Amazing old Texas Cyclone video

http://www.youtube.com/user/shanehuish#p/u/12/s3Ab8_VZXN4

It's been up for a while now, but wow! If you look close, there are 3 kids in the second seat! Around 2:55 the POV train is on the 5th turn, and another train is already getting on the lift! Damn lawyers and people who sue too easily...

I always heard that the ride was at it's best in the early 80's when it converted to 3-bench PTC's - they made it around the course faster than the 4-benchers.

Those %@*! lawyers. Because of concern over the notorious head (and hand) choppers on the ride they nearly ruined the ride experience on the TC later on. This was because of the infamous coffin cars that took away the view. Morgan should have been asamed of themselves for that. Later the cars were modified again to remove the confining upper part.

TC was once regarded by many as the best coaster in the country prior to these changes. It was slightly bigger than the Coney Island original and a mirror image of it.

As for Morgan, they redeemed themselves with the modifications of the Arrow cars on Steel Phantom when it became Phantoms Revenge proving that they could do something right.

Wow, look at all the empty land surrounding the park. Six Flags didn't kill that place suburban sprawl did!

By the time I rode it in '86 the morgans were in place with only the last car "coffinized". A large car dealership was located to the west of the cyclone.
The astrodome wanted astroworld's parking as they were both on the north side of 610. Astroworld had a footbridge over the highway.

It was truly a great wooden coaster, and other than the original, no one did it better (SFoG's gives occasional "exceptional rides", but they are the exception and not the rule). Cyclone had some of the best near-misses of any woodie I can recall.

AWESOME video! I was there when I was 5-years-old. I sat on a bench with my Aunt while the rest of my family rode TC. I remember how amazing it looked back then. I always wanted to trek all the way down to TX again to ride TC, but sadly never got the chance before the ride was destroyed (not demolished, destroyed).

While it's not cool to like Coldplay these days, in my circles anyways, I enjoy that song a lot. The lyrics are perfect for this video.

^^^^^Arthur, the PTC cars were coffinized before the Morgans were there. There was a picture of them in ACE news at the time. Awful, but probably ran better than the Morgans.

The ride was also reprofiled several times. Most notably, the first 2 drops. They used to 'snap' very hard at the top; later the first drop was 'parabola-ized' but not well, and you were slammed very hard into your seat entering the pull-out. (The Georgia Cyclone had a similar reprofile to it's first drop as well, but much later; that is a ride that was once at the top of top woodies list as well.)

I rode the ride in 1990 then again in 1995. Even with the Morgans, it was a good ride. Very gentle actually (except for the SLAM at the bottom of the first drop), pops of airtime. More than anything, I couldn't believe how tight those turns were, and how close it came during the head/hand choppers.

I sure wish I could have been back before it was taken down. The Morgans had the coffin-tops removed for the last couple years I believe, and was supposed to me a much improved ride.

Arthur, Morgan sure did redeem themselves with the Phantom's Revenge trains. Those need to be on all Arrows! Yes, they could add headrests... think about how great that would be - there is still hope for the future.

Thanks for the video.
I have *fond* memories of the Texas Cyclone in 84/85 when it ran 3 bench PTC trains. Without question the best first drop I've ever been on, and the second drop was better than most first drops are today. The thing I'm always asked about that first drop is why it was so good and my answer is that it maintained a longer percentage of sustained "drop" feeling than anything else, and the ejection at the top was pretty severe - Bill Cobb tended to use circular break-over shapes on drops that really catapulted the riders into the lap bar, and that type of shape curve is rarely done today. There was a pretty nice "slam" at the bottom too, so in totality, the first drop really "challenged" the rider and you were scared when you were about to experience it. The section from the drop off the 3rd turn (under neath layer of 1st turn) to the entrance to the 4th turn was perfect, and that's not a word I throw around too often. Particularly that drop off the 3rd turn - the infamous "post turn", where the train changed direction violently mid-drop and you were slammed into your rider and/or the side of the car while in the middle of a very violent ejection-style negative G moment was to put it mildly, staggeringly powerful. The next two hills were quite stout; the second of those was a perfectly shaped speed hill with massive airtime over the entire hill shape - think of Tremors speed hill in that opening tunnel/hill/tunnel series except more intense, and the entrance to the 4th curve was brutal to the ribs in the front seat.

The entire ride was definitely old school/break paced, and I'm not sure how that would fly with the enthusiast community of today given todays more "fully engineered" rides with more of a continuous ride flow without slow spots, but I'm quite comfortable in saying that the forces in a few of the spots on the old TX Cyclone were so strong and powerful that they will *never* be seen again in any design from here on out to the end of time, and I'm glad I got to ride it across several trips during those two years, including a series of rides at 2:00am (!!) in '84 when the park was open til 4am or something crazy for a July 4th weekend celebration.

However, as much as I loved that ride, I'm not sure it would make good business sense to design something that violent and intense in todays times. Even my own tastes have changed, as I prefer a ride with less "slow spots", but I absolutely miss the type of drops that ride had - nothing that operates today really has that same quality of strong airtime on a drop.

-m

Thanks for the memories. My sister lived in Houston when I was in my early teen's, in the early 80s. I remember the ride being very intense at that time, and was disappointed when I returned to ride it in the early 90s. I think I remember riding it once with the coffin cars. Was that in the early 90s?

^The Morgan coffin cars were on the ride in 1987 I think. In 1986 (or 1985) the 3 bench PTC's were still there, but retrofitted with a version of the 'coffin tops'.

While it's not cool to like Coldplay these days, in my circles anyways, I enjoy that song a lot. The lyrics are perfect for this video.

In my circles, it's not cool to not like a song because its not cool. ;)

That being said, I always thought they were Radiohead rip-offs. But that song is pretty good.

I ALWAYS wanted to check that coaster out...since I because coaster-aware anyway.

lol. I agree about them being a Radiohead rip-offs, janfredrick.

I have a few Coldplay songs in my I-tunes catalog. Don't tell anyone. ;)