How can theme parks best honor and preserve their history?
Six Flags Magic Mountain did the right thing by retiring X2.
As I wrote in my Orange County Register column today, theme parks need to be more aggressive about closing rough and painful thrill rides, especially when those rides develop a history of injuring guests with no pre-existing medical conditions.
But I don't want to talk about safety now - we have covered that topic extensively here on Theme Park Insider. Today, I want to talk about history, instead.
X2 was an important roller coaster in amusement park history. It deserves to be remembered for the technical innovation that it brought to the coaster industry, and it also deserves to be remembered for the problems that it had.
Part of the purpose in remembering, teaching, and preserving history is so that we will not forget the lessons that history should be teaching us. X2 and its predecessor X combined several elements that have become popular in modern roller coasters, including a face-down 90-degree dive drop, wing-mounted coaster seats, and programmed seat rotation.
X2's legacy lives on whenever a guest boards a coaster that has improved upon those elements and walks away a fan. A generation of coaster designers have learned from what X and X2 taught, by creating these new thrill machines and others yet to come. The lessons of X2 have been learned, and now it is up to those new coasters to leave their own legacies and teach their own lessons. No one needs to see the skeleton of X2 looming over Magic Mountain to remember what the coaster did and what it meant to the industry and its fans.
The opening of Disneyland in 1955 created the modern era of theme parks. But as Disneyland and the parks that followed it approach and pass the age of the average American lifespan, the question of what parks should do to preserve their history will resonate with more and more fans.
Rides that continue to resonate with fans, driving ticket and pass sales, will continue to get the investment that they need to remain in operation. Great coasters inevitably become a Ship of Theseus, with their tracks, trains, control systems, and stations replaced over time. The controversy comes when an attraction holds historical significance but is sliding into contemporary irrelevance.
Many parks are choosing to honor these rides' legacies by reimagining them. This was pretty much Rocky Mountain Construction's original business plan - rebuilding aging, historic wooden coasters to appeal to a new generation of riders. Even shows sometimes call back to their predecessors. Just look at what Busch Gardens Williamsburg has planned for its upcoming Return to Corkscrew Hill for an example.
I love the respect that parks show longtime fans by acknowledging and honoring its attractions' history in these ways. Smart managers understand that a park's history can be a living attraction itself. They find ways to connect that history to the experience that a critical mass of customers want today.
One of the quickest ways to destroy a business is by chasing new customers while ignoring - or worse, disrespecting - those who have been with you for years. That's why I was happy to read Six Flags Magic Mountain President Brian Oerding acknowledge X2's history and the love that many fans had for it when announcing the ride's retirement this morning.
But keeping a painful coaster with what had become a terrible public reputation was not the way to honor that fan devotion. The best way that Six Flags Magic Mountain can honor the legacy of X2 is to install another amazing, jaw-dropping, innovative coaster that gets fans talking and making plans to visit the park.
I like what I have seen from Magic Mountain's plans for its new Thrill Glider next year. But as a Southern Californian, I want to see Magic Mountain bringing the best of the roller coaster world to the Los Angeles area. Maybe that's America's first installation of a Mack Rides Stryker coaster. Or a great new track design for an Intamin LSM Launch coaster or a Mack Rides Xtreme Spinning Coaster. A world-class, story-driven family coaster would provide a nice addition to the park's current coaster line-up, too.
When older fans express nostalgia for the favorite parks, it's not necessarily because we want to go back on those same old rides and see those same old shows again. It's because we want to feel again the way that those rides and shows once made us feel.
Creating new experiences that honor and pay off the expectations of the past is the best way that parks can hold on to their current fans while appealing to new ones. Cutting ties with a troubled coaster that was holding back the park was a smart move by Six Flags Magic Mountain. I would love to see the park follow that with an equally impressive next step toward developing a new attraction that will get fans across the region and around the world as excited as X and X2 once did.
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Replies (15)
Russell, does every attraction have a lifespan or is it primarily coasters and those predicting the future as Haunted Mansion, PotC, It's a Small World, for example, have had "makeovers" but nothing too drastic and they continue to be "must do" attractions for 50+ years at MK? I agree that coasters eventually become out of vogue in time but as Blackpool Pleasure Beach have demonstrated Big Dipper (1923) and Grand National (1935) are still operating along with other attractions from that era but the amusement park has complemented them with bigger, newer and better rides so BPB is the perfect example of a park retaining a foot in the past and one in the present to the non-detriment of the paying customer.
ProfPlum - Yes, EVERYTHING has a lifespan, but there are going to be diminishing returns if you're just performing replacements in kind over and over. You eventually reach a point where the cost to replace worn out parts is more than the projected return of maintaining an antiquated attraction. Some "classics" can survive based on nostalgia, but at some point even the most well-regarded attraction will meet its demise because it's no longer cost effective to swap parts or perform minor tweaks. That's why Disney has been slowly performing modifications to their attractions to keep them current, and reimagining experiences when attractions go down for major maintenance (see BTMRR and the likely Yeti repair that will probably occur when the entirety of the EE track needs replacing).
