What's next for Busch Gardens Tampa??
- Thread starter Andy
- Start date
-
Signing up for a Premium Membership is a donation to help Inside Universal maintain costs and offers an ad-free experience on the forum. Learn more about it here.
- May 26, 2012
- 1,941
- 2,682
And yet the wooden coaster at Legoland and Fun Spot have been ok. And Fun Spot is building another woodie with a 360 barrel roll. The thing is you have to spend money on preventative maintenance....
But Gwazi has been opened for 15 YEARS. Can you imagine what kind of maintenance it needed before one side closed? Alot. Then they closed the other side because guests complained about the roughness. The one at Legoland is supposed to be more towards kids that start riding their first rollercoasters.
So, Invadr at BGW cannibalized some of the parts from Gwazi. Was it from both sides or just one side?
Maybe, they are hoping that someone wants to buy all the wood or its replacement was further down the line than what we know. I always think that it looks sad to have a standing but not operating coaster. Like a missed opportunity.
- May 26, 2012
- 1,941
- 2,682
The one at LegoLand has been open for 13 years. And there was one in north Florida that was decades old. And the Daia Beach Hurricane operated for 16 years before becoming a mall (It was stillSBNO at the time). So no excuse
Well that's true. Guests weren't really in to Gwazi after all those years. It was rough. Guests didn't like it.
White Lightening is a hybrid coaster not a true wooden one, Mine Blaster will also be a Hybrid I think.
Also, I think the main problem with Gwazi was not just the humidity, but the higher salt content in the air.
The one is Legoland is 1365ft long. Gwazi combined was over 7000ft long and over twice the height. There's no comparison.
Gwazi was a maintenance nightmare for sure.
Fun Spot's wooden coasters are made of steel supports. (Both of them) Legoland's woodie has the advantage of being hidden amongst the tree for some protection from nature.
IF BGT replaces this with another wooden it'll be a hybrid.
IF BGT replaces this with another wooden it'll be a hybrid.
I rode it back in 1999 and it was fine. However, those twisting coasters don't have the best track record for staying smooth. I am curious how Mystic Timbers holds up over time, up here in Ohio. Maybe Gwazi also had trouble because there was never an offseason. Up here, coasters run for six or seven months and then are shut down. Down there, the rides are pretty much open year-round.
No matter what goes in, hopefully it fares better.
No matter what goes in, hopefully it fares better.
That is exactly what the problem was with Gwazi. A Coaster that never had the proper downtime to get the maintenance it needed. Anyone can see that woodies get rough no matter what the climate is...unless they're properly maintained. I've been to so many Cedar Fair and Six Flags parks and got the living crap beat out of my by their wood coasters. They also have some awesome woodies. It all comes down to age and maintaining the rides.
How quickly people forget, or maybe haven't ridden, Mean Streak...Literally the craziest woody I've ever been on...And not in a good way
Gwazi wasn't as bad as some Northern wood coasters I've ridden....Son of Beast for instance, I thought I was going to die
- May 12, 2015
- 117
- 54
See I have a problem with Gwazi not getting the proper downtime when it was still open. BGT has PLENTY of rides to keep guests happy if one or two rides are down for whatever reason.
Oh, you aren't kidding. Mean Streak (or as it was also called Mean Screech) was not a good coaster from day one. Interesting layout that made no use of the speed from the first hill. It got worse over time and was just vicious. Son of Beast (perfect initials but for a slightly different name) - it was terrible with an extremely boring layout. It's the only coaster that I have been jackhammered on so bad that I basically had to quit riding for the day. Motion sickness sucks but that coaster literally literally made you feel like you had been worked over by a gang armed with aluminum baseball bats. Those two are the worst coasters that I have ever ridden, bar none. Unsurprisingly, Son of Beast's designers, GCCA, also designed The Rattler which was also a bad coaster. Youtube it and watch the first drop track sway as the coaster goes down.
I don't know if Gwazi got that bad towards the end or not. Again, I rode it back in 1999.
It wasn't as bad as some people claim...In a park with super smooth B&Ms, it was quite glaring though...The same could be said about Python...When ShieKra and Cheetah Hunt were introduced it just made how bumpy Gwazi was more prevalent
When it came to Gwazi, something else along with the lack of thorough TLC that didn't help was it was built just a year before GCI started using their Millenium Flyer trains, so for most of it's life it was running the heavier PTC trains which just don't work with a twisty GCI layout.
So the track got tore up pretty easily, to the point where it would've required a very thorough track refurbishment to run smoothly when they eventually put the MF trains on. As it's been shown before like with Hersheypark's Wildcat, just replacing the trains without major trackwork doesn't cut it.
So the track got tore up pretty easily, to the point where it would've required a very thorough track refurbishment to run smoothly when they eventually put the MF trains on. As it's been shown before like with Hersheypark's Wildcat, just replacing the trains without major trackwork doesn't cut it.
For me, it was un rideable towards the end, headache inducing rattle all round the track. Such a shame really but they thrown so much money at it over the years, and yet it was still as rough as a badgers arse.
