Though I am (obviously) mad at how post-merger SF handled the closure of Kingda Ka, one thing that I’m not keen on is the idea that it was motivated out of Cedar Fair/Cedar Point’s jealousy at Six Flags/Six Flags Great Adventure for taking the title of world’s tallest and fastest coaster away from Top Thrill Dragster. While not an ultra-popular sentiment, I have seen it echoed by some enthusiasts.
The idea generally goes like this;
Cedar Point opens TTD in 2003, taking the record of the world’s tallest & fastest coaster (and the first-ever “strata” coaster, aka a coaster that’s 400 ft or higher). However, CePo loses the record just two years later when Great Adventure opens Kingda Ka, a coaster of the same model as TTD— but slightly taller and faster. Though Ka would lose the “world’s fastest” title to Formula Rossa in 2010, it was still the tallest and the fastest in the US. Given that CF and SF were business rivals, CF didn’t like how SF stole its thunder in such a short time.
However, all would change when the two companies merged. Though bearing the Six Flags name, this company is controlled by a Cedar Fair majority— all the way up to the CEO, Richard Zimmerman. Now that the company owns both TTD (which had just undergone an extensive refurbishment) and Ka, they were free to do whatever they wanted— and since Cedar Point is the chain’s “golden child”, they wanted to ensure that it alone had North America’s tallest and fastest coaster. Thus, they swiftly approved Ka’s closure and demolition, not even bothering to let the public know until it was too late to get their last rides.
Personally, I find this to be…overly dramatic, to say the least. In reality, both TTD and Ka were expensive to maintain and quite unreliable. In fact, Dick Kinzel (former CEO of Cedar Fair) has gone on record saying that building TTD was his “dumbest decision” from a Financial/ROI standpoint. I don’t know for sure if any legacy Six Flags CEOs or Great Adventure’s former Park President felt the same way about Ka, but it’s not out if the realm of possibility. Once the companies merged, they now had to deal with two stratas…and all the issues/expenses that come with them.
Additionally, CF had spent a good amount of money to “re-imagine” TTD into Top Thrill 2 so that the ride would be more reliable. Unfortunately, TT2 would operate a mere eight days before shutting down for the rest of the season— and while they intend to re-open it this year (after spending some more to fix it), it likely put the kibosh on a similar “re-imagining” for Ka. That, and they’ll never work with Intamin again, despite them being a better candidate for the job compared to Zamperla (who hadn’t done a project like this or on such a scale prior to working on TT2).
To put it simply, the only motive behind Ka’s closure was money. It was an asset that, in post-merger SF’s eyes, was too expensive to maintain in proportion to the profit it generated.
[That being said, I really hope things work out for TT2. I don’t want to see both of them close within such a short amount of time…]
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