my knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss it as an uncreative means to an end, I don't think one can say it's any less of a work of art than the Parkway. The Turnpike inspires feelings all its own. Maybe it has fewer exits and is less form-focused in a way that makes detours frustrating and uninteresting. Maybe you hate New Jersey and the Turnpike makes your journey through it quicker and less painful. Maybe you're Tony Smith and it makes you question the limits of art itself. But it's an intentionally designed system that makes you feel something. It grows into a cultural touchstone as a shared experience, whether that's the intent or not. I see that as artistic.

I also think any exclusive definition of art at a large scale has to differentiate between the worker/builder and the designer/artist, which is a distinction that almost always is just classist and ego-based. See: Donald Judd hiring fabricators for his minimalist sculpture work. I've heard much debate on whether he's entitled to claim himself as the artist of what are publicly called his own sculptures.

Many beautifully designed, widely-adopted consumer products are considered artistic (See: Red Dot Design Museum). By this line of thinking, my roller coaster museum would almost certainly have a boomerang because of its ubiquity and utility. That doesn't mean I think it's the most gorgeous work of art in the world, but I think it's a shared experience in so many people's lives that it'd be worth preserving once the rest of them are gone.

Or like when u watch an old lady at the museum village churn butter. That's performance art, but it's very mundane.

Thank u for ur intrigue everybody ! Book coming soon

It's an interesting discussion, the whole "are roller coasters art?" argument. I honestly don't 100% know where I stand on that as a whole.....but there's no doubt that Kingda Ka was an engineering masterpiece. That launch system alone was something to behold, tbh I still can't believe they built a ride of that scale in 2005. I think in that respect there's no way to really capture that essence in the modern day industry....not because you can't build that big but because the hydraulic launch is dead and that played a major role in how the ride just....felt. The sounds of the brake fins lowering was legitimately terrifying the first time I rode it. Sure we still have the air launch system but do you really trust S&S to build a Ka scaled coaster? No shade at S&S, I think they're an underrated manufacturer (Steel Curtain sits at 5th in my rankings) but reliability....not their strong suit.

 

[Clear]

Does the boardwalk provide a good view of the launch and the stall? If so, that whole area is going to have some seriously immaculate vibes…