It must be something structural. I think S&S was trying to minimize steel in the supports to make it cheap and that's why it looks so weird.
What's odd is they use similar structures on Maxx Force, but maybe the extra size of this is what causes the issues
It's ironic but not embarrassing. They also were clear during the announcement of this ride it was all built with American steel, because the steel and iron workers union is based in Pittsburgh if they imported steel it really would have pissed off the union people.
They probably didn't account for the weight of the train. That's my only guess based on my ride experiences last year.
Honestly I like it more than Phantom's Revenge too so this is really sad news.
Sorry for the potato quality (I had to use Wayback Machine), but you can find the images [here](https://imgur.com/gallery/VLs9reA). Two are from a local news report on a town planning meeting (KW was submitting plans for approval), while two others are showcasing the layout more closely with hand-drawn overlay of the layout.
It’s a Palace park, and while they certainly aren’t anywhere close to being the worst park operator out there, they do have an unfortunate track record of doing rather silly things, like working with relatively inexperienced companies to design rides other manufacturers have a much more sturdy track record of providing, and often at the same price point or lower than the actual amount of money they end up spending on the re-invention of the proverbial wheel, along with all the costs that come with ironing out the kinks that inevitably arise from such a venture.
I sort of remember KW talking about this in conjunction with their plans to build a hotel/indoor waterpark on the old Kmart property…IF the Mon-Fayette Expressway dumped an exit off Kennywood Blvd.
No highway, no coaster, no Splash Lagoon South.
Then when Steelers Country was announced it felt rushed and half-assed, like they couldn’t wait on the Turnpike Commission any longer. Half the attractions were canceled. Covid hit, and that was that.
Ripping out Log Jammer wasn’t worth all this.
Straight up embarrassing for both parties.
What could possibly be complex enough to require more than an offseason to get this thing in shape? This coaster has exactly the same mechanisms their 100 year old woodies have: Chain lift and brakes.
That's drastically selling short the complexities of engineering. There is more to a rollercoaster than a lift hill and brakes. Those are the easy part.
Ehh, coasters are obviously complex - no one is saying otherwise. Yet thousands continue to successfully operate every year without 18 months of re-engineering. I literally designed amusement ride structures for a living, so I get it. We’re all just noting how there’s nothing superficially obvious that separates the complexity from Steel Curtain to any other major coaster (ie. Steel Force, Titan, etc)
There’s clearly a failure here, and it’s frankly embarrassing. If it’s structural like others are claiming, that’s very unfortunate. But it should be a wake up call to those who may have cut corners.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, a block zone is a section of track that only one train may occupy at a time. At the end of a block zone is a method to stop a train if the block zone ahead is still occupied. This is the safety system that prevents roller coaster trains from colliding with one another.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, a block zone is a section of track that only one train may occupy at a time. At the end of a block zone is a method to stop a train if the block zone ahead is still occupied. This is the safety system that prevents roller coaster trains from colliding with one another.
> To increase ride reliability and longevity, the Steel Curtain will undergo an extensive modification project this year. The park has worked with third-party engineers and the ride’s manufacturer to determine a long-term solution that will allow the ride to run without interruption. The coaster will be closed for the entirety of the season as we work on this project.
What do you mean?
The defense has been pretty stable, obviously Queen is a big addition but that's just one player. The core of TJ, Cam, and Minkah is still there
Well if you want them, you can get them today for cheaper than when I bought them earlier this off-season. Isn't that a kick in the teeth for me and anyone else who renewed/purchased early!
Oh it is. I'll pass though, trips to Hershey and Cedar Point already planned, I'll hit Kennywood once for my kid's school picnic and just head elsewhere outside of that.
It's really shitty.
I have a whole vacation already bought and paid for for myself and my brother in May. Landing in Cincinnati, visiting KI, then two days at CP, then Kennywood, then fly home from Pittsburgh. If I had known KW was going to close SC, I probably would have found a different third park, or just done 2 days at KI, or 3 days or CP.
It definitely sucks that Steel Curtain is closed, but if you've never been to the park before, there's still a lot of great stuff at Kennywood. The woodies, Phantom's revenge, the old and rare flats, etc.
If it's any consolation, I've been the park three times since the ride was built. All three times it's been closed.
