Kings Island will retire Firehawk roller coaster at the end of the season

I recall seeing a coaster documentary in the early 2000s that covered the ridiculous number of sensors that were placed on each one of the Firehawk trains. I have no idea if said sensors are part of the alleged maintenance problems, but it doesn't surprise me that the costs of such a ride would be rising after 17 years.

The Vekoma rides' R&D was spawned by Paramount Parks, which led to Stealth at what was then Paramount's Great America. As such, they had first right of refusal to build more, and if they decided against it, Vekoma could sell them to whomever. Infer what you will by the fact that Paramount didn't order another.

Other than the horrible loading and wretched sun-facing lift, I found these more fun than their B&M counterparts. But it seems like the bad qualities/maintenance outweigh the good.

I don't know if this means anything, but in CGA's graveyard scene for FrightFest, they gave every past ride a tombstone with the notable exception of Stealth which is nowhere to be found.

It’s found at Carowinds. DUH.

On the topic of ride graveyards, does Kings Island still have the gravestones for the three Geauga Lake woodies? I remember some people went apes**t over that.

Brett V- That would’ve been awesome to see. Pretty good Easter egg, too. I could see a lot of non-Coaster nerds asking what a Wolf Kabob was, and was it included on the dining plan?

Tekwardo- I think (but maybe I’m wrong) Cedar Point has a grave for Demon Drop even though it’s at Dorney Park?

Schwarzkopf76 said:

Other than the horrible loading and wretched sun-facing lift, I found these more fun than their B&M counterparts. But it seems like the bad qualities/maintenance outweigh the good.

Yeah, capacity has a ripple effect on the park. If a ride has great capacity and is a fan favorite, it serves the auxiliary purpose pulling crowds from other rides and keeping guests occupied and entertained even longer. Even if it has mixed reviews but pushes through the crowds, it gives guests a distraction and something to occupy themselves on crowded days. And those guests won't be clogging up the lower capacity rides.

If a ride has poor capacity, guests may ride it if its new and/or a fan favorite, but will put them in a poor mood and it won't be as gratifying. If it isn't even a great ride to begin with, it doesn't do the park much good, and doesn't grab people from other parts of the park.

On the other hand... if you intentionally stack your park full of poor capacity rides, maybe you could just make your skip the ride pass really expensive and profit from it.

What I admire about Cedar Fair is that even at their smaller parks, they work to make sure that their major additions have respectable capacity, at the very least for the respective parks in which they're installed, in some cases at the expense of low-capacity predecessors. KBF ditched a Boomerang and got Hangtime in its place. Firehawk is leaving KI, a park for which I always felt it was poorly suited due to crowd sizes, and I've no doubt that what goes in its place will be far more of a people-mover.

I do hope that Firehawk lives on elsewhere in the chain. One of the smaller or mid-size parks could greatly benefit from it.

Trackmaster said:
skip the ride pass

I know a couple of coasters that needed this thing.

Pagoda and Jeff are correct regarding the maintenance issues. On my napkin at breakfast I just scribbled down 40 prox and limit switches i could think of- per coach(!) that thing had when i got the privilege of caring for it at SFWoA/GLP. Lots of moving parts, lots of fine-tuning....and lots of money. Those trains were a pain to rehab each winter, and between the man hours plus parts, I recall it coming to $400k+ each year. That was a sticker shock for CF when they bought the place. So much so that the maintenance director they brought back in (Tom Jones, who was previously with the park under SFWoA) wanted the thing dumped right away. In hindsight, that would have made sense. Ditto for putting in another coaster for 2005 instead of the waterpark....but that's another story.

Sad to see it go, definitely a lot of good memories of it and all the peeps i got to work with back then. Hard to believe how often i still think of all of it all, then again it was the most unique job i've ever had.

Here is a video of the lift hill being carefully dismantled

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2049506275338317/permalink/2252490501706559/

Clearly this ride is being prepped to go to MiA next season.

You know a lot of those scratches will buff right out