We don't see a lot of non-launched, steel coasters have these sort of extended issues these days. It makes me wonder if it isn't somehow the foundation or the ground under footers not being strong enough.
Pretty amazing how they only figured out it would be down for the whole year 3 days before opening, after plenty of people had paid for their season passes. Coincidences all around, I guess.
I'd have thought you'd be all over the Ren Fest scene, Bert.
This is something I'd have loved to have done. Easy enough to tack onto a Lagoon trip. Hopefully it can come back in some form.
If you watch Youtube and search for closed or abandoned amusement parks there are tons of them. They all seem to have the same things in common:
1. They were the next Walt Disney,
2. They underestimated the cost to build their park by at least one-half,
3. They overestimated the attendance by quite a bit,
4. They had no extra funds when things went wrong, and
5. The failure was always something or someone else’s fault.
I am not sure about this one but I am sure there will be a video soon with many of these factors being an issue. Don’t even get me started about friends that thought they were good cooks so they should open a restaurant 😉
“According to the National Amusement Park Historical Association, there are approximately 1,000 defunct amusement parks in North America, with a significant number being in the United States.[1]”
Thanks @ajfelice. Good insight to have.
I guess my memory failed me but not all that surprised as the years seem to fly by anymore and COVID seemed to throw a weird time gaps and strange relativity into my recollection as of late.
The Spider used to be the favorite ride of my wife and I when we were dating, though that was over a decade ago now. It was one of the few "thrill" rides I could get her on (somehow I married a non-enthusiast).
Wasn't there a season where the Spider was out of commission almost the entire season for maintenance, or am I mixing this up with another ride?
^Spider has had exactly one full day of downtime between 2022 and 2023. While not the most efficient ride in the world, it regularly ranks dead last among the "major" rides in terms of ridership. If staffing gets tight, the least popular attractions are trimmed first, but in recent seasons this has been less of an issue.
Mechanically, the parts that experience the most normal wear are not OEM and can be replaced fairly easily.