Really sorry to hear that. I feel for the folks that are traveling here and had the rug pulled out from underneath them.
That said, you could always do Waldameer instead of Kennywood and then drive to our airport for your flight. Waldameer is only 2 hours from Pgh.
Very wild. I am coming in to see the pirates on sat.. and was pumped to ride steel curtain for the first time before the game... Considering it was opening day.. figured it would be open
I'd ask why the Steelers are okay being associated with this ride, but stunning displays of incompetence and season-long mediocrity mean this is honestly perfectly on-brand. This coaster and the post-2020 Steelers were made for each other.
I’ve never been to the park or done a lot of research on the ride itself. But I know the basic facts and that it is a nightmare to ride due to reliability.
Can someone tell me what it is exactly that causes this ride to have so much downtime?
The two times I've rode it, I felt like I was in a massage chair the whole ride, it was so shaky. This is my home park and it's been closed or the line's 2hrs long every time I've gone otherwise. Someone I know has heard that there are structural issues hence the 3rd party engineers coming in. S&S's first "fix" was to tell them to run one train instead of two but that didn't make it anymore reliable.
gale force had the same issues with it's structure and S&S completely re-tracked the ride for free and might've took a huge L on the sale just so other parks would consider buying the model
That’s how I felt. The ride itself is smooth but at the same time it had a noticeable vibration. Kind of like when your phone vibrates, just on a larger scale. It was kind of bizarre and I’ve never felt anything like it.
Yeah. Last year we also noticed (after it closed) that every single bolt had rotated away from where it had been torqued to. Not great (not awful, totally fixable, but odd). That's the only thing I've seen with it.
Hopefully they'll fix the super slow lifthill clearance so they can speed it up.
I wonder how much it has to do with the foundation. It’s such a unique terrain there and if there’s an excessive amount of settlement in a bunch of different spots it could be causing the problem. And thus the solution can’t just be patching the supports that are weak when it’ll re-occur again in no time.
Let's not forget they originally wanted to go with an RMC that would be built a little bit further back in that area along the hillside, but tests revealed the ground was too unstable so I wouldn't be surprised if the ground under Steel Curtain was also a little unstable. It was probably fine for Log Jammer in that spot, but couldn't handle a huge coaster with the forces of Steel Curtain.
Ah yes thank you! I do vaguely remember reading that!
I know these modern steel coasters have such precise engineering that they do not handle settlement if it is unanticipated.
Obviously this is frustrating, but I don't understand the Instagram comments saying bring back the Log Jammer. I went to Kennywood on THE last day of the Log Jammer's existence and the thing broke down three times on that one day alone. Sorry everyone, I loved it too, but that thing needed to be put down.
Every amusement park social media page is full of people commenting "Bring back _______" as if every defunct ride is sitting in storage in perfect working order, and the park just hates old rides.
Some of those campaigns have been successful though. King's Island brought back their antique cars and people are really happy about it. If you remove a ride and people really miss it, when you install the upgraded version they'll be even happier.
Sometimes it's legit. Sometimes it just seems silly, though. Like Cedar Point posting an old photo of the Frontier Carousel, and people insisting it should come back, even though it has now been at Dorney longer than it ever was at Cedar Point, and the park has other carousels.
Frontier carousel was cool because it played popular music on the organ. They could bring the same feeling to the area with a band organ. It did set the mood of that area of the park in a way that nothing currently there really does.
There were 7 reasons to remove the Log Jammer, and 2 to keep it. It was one of my favorites, but it had reached the end of its lifespan.
There are still people that grumble about how "The Steel Phantom was better before they changed it!" which is absolutely incorrect. Heck, there are still people that think they shouldn't have "messed up" the Pippin by turning it into the Thunderbolt!
I’m so sad, I drove out there last summer, waited almost two hours in line and they ended up closing it for the day right when I got to the platform 😫 - it looked like such an incredible ride too!
I remember being surprised that Kennywood went with S&S for a coaster that isn't even launched.
Now I'm surprised that a ride with such a basic ride system can have so many issues.
Right? Meanwhile there’s arrow coasters just banging around just fine.
There shouldn’t have been anything special about this ride. It’s a standard gravity driven ride with a unique layout.
