Menu
What's new
By:
Filters

El Toro incident 25 August

I’ve heard this being referred to as a derailment, but it sounds more like a massive jolt directly after the Rolling Thunder hill. Apparently several riders reported pain from this jolt even though only 5 were injured enough to go to hospital.

It sounds a bit like the incident Son of Beast had in 2006 where the wood cracked in one of the ride’s main helixes and caused a bump in the track.
 
I didn't even think to look for this topic in the small news thread so I apologize for a double post. Please feel free to delete if this doesn't need to have it's own thread.
 
I think this is big enough for its own thread.

Its very clear El Toro has some problems and now we see what Six Flags does.
 
Moved the posts from Small News. Don't think this is quite 'big news' yet, but we'll see.
 
Aaron Smith said:
Here's a link to a news story. Apparently there was some type of malfunction at the end of the ride that caused some minor injuries. I can't find any specifics so if anyone knows more I'm definitely interested.

It's a shame this happened and luckily only minor injuries were reported. Since the retrack El Toro has been running incredibly well.

https://6abc.com/six-flags-great-ad...j-el-toro-roller-coaster-new-jersey/12166526/
Click to expand...
Having ridden it on 22 August I would say that it was running pretty horribly in places. Very rough. But then I do like my coasters to be as smooth as a seductive saxophone solo 🎷🎶
 
Wonder what will happen to El Toro? Balder style retrack, complete RMC remake, GCI titan track or just nothing?

Knowing SFGA, if they retrack this whole thing Balder style they will have used up a decades worth of budget, meaning no new coasters until the 2030s.
 
Last edited:
Inverting_Thrills said:
Honestly these have been some rough times for Six Flags, it really makes me question the chains future.
Click to expand...
I've been wondering a lot about that myself. All those coasters built in the early 2000s - in particular, the boom between 1998 and 2006 - are starting to show their age, and some come with pretty big maintenance obligations these days. Just their upkeep - retaining the lineup they currently have in functional order - is getting heckishly expensive. And after that is taken care of, there's little money left to invest in renewal. Six Flags as a chain has barely built any rides coming close to the size of El Toro since the financial crisis of 2007. Yet refurbishing it to good-as-new standard would probably cost approximately the same as building it from the ground up. Would SFGAdv have the money to do that? And if they do, how many years of the investment budget would it require? And it's just to maintain the status quo. You don't pull in many new guests with "Look, that coaster you've known for the past 16 years is still in operation!", even if it cost millions to make it so.

Refurbishing El Toro would be one of the biggest investments in a Six Flags park in the past decade. Sums they've barely afforded a handful of times across all their parks. And that's just one coaster. What will happen when the headliner coasters at other parks begin to require similar overhauls? If memory serves correctly, the chain built around seventy quite big coasters in the eight years between 1998 and 2006. I really wonder what will happen when their "replace before" dates start coming up.
 
i could see el toro being shut down indefinitely unfortunately. this incident is getting a lot of bad press, and it's the second incident in two years. Logic dictates that a large company with new leadership would blame an older attraction that the current leadership didn't build rather than the operations practices that it currently oversees. If six flags was in growth mode, then maybe it would re-track or RMC or do something helpful. But I'm not sure that's what's happening here.
 
SeanC said:
i could see el toro being shut down indefinitely unfortunately. this incident is getting a lot of bad press, and it's the second incident in two years. Logic dictates that a large company with new leadership would blame an older attraction that the current leadership didn't build rather than the operations practices that it currently oversees. If six flags was in growth mode, then maybe it would re-track or RMC or do something helpful. But I'm not sure that's what's happening here.
Click to expand...
Between Kingda Ka and Nitro, SFGAdv would still have a couple of big headliner coasters even if El Toro was removed. But still, El Toro is one of the park's defining coasters, easily overshadowing every single coaster they have built in the years since. Heck, I don't think the chain has built any coasters that come close to Toro in terms of impressiveness since 2006, except SFGAm Goliath. Its absence would be heavily noticed, and it is not something Six Flags could make up for with a spinning Wild Mouse or a Larson Looper, which seems to be around the level of ambition they're building with these days.

That's the conundrum, I guess. Can't keep it operating as-is, can't afford to refurbish it, can't afford to replace it. Losing it might be the best option, but it would surely put a dent in the visitor numbers, so I'm not sure whether they could afford that either.
 
I'm hopeful that Six Flags' impressiveness of builds may increase again in the years to come; no one ever predicted they'd go back to B&M, but they did just that with Dr Diabolical's Cliffhanger!

Cliffhanger is a fairly decent size B&M, too...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top