Demolition crews this morning brought down the record-setting tower of the Kingda Ka roller coaster.
Once the tallest roller coaster in the world - and the fastest in North America - Kingda Ka gave its last rides in November, after owner Six Flags decided to tear down the Intamin Accelerator coaster.
Over the past few months, crews have been tearing out the station and flat track on the coaster. This morning, explosives finally brought down the 456-foot tower, which also supported the Zumanjaro: Drop of Doom drop tower ride.
Opened in May 2005, Kingda Ka blasted riders from zero to 128 mph in 3.5 seconds, propelling them across the 456-foot Top Hat tower. Some riders said that they could see both the New York City and Philadelphia skylines from atop the coaster, which stood over central New Jersey.
With Kingda Ka's demolition, the title of the world's tallest active roller coaster now goes to Red Force at PortAventura World's Ferrari Land, at 367 feet. Superman: Escape from Krypton at Six Flags Magic Mountain stands taller, at 415 feet, but that ride has not been operating for some time now, with its future uncertain.
But Red Force might not have the title for long. If Top Thrill 2 reopens at Cedar Point this season, it will claim the title at 420 feet. And when Falcons Flight opens at the planned Six Flags Qiddiya City, it will smash the records for the world's tallest, fastest and longest roller coaster, with a 519-foot drop and top speed of 155 mph on 13,943 feet of track.
There's a great obit for Kingda Ka, including photos of the rubble that remains, over at the Asbury Park Press.
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So disappointing, even more so that they imploded the structure hours before the rumored time, likely because they didn't want a crowd of looky-loos.
I do think Kingda Ka (and Zumanjaro) were expensive to operate and maintain, and I do think Intamin doesn't want to support the hydraulic launch systems anymore. However, I agree that there was a likely influence from both insurers and regulators about the attractions. It was well known that when Zumanjaro bolted on to the tower, SF went through a lot of different operational protocols to prevent issues from lose articles falling from riders on either of the rides. In fact, when Zumanjaro first opened, they would hold Kingda Ka trains (and lock out the system) during the full Zumanjaro ride cycle (including loading AND unloading) even though there were plastic shields mounted above each drop carriage. You would end up with 4 (and sometimes just 2 if they were only operating one station) trains cycling between a Zumanjaro cycle, which could take over 3 minutes. That protocol was reportedly required by the state, and eventually Six Flags was able to demonstrate they could operate the 2 rides safely without locking each other out, mostly because of the loose article prohibition on Kingda Ka and reduced demand for Zumanjaro because it took FOREVER to walk back to it. It's highly likely the issues and incidents with TTD led to higher insurance costs because of the similarities in design and operation, which just made Kingda Ka an expensive attraction to operate.
I'm just glad we managed to get up to the park last fall to get a couple of final rides on its last official day of operation. There was nothing quite like that launch, and there are very few coasters in the world that can replicate it.
Watching the demolition just took me back to my roller coaster K'nex days.
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You know the bills for this ride had to be getting ridiculous for them to pull it down.
Maintenance probably wasn’t cheap, but If I had to place a wager on a primary cause, I’d say the insurance company put the screws to them on it. These days they find any excuse in the world to cancel or jack up rates on everything…homes, cars, businesses, roller coasters.