Kings Island Closes "The Crypt (Formerly Tomb Raider the Ride)"

I never got on the thing at The Crypt (seems a lot of that was going around), but I did love it as Tomb Raider. I thought the overall theme execution for that ride was pretty good, and I enjoyed the first movie (even if it was a little silly, like the game).

Now, are they able to actualy take the ride apart and get it out of the building? I assume when they built it the ride was built first and then the building around it right?

I don't know if I've ever seen photos of a Giant Top Spin outside. Would be neat to see it come apart.

LMGTFY

You haven't seen photos of a Giant Top Spin outside because there aren't any.

So far as I know, the Crypt is the only one ever built. And even that one has had the gondola cut down, and even that didn't fix the problems they were having. It's just a ride system that never worked right, and as Tomb Raider it didn't perform as it should have. It was interesting...back in the Tomb Raider days, the common complaint was that the ride was "too short." Which is interesting, because at about 3:30, the only ride in the park that was any longer (other than the train) was The Beast! The real problem is that the ride took a lot of time but didn't do very much.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I didn't know the gondola was cut down. That's interesting to me. Can you elaborate on that?

...not to mention that the overall experience is something I would count as part of the ride.

My favorite part was perhaps the simplest; the dark queue line set the mood. It was so much fun experiencing something when I literally had no idea what was coming next. I rode TR for the first time with absolutely zero knowledge of what the "ride" part even was.

How many people does a giant Top Spin hold. I saw 3 rows on the one I linked and assumed it was a giant.

Just some random thoughts:

I wonder how much money Huss put in to this ride with all the problems it's been having or if it Cedar Fair/Paramount has been paying for all these problems.

It's seems that Huss is having quite a few issues with their rides lately. How many top spins have been removed in the last 10 years?

I still don't understand why Cedar Fair didn't use the special effects. I can understand the preshow, since it was Tomb Raider, but what really in the ride building is "Tomb Raider"? I'm trying to remember...I think there was some Laura voice work, but did they have to get rid of the lava, ice, and big bad "boss"...I mean all that they needed to turn on were some lights (mind you the last 3 times I rode it, the "house" lights were on so you could see the special effects were there but not used, and you could see the "boss" painted over in black) and some bubble blowers...unless you want to add the secondary effects as the water going up and down and dripping.

-RollerCoasterGod

When the ride opened, it could carry 77 riders per cycle (2 rows of 25, 1 row of 27). Last time I tried to ride it, one entire row had been removed, and the end seats had been removed from the remaining rows. Not sure how many it could carry, but it was less than 50. By comparison, the original Huss Top Spin in the US, Texas Twister at Geauga Lake (now Firefall at Great America) has two rows of 20 seats.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I knew of this ride's problems and that it wasn't a very high quality experience anymore, but it was wonderful having something more to do when it was extremely hot or raining.

There were a number of times when The Crypt, Flight of Fear, and Boo Blasters perfectly filled in the down time of a passing storm or eased the headache from some extreme heat.

I wish that KI would have converted this into a year-round ancient temple fun house (included with admission), and then transformed it into a haunted attraction in the fall. Alternatively, I might get blasted for this thought, but making it a paid laser tag attraction during the spring / summer might have also been a hit.

Rideman, can you elaborate on the system used to make Tomb Raider run? I've never even seen a Topspin except online. Is it two motors, one on one end and one on the other? Maybe the ride needed delicate balancing or the mechanisims were not in sync? It looked really cool from the vids I've seen of it as TR.

It has been a long time since I've talked to anyone about that ride, but I believe there were as many as three motors at each end. One of the most common faults for the ride was that the arms would get just out of sync, which would cause the computer to shut it down. That's why they wouldn't seat the ends of the gondola, apparently because keeping the load centrally located made it harder to throw out of balance. It always makes me wonder why they couldn't have built the thing to be a little tolerant of minor sync issues. That's a lot of weight to be twirling around at high speed with precision.

It sounds like tons of weight for something that swings of that magnatude. I can't even begin to fathom that. That explains why then that they didn't load the ends. Seems as though Huss must have just not been thinking about sync issuses or maybe they didn't even think about throwing in something of a rudundancy control to tame the two arms. Maybe some kind of a gyroscope system. Idk. Sounds like it was a really thrilling ride when it acutally ran worth a darn.Wish I could have rode it. The wife and I were at KI maybe 5 or 6 years ago and I totally missed it. GGrrr. I know from running a Chaos one time that that ride was a pain in the a to get balanced.

Well there apparently were redundant computers, and when they didn't agree, that's when it turned itself off.

Jason Hammond said:
LMGTFY

I shouldn't have To google something. It should just be explained to me.

That's why I googled it for you :-)

And you didn't even get That right!

http://lmgtfy.com/

The regular top spins have four DC motors, 2 per side, so the bigguns could have 3. They're run by 4 separate drives that work in unison, with the drive for M1 being a master for all 4.

We never had sync issues, but the one at KI had encoders on the gondola so it could stop in precise positions, so maybe that was the cause of so many of the faults. The regular top spins just spin freely.

LostKause said:
I am not upset about this. The Crypt has been a pretty terrible ride the last few years. I wish something amazing and unique would take it's spot, like perhaps a traditional log flume. ;)

Cedar Point took down White Water Landing to build Maverick, and it was actually the third flume ride removed from the park. Then what did they do? They already had Snake river falls, and added Shoot The Rapids, which really isn't that different. Some things just fall under the category of WTF!

I think the reason a lot of the parks are removing flumes is due to capacity, as a wait for White Water Landing on a hot day could be a couple hours. That and they take up a lot of valuable space. As for the Crypt it sounds to me that it wasn't really that great of a ride to begin with. Probably a lot like Disaster Transport at Cedar Point. A good concept, but not overly thrilling.

Right. All of that was hidden way in between the line of my post. It was a jab at parks for removing awesome log flume rides.