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The fact that this ride operated unsafely for nearly a week with this structural failure shows how much tide safety is being neglected so Cedar Fair can cut costs. Carowinds has chased off qualified constantly cutting their hours at the last minute with early closures. now this cost cutting has translated to less safe rides. This is exactly how the big thunder mountain tragedy happened at Disneyland. Cost cutting This all falls in the VP

Woodstock Express is back to two trains today!

What is scary, and not confirmed or substantiated, is that other outlets are saying that a news channel has been scouring pictures people have taken of Fury and it shows this crack starting over a week ago. Here is a picture someone claims was taken 6/24. Is that the crack starting or bad lighting?

It is odd that there is a sale for just the PEANUTS merchandise. I wouldn’t mind Kings Island abandoning the PEANUTS theme in the area altogether and creating original themes for attractions like Dollywood did with Wildwood Grove, but I don’t know how likely that is.

I still think it is going to come down to an outside influence like I mentioned above rather than a design issue. I think this would have shown before on one of their many coasters if it were a design defect. You all don't think a manufacturing defect is the reason? A properly designed support can still have a defect during the manufacturing phase that could show up later. That cracked and broke where two support columns come together. We can't tell from the picture whether the angled one was welded onto the vertical one or if it was cast as one piece, but regardless it could be a defect from the factory. B&M tends to be conservative in their designs. All the Intamin fan-boys say B&M are forceless coasters - guess what - that same forceless opinion is due to their conservative designs. And look at it from an overall standpoint - yeah this looks bad (and it is) but the coaster did not fail to complete its circuit and nobody got hurt and heck probably nobody even could tell that rode it, so the overall design did its part to keep everyone safe. Who knows how many cycles it ran completely broke - do we think this person lucked out and got video of the first break? Maybe it ran 4 days before this was noticed. This further shows the conservative design. Heck B&M may come out and say the ride could still go without that support LOL. There are lots of supports in that area and one by itself failing did not cause catastrophic failure. They may say this wasn't a support designed to hold up the track, but rather to help minimize the movement of a passing a train and as such is redundant as part of their conservative design. They could very well plate it at that location as a temporary fix and re-open while a new part is being made - but they would have to weigh the PR side on would that fix and get it open be better than keeping it closed until a new part is made. Contrast that to SOB when a support member broke.... The other B&Ms in our park and others are operating today, so they probably do not think it is a design flaw impacting other similar supports.

@jsus I wonder if other supports will be redone as well. Again, I’m no engineer, but if one support has undertaken that type of stress, there has to be other supports under similar stress.

There’s a certain dark ride in need of an overhaul…

To me, I think its just B&M maybe miscalculated the forces at that particular spot. That's one of those lower high speed turns, which is a pretty forceful part of the ride. Add in those trains which are pretty dense with the weight and there you go. Carowinds should have fault for not finding out as its not like Fury is a secluded ride and its in a spot pretty obvious to spot. The support doesn't look all that different than other supports in similar areas on Fury, Leviathan, or Orion. Fury is the more forceful of the 3. Good news to me on this- it wasn't catastrophic, no one was injured or worse, and its a relatively easy fix, both in hardware and making adjustments to maintenance. I do suspect that no one will ride it again until 2024 though.

Well it looks like Zamperla has more work to look forward to.

See I disagree. I dont know what maintenance is supposed to do about a situation like this. Its not like maintenance takes a detailed look at everything each morning, even though we would like to believe that. I look at this as a structural error and possible poor design of the support beam in that location. Seeing the videos of the train going past it yesterday was scary and we are super lucky nothing occurred from this. We always talk about the downstream affects of accidents with intamin coasters with CF parks, it would have been a horrible situation if something this serous happened with B&M. Im glad they found this early and can correct all potential problems that could occur down the line. Its a shame for people who frequent Carowinds that their flagship ride will likely be closed all summer.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that was true, the maintenance department is probably short staffed because either A: they can’t find workers or B: to save money. I can almost guarantee a-lot of the daily maintenance inspections are just check boxes. Something that can easily be pencil whipped. It would be hard to not become complacent as it becomes difficult to thoroughly inspect things when you’re given work normally done by two people day in day out. I have theorized that this was ultimately why TTD’s accident happened. The signs of an issue for the bolts on the bracket for TTD were probably present. But who knows if the bolts for the bracket was actually inspected or if the little white box has a check mark pencil whipped on it. Which would be the reason why ODA found there was "insufficient evidence to find the action or inactions of Cedar Point violated any of the laws".

It could be lots of things other than a design failure as many coasters from different manufacturers have similar type designs, so it may not be a design flaw. Especially since B&M tends to be one of the more conservative designs. It could be a bad batch of steel (AKA King Cobra) or water somehow penetrated internally and was rusting from within or running it in lower temps during Winterfest and Jan-March contributed to brittleness in the steel (and thus minimum operating temps need to be raised as maybe that operating requirement was developed with a temp in mind that it would be much warmer during the day or had been warmer and gets cooler in the evening compared to a temperature just getting to and settling around that temp all day) or a manufacturing defect like a bad weld or bad casting where those two support pieces come together. I am sure a thorough investigation will be done to determine the cause.

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That is not a quick fix. I guessing that support will be reengineered.

Continuing the discussion from the other thread, the Cedar Fair designer also mentioned at ACE Coaster Con that the chain is looking at increasing the amount of indoor dining particularly at their Winterfest parks. While that doesn't mean more is coming to KI a new indoor location would help spread out the indoor crowds from Brewhouse and Festhaus.