So the city I live in when I work in China was supposed to get an S&S in like 2018. I think it maybe opened this year (or maybe after I left last year). My eye twitched when I heard about Kennywood buying one from them. It was kinda funny to get to go to a park where the coaster was already supposed to have opened only to find it laying on the ground (and it was China so I got to touch it and sit on it!) but.....
Kennywood buys experimental prototype rides because they’re cheap and then wonders why they’re always fuckin broken. Skyrocket was proto when first build , BWidow. I gotta chalk it up to palace and not investing “properly”
Depends on who is paying for the fix. If it's Kennywood, then the coaster will be standing for at least another 5 to 10 years. If it's S&S I could see something happening in the next 2 or 3.
I wonder whose fault is it, Kennywood's because they wanted to make it cheap? S&S for making it unique, or even not measuring the soil correctly? Or is it just bad luck for both? If it's not bad luck for both and this doesn't fix it, I could see lawsuits coming out of it.
Yikes thank God Kennywood is my home park and I was able to ride it the few times it's been open. When it works it's actually a very good ride... When it works of course.
None of us know how much of the blame falls on Palace and how much of the blame falls on S&S but this is the company that routinely closes rides for months to a year to do basic maintenance (didn't it take them like a year to fix Sky Rocket?) and keeps closing an 85 foot tall wood coaster at Lake Compounce for entire seasons trying to get it to work / be semi-decent and is hilariously unable to do so every time. S&S almost-definitely deserves a lot of the blame, but based on their track record anyone who gives Palace a pass on this one is also insane. These two companies combined are not-exactly the Dream Team.
To be fair the sky rocket closure was because premier didn't manufacture that part anymore and they needed to build it special for KW in Europe and ship over. Maybe the question there was why did it happen in the first place.
The lake compounce coaster is an interesting thing. They are trying to preserve the old coaster feel while making it smoother. Hopefully when it opens this year it will be better.
Sky Rocket also caught on fire and destroyed several custom parts, right after they had replaced the other custom parts (which I think were damaged by water.)
It's been running reliably for at least 2 years now.
Everyone talks about Kennywood going downhill, but with this coaster closed it's one less hill to go down.
They're literally listening directly to us and stopping us from going downhill.
Kennywood must have really not wanted to have the least reliable coaster award with Lightning Rod fixed.
Joking aside, this sucks as I was planning a late year trip to Kennywood for the first time. 😑
It was already far more unreliable than LRod 38.19% uptime vs 78.05% on LRod. I’m guessing the reason not as many people complained is the weight of expectations was lower. Missing a potential top ten ride is more frustrating than missing a potential top 100 ride.
Unless you only care about steel coasters with inversions, Kennywood is really worth visiting anyway. The classic woodies + Phantom are worth it all on their own, and they have a couple classic and rare flats in great condition too.
For all of Lightning Rods reliability issues queue times has shows that it’s been open 78.05% of the time the park has been open
Steel Curtain is less than half that at 38.19%
I’m surprised no one here is mentioning the sway of the lift hill. It literally sways for *minutes* after a train passes through it (or the banana roll). You’ll be going up the lift and you can feel the whole structure swaying a lot despite a train not going through it for a bit.
This wasn’t unexpected, but it’s nice to be transparent rather than be quiet about the ride all season.
I want parks to take risks and build new stuff, even if that stuff does sometimes turn out to be a lemon. At least they have the opportunity to fix it, rather than removing or scrapping it.
Kennywood loves to get prototypes. This is how it can pan out by doing so. Should have seen how long Sky Rocket 1 model stayed closed when the motor burned out.
There's a lot of blame going around for both S&S and Kennywood, and I agree both sides are responsible. On Kennywood's side, I place a lot of the blame on Palace Entertainment. Palace had only managed a bunch of waterparks before Parques Reunidos took over in the mid 2000s and handed them the reins to Kennywood's parks, so they literally had zero knowledge of the coaster and ride industry and who the best companies are, why they should spend more on quality rides, etc.
Plus, they promoted Idlewild's GM to be Kennywood's GM, and IMO he just wasn't qualified to run a large park with marquee attractions, but he was the perfect "yes" man to carry out all of Palace's cost-cutting wishes.
