Like most Millennial theme park enthusiasts worth their salt, I cut my teeth for park operations in the industry in that most common of test beds: Roller Coaster Tycoon on a Windows 95 desktop computer while Windows Media Player repeated Michelle Branch’s The Spirit Room in the background.
If you were unlucky enough to miss this essential era of theme park fandom, Roller Coaster Tycoon presented you with a number of “scenarios” you could choose from – Forest Frontiers (a wooded landscape with a small on-property pond); Evergreen Gardens (a compact property that asked you to build-out a sort of fine British botanical gardens); Millennium Mines (a tricky one, requiring you to make use of a sort of depressed quarry of rock).
The scenario you chose was fundamental. After all, each came with only a few kinds of rides already available, costs to “research” new rides, and strict budget to build with. And though you could add trees or remove them; terraform to carve out canyons or fill waterways; build bridges or tunnels, every click of the mouse wheel resulted in a red, negative dollar amount rising from your action. A player could (and in my case, often did) go bankrupt in service of trying to create something astounding if you failed to balance the realities of attendance; the costs to the consumer; and the tastes of a computerized audience. For many of us who’ve now graduated into armchair Imagineering, Roller Coaster Tycoon taught us the most frustrating and basic rule of making a theme park: ultimately, you have to be realistic…
… Unless you were smart like me. Then you knew that there was really only one level of Roller Coaster Tycoon you ever really needed to play. Arid Heights. If you were unfortunate enough to have missed the “Loopy Landscapes” expansion pack, you might not know the glory of Arid Heights.
Telling the story of Disney and Universal’s theme parks isn’t easy. Some of these are parks have lifetimes now measured in decades, generations, or human lifespans. Like people, their stories are full of growth, change, “phases,” mistakes, reversals, triumphs – and often, core pieces of their identities that tend to stick around for their whole lives even as they change and arrange around them.
I call these diagrams LANDLINES – timelines of the lands that have come and gone from each of these parks. My hope is that these “zoomed out” views of the spaces inside of these parks will provide yet another lens to tell their stories; ways for even us diehard fans to somehow see the parks a little differently. I hope you enjoy.
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“Exploration – Excavation – Exultation!” Take it from the Dino Institute team: there’s an art to digging deep. Uncovering the past isn’t always easy, and making sense of what was only begins at finding evidence of it. Maybe you could say that the same is true of exploring, excavating, and exulting Disney Parks past, too… and that’s where Park Lore comes in.
Our mission is to explore the stories behind the rides, adding context to the legends and lore around the world’s most beloved (and sometimes, denigrated) attractions. Together, we’ve dug deep into the tales of Lost Legends, explored the making of industry-changing Modern Marvels, reflected on the lessons learned from Declassified Disasters, and walked through unbuilt Possibilitylands across the site.
Image: Disney
But through all the stories we’ve told on Park Lore, few hold a candle to one of the boldest, darkest, and downright weirdest thrill rides ever developed by Walt Disney Imagineering. When Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened in 1998, Countdown to Extinction was its only dark ride, sending guests on a wild, off-roading journey through a steaming primeval jungle, pursued by some of the biggest, loudest, meanest, and hungriest creatures ever to walk the Earth.
Countdown to Extinction was a technological marvel, filled with incredible Audio-Animatronics and brought to life by one of the most talked-about ride systems ever developed by Imagineers. Yet Animal Kingdom’s only dark ride was also… a lovably uneven mess, seemingly unsure whether it was meant to leave riders giggling with hokey, blacklight glee or traumatized with terror and wanting to go home.
Today, we’ll explore the development of Disney’s Countdown to Extinction and its subsequent transformation into DINOSAUR, detailing the differences and what made the ride such an unusual, uneven oddity in Disney’s portfolio… until a fate dreamed up on early 2000s message boards unbelievably came to be. Unsurprisingly, the story begins in the past… So “let’s get in, grab the Iguanodon, and get out before that asteroid hits!” Hang on!
When I turned 19 in April 2010, Facebook was still a relatively new, fresh, young place where we were cringe-uploading entire “albums” of nights captured on digital cameras; the iPhone had only just become ubiquitous by way of the iPhone 4; Jim and Pam were newlyweds; we were still at the dawn of Barack Obama’s eight year presidency; the Wizarding World of Harry Potter was still behind walls; and the MagicBand was merely a very expensive concept that wouldn’t be on a guests’ wrist for three more years.
Put another way, 2010 might as well have been a century ago. And there I was, in college, when I was offered what felt like the opportunity of a lifetime. I can’t recall specifically why or how Nick Sim invited me to contribute to his new brand new website, Theme Park Tourist, but I can tell you that I was sure it was a scam. Why would someone PayPal me actual, American currency for writing about theme parks? But the check cleared, as it were, and I was off and running.
Roller coasters come in all shapes, sizes, seating arrangements, and styles… But the best coasters – the ones that people remember – always have something extra. A “secret sauce”; a “spark” that makes them memorable, interesting, and unique. From launches to inversions; freefall drops to dark ride sections; switch tracks to broken records, those “sparks” are special. So what happens when they disappear?
