In a surprising development Busch Gardens announced the impending closure of Scorpion on September 2, 2024. This cam out of nowhere and gives fans only about 10 days to enjoy “the sting of the Scorpion” one more time before closing forever. Thankfully though the announcement came with a promise that “new attractions “future thrills” would be announced shortly to take its place (get ready for the Giga rumors). Here is what the park wrote:
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The United States Postal Service (USPS) has released an awesome series of amusement park stamps entitled Carnival Nights. These are first class forever postage stamps with 8 unique designs that were released on June 6, 2024. They feature swings, flat rides, a Ferris wheel, fireworks, a carousel and even a roller coaster in the corner of one. These would look great on Christmas cards, wedding invitations or birthday cards, so order online or head to your post office to get a sheet today.
Continue readingI’m a big fan of the WIRED “Tech Support” video series. The essence of the series is that they get an expert in a particular field to answer viewer questions about their area of expertise. I’ve seen everything including a mortician, an FBI agent, Penn Jillette talking magic, John Cena talking wrestling and now Korey Kiepert of The Gravity Group talking roller coasters!
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Georgia Surfer has an opening day and it will be opening day of the 2025 season! During a Coaster Fest 2024 Six Flags Over Georgia General Manager Greg Fuller gave a great update on the construction of Georgia Surfer and the challenges it’s seen. He mentioned permitting was slow and they lost about 12 weeks there and then that there were “manufacturer challenges” with Intamin. Specifically that the gondola (train) just shipped ocean freight on August 14th from Europe. Maybe a little too much time worrying about Falcon’s Flights in Saudi Arabia? With all these delays, they just decided it was best to delay and do it right. He said they wanted to run the heck out of it and make sure it was 1000% right for next year. He also stressed numerous times that the ride was a prototype where some challenges are always anticipated.
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Today, August 16, 2024, is National Roller Coaster Day! Many may not realize that the holiday actually commemorates Edwin Prescott being awarded a patent in 1898 for a vertical loop on the Loop the Loop or Loop-de-Loop Roller Coaster at Coney Island. Loops did exist as early as the 1950’s on “centrifugal railways”, but Prescott’s resembled the modern teardrop design which has less intense g-forces and is easier on riders. However, even with the lessened forces the park found more people would rather watch than ride the new coaster.
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Santa’s Land Fun Park & Zoo is a great affordable family amusement park on the southern side of the Great Smokey Mountains. Santa’s Land has only one roller coaster and that’s the Rudicoaster, a highly unique Zamperla powered coaster. This is a custom coaster was built in 1989 and features a Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer theme to go along with the Christmas theme of the park. The Rudicoaster is from the Zamperla Powered Coaster line where the coaster train itself actually has a motor to propel it up the lift hills. Rudicoaster has trees all through and surrounding the course, adding to the atmosphere and really making it feel like a coaster in the woods.
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It was announced earlier in the week that the highly anticipated Georgia Surfer Intamin Launch Coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia was being delayed until 2025. Although this was disappointing, it’s also not uncommon in theme park world. However, this delay could represent an opportunity for the park to solve a potential issue with the new attraction, that being its low capacity. However, there is a solution to this and Six Flags Over Texas used a delay to add capacity to their new Aquaman: Power Wave water coaster just a couple of years ago.
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D23 has come and gone with lots of major announcements that have fans excited. One thing fans had hoped for was a “fifth gate” or another theme park to add to Walt Disney World to match what Universal is doing with Epic Universe. Instead, Disney’s announcements were expansions and retheming of existing attractions. Many would argue you could preserve the existing attractions at the existing parks and simply roll all the new together to make a pretty amazing new park. This way you increase capacity at Disney world rather than keeping the status quo of real estate and attractions. The question is why?
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In sad, but not entirely unexpected news, Six Flags has bumped the Georgia Surfer, the new Intamin launched “surf” coaster, until 2025. The same day it was also announced that Six Flags Great Adventure was delaying The Flash Vertical Velocity, a Vekoma boomerang. Being already August with construction still ongoing the writing seemed to be on the wall although there was still hope after a Novermber 4th opening of Kid Flash Cosmic Coaster last year. The social media posts from the park read as follows:
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Last night at the very end of the D23 Experiences Showcase a suspended coaster announced for Monsters Inc. Land at Disney Studios! This land was not something that was telegraphed or widely expected and was quite surprising. What was even more surprising was that construction is set to begin next year, so this isn’t “blue sky” stuff, this appears to be really happening. In fact it is supposed to being construction next year in 2025!
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