Originally Posted By phruby Park officials say they will be closing Coloussus after 36 years of operation on August 16 to make way for new coasters. Here is your last chance to ride it with the Griswolds.
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA Strange. Cost $7 million to build 30+ years ago. Must have become a maintenance nightmare? It's a great, classic woodie. Rode it many times when it first opened.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros I only rode Colossus once, but I really enjoyed it. I'm a sucker for a good out-and-back type coaster, and this one seemed to fit that pretty well. I don't remember it being especially rough, but it was several years ago >>Must have become a maintenance nightmare?<< I think that all old wooden coasters are really expensive to maintain. It's a shame too, since there aren't many new ones out there any more I read on another site that they might be installing steel tracks onto the existing wooden structure, to make it sort of a hybrid between the two. I don't know if it would be significantly easier to maintain (there's still the huge wooden superstructure to look after), but it would be a nice way to save the ride's layout
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA So perhaps Colossus is 'leaving' in it's current iteration, but is coming back as Colossus 2.0 -- or something. Think of all the money that could be made by selling off handsomely displays pieces of Colossus. A la the electrical parade lights. Boom!
Originally Posted By wahooskipper I don't think it is going away completely. Check out the CCI retrofit of Six Flags Mexico's Medusa or the Rocky Mountain retrofit of Six Flags Texas' Texas Giant.
Originally Posted By phruby >>Think of all the money that could be made by selling off handsomely displays pieces of Colossus. Mmm, termite wood with lead based paint.
Originally Posted By doombuggy "Think of all the money that could be made by selling off handsomely displays pieces of Colossus. A la the electrical parade lights." That turned out to be crummy replacement lights that were never on the floats. I smell one last vacation movie where Clark ends up destroying it.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >>I smell one last vacation movie where Clark ends up destroying it.<< Didn't they already announce that they're doing another one? I think the plot is supposed to be that Clark and Ellen travel to spend time with Rusty's family. Maybe they could work that in some how
Originally Posted By monorailblue The bulbs not only weren't on the floats, they floats didn't glow away forever. Sigh.
Originally Posted By Brad "The bulbs not only weren't on the floats, they floats didn't glow away forever. Sigh." You know, for two minutes in 2006 I was saddened I'd thrown mine out. After reading all about that scam, I'm just glad I have one less piece of cheap arse Disney kitsch clogging my home!
Originally Posted By phruby Took my seven year old on it last night. He loved it so much we did it three more times in a row. MM had a photo op were you can pretend you are the Griswald family standing the with station wagon from Vacation in from Colossus.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros Sounds like they encountered a bit of a snag while they were doing some work on Colossus yesterday... <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-colossus-fire-damage-20140909-story.html">http://www.latimes.com/busines...ory.html</a>
Originally Posted By CuriousConstance "Fire won't delay Colossus reopening, Magic Mountain says" That's a bit terrifying. I'd expect and want a big delay when an entire portion of the track collapsed.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros It really isn't all that much of the track, it's just the most visible part of it. And since it's the top of the hill, it's more or less structurally isolated from everything else Chances are they would need to do a lot of structural upgrades any way for the new track they're installing, so this just adds a little bit into the process. Given that they're still very early in the conversion, they still have a lot of extra float time to squeeze the extra work in
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >>So now it's not being torn down as first reported?<< Nope, the structure is remaining and will get steel tracks installed on top of it. They're also reconfiguring a couple parts of it for inversions and to make the whole thing one long circuit, rather than 2 separate 'racing' tracks <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bSuHIdoU60">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...uHIdoU60</a> Looking at the video, it looks like they might be making the first drop steeper, which would require a lot of changes in the area of the fire anyway, so perhaps they were planning on doing that work regardless
