Tonight’s post is going to be a bit of a short one while I’m still going hard on the database project. Before we get to the article, I wanted to highlight some of the things I’ve found so far. While building this huge tree of connected parks through relocations, it seems there’s always a few parks that are the nexus of everything. It’s often kind of surprising which ones they turn out to be. I had figured Prater Park in Vienna to have quite a few since it has 30 coaster past and present combined (awesome park, perhaps worthy of a post later). But here’s some of the big one’s I’ve gotten so far… I suspect there’s many more to come:
Jolly Roger Amusement Park (Maryland): 2 from, 5 to, 7 total relocations
Alton Towers (England): 5 from, 3 to, 8 total relocations
Flamingoland (England): 3 from, 5 to, 8 total relocations
Others with 4: Steel Pier (New Jersey), Playland Park (New York), Selva Magica (Mexico), American Adventures Theme Park (England), Movie Park Germany (Germany [duh]), Cedar Point (Ohio), Boardwalk and Baseball (Florida)
Like I said—this isn’t complete—I know Geauga Lake will turn out to have quite a few outgoing as will Six Flags Astroworld. If I can finish this tree in the next millennium then there will be a big story about it. I’m drawing the tree out on an 18×24 sheet of paper and it’s hilariously large.
But now to today’s article:
This is a little sooner than I was intending to write this, but I came across it again while adding it to the database and figured I’d go ahead and do a quick story. Phantom’s Revenge at Kennywood is only 19 years old, but It’s already lived 2 lives. This type of change is relatively unique in the coaster world as what’s essentially a brand new coaster was built out of the old one.
Back in 1991, Arrow’s 2nd hypercoaster opened as Kennywood’s Steel Phantom. This was one of the first coasters to raise the debate of what exactly classified a coaster as hyper. Yes, there was a drop greater than 200ft., but it was the 2nd, not the initial dip. The lift hill was also well under the 200ft. mark. Further complication matters, Arrow decided to throw in some inversions to the mix. This meant that the ride would get over the shoulder restraints, which made the collective coaster enthusiast world cringe. Perhaps ignoring better judgment, the coaster opened and was met with largely positive reviews, despite the bruising. A 160ft. lift hill led to a turning and diving drop before going up for the 2nd hill. 225ft. later, riders were down in a ravine and behind Thunderbolt, which the ride passes through on the drop. This kind of thing took interaction to a whole new level. They weren’t going to pass close by to the other ride, they were going to fly THROUGH it. After the interesting opening, Steel Phantom took a left turn and headed up into the curious inversion section. Usually when a park buys a coaster, they have to decide on a specific type. It seems like Kennywood just said “We’ll take both. But make it one coaster.” Unfortunately at this time, Arrow was about the only company to go to for this sort of thing, although they still seemed to be in the mindset that all inversions should be the exact same size, no matter what coaster. This led to tiny loops placed hilariously high off the ground. A huge lead-in hill slowed the train enough to send it through the usual Arrow loop and batwing as seen 9 years earlier on Darien Lake’s Viper. From there, it seems Arrow realized it might actually be possible to not have one size of corkscrew. Steel Phantom features a long and wide corkscrew with a slightly thicker spine to support the element. A final oddly shaped helix leads back under the corkscrew and up into the brakes. Despite being a large coaster, Arrow must’ve run out of ideas quickly because it’s over in only 3000ft. Although popular, Steel Phantom featured all the jolts and strange sections of banking that make the company so easy to make fun of. But by 2000, it seems Kennywood was ready for a change.
Rather than scrap a 9 year old several million dollar investment in pain, Kennywood decided to do the sensible thing… and just replace half of it. Morgan was brought in to give the ride a total overhaul and turn it into an actual hyper coaster. In what must have been pretty satisfying, the 4 inversions were torn out… as was everything from about halfway down the 2nd drop. Figuring the lift and hill were at least decent, Morgan started their track halfway down the big drop. Because 225ft. just wasn’t good enough, they also upped the drop by 3ft. Poor Thunderbolt was once again torn apart as new track was laid through in not just one but two locations. Instead of heading off into pain, the big drop now led to a high banked helix with about 8,000 supports before diving back through Thunderbolt. Next up were the expected airtime hills. While other Morgan coasters had very standard, receding segments of hills, it seems somebody might have had a seizure while designing the back end of Phantom’s layout. Tiny little hills including a ridiculous double down provide massive amounts of airtime. Despite the length being increased to 3200ft., there’s not much in the way of hills, but what’s there is certainly strong. In continuing with Kennywood’s efforts of being cheap (or wanting to recycle, your choice), they reused the old Arrow train chassis. Removing the over the shoulder restraints (to a collective cheer from the enthusiast community), Morgan created a new lap bar that operated from the side so they could reuse the mechanism from the old Arrow trains. With a repaint and a rebranding as Phantom’s Revenge, it was ready to go.
It was probably a pretty big surprise for everybody when on the first test runs, the coaster slid right through the brakes and into the station (reportedly anyways). When you can’t have a longer brake run, it appears you just make part of the course into one. Trim brakes sit on the 2nd to last and last hill on the course to scrub off some of the huge amount of speed the ride has on the way back to the station. Thankfully, it seems the ride actually stops now. It’s also quite popular with general guests and even enthusiasts (ranked 25th in the most recent steel coaster poll). While it would be awesome to see them edit the coaster again in a few years to make it longer or something (or maybe reinsert inversions just to confuse the heck out of people), it seems Kennywood got it right the 2nd time around.
On A Rail 