TOP THRILL DRAGSTER: The Inside Track on Cedar Point’s “Coaster Wars” Icon from High Octane Origins to Relaunch

Few roller coasters have had as wild a life as Top Thrill Dragster. But then again, few roller coasters dare to tackle the same speed, acceleration, height, and adrenaline that the world’s first stratacoaster did. Even through rough patches, there was no question that Top Thrill Dragster was an engineering marvel, and though both taller and faster rides had indeed surpassed its statistics, none could match its boldness in breaking through the 400 foot height barrier with Intamin’s signature abandon.

pic.twitter.com/qUOFD756CB

— Cedar Point (@cedarpoint) January 9, 2023

For eighteen white-knuckle years, Top Thrill Dragster launched riders from 0 to 120 miles per hour, propelled by a wire, pulled by a winch, and powered by pressured hydraulic fluid and a prayer. The accident in 2021 could well have marked the end of Cedar Point’s troublesome landmark. But Dragster hadn’t crossed its finish line; it was just at a pit stop.

On January 9, 2023 – four months after their cryptic statement teasing the “a new and reimagined ride experience” – Cedar Point tweeted a video promising “A new formula for thrills – coming 2024.” Seemingly a reference to Formula One racing, the promotion set the coaster world on fire suggesting that Top Thrill Dragster – or some version of it – would indeed return… And just like that, imaginations revved up…

What if…?

With the official acknowledgement that Top Thrill Dragster wasn’t so much retired as in the process of a rebirth, anything seemed possible, including the impossible. Friends of friends who worked at the Dippin’ Dot stand on the midway heard a lot of “rumblings” around the workplace, eagerly racing to the Internet to share their “inside information”…

In response, coaster enthusiasts raced to mock-up solutions for the ride, imagining arcing swing launches, extended layouts with speed-racing second halves, massive twisting towers, and even dreams of stealing back the coaster crown by extending the ride’s top hat to surpass 500 feet. Surely the equivalent of coaster enthusiast fan fiction, such dreams were fun… so long as you didn’t let them recalibrate your expectations.

After all, more grounded fans focused on three significant questions: 

• Which manufacturer would take lead on any inevitable reimagining? Would Intamin put in a bid for fixing their problematic roller coaster? If they did, would Cedar Fair even look at it? Would else could be capable of working on such an extreme, extraordinary coaster?
  
•  What would the re-builder do about the troublesome, expensive hydraulic launch that almost certainly wouldn’t survive a rebuild? After all, the business of launching roller coasters had changed tremendously since Intamin’s Accelerator model launched in 2002, and nearly all hydraulic launch coasters were regarded as expensive, temperamental, frustrating installations to one degree or another.
  
•  If Dragster’s launch system did not remain a hydraulic launch, how would a train gain enough speed to crest its 420-foot tall top hat without it?

On June 27, 2023, @CedarPoint tweeted out a white roller coaster structural component (above), signaling a “first delivery” with a checkered flag emoji. The mystery track segment coincided with major work on the coaster itself.

Throughout the summer, Top Thrill Dragster’s iconic sunburst yellow supports and cherry red track disappeared beneath a new paint job: gunmetal gray and white. Rumors swirled that the “new” Dragster would shed its racing stripes and be re-stylized as a cosmic, space-themed launch into the stars. (The name “Polaris” was floated by insiders and even teased by a toying marketing team.)

Cedar Point itself seemed to put those rumors to rest in July 2023 when “CP Racing” photo spots appeared along the Dragster midway, adorning construction walls with invitations to “JOIN THE TEAM – 2024” and “GET REVVVED UP,” all centered on an announcement due August 1, 2023.

Unfortunately for Cedar Point, the answer came on July 31, 2023 – one day before the park’s planned announcement. Confirming some fans’ theories, the news broke via an accidental early site update from Italian ride manufacturer Zamperla.

Though Zamperla had been on the short list of fans’ potential manufacturers for the reborn ride, many considered it a long-shot. After all, despite being credited for nearly 400 roller coasters, a vast majority of Zamperla’s portfolio is made of kiddie and family coasters. (The company’s real bread and butter is the flat ride business, including the omnipresent Disk’O and the increasingly widespread NebulaZ.) Zamperla has just a few major roller coasters in its history, with the best known probably being Thunderbolt In Luna Park at New York’s Coney Island (a park which Zamperla itself operates).

Unlikely as the manufacturer may have been to tackle one of the highest profile re-launches of one of the most legendary roller coasters on Earth, under Zamperla’s watch, the remains of Top Thrill Dragster would indeed evolve…

Relaunch

In 2024, Cedar Point would officially hit the racetrack once more with TOP THRILL 2. (Yes, that’s the ride’s official full name, proving that some things never change at Cedar Fair.) Name aside, Zamperla’s solution for the revived Dragster would clearly be rooted in necessity.

As expected, the ride would strip out Intamin’s problematic hydraulic launch system as well as the ride’s trains (the cause of the 2019 accident) in favor of LSMs – linear synchronous motors lining the launch track and using electromagnetism to propel new, Zamperla-produced rolling stock.

Of course, the (relatively) gradual acceleration provided by magnetism would be a major change from the nearly instantaneous potential-to-kinetic energy conversion of unspooling of a hydraulically-powered launch cable, which means that an all-at-once, 0 to 120 mph launch would simply be unattainable.

That left the announcement as something between a hype session and a funeral dirge. After all, on paper, the Zamperla iteration of the ride would fall well short of the original ride’s signature statistic – that 0 to 120 mile per hour all-at-once launch.

Despite LSMs lining the entire stretch of launch track, Zamperla expected its new dragster-shaped trains to only be able to reach 76 miles per hour on a first pass. Even that would likely take eight or nine Mississippi seconds versus the previous ride accelerating to nearly twice the speed in half the time.

Clearly, that speed wouldn’t give the train enough momentum to crest the top hat (and indeed, despite Cedar Point insisting that everyone getting a rollback would be a perk of the new ride’s arrangement, the initial launch wouldn’t even make it halfway up the top hat, somewhat sapping the experience).

Riders on Top Thrill 2 would then fall backwards, realigning with the LSM straightaway, passing backwards through the launch and reaching its next speed peak: 101 miles per hour. That would be enough to rocket it backwards past the station and up the ride’s newest feature: a 420-foot tall vertical spike, providing views straight down.

After several seconds of weightlessness, the trains would plunge down the spike, passing through the launch a third time to finally reach the 120 miles per hour needed to clear the top hat, spiraling back down and crossing the finishing line as before.

Of course, it’s also easy to see why some enthusiasts were immensely disappointed by the announcement. It’s not just because a year of fan-made Planet Coaster variations introduced ideas not included in the ride’s final form – it’s because Top Thrill 2 would inherently emphasize a different aspect of the experience than the original.

Though Top Thrill Dragster’s top speed and height were often held up as its hallmarks (and both will remain in Top Thrill 2), fundamentally, it was the acceleration that made the ride what it was. The reason no one cared that it was “only” 17 seconds is that the real selling point would be what occurred in the first four: that gripping, breathtaking 0 to 120 mile per hour take-off. That instantaneous intensity was unlike anything the average person could experience… except, maybe hopping into the passenger seat of a real Formula 1 race car.

Top Thrill 2, it seemed, would be a more complete ride experience, but a less concise one. And in the interim – after Top Thrill 2’s announcement but before those first rides proved its unique successes – it was understandably difficult for fans to reconcile what could be with what was. It was the kind of disappointment that could only be rectified with a first ride…