Today, we’ve collected a list of three iconic, landmark coasters… that all lost just a bit of their “spark” when a major change saw the end of an era… Though these rides will forever be icons in the story of roller coasterdom and the minds of thrill ride enthusiasts, their tales always come with a caveat about the “thing” that went missing from each…
Did you get to experience any of these three rides? Before or after their “spark” was dulled? Let us know in the comments below…
Stories in the Extra Features and Special Features collections of Park Lore are all about connections – they’re the threads that interlace between the Lost Legends, Declassified Disasters, Modern Marvels, and Possibilitylands you’ll find in our Main Collections. In other words, these features are for people who really want to dig deep.
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Take a took at your local cineplex and you’ll see for yourself that we are firmly in the age of the franchise. “What’s the point,” Hollywood executives seem to ask, “unless it’ll spawn a series?” Remakes, sequels, and nostalgia surround us, and as Disney Parks aficionados know all too well, that strategy often expands to theme parks, where “IP-free” major attractions are few and far between. Today, we wanted to take a look at an increasing thread in amusement parks: sequel coasters that trade on nostalgia to remake or reference beloved and iconic rides…
For those of us who grew up on discussion boards and social media following the goings-on of amusement parks and roller coasters, there was no more fundamental a divide than that between Six Flags and Cedar Fair. For decades, these two regional parks operators battled back and forth, inciting the “Coaster Wars” in their continuous battle for amusement supremacy. Pitting their flagship parks against one another, Six Flags and Cedar Fair raced to compete. As of July 2024, though, that long-waged war has officially ended in a truce.
Yep, in July 2024, it became official. Six Flags and Cedar Fair would officially combine in a “merger of equals” (in other words, not one acquiring the other). The newly formed company bears the Six Flags name, but is comprised 51% of Cedar Fair’s unit-holders and helmed by Cedar Fair’s CEO, Richard Zimmerman. There’s no question that it’ll take years for Zimmerman to sort out the new company’s structure – how capital expenditure schedules will adjust, how park operations should align (or not), how (or if) to merge the two portfolios’ separate licensing deals, annual pass programs, food suppliers, marketing, branding, etc… but in the meantime, a bigger question has emerged…
According to Roller Coaster Database, there are over 5,500 operating roller coasters on Earth today. Of those 5,500, any thrill-seeker worth their salt – most of whom come equipped with a “Coaster Count” spreadsheet – has a “best;” a “classic;” a “bucket list;” a “personal favorite.” But between them, very, very few rides can agreeably and unanimously be described as “landmarks.”
Those are the roller coasters recognized across the globe; known by their silhouette alone; forever emblazoned in the record books; renowned by generations, and even living on as legends beyond their time… From The Beast to Millennium Force; the Incredible Hulk to Nemesis; X2 to El Toro; Steel Vengeance to VelociCoaster… These are rides so renowned, the mere mention of them conjures images in the minds of coaster enthusiasts the world over.
Standing among the pantheon of the most recognizable coasters in the world was one of the planet’s most extraordinary rides: Top Thrill Dragster. Opened in 2003, the world’s first “stratacoaster” shattered expectations and pierced through the 400-foot coaster height record like it was tought tissue paper. A big, hairy, audacious engineering marvel, Dragster was a ride beloved by adrenaline junkies and detested by those who green-lit its construction. A story of extremes, Dragster’s life was a miracle and a mess… until a pivotal pitstop changed the ride’s (literal) trajectory forever…
Higher. Taller. Faster. Wilder. In the 1990s and early 2000s, nothing – and we mean nothing – mattered more to Six Flags and Cedar Fair than breaking records. Parks battled back and forth to attract the globe’s most extreme thrill-seekers, loading parks up with the biggest coaster counts they could manage – and then a few more for good measure, too. Powered by innovative, risk-taking new ride manufacturers, the New Millennium saw coasters pierce through previously-unthinkable records like tissue paper, turning regional, seasonal amusement parks into the battleground of the legendary “Coaster Wars.”
It was, of course, Swiss coaster design firm Intamin that changed the game. At Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio (the self-proclaimed “Roller Coaster Capital of the World”), the Modern Marvel: Millennium Force appeared in 2000. The world’s first “gigacoaster” (with a drop over 300 feet), Millennium Force propelled the industry into the 21st century on sleek and smooth steel rails. But no one was ready for what followed. 2003’s Lost Legend: Top Thrill Dragster took the still-new “Intamin Accelerator” model of hydraulically-launched, instantaneously-accelerated coasters to new heights: 420 feet tall, to be precise, reached by way of a 0-to-120-miles-per-hour launch.
That, of course, left Cedar Fair’s competitor, Six Flags, eager for their own 400-foot Intamin Accelerator “stratacoaster.” Which probably explains 2005’s Kingda Ka. The anchor of a new “Golden Kingdom” area within New Jersey’s Six Flags Great Adventure, Kingda Ka would indeed be the “King of Coasters” – the world’s tallest (456 feet) and fastest (accelerating from 0 to 128 miles per hour in just 3.5 seconds).