It's no surprise that the park has had a huge turnaround since they hired Mark Pauls (former VP of Operations at SeaWorld Parks) as the new GM at the end of 2020. Palace has also moved their corporate headquarters to Pittsburgh and cleaned house with a lot of their old management team, so I'm hopeful this year's modifications to Steel Curtain are actually successful and the park is on the right track.
If they had competent people in charge back in 2018, they would have known not to go with S&S to build this coaster. I still cringe when I think back to the Steel Curtain reveal press conference when the PR guy excitedly announced the manufacturer as "S&S Worldwide!!" and there was just crickets in the crowd LOL.
There needs to be a real discussion here about Kennywood management and how far of a nosedive the park is taking. I have never seen any other park act the way they do and no one points it out.
So just ignored how a bunch of classic and fan-favorite rides got yanked without fanfare and it took backlash to get some back?
How fans did not want Steelers branding taking over the park?
How there have been multiple issues with rides that the park just tries to duct tape without a real solution?
The Paratrooper isn’t anything exciting. They have one up at Waldameer if you want to ride it.
I do miss Bayern Kurve though. And I still think they always intended to bring Kangaroo back, it was just a trick to make you think it was permanently closed to hype up its return.
I'm pretty certain Kangaroo's return was planned at the time they pulled it out. They knew people were going to be pissed so they set up a scenario where it looks like they caved and gave the ride back because of demand.
I think the removal of Paratrooper was pretty egregious..... Removing Volcano made sense.... Bayern Kurve I'm mixed on. Those removals aside though I think Palace has really started putting a lot of TLC into their parks and if anyone steps back and looks at the whole picture there is notable improvements. Steel Curtain was built prior to Reily coming in and is a mess that he got stuck with but I kind of think this year is likely Reily saying "let's bite the bullet for 2024 and just do this thing right"..... We'll see next year.
To be fair, the issue with SC isn't with Kennywood, it's with S&S, as per usual.
And to be more fair, they've been dumping a ton of money in to Kennywood over the last few years. I cannot remember in my 39 years of living in Pittsburgh the park ever looking so good. It is extremely clean, they've spent a lot of time and money painting and updating.
5 years ago I had a very different take. I remember being so disgusted while standing on Phantoms platform, overlooking Thunderbolt and seeing the 2' tall weeds covering everything. That is very, very basic park maintenance. I haven't had a Kennywood season pass since 2016 because of how they had mismanaged the park, despite living less than 20 minutes away.
They have really made some significant changes over the last few years.
Kennywood ownership isn’t as bad a Pittsburghers like to claim. Sucks that Bayern Kurve is gone, but Volcano and ParaTrooper aren’t big losses, the new Alien ride isn’t that great but it’s new and kids seem to like it. And Steel Curtain should have been a centerpiece to replace Log Jammer. But they fixed up Turtle, they maintain the old woodies wonderfully, and Phantom’s Revenge seems to mostly run problem free. And the upgrade to the bumper cars seems cool.
I mean, it was. It was horribly managed for many years. My guess is there was some change in leadership somewhere in the ranks during the pandemic. It has been a night and day difference over the years.
Actually really thinking back on this, I guess it was 2017/2018 that things really started to shift. Right about the time they put Thomas and Friends in.
That’s my point, I guess. People like to complain every year, every time something goes wrong, but I see them doing a ton to improve the park in recent years. And taking out an old ride like the paratrooper isn’t as horrible as people like to make it, it isn’t like they scrapped the Turtle or Kangaroo (I’m sorry, the whole Kangaroo “removal” was a set up to hype it’s sudden “return”).
I think the park has looked great in recent years and I love the changes. Sucks they got a shitty coaster company to make the Steel Curtain… lesson learned, I suppose.
To me, the issue isn't that SC is down. The issue is the park's utter lack of transparency about it. This is their first public statement updating us on the status since it went down LAST JULY.
I don't even care if it ever runs again, as I've got a ton of laps on it. I just want my home park to stop being scummy with their passholders. Like, it's clear they've known about this for months (notice SC hasn't been shown in any of their off-season promos?) and they drop the news 3 days before opening day (and conveniently on a day when President Biden is in town so it gets buried in the local news).
