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Ride types that just... died out?

Pokemaniac

Mountain monkey
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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?
 
You've said in a few topics that large woodies have died and that's just... not true? Goliath? Wildfire? Outlaw Run? Lightning Rod? Cu Chulainn? All the Chinese ones? It's not dead at all, just because you seem to discount the RMCs (even ones with no steel like OR and LR) doesn't mean they're dead.

X Cars did seem to die, thank God.
 
I guess a more recent case would be the Intamin Hydraulic launch coaster (which later became Intamin Accelerator). After the smashing success of Xcelerator back in 2002, followed by the possibility of reaching new heights and speeds in a fairly easy way with the two big Stratacoasters using hydraulic technology, Europe seemed to take on the craze opening Rita.

This coaster was then suited by the European market and it seemed like every park and their aunt had to have one of these accelerators. Up until the opening of 2007-2009, when Furius Baco opened (with a new failed train concept) and a couple of smaller versions of their cousins (Senzafiato being the smaller version of Rita).

The only major Accelerator which have been built ever since has been Formula Rossa at Ferrari World Abu Dhabi in 2010, and then... nothing. I guess this model, albeit providing a forceful and exhilarating first launch was a maintenance nightmare and proved to be plagued with problems concerning its launching mechanism (with crazy news of cables snapping, hydraulic systems blowing up, etc.).

I don't know if we will ever see another Intamin Accelerator coaster or they will slowly be replaced by the more reliable LSM system, like we are seeing with the big launcher at Ferrari Land.
 
You've said in a few topics that large woodies have died and that's just... not true? Goliath? Wildfire? Outlaw Run? Lightning Rod? Cu Chulainn? All the Chinese ones? It's not dead at all, just because you seem to discount the RMCs (even ones with no steel like OR and LR) doesn't mean they're dead.

I stand corrected on Outlaw Run, at least, since it indeed doesn't have steel tracks. It's also taller than it lift hill suggests, masking it in RCDB's stats. Although I'd argue that the topper track makes it a little different from conventional woodies. And whether woodies with inversions represent a new layout for an old ride type, or a new ride type entirely, is debateable. I'd say Lightning Rod is more of a traditional woodie than Outlaw Run is, if you get what I mean. If you discount the launch, it "behaves" a lot more like a traditional woodie. Although I could see your point too, since its technical composition is little different from Outlaw Run's.

As for Cu Chulainn and the Chinese woodies, I'm afraid I won't count them among the very large woodies. With heights ranging from 32 (CC) to 34.1 (FFD) metres, they're fairly large, but don't hold a candle to the giants of yesteryear. Mean Streak was 49 metres tall. Rattler was 55, as is El Toro. T-Express 56. Colossos 60. Son of Beast more than 66, almost twice as tall as the traditional woodies we've seen in recent years.
Then again, among "all the Chinese ones" is Python in Bamboo Forest, with a total height difference of 49 metres if RCDB's page is to believed. If anything, it and Lightning Rod may be the two coasters that topple my argument. And of course, there may be others where RCDB lacks the data for them to show up in searches.
 
If we're talking about dead ride types, might as well throw in the obligatory stand-up coaster. As far as I can tell, the last new one was Georgia Scorcher in 1999. Presumably they died a death because of the limitations in forces and the fact that the gimmick doesn't do much (though useless gimmicks haven't stopped UK parks' marketing for the last ten years). I've only done Drayton's Shockwave, and, aside from the insane zero-G roll, the main thought I have is "I've spent half an hour standing up, and now I have to continue standing up under g-forces."
 
I'll throw in the B&M Floorless, which boomed in the early '00s, before sort of dying ... we've had two brand-new ones in the last decade. Don't know if it really counts given all the standup-floorless conversions, but the converted ones aren't the best and they only exist because Cedar Fair had to find some way of getting rid of their godawful standups without removing too many rides.

Similar story with the basic Intamin looper, although that's probably not missed.
 
I'll throw in the B&M Floorless, which boomed in the early '00s, before sort of dying ... we've had two brand-new ones in the last decade. Don't know if it really counts given all the standup-floorless conversions, but the converted ones aren't the best and they only exist because Cedar Fair had to find some way of getting rid of their godawful standups without removing too many rides.

Similar story with the basic Intamin looper, although that's probably not missed.

I was considering to list the B&M Floorless as an example in the OP, to have less Inverted coasters, but ultimately decided against it. B&M found a way to make their Dive Machines floorless, giving the ride type a bit of a continuation. But it's true, the floorless multi-looper has become a bit of a rarity these days. Come to think about it, so has the floored multi-looper... the last one to open was Led Zeppelin (later Time Machine) at Hardrock/Freestyle Music Park, in 2008. It's due to be relocated to Vietnam. The last one to open that is actually still open is Wildfire at Silver Dollar City - all the way back in 2001. Then again, you can arguably call Incredible Hulk at IoA brand-new, so... everything is debateable.

