So, a couple of recent threads discussed how certain coaster records haven't been broken in a long while. This got me thinking... some of those records haven't only been not broken in a while, they haven't even been challenged. Since the record was last broken, nothing even resembling the record-breaker has been built. Or even where a record was not at stake, suddenly the ride type was all but abandoned despite initial success.
This thread discusses coaster types and flat rides that enjoyed popularity, seemed to be everywhere for a while, and then suddenly parks stopped buying them for some reason or another. Let's kick this off:
Large, traditional wooden coasters.
For a while, woodies got bigger and bigger seemingly every year. In the early 1990s and early 2000s, parks and manufacturers scrambled to create the biggest, meanest wooden coasters out there. Texas Giant, Mean Streak, Rattler, Colossos, Son of Beast, El Toro... all huge, high-intensity coasters. Intamin seemed to have perfected the formula with their Plug'n'Play concept, creating smash hit after smash hit with Balder, El Toro and T-Express as the most praised ones.
And then...
...parks stopped buying these woodies alltogether. After T-Express was built in 2008, no woodie has been built taller than 40 meters. RMC managed to revitalize the concept (awesomely, I might add) by adding extreme elements and inversions to a previously conservative ride type, but why was the giant, non-inverting, all-wood coaster suddenly extinct?
The legacy:
Three letters: RMC. The addition of steel tracks made a lot more thrilling maneuvers possible, as well as steep drops and turns banked way more than what appears sensible. Suddenly, parks wanted tall woodies again. The traditional wooden coaster role, though, is mostly relegated to coasters smaller than 40 metres. That being said, with Lightning Rod, we might be ushering in a new era of Wicked Woodies Without Wsteel.
B&M Inverts.
Batman The Ride opened that ball in 1992, two more Inverts were made the following year, four in 1994, two in 1995, two in '96, four more in '97, and from there on, an average of just below two per year until 2004.
And then...
...there were two in '06, one in '07, one was relocated in '08, another relocated in 2010, one new one was built in 2012 and another in 2014. From being multiple-per-year rides, they were suddenly a "once-every-three-years-or-so" ride. The tallest and fastest of them was built in 1997, and while the runner-up is the 2014 one, the market for large Inverts is all but gone. What happened? B&M Inverts are high-quality rides enjoyed by enthusiasts and the public alike, the Chinese coaster market has boomed in recent years, but the once-ubiquitous coaster type is now an outright rarity.
The legacy:
Inverts are very popular in China. Multiple new ones open every year. But they are mostly built by Chinese manufacturers, with heavy influence from old Vekoma designs. That being said, Vekoma itself has also had success with their line of family inverts, and the ol' SLC workhorse isn't dead either. There's still a market for inverts, but B&M might be priced a little too high to have the same degree of success as they used to have.
Intamin Impulse coasters.
The coaster that breaks every scenario in RCT3 (seriously, it costs nothing, fits anywhere, has high capacity and peeps are willing to pay lots to ride it) was sort-of popular around the turn of the millennium. The first one opened in 1998, then there were six installments between 2000 and 2003. Then one in 2008, which was a relocation of the one built in 2003.
And then...
...Silence. The last new invert to open was, again, in 2008. It was initially built in 2003. But another is due to open next year, in China. Inverted Impulse coasters are very high-profile rides with rolling launches, great heights, and often disorienting twists, and make a very recognisable appearance in a park's skyline. But their initial success was not followed up. And don't even get me started on the Intamin "regular" inverts. To date, Volcano: The Blast Coaster remains the only launched full-circuit invert in the world, if I'm not mistaken.
The legacy:
The idea of launching things back and forth has endured, in Premier's Sky Rockets, for instance. And Intamin has reused the idea too, with 2016's Soaring With Dragon, which launches the train thrice before embarking on a full-circuit layout. SFMM's Full Throttle by Premier does something similar. And of course, who can forget Pulsar at Walibi Belgium, which is practically a non-inverting, non-twisting Impulse water coaster.
Do you have any other examples? Do you know why these ride types - or others - died so suddenly? Were they replaced by something better, or did they just turn out to be a bad idea? Were they too expensive, was maintenance a nightmare, the capacity too poor or did they take up too much room?
