Coaster Paint

I was browsing coaster pics the other day, and thought about paint. How much does a coaster cost to get re-painted? I know it varies in size, but what would be an estimate for a coaster, say, the size of Phantom's Revenge? or Alpengiest, or something like that. Also, what kind of paint do they use, I can imagine it is a special kind, probably made to last very long.....Im just curious.....just something that crossed my mind.

Josh

I just find it funny that on media day for Millennium Force someone from the park said they used fade-resistant paint. Even in 2001, I'd beg to differ.

There was a great article in one of those Sherwin Williams propaganda/contractor magazines several years ago about how they repainted Lazer at Dorney Park. I don't think they'd want to feature that painting contractor again, as a good amount of the paint was peeling off the year Talon opened.

I don't have any estimating numbers for painting roller coasters. A lot has to do with the particular coaster obviously and the condition it is in before painting. A wild guess would be somewhere between $0.50 and $1.00 per square foot for painting a steel coaster. Now you can do a bunch of estimating and math to figure out how much to paint your favorite coaster.

By the way, my friends in the paint business tell me that amusement parks are notoriously cheap when it comes to buying the paint itself. The parks tend to use cheap aliphatic enamels rather than the epoxy/urethane system that lasts several times as long.

I heard that they used airplane paint on Batman at Great Adventure. Maybe it was on clearance-- I haven't seen too many yellow airplanes.

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J Bird said:
... what would be an estimate for a coaster, say, the size of Phantom's Revenge?

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$100k. Just an estimate, of course. ;)

Well lets see, the paint for my 1:17 roller coaster model cost $5. So.. roughly $35. Possibly $30 if they used clearance airplane paint.

Wouldn't 17 times $5 be $85? But hey, interesting theory...

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ZNitroMan said:
I haven't seen too many yellow airplanes.

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Well here is one for starters

I believe most airplanes are painted with urethanes these days because they retain their gloss well when exposed to the weather and sunlight. ie. DuPont Imron.

The premium system to use for painting a coaster would be a coat of epoxy for best bond to the steel followed by a coat of urethane for weather resistance.

So if you hear that someone is using airplane paint on a roller coaster, they are probably doing it right.

No. I'm pretty sure it's Crayola.

And yes.. 5 x 17 isn't 35, it's a math problem.

Well it clearly doesn't matter to AB how much it costs.. they seem to keep their coasters sterling. Alpengeist looked brand new 2 months ago.

Track has always arrived ready-painted from what I've seen, even in the case of Nemesis with it's mottled rust effect, but strangely Oblivion's track arrived grey (presumably the primer?) and was painted black on site.

Only a few years later, the paint faded and the ride has never ever been re-painted - it looks truly awful now and is a bright shade of grey in places.

Just interesting that it was repainted on site. I imagine that because it wasn't done properly, that is why it faded so quickly.

Unfortunately, $5 x 17 assumes surface area is directly proportional to scale. Fact of the matter is that surface area scales as a square, so you'd be looking at $5 x 17 x 17 which is 5 x 289 = $1445 which seems just about right. ;) ;)