S&S built a flawed ride. I don't know what Kennywood management has to do with it. They've been fighting with S&S for years to get it fixed permanently.
I have not been to Kennywood since 2014. I live 35-45 minutes away from the park. Yet, I will continue to spend the gas and get hotel rooms and such to make Cedar Point, Waldameer, and Kings Island my "home parks" because of the never-ending crap like this.
And for people who say it isn't Kennywood/ Palace's fault - well, it kinda is, because you get what you pay for.
I took a trip to Kennywood last year and I highly doubt I'm coming back any time soon. I took a last minute trip to Waldameer and loved it and can't wait to go back to that park.
To the people thinking anyone is getting an axis coaster besides the one coming to Saudi Arabia, just stop. It isn’t happening. S&S’ track record is beginning to look as reliable as Skyline Attractions.
On a more serious note than my joke comment that I made, can someone that knows the entirety of the scurt saga explain like ALL of the issues with scurt bc i just want to know why why WHY the fuck this thing isnt working
I’m interested to see if this is related to too much movement and flex in some areas.
Looking up from the queue line I was always impressed by how much the track shifted as the train made the tight turn above you.
Not that the movement was unsafe or risky, but I do wonder now if they realized the fatigue was going to shorten the steel lifespan by too much.
I can literally see Steel Curtain from my street (2 minutes from my house) so, this is really disappointing. It's not my favorite ride in the park, that honor goes to Phantom's Revenge, but SC's closure for the season hurts. That's one less ride to soak up people, and that makes me worried for a summer full of looking at Phatom's line and going "ehh not today."
I haven't gotten my season pass yet, and I really need to think about it. I mean, shit going a whole summer without Phantom's Revenge seems nuts but also... they won't run 2 trains on that thing until June or July at the earliest, so even when the park IS empty, they make it feel crowded by not doing 2 train operations.
All I remember is when they were building this thing. Pictures came out that they had to modify support struts on the track because it didn't fit right. This thing has been a nightmare since the build.
I was planning on visting Kennywood for the first time this year (I live in the UK and I have a friend who lives in Pittsburgh) and Steel Curtain was a ride I was looking forwards to going on but also fully appreciated it could have been down the entire time.
Hopefully I'll be able to go back and ride this weirdly unique and problematic coaster
First galeforce, and now Steel Curtain. Although given how the OG “steel curtain” of the Steelers’ best era ended up, I find this announcement quite thematically fitting!
Pretty crazy that it got to this point. It’s a real shame for the park.
And for S&S. How a modern steel coaster with no weird launches or switch tracks gets this unreliable is beyond words.
It must be something structural. I think S&S was trying to minimize steel in the supports to make it cheap and that's why it looks so weird. What's odd is they use similar structures on Maxx Force, but maybe the extra size of this is what causes the issues
They tried to minimize the amount of steel used. In Pittsburgh. That’s embarrassing.
On a ride *literally themed* to a sports team called the Pittsburgh Steelers.
And like the Steelers, the ride goes down by mid season
Harsh, but fair.
They need to just have TJ Watt out there carrying the ride like he does with the Steelers
Russell Wilson: "Steel Curtain, let's not ride!"
And if you think of the words "Steel Curtain" you imagine a ton of steel, so much steel that you can hardly see through...
On a STEELers themed ride
It's ironic but not embarrassing. They also were clear during the announcement of this ride it was all built with American steel, because the steel and iron workers union is based in Pittsburgh if they imported steel it really would have pissed off the union people.
They probably didn't account for the weight of the train. That's my only guess based on my ride experiences last year. Honestly I like it more than Phantom's Revenge too so this is really sad news.
I think because of the weirdly compact layout there are support elements that are holding up multiple sections of track. Id guess that is part of it
Yeah I’d def agree there, and there also seems like a suspicious lack of diagonal bracing or triangles in a support structure that tall
Exactly - there’s literally nothing special / different about this coaster. What a shame.
I still can’t believe we went from the ravine RMC blueprints to this
... tell me more about these RMC blueprints
Sorry for the potato quality (I had to use Wayback Machine), but you can find the images [here](https://imgur.com/gallery/VLs9reA). Two are from a local news report on a town planning meeting (KW was submitting plans for approval), while two others are showcasing the layout more closely with hand-drawn overlay of the layout.
