The In-Depth Story of Cedar Level’s Gigacoaster Icon and Its Coaster Wars Victory

Proper on the intersection of artwork and science resides the curler coaster…

And although we’ve devoted in-depth options to many – from Son of Beast to the Big Bad Wolf; Expedition Everest to Top Thrill Dragster; Space Mountain: De la Terre à la Lune to Volcano: The Blast Coaster – within the opinion of most of the trade’s most devoted followers, the journey that the majority magnificently combines artwork and science in a single is MILLENNIUM FORCE, the landmark gigacoaster at Cedar Level.

Rising 300 toes over Ohio’s Lake Erie, Millennium Drive is the crown jewel of the “Curler Coaster Capital of the World”; the end-all-be-all of the ’90s “Coaster Wars”; the “Greatest Metal Coaster within the World” yr after yr; and true to its title, an trade pivot level completely bridging the hole between previous, current, and future. Even having been surpassed in top, drop, velocity, and size, this landmark journey is a bucket listing topper for coaster fanatics from across the globe.

Although Cedar Level promised in 2000 that “The Future Is Using On It,” the story of Millennium Drive actually is the story of the metal curler coaster and its half-century evolution… And that’s the place our journey begins…

The Metal Age

You must keep in mind that within the grand scale of humanity’s seek for amusement, the metal curler coaster is a comparatively new invention. By any depend, the primary fashionable, tubular steel-tracked coaster was Disneyland’s Matterhorn Bobsleds – a 1959 addition to the then-four-year-old park. Even nonetheless, it wasn’t till the mid-’60s that “mine prepare” coasters started to proliferate throughout amusement parks; not till 1975 that Knott’s Berry Farm’s Corkscrew (left) turned the other way up; not till 1978 that Cedar Level’s Gemini lastly supplied a drop of over 100 toes, proving that this still-new “metal coaster” medium might construct taller, sooner, and steeper than anybody had imagined earlier than.

For that purpose, we are able to’t lay the inspiration for Millennium Drive with out acknowledging that the rise of the metal coaster started with Arrow Dynamics – a Utah-based journey producer who virtually dominated the trade for many years, together with every of the installations talked about above from Matterhorn to Gemini.

In reality, the story of the primary three a long time of the metal coaster is principally the story of Arrow: of the “mine trains” that proliferated via a era of parks within the ’60s; of the Double Loops and Corkscrews that turned normal within the ’70s; then, of the swinging suspended coasters and daunting “multi-loopers” that turned mainstays of midways within the ’80s. Arrow laid the groundwork for numerous improvements – and their coasters as we speak stay the inspiration of numerous amusement parks throughout the nation.

However on the intersection of the metal coaster’s rise and Arrow’s story stands one park, one journey, and one man who set the stage for Millennium Drive. Cue the ’80s synths.

Magnum XL-200

Cedar Level, like many traditional amusement parks, is previous. Like, critically previous. Tracing its opening to the Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant simply 5 years after the top of the Civil Conflict, the 1870 park on Ohio’s Lake Erie started like many amusement parks did: as a lakeside bathing seashore that progressively added a bathhouses, a dancehall, a bandstand, and – by 1892 – a curler coaster. (The pre-electric, gravity-powered Scenic Railway reached sensational high speeds of 10 miles per hour.) It wasn’t even till 1911 {that a} causeway was constructed to the island, turning the Victorian picnic park from an island to the peninsula we all know as we speak.

Talking of which, to go to Cedar Level 100 years later (left) can be to see a contemporary park stuffed with rides of its time – midways affected by log flumes, traditional picket coasters, historic resorts, and extra. Extra to the purpose, although, Cedar Level was maybe a poster baby for the story of the curler coaster as instructed via Arrow’s innovation. The park had its dutiful ’60s mine prepare (1969’s Cedar Creek Mine Journey), its ’70s looper (1976’s Corkscrew), and an Arrow suspended coaster (1987’s Iron Dragon) all nonetheless reigned over by 1978’s Gemini.

However Cedar Level of the ’80s additionally had a secret ingredient: Dick Kinzel.

Born in close by Toledo, Kinzel had virtually been raised at Cedar Level. Based on Tim O’Brien’s biography, Dick Kinzel: Curler Coaster King of Cedar Level, Kinzel started his employment with the park as a seasonal employee, then as a meals service supervisor earlier than – in 1975 – “begging” for the job of Director of Operations for the park. Kinzel was there for the groundswell of income surrounding the record-breaking opening of Gemini in 1978, so when he returned to Sandusky after a stint main Valleyfair because the newly-elevated CEO of Cedar Truthful in 1986, Kinzel got down to recreate that magic.

Whereas Gemini had value a staggering $3.7 million, Kinzel now turned to the board with an almost-unthinkable request: a $7 million allowance to win again the coaster top report (which might be stolen by Six Flags Nice America with 1988’s 170-foot-tall Shockwave).

“I simply wished the very best coaster on the earth,” Kinzel remembered in a 2017 retrospective with the Sandusky Register, along with his sights set on reaching 185 toes. However allegedly, a board member requested, “How way more would it not take to get to 200?”

Magnum XL-200 opened Could 6, 1989 – the world’s tallest, quickest, and steepest curler coaster… However extra importantly, to Kinzel’s pondering, the primary ever to high that once-thinkable 200-foot top barrier; the world’s first “hypercoaster.”

Kinzel referred to as these “final 15 toes” the very best funding in Cedar Truthful’s historical past. “Individuals would truly say it was definitely worth the value of admission alone,” Kinzel said. “I truthfully assume it was the very best resolution the park ever made.” It is smart. No coaster stays the “tallest” or “quickest” or “steepest” for lengthy, however the first? That’s one for the report books.

