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Cedar Point | Top Thrill 2 | Triple Launch Renovation | 2024

Wazzupnerds said:
Makes me question what Cedar Point's maintenance team is doing.
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This is purely conjecture and I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect a lot of these parks are cutting corners to compensate for understaffing. It's what I thought when the El Toro incident happened (another likely maintenance issue) and the shoe definitely fits for this one.

If that's the case, I'm beyond disappointed.
 
solarfall said:
This is purely conjecture and I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect a lot of these parks are cutting corners to compensate for understaffing. It's what I thought when the El Toro incident happened (another likely maintenance issue) and the shoe definitely fits for this one.

If that's the case, I'm beyond disappointed.
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I think the past few months have made maintenance teams look like garbage. You can blame the parks, covid, whatever, but the standard needs to be upped.
 
Safety is the best thing to cut corners on... :oops:

But in the end it's quite likely that the maintenance crew got better job offers while parks were closed than security or ride ops that don't need any higher qualification. So it's quite possible that there's the biggest lack of skilled workers. You just shouldn't cut any corners in this regard. So let's just hope that either they notice that and keep rides that they keep rides closed if they can't do proper maintenance and daily checks - as bad as closed rides sound for enthusiasts. Otherwise it's not just bad for injured persons and the rides but for the whole industry. As rollercoasters might not only be considered unsafe by scaremongering YouTubers but by the gp if multiple accidents happen.

On the other hand this could've just been bad material. Some invisible cracks that are just unnoticable during normal maintenance. Most likely we get to know as the investigation goes on.
 
@UP87 as I mentioned above, some of the bolts for the metal part were still attached to the train, suggesting to me that a material fractured. The state investigated the ride in May and found no issues. I’m not sure a block break fin (or whatever it is called) is a part that usually would get replaced…?

Whatever the cause, it is obviously an unacceptable occurrence and the park will need to take some measures to ensure it doesn’t happened again.
 
nadroJ said:
Any update anywhere as to how/if she is recovering?
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An unexpected update appears, chock-full of speculative info.

A YouTube-r (El Toro Ryan - an ex-employee of the park) has posted on 'good authority' that the known reason for the accident was due to internal corrosion of the metal parts, not visible externally, perhaps as the trains were left out over winter in the snow for a longer period than usual (or, as a purported engineer has mentioned in the comments, because the train was covered and moisture around those parts was unable to evaporate). It is therefore considered addressable but 'unforeseeable / freak occurrence' and the ride is expected to re-open next season.

Getting onto your question, someone has commented In the YouTube video that they are a family member of the victim. Apparently, she is no longer in a critical condition but has life changing injuries. I don't think we'll get much more info beyond this as it'll understandably be tied up in agreeing a settlement. The absence of any news suggesting a complete recovery is obviously very sad.

Video below (from which you can navigate to the comments):

 
Here's a good, full article rundown of additional detailing: https://sanduskyregister.com/news/371622/top-thrill-dragster-closed-for-2022-season/

Some Cliffs Notes:
  • Cedar Point was found not guilty of neglect/improper upkeep of TTD that led to the August 15 accident.
  • The August 15 accident involved a sensor plate coming loose off of the track and striking a guest.
  • These sensor plates are replaced during typical off-season maintenance. Cedar Point did see a shortened maintenance/upkeep cycle during the 2021 off-season due to Covid restrictions. Despite that, the state investigation still found Cedar Point had no knowledge of the plates failure (it was inspected with logs the night before)

While it's easy to jump to the "TTD is definitely coming down" conclusion, I do wonder - in the midst of the entire investigation, I'd imagine no park staff have been able to do regular off-season upkeep of the ride. It has been, in essence, a 400 ft. piece of evidence; so closing for the 2022 season could be the result of being months behind on maintenance schedule. (Again, recognizing the ride has technically not had a typical off-season inspection/maintenance cycle for 2 years now)

To also play out the wild hypothetical of removing TTD - a feat in itself, deconstructing 400 ft. of structure - when you consider simple overhead costs of deconstruction, site prep, and constructing something else (coaster, park expansion, whatever), it isn't hard to get to a $40-$50M price tag. Recognizing the coaster was worth $25M at opening; is it worth it to invest in removing the ride, versus taking a year off for full maintenance rundown and open fresh in 2023? As we saw with the (also wild) removal of Wicked Twister, it's a cost value proposition. Call me not instantly convinced Cedar Point would so quickly remove a crown jewel, at certain extreme cost.
 