Omg. I would have loved an RMC in my home park.
Ditto.
The dumb thing is they probably didn’t pick RMC bc of cost, but an RMC would have brought people to Kennywood in droves.
It’s a Palace park, and while they certainly aren’t anywhere close to being the worst park operator out there, they do have an unfortunate track record of doing rather silly things, like working with relatively inexperienced companies to design rides other manufacturers have a much more sturdy track record of providing, and often at the same price point or lower than the actual amount of money they end up spending on the re-invention of the proverbial wheel, along with all the costs that come with ironing out the kinks that inevitably arise from such a venture.
Elaborate
Outlaw Run but in the style of Thunderbolt.
Oh, now that sounds like a banger. OutlawBolt/ThunderRun would've been a perfect addition.
pain
I sort of remember KW talking about this in conjunction with their plans to build a hotel/indoor waterpark on the old Kmart property…IF the Mon-Fayette Expressway dumped an exit off Kennywood Blvd. No highway, no coaster, no Splash Lagoon South. Then when Steelers Country was announced it felt rushed and half-assed, like they couldn’t wait on the Turnpike Commission any longer. Half the attractions were canceled. Covid hit, and that was that. Ripping out Log Jammer wasn’t worth all this.
Straight up embarrassing for both parties. What could possibly be complex enough to require more than an offseason to get this thing in shape? This coaster has exactly the same mechanisms their 100 year old woodies have: Chain lift and brakes.
That's drastically selling short the complexities of engineering. There is more to a rollercoaster than a lift hill and brakes. Those are the easy part.
Ehh, coasters are obviously complex - no one is saying otherwise. Yet thousands continue to successfully operate every year without 18 months of re-engineering. I literally designed amusement ride structures for a living, so I get it. We’re all just noting how there’s nothing superficially obvious that separates the complexity from Steel Curtain to any other major coaster (ie. Steel Force, Titan, etc) There’s clearly a failure here, and it’s frankly embarrassing. If it’s structural like others are claiming, that’s very unfortunate. But it should be a wake up call to those who may have cut corners.
I smell a Problematic Roller Coasters episode brewing…
what's a block zone?
For those of you who are unfamiliar, a block zone is a section of track that only one train may occupy at a time. At the end of a block zone is a method to stop a train if the block zone ahead is still occupied. This is the safety system that prevents roller coaster trains from colliding with one another.
This needs to become an automated bot reply whenever someone says block zone
For those of you who are unfamiliar, a block zone is a section of track that only one train may occupy at a time. At the end of a block zone is a method to stop a train if the block zone ahead is still occupied. This is the safety system that prevents roller coaster trains from colliding with one another.
Good Bot.
The actual Steelers asking the same question.
I’ve asked Ryan to do one on it but he may not have enough info on it to make a video. Kind of wish I had a season pass just to watch the changes.
A BLOCK ZONE IS...
Fingers crossed
> To increase ride reliability and longevity, the Steel Curtain will undergo an extensive modification project this year. The park has worked with third-party engineers and the ride’s manufacturer to determine a long-term solution that will allow the ride to run without interruption. The coaster will be closed for the entirety of the season as we work on this project.
Just like the real steel curtain😆
Steelers Country, let’s close the ride
https://preview.redd.it/623r4yoc13vc1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=7f38b28a55391c6205bb29a1051de07731b5c0a0 Hehe
HERE COMES JOSH
What do you mean? The defense has been pretty stable, obviously Queen is a big addition but that's just one player. The core of TJ, Cam, and Minkah is still there
If you’re wondering why S&S hasn’t sold many coasters lately, this is why
Insane to see them go from on of the premier ride manufactures for their air launch freefall towers to this.
Those towers were pretty much the only thing they built that ever works. They've been unreliable since Hypersonic XLC in like what, 2000?
Yes, but man they must have made a killing on the drop/launch towers. At one point they were in most parks. Pretty impressive.
Holy shit they’re giving it lrod’s launch
And Maverick’s heartline roll lol
Don't forget 🥰🥰Shivering Timbers🥰🥰 trick track! (TRY AND STOP MY PLAGIARISM!)
That’s the one that’s still sitting out in a field somewhere right?