Even when Magnum is, as we speak, half the peak of Cedar Point’s tallest coaster, it’s nonetheless a landmark. Its red-orange monitor blazes alongside the northern fringe of Cedar Level’s seashore, racing perpendicular to the surf in steady, arcing airtime hills and metallic tunnels. Although as we speak, its age betrays it (Arrow’s ramp-like hills and trim-braked turnarounds really feel considerably totally different than the precision-calibrated, flowing airtime hills of a B&M hypercoaster, for instance), there’s no query that it stays a bucket listing journey for coaster fanatics.

Magnum is an icon not solely within the park’s historical past, however Arrow’s. In spite of everything, on reflection, Magnum kind of topped out Arrow’s capabilities. Although the producer had actually created the fashionable requirements of a thrill journey, the trade was standing on the precipice of an enormous shift that would go away Arrow behind and introduce the designers of the twenty first century…

The Coaster Wars

Nobody might’ve predicted within the late ’80s that every thing was about to alter. However proper about then – simply because the concrete footers of Magnum had been taking form alongside Cedar Level’s seashore – the primary domino en path to the Coaster Wars had been tapped.

It began when – in 1988 – two outstanding engineers from Giovanola (a Swiss elements provider who labored with coaster producer Intamin) determined to go it alone, opening their very personal engineering agency with simply 4 staff on the payroll. Suffice it to say, Walter Bolliger and Claude Mabillard weren’t on the lookout for work for lengthy. Straight away, they had been approached by the engineering workforce on the recently-rebranded Six Flags Nice America close to Chicago with a proposal to create a next-generation model of the stand-up coaster that the duo had developed for Giovanola.

The outcome was 1990’s Iron Wolf – like so many B&M coasters, not the primary of its type, however probably the most definitive type. In spite of everything, Iron Wolf (above) debuted what would change into B&M signatures, like four-abreast trains, thick-spined monitor, cylindrical columns, that iconic “pre-drop” dip, and precisely-engineered layouts full of advanced inversions… a substantial divergence from Arrow’s equal mega-loopers of the age, and definitely from TOGO stand-up coasters.

After all, what actually put B&M on the map was their return to Nice America two years later with a complete new idea coaster: the inverted Batman: The Journey (above). Once more, although Arrow’s suspended coasters had dangled swinging “buckets” beneath the monitor, B&M’s innovation had allowed for ski-lift model trains the place riders – legs dangling! – had been rocketed via fluid aerial manuevers and inversions.

Clearly if we bounce forward, it’s simple to see B&M’s two debut rides had been the beginning of one thing substantial. The inverted coaster, particularly, turned the headliner du jour of the ’90s; the must-have thrill journey that will proliferate throughout coaster parks, yielding wave after wave of B&M coaster designs. However particularly there, on the daybreak of the ’90s, the primary wave of B&Ms standing alongside Arrows should’ve been like shade TV supplanting black-and-white; a mind-blowing, unimaginable redefinition of what curler coasters might seem like, really feel like, and do.

On reflection, it’s nearly exhausting to think about simply how radically the amusement park trade modified between 1989 and 1999, and the way rapidly B&M overcome Arrow’s multi-decade reign.

Certain, Arrow would return to the “hypercoaster,” stealing the “world’s tallest” report from its personal Magnum XL-200 with 1994’s Desperado, which was itself dethroned by one other Arrow hypercoaster – Blackpool Pleasure Seashore’s Pepsi Max Massive One – only a month after. And for some time, it’d’ve appeared that – simply as Arrow mine trains and double loopers had change into park requirements within the ’60s and ’70s – Arrow hypercoasters would progressively make their strategy to parks the world over.

However this time was totally different. The foundations had been rewritten, as evidenced by B&M’s personal tackle the 200-foot style – 1999’s Apollo’s Chariot at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. As they’d finished with the stand-up, inverted, and sitting coaster, B&M’s hypercoaster was distinctly of the subsequent century – its precisely-designed, effortlessly weightless, high-capacity, high-reliability, and buttery-smooth out-and-back airtime hills with raised, open trains and environment friendly loading… such an enormous divergence from Arrow’s pre-computer, herky-jerky, soldered-on-site installations.

So is it any shock that for severe thrill parks, the ’90s was an period of unthinkable growth. Company house owners like Cedar Truthful, Six Flags, and Paramount Parks swept throughout the nation, gobbling up unbiased parks or small-scale operators like Pac-Man. Frankly, their big-budget monetary backing and company connections had been wanted to supercharge parks with a tidal wave of thrills, powered by headlining record-breakers by B&M.

The Coaster Wars had arrived. Throughout the trade, coaster counts exploded. The arms race accelerated via the last decade, for higher… and for worse.

“For worse,” for instance, the reverberations of this period can nonetheless be felt in each copied-and-pasted Vekoma SLC; in each over-expanded Six Flags that may’t appear to get previous a long time of reliance on low-cost season passes and advertising targeted completely on thrill-seeking youngsters; in every Cedar Truthful park that boasts a dozen coasters, however zero darkish rides; within the decade of recuperation every park has wanted to make up for ten years with none flat rides, household sights, or theming; within the parks that didn’t survive the period as a result of they couldn’t muster the funds to compete with corporate-backed chains whose headline-grabbing coasters drew guests like a fly zapper…

We are saying all of that to convey to you simply how accelerated this period was, and the way ravenously hungry operators had been to turn family parks into flagships; to construct taller, sooner, and larger than the competitors by any means mandatory, with saturated metal columns rising like redwoods amongst expontentially-expanding park skylines.

And “for the higher,” this period of breathless growth, intense competitors, and rising new gamers within the trade served as a stellar alignment between Cedar Level, Dick Kinzel, and a rising journey producer prepared to do the unthinkable: shatter the 300-foot top report. Learn on…