Announcements for new amusement park rides and attractions
are heavy this time of year. One thing
that occasionally comes out with these announcements is rides that will not be
around to see the 2014 season. This year
Six Flags announced that Rolling Thunder, a racing wooden coaster at Six Flags
Great Adventure, would not be in the coaster line up next year. The last day of operation is slated for
September 8th. The removal of
Rolling Thunder will drop Six Flag Great Adventure’s coaster count down to 12.
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| It was announced on 8/29 that Rolling Thunder at Six Flags Great Adventure would give it's last ride on Sept. 8, 2013 |
Rolling Thunder has been operating at the park since 1979. The announcement to remove this ride was met
with the same cheers and jeers that come with any news of the removal of a
ride. Some people are happy to see the
ride go, complaining that the ride had become rough or the ride was
boring. Others claim it was their
favorite ride in the park or it was their first coaster and wish it was kept
for nostalgic reasons.
The decision to remove a ride isn’t made lightly. The following information may not be the
exact way the company reached the decision to remove the ride. It is merely a guess from me after working
over 10 years in the amusement/resort industry.
Parks budget expenses for a ride at the beginning of the
fiscal year. They look at the amount of
money spent on a specific ride from the previous years and calculate what they
expect to pay. Yearly expenses can
include spare parts for the track, trains and sensors/computers as well as
paint and queue repair. They also
include numbers for possible emergency repairs and parts like the lift chain
that must be replaced periodically. At the end of the season they calculate the
actual cost of upkeep. Once you add the cost of labor to operate to the upkeep
of the ride you arrive at the total cost for operating the ride.
The park uses turnstiles to calculate the number of riders a
ride gives in a particular year. If you
divide maintenance and operational costs by the number of riders you get what
it costs for each guest to ride a given attraction. When the park is considering a new attraction
these numbers can be used to analyze what attractions may have reached the end
of their service life. Once an
attraction has reached this point it is possible for it to be sold and used
elsewhere to breathe new life into it.
The attraction will be scrapped if the cost to relocate it is
prohibitive.
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| Great American Scream Machine was Removed from Six Flags Great Adventure near the end of the 2010 Season. |
It has been stated on several sites that Rolling Thunder had
been operating on only one side, indicating that the popularity of the
attraction was down low enough that there was no need to open both sides. It is sad to see an attraction go but this
means that there can be new life with new attractions brought in. For the 2014 Season Six Flags Great
Adventures will see the addition of the world’s tallest drop tower, Zumanjaro:
Drop of Doom, as well as a new animal exhibit.
You can read more about that here.
Want a years worth of roller coaster excitement? Click here to check out the roller coaster calendar by William Supko Photography for sale on Etsy.