It seems like B&M has struggled to find customers for some of their ride types that other manufacturers can also deliver. "Everybody" does sit-down loopers and Inverts these days. But dive machines and wing coasters are uniquely B&M, and they are selling well. That, or there are customers, but B&M lacks the capacity to take every order and decide to focus on their "novelty" coasters.
 
I can't agree with B&M floorless coasters. The conversions count.

Intamin pre-fabs should have caught on. Big, traditional-ish woodies haven't been popular lately, either.

Stand-up coasters, obviously.
 
The first thing which sprung to my mind when reading this thread was pipeline coasters, as I thought they were big in Asia. But looking into it, they never really took off anyway, didn't have any boom period, it's just they died out quickly. Meh, close enough!
 
Intamin Accelerators seemed to die out shortly after 2005 when Rita opened (at least from what I found). I haven't seen a good hydraulic launched coaster in a while.

I seriously doubt wooden coasters have died out with all these new woodies opening this season. Mystic Timbers? InvadR? SW8? I don't think it's all about who can build the tallest, longest, meanest woodie. But it's nice to see them making a return.
 
Stand-up coasters had their brief moment in the 80's and 90s', but I'd be very surprised if another one was built anywhere (with the possible exception of China).

I'd be delighted if no more Sky Loop X-Cars ever get built, unless they are the Chinese knock-offs which are actually better than the original.
The only half decent X-car creds are Formule X, and Abismo, but even they aren't anything to shout about.

I don't think a ZacSpin has been sold for a while either. Oh well.
 
It's got to be B&M stand up. The last new one was 1999, and two have already been converted to Floorless. If anything the dying out of the stand up has really bough Floorless coasters back.

Outside of Asia the B&M flyers have died out really, I mean most outside of Asia were all in America, except for one, and that last one was built in 2009. Since then there have been a few in Japan and China, but that's it.

However, all of this doesn't mean these types won't make a comeback. Look at dive coasters - a few at the turn of the century, then a few more in the late 2000s, and now a few more again in the mid 2010s, and even Mack coming up with a design to rival it.

But as this topics is about any ride type, I'd say the S&S towers as well. Surely Hershey's is the first to open at a major park in years.
 
^ But parks are already saturated with S&S towers. It's not that they've died out; it's that they're already pretty much everywhere.

It's definitely the stand-ups. They never massively took off, there hasn't been a new one for ages, and I can't see any more appearing, even in China.
 
The first thing which sprung to my mind when reading this thread was pipeline coasters, as I thought they were big in Asia. But looking into it, they never really took off anyway, didn't have any boom period, it's just they died out quickly. Meh, close enough!
I don't actually know of any existing Pipelines anymore. I don't know if Kings Island's Vortex counts. Alton Towers were going to have SW1 & 2 as Pipelines. They were never built. That was the last I heard of them.
 
The amusement park industry is a quirky one - while it generates tens of Millions of dollars in direct revenue and ten of Billions of dollars in economic impact; there are a select few amusement park chains that truly play in large roller coaster development. Saturation is reached quickly for roller coaster segments, as few can afford the multi-million dollar investments needed.

The B&M stand-up has always struck me as the biggest flash in the pan. Five were ever built between Paramount, Cedar Fair, and Six Flags (you can also conditionally add in the three Intamin stand-ups, but that's more gray area on where Intamin stopped and B&M started in developed). It was simply a less comfortable riding style applied to an otherwise great layout - the first Floorless coaster (Medusa at SFGAdv) opened the same year as the last Stand-Up coaster (Georgia Scorcher at SFOG). And since it's debut, the Floorless has seen far greater success with 13 new installations, and 2 conversions. The Stand-up simply has a definite flaw in it's ride comfort, met it's scale quickly with Riddler's Revenge, and became antiquated with better ride designs.
 
When was the last looping traveling coaster manufactured? The most prevalent ones I can think of are Schwarzkopfs and Pinfaris, and were all manufactured before 2005. It seems like the manufacturing of purpose built traveling loopers has slowed down lately, is this true or am I being ignorant?
 
^ Those roller coasters also last forever, which could be cause for less manufacturing.
 
The forwards backwards forwards launch thing mentioned in the first post seems to be taking off of late. Dragonfire (Premier), Capitol Bullet Train and Star Trek (Mack) and Soaring Dragon (Intamin) all use this trick. I guess it combines the best bits of an Impulse style ride and a full circuit. And as Pokemaniac mentioned we are expecting an Intamin Impulse at Wanda Wuxi next year. interesting to see a new one go in 13 years after the last new one opened at Valley Fair.

Wuxiimpulse2.jpg
 
When was the last looping traveling coaster manufactured? The most prevalent ones I can think of are Schwarzkopfs and Pinfaris, and were all manufactured before 2005. It seems like the manufacturing of purpose built traveling loopers has slowed down lately, is this true or am I being ignorant?
Interpark still makes those hideous Wild Wind coasters and I think SBF Visa also offers a travelling coaster with a loop (Tower Coaster; luckily they've only ever sold one).
 
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