Texas Giant will close for a year, get $10 million renovation

Raven-Phile said:
I like turtles.

That was awesome. I'll acknowledge it. :)

You just need zombie face paint.

Prior to SFoG's hyper, I thought B&M hypers in general were supposed to be boring and that they'd made a mistake on that last GOOD drop on AC. Nonethless, TG is awesome to me, I had two trips ('04 and '08) with absolutely fantastic rides, and almost wish I'd been able to tear myself away from Shockwave for a couple more Giant laps - I said almost. Jeremy has Herc....I have the original Texas Giant. If it truly is turning prefab, that's still gonna be one kick-butt ride, but it won't be the same....

Beemers are so hit and miss for me, aside from a couple of the newer ones, namely Nitro and Talon I geberally love the older rides and abhore the newer ones.

I woudl just as soon ride Cedar Creek Mine Ride as Apollo or *GASP* Alpie

All the B&M's I've ridden are near the top of my personal favorites list. The only coaster that tops them all is X2.

Touchdown, if you want a B&M stand up which will fall into your first category, you have to ride Riddler's Revenge.

I don't do anything special to enjoy Magnum. I buckle the belt comfortably across my lap (like in a car) and lower the bar against my legs. That's it. I then enjoy one of my most favoritest coaster rides ever. When the trims are off, it's the Voyage of steel coasters. And count me in as a big fan of Apollo as well (well as long as I'm in the back of the train and it's running up to speed). I have had lackluster rides on it as well, but the good rides were better than Behemoth.

I've had both amazing and not so great rides on Giant. I hope they can get it back to full speed without the unnecessary roughness, yet not make it obnoxiously smooth like El Toro, nor reduce the intensity due to switching to single-bench cars like what happened on Hershey Wildcat. Hopefully they find a way to make it a better woodie and not a tamer woodie. I'd rather have an exciting, rough ride than a boring, ride.

Hoping to make it back to Texas before the end of the season. Gator, when are we getting our Texas Giant and Shock Wave on'? :)

delan said:
Now if Cedar point would do the same for Magnum. Can you imagine it with some new trains from ....lets say.....intamin? Bananas!

I really, really, REALLY don't get this whole "Magnum needs a revamp!" trend I've been seeing lately. Intamin is not God. B&M is not God. Magnum has run consistently well for 20 years while rides like X and Texas Giant either never ran well or ran well for a short time, then hit the wall.

Why fix what's not broken? Texas Giant is definitely broken. X was broken. Mean Streak? Broken. Magnum? Not broken.

Just because you and about half a dozen other people have a hardon for Intamin doesn't mean they need to "improve" every coaster on the planet.

If every ride were an Inatmin I'd retire from coaster riding because they would all be the same and that'd be boring.

I'm not a big fan of Magnum, and I don't buy into the whole, "it's like a big wood coaster" mentality. It's not enjoyable to me, it's just painful. If I want to ride a wood coaster, I'll ride a wood coaster. If I want a painful wood coaster, at least a real one treats me to the proper sounds and smells.

$10 million sounds like a lot for a revamp of the current ride. For that amount of money, the whole thing could be replaced.

I regret not having ridden the thing when it first opened because it was supposed to be one of those legendary rides along the lines of the Crystal Beach Cyclone, the Rye Playland Aeroplane, the Idora Wildcat and the original Texas Cyclone.

Rob Ascough said:
I regret not having ridden the thing when it first opened because it was supposed to be one of those legendary rides along the lines of the Crystal Beach Cyclone, the Rye Playland Aeroplane, the Idora Wildcat and the original Texas Cyclone.

"They" say the same thing about Mean Streak as well. I was there during it's first four seasons, Mean Streak was never any good IMO.

I got really good rides on Mean Streak back in '93, or at least I thought I did. It was before noon and the ride had just reopened after some light rain. We thought it was great- perhaps the best rides we ever experienced on a wood coaster- although you have to keep in mind this was before the days of CCI, GCI and TGG coasters.

Even when they were new coasters, Mean Streak was regarded as the Texas Giant's lesser sibling. The Giant was wild and out-of-control while the Streak was calm and sedate.

I hope they re-theme it to Walker: Texas Ranger.

For having a similar steel coaster taste to Gator (with the exception of his Obsession with Anton) I couldn't disagree more about Texas Giant. I could believe it was intense if the roughness wasn't making me wince at the bottom of every drop. There are a few rides that I've been able to tolerate and a very few that I've been able to enjoy (over 3 years of SFoT as home park), but more often than not I'll pass rather than ride. Go figure.

(Count me as one who loves AC, really likes Nitro, and still hasn't gotten a positive ride on Magnum).

$10 million to fix this pile of timber? Something tells me within 2-3 seasons everyone will be complaining how rough it is again. I truly think wooden coasters have height limits for comfort. As with others in this post, how can it possibly cost more to repair than to build a new wooden coaster from scratch? This must be one incredible overhaul.

Height limits on wood coasters. Bah.

The only real issue is that the track MUST be well supported. I've heard it described as not entirely unlike a wet noodle. Add to that the track must be properly built, in that it must be rigid enough to transfer the load across several bents.

I can name you a wood coaster in excess of 160 feet tall that runs just great in spite of its incredible height and speed (it has other issues that make it incompletely re-rideable for most people, but that isn't entirely because of the height or the speed.

I can also name you a coaster that is a mere 85 feet tall, which is supposed to be the "sweet spot" for wooden coasters (see Blue Streak, Racer, Phoenix...) where the track and structure are in such poor condition that the ride is almost entirely unrideable.

It's a combination of design, engineering, and maintenance, and only when all three are good do you get a decent ride.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Anyone got a noose? LOL

I beg your pardon...

The logic here seems REALLY off. In every aspect. Mostly the financial aspect of it.

They are investing twice the amount of money it cost to build the coaster to renovate it?

That coaster must really mean alot to the park. Somethings askew. Has intamin come up yet in conversation as being involved here? Closed for one year? thats a MAJOR overhaul. The coaster probably took half that amount of time to build. There is something more technical going on here. It sounds like it has to do with the track. Back to my point.....Intamin. And I had this idea years ago for these ailing woodies

$5 mill to build original + $10 mill for an intamin makeover? = $15 million This is the ONLY logic I can find for this; being that $15 mill is what it would cost to build a new intamin megawoodie like el toro. haha its still crazy no matter how you look at it. God, if Dorney only had this amount of love for Hercules.....;)

eightdotthree said:
$10 million? Tear it down and build a GCI!

Better yet; Tear it down and let Intamin do a prefab wood reprofile to it.

I'd be very surprised if Intamin plug 'n' play isn't what's going on here.

Coasterphan said:

eightdotthree said:
$10 million? Tear it down and build a GCI!

Better yet; Tear it down and let Intamin do a prefab wood reprofile to it.

If this happens, I will make my husband insanely happy and move to Texas. He will never know my true reasons for agreeing to it. He'll think I'll just have wanted him to live in Dallas Cowboys country. LOL