Though cynics call the ride a blatant copy-paste of Dragster (the two are near-twins but for a difference of 36 feet and 8 miles per hour, plus a 129-foot tall “bunny hill” finale added to Ka), the ride nonetheless became the world’s tallest and fastest roller coaster, period – and for a generation of “East Coasters,” a towering icon of adrenaline in its own right.
And by any measure, Kingda Ka’s reign was unbeatable… for a while.
Shifting gears
Image: Six Flags
By most any measure, the one-two punch of Top Thrill Dragster and Kingda Ka marked the definitive end of the so-called “Coaster Wars.” Both spent their early years plagued by downtime; both were incredibly expensive to operate; and as a natural consequence of being the pinnacles of an era focused on extreme thrills, both were emblematic of a growing sense that both Cedar Fair and Six Flags had abandoned family audiences to cater exclusively to teens. By the mid-2000s, the amusement industry began a substantial pivot away from white-knuckle thrills and toward crowd-pleasing, high-capacity, tried-and-true coasters.
(Not for nothing, but neither Cedar Fair nor Intamin did much business with Intamin after the headaches of their two stratacoasters.)
Don’t get us wrong – Cedar Fair and Six Flags parks still added their fair share of coasters over the last two decades. But the back-and-forth volleying for having the most coasters, or the tallest, or the fastest seemed to fade into the rear view. Instead, particularly Cedar Fair’s parks underwent a bit of a family renaissance, re-focusing on special events, dining, dark rides, reliable B&M coasters, and quality-over-quantity projects.
Eventually, coasters faster than Kingda Ka’s 128 mile per hour speed came along (such as the S&S air-launched Ring Racer in Germany, and fellow Intamin Accelerator Formula Rossa in Abu Dhabi). But neither stateside operator seemed to have any hunger to reclaim the crown. (As evidence of why, neither of those coasters foreign speedsters are operating today.) While Dragster and Kingda Ka continued to experience sometimes-lengthy bouts of downtime (with Kingda Ka in particular missing entire months and seasons), both remained as anchor experiences for their parks… and of course, proverbial Meccas for thrill-seekers.
As you know by nature of reading this, that changed when – in August 2021 – Cedar Point’s stratacoaster ended its two-decade race with a tragic accident. When a bracket on the Intamin-made train came detached during the launch and struck a guest waiting in line below, Cedar Point officially closed the ride for good, never to re-open. Well… kinda.
In 2023, Cedar Point announced that their stratacoaster would be heavily retooled by another ride manufacturer – Zamperla – and swap its all-at-once hydraulic launch for a progressive, multi-pass electromagnetic LSM launch. Though it would still eventually reach 120 miles per hour to summit the 420-foot tall hill, it would take three launches to get there – including a 100 mile per hour backwards acceleration up a new, 400+ foot tall rear spike. (That, it turned out, also didn’t really work. The ride operated for just a few weeks before shuttering to have its trains majorly modified, with an expected reopening in 2025.)
Though the new “Top Thrill 2” received rave reviews during its short time operating, there was no question that that instantaneous acceleration – from 0 to 120+ miles per hour in four seconds – was sorely missed… and indeed, could only still be found on Kingda Ka.
Rumors
Kingda Ka was the first coaster I consciously remember being announced, it was the first coaster where I followed its construction, and I vividly remember my first ride on it in 2007. I rode the teal train with my dad. I had the pleasure of operating it in 2015 and it has been a… pic.twitter.com/IIrXUehOQo
In fall 2024, rumors began to swirl by way of well-respected YouTubers in the coaster community that Six Flags had lost enthusiasm in the expensive and continuous upkeep of Kingda Ka… and more to the point, than an unpublished-but-penciled-in retirement of the coaster had been moved up from the end of the 2025 season to the end of this season. Insiders insisted that despite Six Flags having said nothing of the sort, fans had just weeks left to experience the “King of Coasters”…
Naturally, online commentators valiantly refuted the suggestion as clickbait and ragebait meant to bolster ad revenue. Admittedly, it sounded ridiculous that Six Flags would close the world’s tallest and fastest roller coaster with no pomp and circumstance, no exclusive merch, and – worst of all – no “last rides.” Fans looked at the park’s own Instagram posts, which had advertised Kingda Ka as a reason to buy a 2025 season pass. Surely if they planned to close the ride forever, they would’ve made a big to-do about it.
Image: Intamin
As the days of the 2024 season waned, fans eagerly accosted Six Flags emails and social media accounts, all of whom suggested that the rumors were just that, and that Kingda Ka was merely closing on November 10th for its typical year-end slumber ahead of the park’s Christmas celebrations – not for the kind of permanent closure fans suggested.
Well everyone, here we are again – and this time, at Disney’s Animal Kingdom!
By nature of reading this, you’re probably not new to Park Lore. But just in case, I’ll briefly explain. Park Lore is all about seeing the theme parks we know through new and different lenses. Since I started organizing my years of piecemeal freelance work in 2020, I’ve amassed a collection of totally ad-free, in-depth histories of beloved theme park attractions, never-built lands, closed classics, and more, increasingly interspersed with niche theme park art projects, over a hundred hand-drawn ride layouts, and a real favorite of mine – “armchair Imagineered” theme park build-outs.