I know it's been said a million times from others, but I'd be really surprised to see this reopen. Major maintenance issues plus this.... I don't know. It's not super important to the park anymore anyways.
 
Following the announcement I think the longer TTD remains closed, the less likely the ride will reopen. Another factor that may come into this, if Cedar Fair are struggling financially, it would make sense they and CP might not be wanting to invest in fixing up a coaster that is nearly 20 years old, that is also troublesome with reliability issues.

I do wonder if Cedar Point had an attendance drop off after this accident, like Alton Towers did with Smiler, but that may be harder to tell as the park would have still been recovering from the Covid19 pandemic.
 
Jackson said:
It's not super important to the park anymore anyways
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I haven't visited Cedar Point, so don't have first experience of how the crowds behave or anything. But, when I think of Cedar Point, I think of Top Thrill Dragster. It's an instant association. I'm sure if you were to ask a wider audience too, TTD would consistently be the ride spoken of.

Yes, the park have gotten plenty of new rides since, and plenty of noteworthy additions too. Plus their older rides too. But I don't think TTD's importance and relevance of being the park's icon and crown jewel ride can be understated.

I wouldn't be surprised either way if this goes or stays. But I think it can still be put in the "super important" category of rides at the park.
 
Jackson said:
I know it's been said a million times from others, but I'd be really surprised to see this reopen. Major maintenance issues plus this.... I don't know. It's not super important to the park anymore anyways.
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Maybe for you if you’ve been plenty of times but for others who’ve never been it’s a HUGE reason to visit. When I had my first trip back in 2019 Maverick and Steel Vengeance were open but which coaster was I most excited to get on? Dragster. It’s an iconic coaster years and years after opening, I think it’s naive to underestimate its pulling power just because they’ve had new things since.
 
I don’t know if I’m missing something here, having never been to Ohio, but surely a 420ft coaster that’s the tallest & fastest in the park, the tallest & fastest in Ohio, and still the 2nd tallest & 3rd fastest worldwide will still be one of Cedar Point’s most popular and iconic attractions among the general visitor? It’s hardly like Wicked Twister, where a lot of other things at Cedar Point dwarfed it stats-wise and it arguably became somewhat second-tier within the lineup.

I admittedly don’t know what the attitude to records is like in Ohio, but here in the UK, our parks’ record breakers are often still the most popular rides, even in cases where they’re not the newest (Big One opened in 1994, 9 years before TTD, and I’d say it’s still far and away Blackpool’s most popular coaster), so if TTD, a regional record breaker in both height & speed, truly is seen as irrelevant within Cedar Point’s current lineup, that’s truly interesting, and arguably a testament to the strength of CP’s coaster lineup. If you plonked TTD in any other park in the world, I reckon people would flock to it, and I’ll admit to being very surprised if they don’t at Cedar Point. Yes, the ride might not hold any world records anymore, but to still hold regional records, and still be the second tallest & third fastest in the world, 19 years on from opening is pretty impressive, for my money, and I’ll admit to being surprised if those impressive stats don’t make the ride appealing to your average CP visitor.

TTD is certainly one of the attractions I’m most looking forward to at Cedar Point, anyway!
 
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nadroJ said:
Maybe for you if you’ve been plenty of times but for others who’ve never been it’s a HUGE reason to visit. When I had my first trip back in 2019 Maverick and Steel Vengeance were open but which coaster was I most excited to get on? Dragster. It’s an iconic coaster years and years after opening, I think it’s naive to underestimate its pulling power just because they’ve had new things since.
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Yeah I'm with Jordan on this. I do plan on visiting CP at some point in the future but I'd probably delay my visit if I knew TTD would be down. It may not be the record holder at the moment but, I definitely think it's worth putting money and time into making it more reliable and safer, which is what I expect they will do.

There is a part of me that thinks maybe these hydraulic systems are reaching the end of their lives and we will start to see them removed as parks decide whether or not the maintenance is worth it, but in the case of TTD, its too important to let go just yet.
 
Yeah Jordan's first few words sum it up - if you're a regular visitor or have been before, TTD just becomes 'another ride', so to speak. But for first time visitors, it has a pull and attraction that few other rides come close to.

For a comparable example - if Nemesis was down, would it stop some of us lot visiting? Probably not. But would it stop us telling people visiting from overseas to head to Alton until it was fixed? Absolutely.
 
Not that I had any plans to try to get to Ohio in the nearest future, but if I wanted to visit this year and I heard that Dragster was down for the count, I would wait until it either re-opens or is torn down. People who get to visit maybe once or twice a lifetime would definitely be put off by it being SBNO.
 
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