millenium force easily makes my top 2, right behind maverick. i love the sheer sense of speed and openness you get out of it!

MF is definitely my favorite. It’s such a smooth ride that I forget about fighting it like I have to do with some other coasters. I will never forget the feeling of riding the MF or my first time riding it. Little context, when I was in my teens, tall coasters scared me. I really wasn’t willing to try them at all, instead going on the Raptor or Mantis. Rides like the Magnum scared me. But the MF just fascinated me when I first saw it being constructed and when it was completed, I would just watch it. Finally I got my courage and decided to try it near the end of the day and it felt like a breakthrough. I just enjoyed the speed, the thrill, and the ride. After riding the MF, I started going on all the top rides and tallest coasters and now I’ve gone all over the country, from California to Florida, riding coasters. Yet I still remember the feeling of the MF to this day.

I know they announced she will be getting a new lift hill motor to get the lift back to full speed so hopefully they slap on a coat of fresh paint too. Do those things and that old girl will be running like it’s the year 2000 again. Twenty four years on and she is still smooth as silk and rated among the best coasters in the word. Millie is a modern icon

For me the best part of this ride was always the insane launch. Removing that is a huge shame. Adding air on the top hat sounds like an improvement. My main concern is that the capacity of the ride must have gone down because of the additional launch time.

I rode it like 5 years ago and it gave me PTSD. now that i know all this i may face my fear again. had to be before the remodel bc that first drop looks so much different. it used to look like it was almost straight down. now its a legit hill. thank you for this good sir

As someone who works in construction, and has for many years, Zamperla was absolutely the lowest bidder lol. It doesn’t mean that they do bad work. But that is just how construction works. I give them credit for trying this out, but at some point Zamperla should have had some sort of backlog to reference for this project. There’s nothing wrong with going big, but you shouldn’t get a shot at Ali if you’ve just won your first boxing match. I have no doubt that with time Zamperla will fix the issues, but CP isn’t exactly the most patient of people when it comes to ride manufacturing.

I’m going on July 22, will it be open?

Thank goodness Six Flags bought cedar fair!

Obviously Zamperla is a failure here.

Bring back Intamin!!!!

Thank you for making a very well thought out and reasonable video vs all the hit pieces for views that the “thoosies” are eating up all day online. I was a manager at Cedar Point in 2018. Anyone remember our grand opening of Steel Vengeance? And the problems it has to this day? Dragster of course for 19 years? Maverick modified and the problems it still has? 7 people almost drowning on our Intamin water ride? To say that B&M, MACK, or RMC would have done better (they put in bids) is blatant ignorance. People, the Zamperla team is filled with former Intamin engineers who worked on your beloved favorites. One of the head engineers living in Sandusky is a former Intamin engineer who worked on many of their best rides. You basically have Intamin working on the project without knowing it. That’s how they were able to 3D scan Intamin track and copy it! I still live locally making my living, I still have friends at the park. There is still a lot of season left for the ride to have a great season. The thousands of thoosies being critical of Cedar Fair and Zamperla are the same folks that will never take that business risk, or that risky investment, or that risky job change. The Zamperla team on site are very nice guys and they really are working their asses off. I rode it already also and the ride is awesome. It already will be more reliable just by not having the hydraulic launch. When it’s open (which is anticipated soon). Enjoy the ride, shut up, and have fun!

I've ridden TT2 it's incredible what Zamperla has done.

I really loved this take and am now subscribing

Excuses, Excuses. Fun fact that the ride has never gone one season since its inception without breaking down. There it sits yet again broke down. Reimagine that.😮

Since were speculating, I think its possible whatever band aid Zamperla tried to put on will be rejected by state inspectors (which it should IMO). I would expect a full train redesign. Also, lets not lie to ourselves, we all have eyes. The lightning trains are borderline fraud. Anyone with a brain can see how laughable it is to see how the entire car was mounted on just one beam.

