Great Escape retiring Alpine Bobsled roller coaster

This layout was the best of the Intamin bobs. It is a shame Intamin didn’t improve on it by taking what they learned about what size vehicle worked best in the trough as well as an improved trough design to build an even bigger/faster version.

I hope someone will buy it and move it.

I rode the bobs coaster at Opryland years ago and thought it was phenomenal having also ridden Avalanche Run...a shell of Opryland experience.

My opinion/observation involves Cedar Point looking at successful Intamin bobsleds like the ones at Opryland and SFOT and saying “We’d like one of those, only please make it the biggest and fastest on earth. Increase capacity, too.” and the result was Avalanche Run. Lord, what a snooze. I don’t know that I’d go so far as to call it a “Disaster”…., but maybe….
Anyway, I guess we should say that their most successful models were the shorter, snappier ones. I rode Bob at Efteling which had a custom layout but the forest in which it lived and a certain nostalgia factor was about all it had going for it. It’s since been removed as well.
Most had tandem in-line seating, but Great Escape’s had side by side seating and slightly wider sleds. But truth told, none of them are/were all that enjoyable. The ride was always clunky with too many block brakes and the uncomfortable crowd bars.
Mack probably presents the most successful of the steel rides and the only wooden one is a head scratcher if not a complete eye roller.

Worked an afternoon at La Vibora at SFOT to cover someone and it was a brutal back breaker to check lap bars. The trains sit really low compared to the dock and it wasn't just a lean in and check it like most, but you really had to bend down to reach it. I definitely needed a lay down with some Advil when home, no idea how the regular crew handles that.

They should hire height challenged people to check the lap bars.

I never rode this one, but I find bobslead coasters to be a lot of fun. This is a loss. I hope it gets a second life at another park.