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

Top Thrill 2

The newly-reborn Top Thrill 2 officially opened to the public on May 4, 2024 and to be clear, fans’ forum frustrations were quickly left in the dust.

Reviews? More or less unanimous. Top Thrill 2 definitely isn’t a “lesser” version of Top Thrill Dragster. It’s also not a “return to form” or an equal substitute for the old experience. Nope. It’s actually a whole new ride that independently serves as one of the best roller coaster experiences on Earth. Cedar Point has effectively re-entered this ride into the Coaster Pantheon and created a new genre-defining experience.

That initial launch? Sure it doesn’t accelerate as quickly as Top Thrill Dragster’s. But it turns out that the pulse-pounding countdown to launch is still pulse-pounding, that 0 to 76 is still a pretty major launch, that the “gradual” acceleration over eight seconds is actually its own unique thrill, and that curving up into the ride’s vertical ascent with enough wherewithal and breath to actually appreciate it is kinda neat.

Rolling in and out of today on Top Thrill 2! @cedarpoint @TonyClarkCP #TopThrill2 #CedarPoint pic.twitter.com/NKqUe7Pcyc

— CP Rundown (@CPRundown) April 29, 2024

Oh, and then the rollback and second launch? It’s now apparent that accelerating backwards at 101 miles per hour is kind of awesome. In fact, that launch – and the pull-up into a new, 420-foot tall rear spike – basically encapsulate the entire experience of Six Flags Magic Mountain’s iconic Superman: Escape from Krypton… and on Top Thrill 2, it’s basically just an appetizer. After multiple seconds of floater air at the top of the spike – hovering over Power Tower – the ride falls as far as Millennium Force, vertically, like it’s nothing.

Then, after a near-miss “head-chopper” visual effect with the ride’s station, we get the full monty, 120-mile-per-hour race for the sky. And unlike Top Thrill Dragster – which tended to teeter atop the 420-foot tall top hat for a moment, appearing as if it might rollback (and indeed, sometimes doing so), Top Thrill 2’s electromagnetic launch crests the top hat with confidence – and a surprising pop of airtime as you gaze out across Lake Erie.

If you haven’t yet, be sure to watch this on-ride POV video of the Top Thrill 2 experience…

So sure, we’ve lost the “0 to 120” launch that defined the previous version of this ride… But in exchange, we’ve got three launches (including a 100 mph backwards one), a rear spike of floater air, and a minute-long ride (versus the original’s infamous 17 seconds). On paper, it’s easy to understand why fans would be frustrated about the reduced stats of the new ride’s acceleration… but in practice, this ride provides that same 120 mph launch and more. Unanimously, Top Thrill 2 is a winner that’ll be more reliable, more safe, and frankly, more extreme than its predecessor in many quantifiable ways.

If there’s one criticism to be had of the new Top Thrill 2, it surely comes down to policy. Cedar Point ruffled major PR feathers when – just weeks before the ride’s opening – they announced that their policies and procedures around it had changed. Apparently in consultation with Zamperla, the park decided at the last minute that Top Thrill 2 would follow in the footsteps of many RMC coasters, requiring riders to completely divest themselves of “carry-on items” – including phones, wallets, and eyeglasses – with such serious oversight that queueing guests pass through metal detectors.

There’s just one problem – unlike RMC rides, that often have free lockers located deep into ride queues and just before the station, the late decision from Cedar Fair and Zamperla unfortunately means that there was no time (and perhaps, no place) to build in-queue lockers. That means that – shucks! – practically every single rider will need to fork over a couple bucks to rent a locker outside of the ride’s entrance. 

And then, will need to endure the multi-hour waits for this new headlining thrill without so much as the lines on their palms for entertainment (and even those will be hard to see if you didn’t bring or buy a glasses strap, since glasses also need left in a pre-queue locker. Oops). It gets worse for those in sandals or flip-flops, who will need to purchase a pair of shoes to enter the queue at all since strapped-on footwear isn’t allowed past the lockers.

Top Thrill Dragster hasn’t been the tallest or fastest roller coaster in the world for decades. But it remained a top 10 experience for its location, its intensity, and its guts. None of those factors are missing now. They’re just rearranged. So even as Cedar Point bills the ride as “the world’s tallest and fastest triple launch coaster,” leave the would-be records behind for a moment… instead, just know that this ride will leave you breathless in its own right.

Final Lap

For nearly two decades, Top Thrill Dragster pushed the limits of what a roller coaster can do. 18 million riders were propelled from 0 to 120 miles per hour, shattering the 400-foot height record day after day after day. The silhouette on the peninsula. The trains. The sounds from around the park. The sights from the top. “Baby, I’m ready to go!” In every way, Top Thrill Dragster was a legend.

And now, via Top Thrill 2, the 400-foot ride – one of just two stratocoasters on Earth – seems to have been granted a second lease on life. Consider it a poetic inversion to the fate of fellow ultra-extreme Coaster Wars behemoth, record-breaker, and Lost Legend: Son of Beast, which was similarly given the green light to re-open after a rider injury, but was kept closed in plain sight for years… until it was finally demolished.

Somehow, it seems that Kinzel’s Coaster Wars equivalent of the A-Bomb won’t meet the same fate… but as to whether Top Thrill 2 will have a story as wild as its fabled predecessor? Our best advice for now is simple: “Arms down, head back, and hold on…”