The only thing they need is to lower the seats. They rattle because they're too high. The old one was smoother.

As of 6/11/24, nothing was being worked on. Little disappointed. It's just cool enough to see it in person.

Zamperla needs to be bullied like Intamin was. B&M had a giga snap in half. RMC cannot make a simple chain lift coaster work right. And Intamin gets all the hate. Nobody cared when Zamperla couldn't get their Mouse to work because it was a stupid ride. Now everyone is noticing. We can celebrate Zamperla when they deserve it. And Cedar Point deserves their share of the blame.

Absolutely amazing video! Thoroughly enjoyed this!

Don’t forget. Top Thrill Dragster originally had drag wheels and had to go through a train modification. Also in July of the year it opened, 4 people were injured by debris from the launch cable which caused a brief closure. Everything wasn’t peachy when the Intamin version opened either. My what short term memories we all have. Heck people threw Zamperla under the bus when Wild Mouse had a rough opening, but now that ride is more consistently opened than many others in the park.

Do a video on Storm Runner

thank you for treating this subject fairly and not just jumping on the "cheapest bidder" train like everyone else. I'm rooting for Zamperla

Is it pronounced "Zam-Pear-La" or "Zam-Per-La"?

Ultimately, Dragster's conversion is a one-off. It didn't need to go perfectly, but it needed to work well enough that smaller parks will have confidence in buying a 70m Double Heart as their only realistic shot at a hyper. The worst-case scenario of this is Zamperla stays stuck in the carnival corner, building Wild Mice and the occasional Double Heart. Best case is they can rival Intamin at building custom multi-launch coasters, and maybe put Premier out of the coaster business. Hope they're building the 2025 project at Canada's Wonderland, but even if they aren't, Cedar Fair could have them on their radar for KI or another park.

Prototypes are going to have problems especially with new trains with the speeds TT2 goes. It's called Shit Happens.

I would say give Zamperla a chance here. Yes, there have been issues so far but let’s be honest, this is nothing new for a new ride. People are just not giving Zamperla the benefit of the doubt like they would Intamin because it hasn’t been earned yet. This currently is just a bump in the road and time will tell if this mole hill becomes a mountain. You want a true disaster of a coaster look no further than Sleel Curtain at Kennywood in Pittsburgh. When TT2 gets that bad then we have a problem As for a potential Intamin and CF reunion I would like to see something truly epic and new.

Is it Zam-Pair-La or Zam-Perl-La??

"Lightning Rod just now became a reliable coaster." Reliably average. It has been neutered AF

Thanks for the realistic viewpoint. It's an innovative coaster, so bugs have&will be worked out. Already we're at the "2nd generation" of the train chassis with "what I heard" Totally Brand New Trains "3rd generation" trains next operating season.

Having 9 rides so far on TT2, I can confidently say that it vastly exceeded my expectations. I was as puzzled as most when hearing that it would be Zamperla. Supposedly Intamin put a bid in that would be a 250' spike with a backwards launch first then forward. I think we got a much, much better outcome and the enhancement of the higher top hat speed and higher trains makes the top hat now the best element I've ever experienced. When it openined, the daily operation was honestly impressive. When it went down, it was back up very quickly and every new ride has the hiccups to work out at first, even B&Ms. The only puzzling thing is that when you look at the wheel carriers, the piece connecting the road wheels to the rest of the assembly looks to be very small. Definitely a "Where's the beef?" thought in retrospect. Having looked at the designs from Intamin and B&M on coasters half as big, there is much more metal there. The new design is seriously beefed up and if this is the only issue and then we move on to reliable operations for year to come then it will simply be a small blip on an otherwise extremely impressive project. If bugs keep popping up that will be a different story, but I'm hopeful. I unironically said to my kids that I really hope we get a Zamperla launch coaster as the Vortex replacement at KI after opening weekend after being team RMC, Intamin, Mack, or Vekoma in order of want and reverse order of likeliness.