Official speculation thread started here. https://kicentral.com/forums/index.php?/topic/46527-2024-kings-island-speculation-thread/

I believe I remember that too. I believe the survey mentioned something along the lines of "an indoor dining facility with kids entertainment." I'm thinking something like Harmony Hall at Carowinds (would be very similar to Festhaus though) or maybe if you want to go Camp Snoopy, you could go a lodge style building like Canada's Wonderland built. Call it "Peanuts Grand Hall" or "Peanuts Grand Lodge". EDIT: I found the thread that talks about this survey:

The last time I remember them doing a store sale the middle of the season is when they had the clearance sale at the Attitudes store. A few weeks later it was torn down in preparation for Coney BBQ. Hearing from one of the designers at CoasterCon last week it sounds like they want to do more with the Snoopy license. I could see the old Sky Ride station getting torn down as well as the barnyard. Wasn't there also a survey a few years ago asking about restaurant ideas for Planet Snoopy? A Camp Snoopy conversion like Carowinds would be fantastic.

The contract Cedar Fair has with Peanuts runs till 2025. With an optional 5 year extension at the discretion of Cedar Fair.

I got this photo sent to me. Are sales down or is there a reason they are on sale?

I was at Alton Towers in the UK last week. They have a similar à la carte menu, where visitors pay per attraction using a mobile device app. Cost per Fastrack Pass was about $15.

As a structural engineer, I'd say this is a significant concern. The top of the support appears to have completely fractured – likely due to fatigue at the weld joint between the adjoining circular sections. The concern is this connection detail is likely used by B&M in many of their modern coasters. The question is whether Fury 325, Orion, or other modern B&M coasters have similar connections that should be inspected and monitored.

Depending on what information comes out, we may divert our Carowinds plans to go to Kings Dominion instead. Likely will be a long while before it reopens but your never know!

What will likely happen is there will be a chain wide email featuring a training video.

Yes it is, as are other B&Ms in the chain (except Fury).

The question is… is Orion operating today?

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It is scary to think of what could have happened if the support failure was not caught as soon as it was. Luckily, the failure occurred on a very visible part of the ride, and I assume it was guests or park personnel that noticed the issue and reported it. What if something like this happened in an area not so visible like in the woods? Would it have taken an accident for Carowinds to realize the issue?

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Agreed. I think if it were a design issue, it would have popped up somewhere else. Unless they cut into their factor of safety for this ride to get the coaster in under a certain budget number, but again I don't see B&M doing that. I think an outside influence as I mentioned will be the contributing factor. It certainly sucks for many parks this year to have their "signature" ride go down or not operate. Question will be do we wake up in the morning to B&Ms across the country being shut down as a precaution or have they already concluded it wasn't a design error or was something specific to that ride?

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Here is a video, it appears it happened in the middle of the day. I wonder how long it operated with it broken like that. Likely a lot of inspections going to be happening. I also expect engineers from B&M to be on site next week inspecting it in person. While Clermont could likely get them a new support in a few weeks, B&M is likely to redesign it first. I would also expect B&M will issue a service bulletin to inspect other rides just in case. I have heard and seen pictures of cracked spines on B&M coasters. This is the first broken support to my knowledge. I think I know where this is on the coaster, but please someone correct me if this is wrong. It looks like the first big turn after the lift hill. Which means this would be somewhat close to a road.

Fury's track flexes quite a bit - so obviously that put a great deal of stress on the support that didn't have much give. Its a stress break. I would suspect a re-engineered support may be in store, not a simple replacement. I would also expect Orion to be closed pending a close inspection of similar supports. Glad it didn't happen last Friday, when I was there riding it...

I've seen that as well. Looks like Fury is going to be closed for quite a while. It's a good thing everything is bolted together now instead of welded, but it'll still take a bit for Clermont Steel to manufacture a new support and get it shipped to the park. Hopefully B&M will cover the cost.

Something about seeing this photo of the station all lit up at night just floods my mind with so many memories. Thanks for sharing this.

Just wondering who was on first...old comedy routine.

I retract my statement regarding their media team, I guess I didn’t dig deep enough.

I am concerned that Carowinds maintenance missed it for what now appears to be a week. They should be doing a visual inspection of the entire ride daily and we have people going back through their pictures from the last week and you can see it progress from the top of the weld to slowly tear the support apart. I understand how it got missed the first day or two. But I saw a picture from Thursday the day before it was closed and it’s very obvious.

Double Post From the looks of it

From what I've heard, its still in the shop waiting to be put back together.

How did that happen? Could it have been from force/pressure or weather related?

I'm guessing because of their strong association with Marvel and Stars Wars now, I think most kids today will associate Disney with everything Marvel and Star Wars. Seems like both properties have taken a bit of a dive since Disney purchased them (or at least over the last several years anyways, not sure exactly at which point Disney acquired them.) Some of that is the natural ebb and flow in that I think super hero movies have been so played out that people are ready to find something different (though I'm not sure that they have) but part of that is on Disney or whomever is in charge of the scripts and stories, they haven't been great for the most part. the other area that will hinder them is for many older generations, Disney then later Nick represented the main kids programing and there wasn't much else. Disney World/Land offered a heightened experience with the characters that you loved in the movies/TV. Today's kids have so many more options for content, youtube, netflix and a billion other streaming services not to mention Tik Tok and the like. Disney's movie of the week is no longer something special, its just another option (well not that the movie of the week thing exists anymore, but you catch my drift) With so many options, younger kids will age out of Disney and into more grown up kids content much quicker that will lesson that sense of nostalgia that older generations developed with Disney Properties. I think the way older generation or Disney Adults if you will feel about Disney will be lost of today's youth if we check back in 20 years. Course by then I'll have my flying car so all will be good

Really if the fast pass make the ride half the wait time at least, it did it job. I think these are great, and hopefully there like $25 dollars a pop each.