First look at full-speed, on-ride video for AlpenFury

Six Flags really screwed this one up, why open a major new coaster after the summer season right when you're going into Haunt, your busiest days of the year? (which are going to be packed because of Haunt regardless of whether you have a new coaster or not). At that point you may as well just cycle it empty in September/October to use it as an upsell for next seasons season passes. Bad long term planning to try and build such a major new attraction for 2025 at the last minute.

I have no idea why people think that new attractions need to come out during peak season. I'd think staggering it would be better so that you could spread out the crowds.

It was announced last August as a new for 2025 attraction, which has become the norm for seasonal parks to do (announce next years new ride in the late summer/fall in order to sell season passes renewals for the next season). This is from the August 8 announcement:

"Guests who purchase a 2025 Gold Pass will get unlimited rides on AlpenFury in 2025...The 2024 Gold Pass is now available at its lowest price of the year, for only $105 through Sept. 2. Early birds who purchase before Aug. 11 will also receive five free Single-Use Fast Lane Passes!**"

The problem of course is they like to say things like this knowing the ride was still going to be under construction for half (or more) of the season. Which leads me to believe the company is having cashflow issues because why would you out of nowhere decide to build a new coaster at the last minute knowing its going to be closed half the year unless you need that immediate revenue from season pass sales to keep the bills paid. Which also seems like what happened at Cedar Point with Siren's Curse.

Now granted I have no evidence for this and don't care enough to research it...just seems to make sense.

VelocicoasterFan, at a seasonal theme park it is generally best practice to have new rides open by mid May if possible so the park can use it to draw guests who wouldn't otherwise visit that year and draw in extra visits from passholders. Opening it later in the season (after about mid-July) is usually not favorable as by that point the park may have lost out on visitors who chose to forgo their annual trip because the ride wasn't ready. Additionally, passholders can feel burnt if they bought a pass for a new ride and it doesn't open until late in the season as that limits the amount of time they have to experience the attraction. At a year-round park, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a fall opening, but when your park is closed for five months every year, it often makes sense to defer a late ride to the start of next season rather than running it for only a couple months before closing for the winter.

the_man25, I'd personally place most of the blame on this one on Premier. The contract for AlpenFury was signed in 2023 over a year before Cedar Fair and Six Flags merged, and they got the bid because they were the only one that would commit to a two year timeline. The attraction was supposed to finish construction in April so the area could be cleared out before the park opened for the season, but unfortunately fabrication delays prevented that from happening. This is not the first time a Premier attraction has been significantly delayed either (West Coast Racers, their last large custom project, started construction four months late due to fabrication issues and ended up opening in December rather than the planned July debut), and it seems to be a bit endemic among the company's projects.

As for AlpenFury's opening date, I would be very surprised if it doesn't open at some point in July. The ride is a pretty straightforward attraction that has already been testing for a couple weeks, so based on the timeline of other Premier projects a mid to late July opening seems likely.

It seemed like the park was trying really hard to get this coaster open this weekend with an initial media preview scheduled for July 3, but that event was delayed with no reschedule date announced. My guess is that it won't open next week since the new media day has yet to be announced, so we're looking at the following weekend (Thursday, July 17) at the earliest.

I do think the park was trying everything they could to get this open as close to Canada Day as possible, but it just didn't happen. This coaster is not only complicated from a technical perspective, but its location and layout that stretches across multiple guest areas makes it very difficult for the park to perform work on while the park is open. The plan was probably to get all of the track installed and test cycles started before the park opened for the season, but they weren't able to get that completed, meaning they were still erecting track in April and doing major construction activities during the early part of the park's season.

I still think this coaster has a chance to make a run at the best new coaster of 2025 (up there with Stardust Racers and the yet-to-open Falcons Flight), but Six Flags is definitely loosing some marking juice with this delayed opening.

I may be beating a dead horse here but again I think it needs to be pointed out this is exactly why I think SF's management really screwed this one up. Building it when they did, as a new for 2025 addition, knowing they were going to have to rush the opening just to get it open just for the last few months of the season, shows a serious lack of competence IMO because of the kind of ride it is.

Its one thing to do that with a ride like Wrath of Rakshasa because with that at least you can be confident everything is going to work right. This type of attraction is the last thing on earth that you should rush the opening for and in order to open with a reliable attraction that will deliver a good experience requires months of testing. If they rush this and open it in July I would not be shocked if it is extremely unreliable and ends up SBNO by Haunt...not saying its guaranteed to happen by any means, but way more of a possibility than I would be comfortable with if I were a park manager. I have opened rides where they rushed the opening and it screwed everything up for years, and been part of other projects that they took the proper amount of time for construction and testing and the ride opened reliably with no drama. Which again leads me to believe at the end of last season they were desperate to sell season passes for this season.

I can see where you're coming from the_man25, and I think the general consensus was that weather was surprisingly favorable over the winter months to facilitate progress on this new coaster over the off-season. However, I think this is simply a pretty complicated installation that weaves through multiple adjacent attractions including Wonder Mountain, and has proven to be far more intricate than the park anticipated.

The real question is when is the "drop dead" date on trying to get this open this year. As AJ has noted, this could be as much the fault of Premier as it is Cedar Fair/Six Flags (initially planning and design likely occurred before the SF merger), so to push all the blame onto SF is probably a bit unfair. Nonetheless, I think between this and the delay of Quantum Accelerator at SFNE should demonstrate to the merged chain that they need to stop trying to leverage new attraction announcements to drive pass/ticket sales and be a bit more transparent with their customers on their design and planning process. FWIW, while Wrath of Rakshasa and Siren's Curse appear to have debuted on tight construction timelines, the chain's other major new coaster, Rapterra started going vertical back last August and went through months of testing before debuting for Kings Dominion's opening weekend in March. I think you're seeing that advanced prep work occurring at SFoT for their new B&M Dive Machine and whatever is going into SFMM, which might actually be for a 2027 attraction, so these hiccups are probably a function of the merger and transitioning staff/leadership.