Knott's delays preview for its Montezooma coaster

These recent coaster delays have drawn out some interesting details about both of these projects.

First is that Knott's/Six Flags have spent around $20 million over the past 4+ years to renovate Montezooma's Revenge. That's a massive investment for a coaster that at best is a mid-tier attraction at Knott's, and probably represents an investment of 2-3 times more than what the park paid for the coaster (after inflation) when it was built in 1978. It's just mind boggling to me that they've pumped this much money into this project and continued to forge ahead even when costs spiraled into 8 figures. There's something to be said for "sunk costs", and Montezooma is located on a spot of the park that would make it difficult to design a replacement attraction with a similar profile, but I cannot believe that they've run up $20 million just to renovate a small shuttle coaster.

On the north side of town, USH has reportedly been presented with complaints from neighbors about the recent testing of F&FHD. The coaster has been testing for months, but the complaints that have reportedly been lodged in the past few weeks have noted noise from riders' screams and a complainant even suggested Universal operate the coaster at a slower speed to make it less exiting and lessen the screams in a local TV interview. These complaints appear to be the reason behind the suspension of TM previews, but it's inconceivable to me that Universal had not done their homework and received full buy in from their neighbors. There are supposedly sound monitors staged in the impacted neighborhood even before they started testing, so I would expect that USH has the data to show that the coaster (and riders) are not generating any more noise than the 101 (frankly if I lived across from USH, I'd already have sound-dampening windows/doors because of the adjacent freeway). This just feels like a bunch of NIMBY's looking for a payday, but is something Universal is going to continue to have to deal with as the park looks to evolve away from it's movie-studio roots.

In other coaster development news, SFGAdv has announced a media event for Project Purple on July 28th where they will reveal all the details of the record-breaking coaster. Since the track has been topped off, there's really not much to reveal on the statistical side, so it's really just the final name and theme (and whether this project will be open for the start of the 2027 season) that is unknown at this point.

Finally, Fury 325 at Carowinds, which has been down for over a week, is likely to be inoperable for the rest of the summer, and likely through the fall as it's rumored that an issue has been identified with one of the support footers (fencing has been put up around the location in question).

When you throw in all of the other news surrounding the industry (MK's Space Mountain reportedly getting a full retrack, visible issues with the erection of F&FHD at USF, and other projects having issues/delays like Nightflight Expedition, SeaQuest, and others), and it's just not a great time right now to be a theme park operator.

I'm sure if they knew it was going to be four years and $20 million there is no way they would have done it. It seems like with this project everything that could go wrong did, and hopefully the ride will be reliable and they can move onto something else now. When I was at SF I saw tons of money and resources dumped into a certain green and blue giant inverted boomerang for 6 years until finally the CEO visited one day and saw it was closed, and got so fed up he made an executive decision right then and there: "get rid of that thing!" lol.

FWIW, Universal Studios Hollywood is disputing local LA media reports that Fast & Furious Hollywood Drift has been delayed past summer to later in 2026. Park spox said opening date announcement expected "soon."

I somewhat agree the_man26, but at some point you've got to cut your losses. My understanding is that Knott's (before the SF merger) had issues with the original contractor hired to renovate the coaster, and then pivoted to a new contractor. I wouldn't be surprised that the uncertainty of the merger played a role here, and some costs were likely burned due to the transition, but at some point someone at the park level should have said "What are we doing here?" Sure, stuff happens, but it's crazy to me that the final price tag to renovate an existing little shuttle coaster will be as much as a brand new mid-sized coaster. This renovation is a complete nothingburger, and won't come close to bringing a return on the massive investment - Knott's probably could have replaced 2 major flat rides or built a new coaster (bigger than Montezooma) for what this renovation has cost.

Well, I think this year is officially cursed when it comes to new attraction openings. At least Tormenta finally did open last week, but we're in mid July and still have three other major "summer 2026" attractions without a date. Hopefully Montezooma's delay is only a few days to a couple weeks to make some last minute tweaks based on employee feedback and doesn't represent a major setback, because Knott's really needs the ride back ASAP at this point.

Also, yikes, they really spent $20 million on this thing? I knew it had ballooned in cost from Kumbak's (speculated) $9 million initial bid, but didn't realize it'd more than doubled. That's pretty insane for a makeover of a simple shuttle loop, and if this doesn't come out being the best darn shuttle loop in existence, I'm going to be resentful they didn't just opt to buy a Super Boomerang for the plot (which was on the table when the project stalled out and probably would have been less expensive than what they wound up spending here).

There was speculation in early 2024 (Jan/Feb) that Knott’s had given up on the project after the first contractor failed to rebuild the track properly and install a new launch system. The 1978 roller coaster had disappeared from the park map even while other attractions that were being refurbished or had actually closed like the Huff and Puff were still on the park map.

After some bad word of mouth, pressure from roller coaster enthusiasts, and presumably some debate by Cedar Fair (and Six Flags as the meger had been announced and was underway) management, Knott’s announced on March 1, 2024 that the coaster would re-open in 2025 (a re-opening date which was not met).

No doubt the coaster’s ACE historic designation and the fact that Montezooma was supposed to be the centerpiece of the reimagined Fiesta Village had some influence in Knott’s decision to not to abandon the project.

Side note: I saw then-Cedar Fair regional VP Raffi Kaprelyan in the park in February and asked him if Montezooma would re-open in 2026, since the project had been delayed so many times. His answer was, “It better be this year.”

It loops, it goes up and down, and then it loops again. For 20 million dollars, this better be a life changing experience.

This is why full rehabs / refurbs outside of Disney or Universal don't make a lot of financial sense. Ditto with moving a coaster ... looking at you AF1.