I suppose we could also discuss one-off ideas that never took off (like Walibi Belgium's Vertigo, or Skara Sommarland's Tranan), but I primarily intended for this thread to discuss ride types that had an initial degree of success, and then suddenly wasn't successful any more. What do you think?
This thread discusses coaster types and flat rides that enjoyed popularity, seemed to be everywhere for a while, and then suddenly parks stopped buying them for some reason or another. Let's kick this off:
Large, traditional wooden coasters.
For a while, woodies got bigger and bigger seemingly every year. In the early 1990s and early 2000s, parks and manufacturers scrambled to create the biggest, meanest wooden coasters out there. Texas Giant, Mean Streak, Rattler, Colossos, Son of Beast, El Toro... all huge, high-intensity coasters. Intamin seemed to have perfected the formula with their Plug'n'Play concept, creating smash hit after smash hit with Balder, El Toro and T-Express as the most praised ones.
And then...
...parks stopped buying these woodies alltogether. After T-Express was built in 2008, no woodie has been built taller than 40 meters. RMC managed to revitalize the concept (awesomely, I might add) by adding extreme elements and inversions to a previously conservative ride type, but why was the giant, non-inverting, all-wood coaster suddenly extinct?
The legacy:
Three letters: RMC. The addition of steel tracks made a lot more thrilling maneuvers possible, as well as steep drops and turns banked way more than what appears sensible. Suddenly, parks wanted tall woodies again. The traditional wooden coaster role, though, is mostly relegated to coasters smaller than 40 metres. That being said, with Lightning Rod, we might be ushering in a new era of Wicked Woodies Without Wsteel.
B&M Inverts.
Batman The Ride opened that ball in 1992, two more Inverts were made the following year, four in 1994, two in 1995, two in '96, four more in '97, and from there on, an average of just below two per year until 2004.
And then...
...there were two in '06, one in '07, one was relocated in '08, another relocated in 2010, one new one was built in 2012 and another in 2014. From being multiple-per-year rides, they were suddenly a "once-every-three-years-or-so" ride. The tallest and fastest of them was built in 1997, and while the runner-up is the 2014 one, the market for large Inverts is all but gone. What happened? B&M Inverts are high-quality rides enjoyed by enthusiasts and the public alike, the Chinese coaster market has boomed in recent years, but the once-ubiquitous coaster type is now an outright rarity.
The legacy:
Inverts are very popular in China. Multiple new ones open every year. But they are mostly built by Chinese manufacturers, with heavy influence from old Vekoma designs. That being said, Vekoma itself has also had success with their line of family inverts, and the ol' SLC workhorse isn't dead either. There's still a market for inverts, but B&M might be priced a little too high to have the same degree of success as they used to have.
Intamin Impulse coasters.
The coaster that breaks every scenario in RCT3 (seriously, it costs nothing, fits anywhere, has high capacity and peeps are willing to pay lots to ride it) was sort-of popular around the turn of the millennium. The first one opened in 1998, then there were six installments between 2000 and 2003. Then one in 2008, which was a relocation of the one built in 2003.
And then...
...Silence. The last new invert to open was, again, in 2008. It was initially built in 2003. But another is due to open next year, in China. Inverted Impulse coasters are very high-profile rides with rolling launches, great heights, and often disorienting twists, and make a very recognisable appearance in a park's skyline. But their initial success was not followed up. And don't even get me started on the Intamin "regular" inverts. To date, Volcano: The Blast Coaster remains the only launched full-circuit invert in the world, if I'm not mistaken.
The legacy:
The idea of launching things back and forth has endured, in Premier's Sky Rockets, for instance. And Intamin has reused the idea too, with 2016's Soaring With Dragon, which launches the train thrice before embarking on a full-circuit layout. SFMM's Full Throttle by Premier does something similar. And of course, who can forget Pulsar at Walibi Belgium, which is practically a non-inverting, non-twisting Impulse water coaster.
Do you have any other examples? Do you know why these ride types - or others - died so suddenly? Were they replaced by something better, or did they just turn out to be a bad idea? Were they too expensive, was maintenance a nightmare, the capacity too poor or did they take up too much room?
I suppose we could also discuss one-off ideas that never took off (like Walibi Belgium's Vertigo, or Skara Sommarland's Tranan), but I primarily intended for this thread to discuss ride types that had an initial degree of success, and then suddenly wasn't successful any more. What do you think?
