GateKeeper
In 2013, the towering tan showbuilding was no more. Instead, the lakeside midway became an open plaza with stellar views of the water, with winged shades covering a beachfront queue. A new roller coaster – royal blue, white, and gold – rose from the sand. Gatekeeper is an elegant, soaring, swooping B&M Wing Rider that rises high above the park’s skyline, gracefully gliding above the beach.
Riders are seated aboard “winged” trains suspending them with no track above or below – an unexperience unlike any other at Cedar Point.
With its station and lift hill rising in the area once blocked by a corrugated steel warehouse, Gatekeeper filled Disaster Transport’s spot in more ways than one. Despite its awesome size and statistics, the soaring, swooping, elegant, oversized ride is a perfect family attraction – massive, but gentle and smooth.
More than just a massive thrill ride investment, Gatekeeper opened up Cedar Point’s beach and redefined the front half of the park. The blazing blue track and soaring golden trains dominate the skyline and – true to the ride’s name – signal your entry to the Roller Coaster Capital of the World.
And that’s probably one of the ride’s most stellar features: to accomodate Gatekeeper, the park’s entrance was reconfigured, and designers took the opportunity to give the experience of arriving a true rebirth. The entry gates were restylized in retro-modern textures and typefaces with master-planned gardens and signage. From the entry gates rise two impeccable white towers, each with a cutout “keyhole” perfectly aligned for Gatekeeper’s track.
As the train approaches the park’s gates, it leaps skyward and races toward the white towers, twisting at the last second to pass through the carved keyholes with an elegance that makes passers-by stop and stare. For riders, too, the illusion of an impending collision is a signature experience.
Whatever your thoughts on Gatekeeper, we can be sure that it is a fitting replacement for Disaster Transport and a wonderful ride to transition Cedar Point from its Coaster Wars heyday into the modern, built-out family park that’s it transforming into.
Disaster
There’s no question that Disaster Transport ended up living up to its name. The unfortunate roller coaster started its life as a fun family coaster and ended as a letdown without ever changing a single square foot of track. All it took was an overbaked attempt at theming and then a total and complete abandonment of it to spoil a unique ride and darken Cedar Fair’s attitude toward theming for a generation.
The truth is, Disaster Transport will likely always be remembered as a major (and rare) miss for the Roller Coaster Capital of the World, though it no doubt holds a special place in the hearts of children of the ’80s and ’90s for whom it might’ve been their first “grown-up” coaster. If only Cedar Point could’ve committed to the ride’s special effects and themes, they might’ve indeed ended up with their own Space Mountain. Instead, Disaster Transport was a mess destined for inclusion in our Disaster Files series.
We leave you with a final retrospective lights-on look at the interior of Disaster Transport’s main showbuilding.
If you enjoyed our detailed look at this unintentional flub, make the jump to our Declassified Disasters collection to dig into another unsealed file, or pick up with another full feature!
Now we have to know: did you ever get a chance to ride Avalanche Run or Disaster Transport? What were your thoughts about the confusing ride? Did Cedar Point’s seasonal take on Space Mountain ever stand a chance, or was the half-baked low-budget concept doomed to be lost among the stars? Record your memories and thoughts in the comments below to keep this bumbling ride alive for another generation!
As a child, my parents took me and my sister to Cedar Point in the late 50’s. There wasn’t much to the place then, the “standout” being the creaky old wax museum’s chamber of horrors, with its unbelievably horrific depictions of gruesome crimes (the worst one showed a woman tossing her babies into a burning oven—YIKES!!!). Shortly after the park began rebranding itself in the 60’s, notably with construction of the Blue Streak coaster, I began to visit at least once per year. I do remember the hype surrounding the new Avalanche Run coaster. I found it entertaining but less than stellar. When they reworked it into Disaster Transport, I gave it another chance. I found the lead up to the ride more interesting than the ride itself. I guess I’d hoped that they would have somehow made it more thrilling, but no, it was still the same sleepy Avalanche Run with the lights turned out. The special effects were cheesy at best, and on subsequent visits to the park, I found myself avoiding that ride more and more. I was not sorry to find that it was torn down.
I love the regional park forays into theming. Even when they fall flat on their face, it’s still entertaining (or at least fascinating).