After 27 Years, Bid Farewell To The Georgia Cyclone (Millen, Cleveland: hotel, living in)

[ATLTJL]

And the Texas Giant was much more in line with the trend of good parks building massive wooden coasters. Cedar Point also built the Mean Streak around the same time...which I think has also been dismantled. It's fottprint was enormous, but it was just so rough.

[atl1221]

Originally Posted by ATLTJL

And the Texas Giant was much more in line with the trend of good parks building massive wooden coasters. Cedar Point also built the Mean Streak around the same time...which I think has also been dismantled. It's fottprint was enormous, but it was just so rough.

Yep...Mean Streak is closed and Rocky Mountain Construction (RMC) is refurbishing it. I was there in May and it was looking awesome!

[Mossberg]

The Mean Streak was my favorite ride at Cedar Point. It was especially brutal riding in the back seats, but that's what I loved about it! They are converting it to a hybrid coaster I believe.

[ATLTJL]

Yep...Mean Streak is closed and Rocky Mountain Construction (RMC) is refurbishing it. I was there in May and it was looking awesome!

Oh yeah, I do remember hearing about that! I'm glad that they are preserving the awesome structure of the Mean Streak. I hope that RMC does a good job. I actually preferred Gemini to Mean Streak, maybe because it was already a hybrid coaster that has a nice, smooth ride (or at least, smoother than wood).

I wonder if SFOG even considered turning the Cyclone into a hybrid? I'm kind of glad they aren't because honestly, the track design IMO just isn't that good. But I'm also fearful that they will turn the space into some lame attraction that is much dumber than a hybrid Cyclone will be. I mean, we're talking about the same park that bought a Larson Giant Loop, just a bigger version of what people have been riding on traveling carnival midways for decades, and bills it as the Joker Chaos "Coaster." I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if they just bought a used Zipper, painted it, and called it Bane's Backspinning Blazer.

[MN_Ski]

The Cyclone isn't going anywhere.

It is being refurbished into a steel coaster. At this point, a good majority of the coaster is already riding on a steel rail system. Expect a slightly taller drop, a few inversions, and a much smoother ride.

[ATLTJL]

Wait, how are they going to add inversions to the Cyclones wooden frame?

[TheTravelinMan]

Originally Posted by ATLTJL

To be fair....this is not a historic roller coaster. I remember when they built it, we wondered why they built such a terrible coaster. It's true that wooden roller coasters were enjoying a resurgence at the time, but they were taking them to the next level building coasters bigger and longer than ever before....not recreating track designs that were already 60 years old and outdated.

So the Georgia Cyclone was pretty much a crummy outdated ride the day it opened. I think Six Flags always knew that, and that's why they announced it's permanent closure less than two weeks before it goes way. They know that nobody is going to be clamoring to ride this thing one last time. If they did, they would have announced it in March and billed this entire summer as "your last chance to ride the legendary Georgia Cyclone!"

Our Six Flags pretty much never gets modern, interesting rides. The best coaster is has is Goliath, and that debuted in 2005. That's more than 25 years after Cedar Point opened its hyper coaster. By the time Goliath topped 200 feet in Austell, amusement parks all over the country and world were going past 300.

I really wonder if Six Flags has seen business drop since the amusement parks in central Florida upped their game. Used to be if you wanted a decent coaster in the southeast, you HAD to come here. But now we've been totally outclassed by coasters at Busch Gardens, Universal, and even freaking Sea World.

Sorry, I've just never regarded SFOG as a good -- or even passable -- amusement park.

I think we have a compounded problem on our hands here. SixFlags as an entity has not pushed the envelope with rides to the extent that Cedar Point has and then we have the issue that SFOG is not even owned by SixFlags but rather just managed by them which has resulted in less investment in the park. I've made the trek up to Ohio many times when I want my coaster fix despite having SFOG just minutes away. The Gatekeeper @ Cedar Point is the biggest adrenaline rush of any ride I've ever been on.

[ATLTJL]

And another thing to consider is even when they DO get a great ride, they f it up. Remember Deja Vu? That was a definite adrenaline rush, one of the best coasters I have ever been on. But SFOG could barely keep it running, it was always broken...then they eventually just sold it.

In January 2008, Silverwood Theme Park in Idaho announced on its website that it would install the Déjà Vu from Six Flags Great America with a projected opening date of July that year.[9] They later announced Déjà Vu would operate as Aftershock.[10] Before opening at its new location, the ride was overhauled by Vekoma in order to make the ride more reliable.[citation needed] The ride officially opened July 21, 2008.

So if little Silverwood Theme Park, owned by a single dude, could invest the resources to make Deja Vu more reliable, why couldn't SFOG? Instead they replaced it with a dumb kids area???? Obviously, SFOG is just not interested in even trying to be a player on the amusement park scene.

Incidentally....we've also been severely outclassed by Carowinds with its gigacoaster, Fury 325.

[tikigod311]

Originally Posted by ATLTJL

Wait, how are they going to add inversions to the Cyclones wooden frame?

Yeah, that would be pretty awesome, but I would imagine they would need to redesign a significant portion of the ride.

Deja VU was completely awesome, very disorienting. Sad to see that one go. A more simplistic one I really miss, The Viper. No line, super fast, lots of fun.

Love there are so many coaster nerds on C-D!

[ATLTJL]

A more simplistic one I really miss, The Viper

Me too, really loved The Viper! But it's a tad harder to defend because it's also based on a pretty old design. The acceleration on that ride was intense and it never had a long line. I really enjoyed it.