Cedar Point to close Snake River Falls
- Thread starter JoshC.
- Start date
TPoseOnTantrum
Giga Poster
Alright let's compile some information here;
April 27, 2024; That survey for new coasters included a Vekoma Tilt, stupid Mack Xtreme spinner tower, Zamperla family shuttle coaster, and a Mack water coaster (leaking a pitch for Freizeitpark Plohn's 2026 project, meaning that they've indeed already had meetings with Mack reps).
Exactly one week later; Tony Clark confirmed that a contract had been signed for "the next big whatever" the week previous. It'd been assumed to be a 2025 waterpark addition, since they'd just removed two very similar slides at the same time as Dorney (who've been explicit about 2025 replacements on their end), but no timeline was given in this statement and it could very well be this project.
I find it VERY interesting that these two developments apparently happened within the space of a couple days.
In any case, here's the land we now have to play with between Snake River Falls and this side of the now-former Forbidden Frontier. Definitely opens up a decent chunk of room.
April 27, 2024; That survey for new coasters included a Vekoma Tilt, stupid Mack Xtreme spinner tower, Zamperla family shuttle coaster, and a Mack water coaster (leaking a pitch for Freizeitpark Plohn's 2026 project, meaning that they've indeed already had meetings with Mack reps).
Exactly one week later; Tony Clark confirmed that a contract had been signed for "the next big whatever" the week previous. It'd been assumed to be a 2025 waterpark addition, since they'd just removed two very similar slides at the same time as Dorney (who've been explicit about 2025 replacements on their end), but no timeline was given in this statement and it could very well be this project.
I find it VERY interesting that these two developments apparently happened within the space of a couple days.
In any case, here's the land we now have to play with between Snake River Falls and this side of the now-former Forbidden Frontier. Definitely opens up a decent chunk of room.
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Dang beat me to it!
So for general state of play, this opens up yet more real estate around Millennium Island, as Forbidden Frontier and Snake River Expedition boat ride are also now retired. A lot of leeway and layout availability… if anything were to actually be forming.
Also, if removing Snake River Falls helps preserve Cedar Creek Mine Ride for real estate sake - count me in!
RcTmix
Mega Poster
I would love to see a high capacity high thrill coaster in this plot. It would help with crowd management to have a third major coaster in the area to draw some of the crowds away from Steel Vengeance and Maverick when their lines are long. Plus it would help distribute the crowd every time one of those two dumps their queue because of maintenance headaches.
Edit: so maybe NOT an extreme spinner, unless Mack can figure out how to triple the capacity of Ride to Happiness. According rcdb, RtH only does 550 riders per hour, which is even worse capacity than Maverick.
Edit: so maybe NOT an extreme spinner, unless Mack can figure out how to triple the capacity of Ride to Happiness. According rcdb, RtH only does 550 riders per hour, which is even worse capacity than Maverick.
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cookie
Giga Poster
RTH is only designed to run two trains and has no mid-course brake run. Plus, the 550ph figure is inaccurate. That would mean a dispatch every 104 seconds, but this POV shows the second train leaving the station less than 90 seconds after the first:
This puts the throughput closer to 650pph — which is still bad, but getting the dispatch time down to 60 seconds with three-train ops and MCBRs would already bump it to 960pph, which would be more in line with how Cedar Point coasters normally operate.
The second launch acts as MCBR, with the block ending after the train has cleared the dive loop.
Fiender
Mega Poster
Also worth noting, Curse of the Werewolf at Epic Universe appears to be the same model (Xtreme Spinner), even if it doesn't have any inversions or thrill elements, and that coaster has 5 car trains. With this, pre-boarding lockers, and separate load/unload stations, I think a park could really push the capacity on these, if needed.
LiveForTheLaunch
CF Legend
That thing looks like a rust bucket now, and I think we all knew it was on borrowed time. It's still an iconic ride in that area of the park, but I'll take a new ride over something I barely ever rode for reasons pertaining to vanity, even though it was quite fun 
.
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TPoseOnTantrum
Giga Poster
Last boat went out before 7pm on Monday night;
TPoseOnTantrum
Giga Poster
owenstreet7
Mega Poster
This looks like they might be looking at some sort of water ride to replace it (or a retheme but I'm pretty sure it's been communicated as a permanent closure).
As much as I'd love this to be a water coaster of some sorts (or indeed a straight water ride replacement for Snake River Falls), this could also be new water slide additions to the Cedar Point Shores (formerly Soak City) water park, which quietly removed the original batch of Soak City waterslides (circa early 1990s) beginning of the season, and has a quite-open footprint for a new water coaster or something to that effect. The water park is chronically underfunded, only having received a racing slide and small-drop-floor slide tower in the last ten-ish years, and would be well deserved to get a new, larger scale investment!
TPoseOnTantrum
Giga Poster
Waterparks are a bit of a different ballgame than amusement parks, as they don't typically require as much capital investment as theme parks. They can see little change and still remain extremely popular and profitable, there's just not an incentive to build a new slide every two years. There's exceptions to this, such as United Parks trying to impress shareholders or select international locations rapidly investing to handle demand, but generally they're not the norm.
Cedar Point Shores had two big transformations last decade. The racing slide was added in 2012 and also saw the repainting of the two main slide complexes. The rebrand in 2017 saw the new slide tower (not small by regional standards), entirely new kid's area, relocated entrance, more repainting, new dining, and a bunch of infrastructure changes that coincided with the removal of Challenge Park. I've visited pre and post-Shores and both were in good shape. Much better than Kings Island's waterpark at least, which definitely needs help.
Removing the Crosscurrent slides this year seemed to have been a corporate order, as Dorney concurrently did the same with theirs. They're still intending to build up a replacement for 2025, so my guess is the same here. Always great to see a new waterpark attraction, but the scales for capital investment are not the same as at theme parks.
If it also helps add to the water slide scales, Kings Island is receiving a water slide next year - could be a bulk order.
I also realized my statline was wrong, the original Soak City waterslides are actually as old as me, built in 1988.
I’ll merge and move appropriate posts to the new Vekoma construction thread. Thanks for starting the new thread!