I thought this was just a rumor at first, like Universal closing down Marvel Super Hero Island at IOA, but no- Kingda Ka is to be shut down for good, and it's not getting the TTD treatment either. This comes with the much less saddening closure of Green Lantern and an announcement of a new, "record breaking" launched coaster to be installed here. Why would Six Flags do this? Even when Falcons Flight opens, Kingda Ka would've been the tallest and fastest coaster in America. If maintenance issues are cause for concern, why not get intamin to give it a TTD-style upgrade, especially with the space opened up by green lantern's closure. Someone help me out here.
@VelocicoasterFan - Did you ever consider that perhaps Intamin didn't want to reengineer their coasters? It's very possible that Cedar Fair approached the manufacturer to fix TTD and the company passed on the opportunity or didn't want to take the project for the price CF was willing to pay.
Just because Six Flags/Cedar fair would want Intamin to figure out how to get the strata coaster concept to work without the hydraulic launch doesn't mean Intamin wants to take on that challenge. That assumes CF/SF wants to work with Intamin again following the recent history of issues CF has had with Intamin products (Maverick inversion removal, I-305 reprofiling, and Xcelerator/TTD issues). There are indication that CF does not want to work with Intamin again, which would explain why the company hasn't installed one of their products in over a decade.
Also, while I'm guessing Zamperla was engaged for TT2 instead of Intamin because of cost, it does show that retrofitting a very complicated piece of machinery that is at the limits of modern engineering is not as easy as it seems. Yes, Zamperla was able to get TT2 to work, but it's clear that they had to trade off reliability and longevity just to get trains over the top hat.