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Six Flags' Colossus wood roller coaster to close Saturday


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Six Flags' Colossus wood roller coaster to close Saturday

 

The massive Colossus roller coaster, with a 100-foot drop and speeds up to 60 mph, has evoked screams of terror and joy for 36 years.

 

LA Times article

 

I remember when it first opened. I went on it shortly after that. I went with my nephew and we rode it twice in a row. It was the bomb ride at the time.

 

It's made of wood and I remember while on the way up to the top I was wondering if they paid the framers by the hours or pieced it out to them. Lol. I was working on a framing crew at the time.

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Had a season pass to Six Flags most of my teenage years.  Rode that hundreds of times.  Really sucks they are closing it.

 

That place got overrun by gang bangers though, not a nice place to go.

 

We always went in the daytime and left before dark for that reason. Too bad they allowed that to happen.

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Colossus isn't going away per-say. The structure is staying, just using it to build a new ride with steel rails. Other Six Flags parks have done it with 3 other wooden roller coasters past their prime, turning them into a pretty bad ass looking ride. .

 

The one in Texas is the one someone died on, but that was operator error letting someone way over the weight limit on. Here's the most recent 2.

 

 

 

 

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The park is not as bad as it was about a decade ago in regards to gang activity, but it's tough to keep the low lifes from LA away when you have a bunch of crazy rides that people want to go on. I go to the park about once a year because I love some of the rides, but cannot stand the lethargic employees, the bullsh*t policies that they decide to enforce or not enforce, and the poor operations with regards to how long it takes to get on the rides sometimes.

 

I remember when it first opened. I went on it shortly after that. I went with my nephew and we rode it twice in a row. It was the bomb ride at the time.

 

Lucky! You were one of few to ride it when it still had the -1 G "double dip" which was apparently one of the best parts of the ride. Colossus was "neutered" shortly after it opened due to an overweight woman who was flung from the ride at the double dip because she was not restrained properly. The double dip was removed, and was replaced with what is now a mid course brake run, however you can still see the double dip underneath the brake run in the structure of the ride.

 

Colossus.jpg

 

And like aaronkv said, it hasn't been announced yet, but it's pretty much expected that they will be turning the ride into a steel rail coaster done by Rocky Mountain Construction. I like the ride too, but it will definitely be an improvement over what the ride is now.

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I was at Six Flags in '92 or '93 when there were riots and looting. Paperboy and TLC were going to play that day, but they sold out or over sold to where people couldn't get in and people started to break stuff and what not. Still haven't seen a line like that on a freeway off ramp. I remember people even pulled over and were pissing on the side of the freeway in broad daylight.

 

The last time I was there had to have been 15 years ago. They had just released/opened up the Superman ride. We went on it and when we came back we didn't stop where we were supposed to and almost smashed into some building wall at whatever rate of speed that thing went. The higher ups came and said they needed to reset the rails or some business so they were giving us all another free ride if we wanted (some chicks that thought they were about to die, which may have been the case, elected to get off) and just shot us back to back as a comp for possibly almost dying. Looking back I find it hilarious no one but the chicks got off. The staff handled it really well almost like it was normal, so no one really freaked out that we ended up 25-50 feet past the start/stop point.

 

Good times at Six Flags.

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Yeah the Superman ride is controlled by magnets and computers. The computer system has been updated since then so the ride doesn't have nearly as many breakdowns, but back when the ride opened it had a slew of problems. It really was one of the most technologically advanced rides at the time, it used a lot of power, and it was the first of it's kind.

 

Basically the car has a huge magnet underneath it, and the dozens of white rails you see along the launch track are also magnets that are electronically controlled by the computer system. They create +/- polarity in the magnets in order to launch the car. When the ride breaks down, the electronically controlled magnets shut off, so there's no way to slow the car upon returning to the station. The solution and safest way to slow the car, was to have a series of permanent magnets with similar polarities behind the station, not controlled by computers, that reacted with the car magnet whether the power to the ride was on or not, and it slows the car as quickly as possible. That's basically what happened during your ride, and I assure you, nobody was in danger.

 

If you're ever at the park and look at the top of the Superman tower, you can see the exact same magnets at the end of the track. They're brownish/black, and they do the same thing in case the ride was ever launched too fast so that it wouldn't hit the top of the track or go flying off. In fact when the ride first opened, and a little while after it reopened as Superman Backwards, the cars actually did clip those permanent brakes at the top of the tower, because the car actually hit 100+ MPH. Now you don't typically see it go as high because they don't launch as fast. It keeps the ride from breaking down often and puts less wear and tear on the ride/computer system overall.

 

Was a ride mechanic at Magic Mountain for a year, and worked on a couple of the rides including Superman, so I know quite a bit about the rides from firsthand experience.

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The park is not as bad as it was about a decade ago in regards to gang activity, but it's tough to keep the low lifes from LA away when you have a bunch of crazy rides that people want to go on. I go to the park about once a year because I love some of the rides, but cannot stand the lethargic employees, the bullsh*t policies that they decide to enforce or not enforce, and the poor operations with regards to how long it takes to get on the rides sometimes.

 

 

Lucky! You were one of few to ride it when it still had the -1 G "double dip" which was apparently one of the best parts of the ride. Colossus was "neutered" shortly after it opened due to an overweight woman who was flung from the ride at the double dip because she was not restrained properly. The double dip was removed, and was replaced with what is now a mid course brake run, however you can still see the double dip underneath the brake run in the structure of the ride.

 

Colossus.jpg

 

And like aaronkv said, it hasn't been announced yet, but it's pretty much expected that they will be turning the ride into a steel rail coaster done by Rocky Mountain Construction. I like the ride too, but it will definitely be an improvement over what the ride is now.

 

 

I never got to experience the Double Dip. Be cool if RMC keeps it's exact profile as part of the ride.

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