The people that are criticizing Cedar Point for taking the “cheap” route on the reimagining of this ride need to realize how much money it probably costed them to build another 420 foot structure. That on its own is not cheap at all

yeah yeah yeah, it's not worth it to dwell on it, but man I want a new intamin in ohio. I'm just sayin'. Like imagine a looong intamin launch coaster in the woods at KI.

Finally, a video with a fair opinion reg Zamperla and TT2... I believe it all will work out in the end. Folks are just hard on Cedar Point, yet we barely mention Hyperia current issues...

During Coastermania, Tony and Mike confirmed that they'd been talking to Intamin for YEARS for trying to re-do Top Thrill Dragster but no matter how much they talked, they just couldn't come to an agreement. We don't know if that had to do with money, logistics, construction, the design, the capacity, layout, etc. Who the heck knows. I'm just so so tired of people just saying things like, "Why didn't they ask Intamin?" As if they have a single clue about how these things work or they've forgotten how ridiculously insane this design is. As pointed out in the video, all new, first of a kind coasters have issues like this and it's very common across all manufacturers.

How much do you want to be cedar fairs plan was to bankrupt zamperla. Since cedar fair and six flags merged they now have reason to own a company that can manufacture track for their coasters. Cedar fair gives them a big project like tt2 just like six flags did with arrow and x2 then when the company goes bankrupt unable to get a return on the massive investment of restricturing the buisness to make large scale coasters cedar fair will swoop in and buy the company. Now they have a in house way to create parts and track for the hundreds of coasters they own. And they can supply parts to other parks across the world. Six flags and cedar fair are evil. Theybdont care about how they get their profit they just need that stock price to keep climbing. I hope six flags goes bankrupt and is forced to sell off the parks to other companies. Local ones that actually care about the communitys their parks are in.

I rode it 5 times before closing and honestly if it runs like it did before closing it’s going to be considered a win and I’ll add that if you look at any other KZfaqr that rode it they all say it an amazing ride zamperla is here to stay!!

The industry and the hobby are only better served by them succeeding, so you'll only get optimism from me. I hate how much negativity and doom-saying there is out there from people who supposedly want new and exciting experiences.

11:22 bro turned into the ride operator

Why did Intamin have trains and wheels that were working correctly for YEARS versus ~8 days with Zamperla?! Can anybody explain that? This is not a success story and doesn't deserve to be.

Like you said, at a certain point, its just hoping nothing will go wrong. Were on board though with Zamperla. The ride totally impressed us! And it had very little downtime opening weekend. Once they get all the issues fixed, people will forget all about this year. However, Cedar fair will probably not...

Very cool Larry. Thanks

This is a great take. I do feel like they ran into more extensive issues. And I agree it’s about the marathon not the sprint, but this first year of opening is crucial for the reputation of CF and Zamperla.

Opened in 2000 and still riding smooth in 2024! Millennium Force was built to last!💪🎢

Why can't they just use the same wheels from *Kinga Ka?* Am I missing something? _Is it really that complicated?_

Can I ask how bad the lines would be Aug12-18? I know you can’t guarantee but I am really hung up on last week of august vs that middle August period The only reason I’m even considering middle august is because the park stays open till 10. I have budgeted fast lane into my trip and everything I want to ride ALOT. I would never ask you to guarantee anything but how big a difference do you think we would talking in waiting lines

I come from the future, and you got the 2022 predictions right! You just got the wrong years for camp snoopy and flat rides!

Aged like milk

4th of July weekend

Your channel name just rolls off the tongue so smoothly

I had my first ride ever on Millennium Force on Sunday, 5/5/2024, and after whimping away from it several times last season, it is now my favorite coaster! I rode her again 2 weeks later! CP is my home park so I'm definitely going to be riding it several more times this season! I probably enjoyed my first ride just as much in 2024 as much as people in 2000 did. Hopefully, she gets a new paint job this off season for her 25th anniversary next season