X2 in theory made sense but in reality and execution - it is unnecessary.
Coasters are already fun, fast and exciting. Why make a coaster where the riders also flip? They made a ride too intense and probably nauseating for many.
If you are flipping in a seat while also riding the coaster you can and will get disorientated.
They made a ride for extreme riders not for the masses. And now they have failed and it will cost them….
Russell - Hulk is One of the Best rides ever created - even if Universal was not under the contract - They would have kept the amazing attraction….
@Brian - See that's the thing, X2 is NOT nauseating because of the controlled spinning that matches the position of the rider with the forces exerted on the body. Free-spinning 4-D coasters are nauseating because the spinning is more random and not always aligned with the car's position on the track. That's what made X/X2 so revolutionary, but as we've see with more modern coasters like F&FHD that controlling spinning on coasters can be accomplished without the need for the "X Rail", which is one of the primary reasons X2 was rough and created moments that potentially led to alleged injuries.
If Universal could have modified Hulk's layout when the track reached the end of its lifespan, they absolutely would have (or installed a new type of coaster). Yes, it's one of the best coasters on the planet, but there's always room for improvement.
Thanks Russell good solid repose - but - "X2 was rough and created moments that potentially led to alleged injuries."
Not potentially - it did lead to injuries....
Hulk needs Zero Modifications - it is perfect -hahahahh
And the fans would rebel if Hulk was replaced.
This is why I'm glad that, even if the rumors turn out to be false, people are talking about Matterhorn right now. I think it's time to say goodbye, and a lot of people are having a hard time with that because it's the first tubular steel coaster. It's rough. It's not fun anymore. It's time to pull the plug and replace it with a new version that pays homage to the classic while bringing new (smoother) thrills.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was some sort of Coaster preservation archive, which records 360 degree footage from a coaster before it’s decommissioned, for use in a motion simulator once it’s gone?
@DangerGoat - That's a great point, and one of the reasons why BTMRR at MK received a full retracking, which is not a viable alternative for Matterhorn. However, the issue many have with the Matterhorn rumors is not the potential elimination of a classic attraction that Walt himself worked on, it's the potential for a massive change in the Disneyland skyline and the natural transition between Tomorrowland and Fantasyland. You can't just pick up and move Matterhorn to another spot in the park and convince people they're still walking into Disneyland.
Exactly. I think ideally they "simply" tear down and rebuild the entire structure in conjunction with a project that closes the monorail and Autopia, giving you a lot of extra working space on the east side of the mountain. Obviously, that's extremely challenging, complicated and expensive ... so, I'm not sure how likely I think that is.
With regards to attraction lifespans, as Coaster Vloggers are running out of new places to vlog from on either side of the Atlantic, quite a few have decided to take the plunge to vlog from parks on the other side of the Pacific, specifically China which has double the number of coasters (1600) compared to the USA (800) One thing that some of their vlogs have noted is at the loading stations of many roller coasters there is a prominently placed plaque stating when that particular coaster started operation as well as when it will reach of end of its lifespan (in years) meaning it must be removed by then. Not a bad idea to adopt elsewhere IMHO. Now if they could only do something about all those SBNO rides that nearly all their parks have in some form or another. But that is whole other story
Russell,when you say "EVERYTHING" do you also include Spaceship Earth?
ProfPlum - Absolutely, and the fact that Disney has hinted at major changes (including the old Tron coaster rumors) is proof that every attraction has a finite lifespan. The only reason Spaceship Earth has not undergone major change is because the ride system itself is integral to the structure's stability, and removing the omnimover would impact the "ball" itself. Disney up to know has been unwilling to remove/replace EPCOT's icon, so Spaceship Earth is really the only attraction that can exist within the structure, but at some point the cost of maintaining the attraction will exceed the cost of replacement, which includes the emotional capital of designers and guests to deal with the massive change to the park's skyline).
At least with Spaceship Earth, geodesic domes are strong structures that can support extremely heavy loads. Obviously, the materials degrade over time, but that's a solid structure. Matterhorn, on the other hand, is not.
I was thinking more about what Jacob suggested: tear down the existing Matterhorn and rebuild it up to 2026 (or whatever) standards. Yes, people are going to complain. Yes, it'll briefly change the skyline. But we'll end up with something better.
Efteling in the Netherlands decided that their first (arrow/vekoma) rollercoaster ever deserved more then being torn down and be a memory, they redesigned the track but kept the exact layout in 2018 , now its smooth as silk and can easily run for another 40 year
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Every attraction has a lifespan, and a coaster like Incredible Hulk, where Universal replaced every inch of track, should be seen as the exception to the rule. If Universal was not operating under the unusual Marvel license, Hulk would have met the same fate as the similarly aged Dueling Dragons/Dragon Challenge. Fans just need to understand that parts have a finite lifespan and at some point it will become more cost effective to reimagine or replace a popular attraction than it is to repair it or to replace individual worn-out parts.