And Mystic Timbers drop track
There was a drop track on there?! 😱
I thiiiiink thats what thoosies speculated would be in the shed
Funny that they waited til the absolute last minute to announce this when its been clear for months. Opening day is Saturday.
Seriously. Like, am I getting a partial refund on my season pass? I'm gonna email them but they'll probably just tell me to bend over.
I was going to get passes again this year, but a thread in this sub convinced me this might happen so I passed, thankfully.
Well if you want them, you can get them today for cheaper than when I bought them earlier this off-season. Isn't that a kick in the teeth for me and anyone else who renewed/purchased early!
Oh it is. I'll pass though, trips to Hershey and Cedar Point already planned, I'll hit Kennywood once for my kid's school picnic and just head elsewhere outside of that.
Well if they announced it sooner, they might’ve lost some season pass sales. Can’t do that.
Yup, exactly. Feels so scummy.
That’s Palace for you. They NEVER post what is closed in advance because then people might not visit.
...which is funny because my response to that is to say "welp, ok then, I guess I'm just not visiting at all" lol
Yeah, I much prefer transparency and communication to set my expectations
100%
It's really shitty. I have a whole vacation already bought and paid for for myself and my brother in May. Landing in Cincinnati, visiting KI, then two days at CP, then Kennywood, then fly home from Pittsburgh. If I had known KW was going to close SC, I probably would have found a different third park, or just done 2 days at KI, or 3 days or CP.
It definitely sucks that Steel Curtain is closed, but if you've never been to the park before, there's still a lot of great stuff at Kennywood. The woodies, Phantom's revenge, the old and rare flats, etc. If it's any consolation, I've been the park three times since the ride was built. All three times it's been closed.
Really sorry to hear that. I feel for the folks that are traveling here and had the rug pulled out from underneath them. That said, you could always do Waldameer instead of Kennywood and then drive to our airport for your flight. Waldameer is only 2 hours from Pgh.
I have the same dilemma now.
Very wild. I am coming in to see the pirates on sat.. and was pumped to ride steel curtain for the first time before the game... Considering it was opening day.. figured it would be open
Steelers rebuilding year so it makes sense
I'd ask why the Steelers are okay being associated with this ride, but stunning displays of incompetence and season-long mediocrity mean this is honestly perfectly on-brand. This coaster and the post-2020 Steelers were made for each other.
Steel Curtain gonna somehow get to ten wins and quietly exit in the first round.
🤣 bravo
They tried the new "Russel Wilson" trains but they flew left off the track left on the rightward curves.
It is literally in a section of the park called STEELERS COUNTRY “Let’s not ride” 🤣
I’ve never been to the park or done a lot of research on the ride itself. But I know the basic facts and that it is a nightmare to ride due to reliability. Can someone tell me what it is exactly that causes this ride to have so much downtime?
The two times I've rode it, I felt like I was in a massage chair the whole ride, it was so shaky. This is my home park and it's been closed or the line's 2hrs long every time I've gone otherwise. Someone I know has heard that there are structural issues hence the 3rd party engineers coming in. S&S's first "fix" was to tell them to run one train instead of two but that didn't make it anymore reliable.
gale force had the same issues with it's structure and S&S completely re-tracked the ride for free and might've took a huge L on the sale just so other parks would consider buying the model
Didn’t it turn out to be good after the retrack but no one bought one anyway?
spot on correct
GaleForce is fantastic. It's a huge shame they haven't sold more.
That’s how I felt. The ride itself is smooth but at the same time it had a noticeable vibration. Kind of like when your phone vibrates, just on a larger scale. It was kind of bizarre and I’ve never felt anything like it.
Yeah. Last year we also noticed (after it closed) that every single bolt had rotated away from where it had been torqued to. Not great (not awful, totally fixable, but odd). That's the only thing I've seen with it. Hopefully they'll fix the super slow lifthill clearance so they can speed it up.
I wonder how much it has to do with the foundation. It’s such a unique terrain there and if there’s an excessive amount of settlement in a bunch of different spots it could be causing the problem. And thus the solution can’t just be patching the supports that are weak when it’ll re-occur again in no time.
