A few lawsuits, a lot of firings, and a disaster of PR all rolled into one neat little bundle.
Volcano: The Blast Coaster
- Thread starter I305Evan
- Start date
A few lawsuits, a lot of firings, and a disaster of PR all rolled into one neat little bundle.
I've caught flack for saying this in the past, but there's OEM's out there that really don't like working with Legacy CF people because of their attitudes to ride maintenance.
It took almost a decade for Larry Giles at BGW to decide that it was OK to explain Big Bad Wolf's demise and that was for perfectly understandable reasons if the reasons I have heard whispered over the years are true then I doubt we will ever see them publicly acknowledged but two high profile failures at the two flagship parks parks are probably good indicators.
Last edited:
Some of the whispers of what I've heard on TTD are bad.
Not like "oh that's not a good choice" bad but borderline they are lucky more people weren't seriously hurt and the lawsuits could have bankrupted them bad.
This can't go to the grave with everyone. At some point it's ok to acknowledge what has happened without any repercussion.
It hasn't the leaks and rumors exist in the community but it's extremely unlikely that you will ever see it publicly verified by anyone which probably his a big hint to what the magnitude of the issue was. There is also the it was a coaster and no one got hurt element at some point it just because a interesting little side note and people move on and stop wondering why it's gone.
I mean it's not like the one of the company's flagship parks was allowing people to ride a coaster with a completely snapped support until a visitor got it on video and raised a fuss or anything.
I said it before I say it again guys have warm thoughts that the maintenance procedures that brought us El Toro issue 1 through what 4? and Furry and Dragster have now joined forces.
My guess, based on absolutely nothing at all, is that difficult to reach supports started cracking/breaking.
It's likely worse than that.
If I had to guess they replaced launch mechanics with something Intamin didn't approve of and it launched with more force and speed than the track was designed to handle. So stress cracks form in the supports and track on the launch inversion making the ride unsafe.
They did not, in fact Intamin was supposed to do an overhaul of the launch and ride systems the following winter.
I'm guessing then that it must have had something to do with the ride structure becoming damaged beyond repair or unstable due to the park's lack of attention. Something along those lines, anyway.
La vie est drôle.
At some point, maybe. Right now, though, people have their reasons to not want to say much about it.
Kings Dominion already paid for this before the incident for those who aren't aware. As far as I'm aware Kings Dominion did not get that money back.
To be fair, those aren't really whispers. Though the official report didn't find that Cedar Fair broke any laws, from my reading the report, one party's actions pretty clearly led to the TTD incident in my opinion. Cedar Fair settled the lawsuit with the victim/her family without a final ruling, but, at least in my opinion, Cedar Fair's maintenance policies led to the ultimate outcome.
Going a little deeper...
If an issue the TTD report found was the result of a broader Cedar Fair maintenance policy and not just an isolated incident, who would really be surprised if a similar core issue as the one that resulted in the TTD accident could be found elsewhere in the chain too? Imagine, hypothetically, how much more damning it would all be if such a policy had, prior to the TTD incident, already been employed on a similar attraction, directly led to another catastrophic, potentially-guest-endangering, ultimately-ride-dooming issue, and the potential issue(s) caused by this theoretical policy—despite being obviously revealed through this hypothetical, prior instance—were never corrected elsewhere. That would be a super, super bad development for Cedar Fair in my estimation. Now imagine for a moment that such information was, theoretically, known within portions of said corporation. One can imagine how desperate said corporation would likely be to keep that story quiet. Unfortunately for Cedar Fair, when you lay off large numbers of people, you tend to spoil a lot of goodwill...
But hey, that's just a theory—a coaster theory—aaannnddd... CUT!
Last edited:
From what I have pieced together from a few discussions with different people it seems like there was a trend, which Im unsure if it’s continuing to the present day but I think or at least hope they learned some type of lesson by now, but it’s that cedar fair went for cheaper replacement parts rather than the official ones on the trains which caused the track itself to warp somewhat and caused undue and increasing stress to the structure. From what I understand too it’s not an isolated incident as vortex at KI got utterly fucked by that and judging from the insane amount of work on the TT2 launch track and rumors of it needing to be straightened out I think it suffered a similar fate.
I would like to add a disclaimer this is all hearsay and pieced together but it adds up in my opinion
I would like to add a disclaimer this is all hearsay and pieced together but it adds up in my opinion
Yup. I get what you are putting down there. I think you and I have heard similar rumblings from different sources.
Given the parks I heard it from…yes a theoretical company wide issue of potential policy teems to be a possible issue.
I like the way my person put it: Dig into the similarity of long term issue rides at Legacy CF parks — the pattern makes the issue obvious.
Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me if it were the case. I could totally see KD saying, "This is what it'll cost to do this maintenance". Corporate counters, saying "This is your maintenance budget, figure it out." Which would make leadership at KD look for cheaper solutions from third-parties, who don't have all the schematics and calculations that Intamin does, so they engineer a part that doesn't transfer load properly or puts additional stress on the surrounding parts leading to other part failures.
After all this, they contact Intamin to do a ride refresh/drive rebuild. Once Intamin comes in to do a pre-bid assessment, they notice the alterations and say "This is not what you told us was happening, it will now cost X more than our original quote, as we will need to manufacture replacements for your third-party replacements and the parts around it. If the ride continues to operate like this, it could lead to a catastrophic failure and possibly deaths."
Cedar Fair and KD balk at the new price, after all, they could probably buy a new ride at this new price point.
But, I mean, this is all a hypothetical musing of what I could imagine happening.
I also wonder what the effects on the actual mountain were after 20 years of housing a roller coaster it wasn't designed for. How far gone was that?
After all this, they contact Intamin to do a ride refresh/drive rebuild. Once Intamin comes in to do a pre-bid assessment, they notice the alterations and say "This is not what you told us was happening, it will now cost X more than our original quote, as we will need to manufacture replacements for your third-party replacements and the parts around it. If the ride continues to operate like this, it could lead to a catastrophic failure and possibly deaths."
Cedar Fair and KD balk at the new price, after all, they could probably buy a new ride at this new price point.
But, I mean, this is all a hypothetical musing of what I could imagine happening.
I also wonder what the effects on the actual mountain were after 20 years of housing a roller coaster it wasn't designed for. How far gone was that?
Last edited:
From what I understand the mountain was 100% fine but to demolish the ride and not the mountain was too expensive because of how intertwined they were. If I remember correctly I believe it was even a few years into getting a refurb.
Also, I heard that Intamin basically looked at it and instead of giving them a counter offer that would’ve cost way more, they basically just said no because of the state it was in, and no other company made an offer they liked so it got demolished. It does make me wonder if that’s why cedar fair went with zamperla on TT2, though that may still just be a price thing
Intamin never actually looked at it from what I understand. The way KD was handling the situation Intamin retaliated by cancelling all contracts with the park until corporate intervened.