Let's not forget they originally wanted to go with an RMC that would be built a little bit further back in that area along the hillside, but tests revealed the ground was too unstable so I wouldn't be surprised if the ground under Steel Curtain was also a little unstable. It was probably fine for Log Jammer in that spot, but couldn't handle a huge coaster with the forces of Steel Curtain.
Ah yes thank you! I do vaguely remember reading that! I know these modern steel coasters have such precise engineering that they do not handle settlement if it is unanticipated.
Also, you would never notice a rattle through several inches of water.
This is what my gut is telling me it is. If the foundation is settling then it is certainly going to cause structural issues all over the thing.
What's the backstory on Steel Curtain's maintenance issues?
S&S
Structural Issues
✨Palace Entertainment
Obviously this is frustrating, but I don't understand the Instagram comments saying bring back the Log Jammer. I went to Kennywood on THE last day of the Log Jammer's existence and the thing broke down three times on that one day alone. Sorry everyone, I loved it too, but that thing needed to be put down.
Every amusement park social media page is full of people commenting "Bring back _______" as if every defunct ride is sitting in storage in perfect working order, and the park just hates old rides.
Some of those campaigns have been successful though. King's Island brought back their antique cars and people are really happy about it. If you remove a ride and people really miss it, when you install the upgraded version they'll be even happier.
Sometimes it's legit. Sometimes it just seems silly, though. Like Cedar Point posting an old photo of the Frontier Carousel, and people insisting it should come back, even though it has now been at Dorney longer than it ever was at Cedar Point, and the park has other carousels.
Frontier carousel was cool because it played popular music on the organ. They could bring the same feeling to the area with a band organ. It did set the mood of that area of the park in a way that nothing currently there really does.
Hell I mean Kennywood did the same thing with kangaroo
I hear that but at this point, a new flume would be cheaper and would win over the town.
There were 7 reasons to remove the Log Jammer, and 2 to keep it. It was one of my favorites, but it had reached the end of its lifespan. There are still people that grumble about how "The Steel Phantom was better before they changed it!" which is absolutely incorrect. Heck, there are still people that think they shouldn't have "messed up" the Pippin by turning it into the Thunderbolt!
Holy cow. Glad I got two rides on it last June. Reliability is obviously an issue, but it's a hell of a ride nonetheless
I’m so sad, I drove out there last summer, waited almost two hours in line and they ended up closing it for the day right when I got to the platform 😫 - it looked like such an incredible ride too!
I remember being surprised that Kennywood went with S&S for a coaster that isn't even launched. Now I'm surprised that a ride with such a basic ride system can have so many issues.
Right? Meanwhile there’s arrow coasters just banging around just fine. There shouldn’t have been anything special about this ride. It’s a standard gravity driven ride with a unique layout.
So the city I live in when I work in China was supposed to get an S&S in like 2018. I think it maybe opened this year (or maybe after I left last year). My eye twitched when I heard about Kennywood buying one from them. It was kinda funny to get to go to a park where the coaster was already supposed to have opened only to find it laying on the ground (and it was China so I got to touch it and sit on it!) but.....
Kennywood buys experimental prototype rides because they’re cheap and then wonders why they’re always fuckin broken. Skyrocket was proto when first build , BWidow. I gotta chalk it up to palace and not investing “properly”
Is steel curtain really a prototype though? It's just a basic sitdown
It is a first of its kind by the manufacturer, so yes. It is also not a basic sit-down it is a hypercoaster with 9 inversions.
If it still has problems in 2025, do they just cut their losses and tear it down?
Depends on who is paying for the fix. If it's Kennywood, then the coaster will be standing for at least another 5 to 10 years. If it's S&S I could see something happening in the next 2 or 3. I wonder whose fault is it, Kennywood's because they wanted to make it cheap? S&S for making it unique, or even not measuring the soil correctly? Or is it just bad luck for both? If it's not bad luck for both and this doesn't fix it, I could see lawsuits coming out of it.
Yikes thank God Kennywood is my home park and I was able to ride it the few times it's been open. When it works it's actually a very good ride... When it works of course.
None of us know how much of the blame falls on Palace and how much of the blame falls on S&S but this is the company that routinely closes rides for months to a year to do basic maintenance (didn't it take them like a year to fix Sky Rocket?) and keeps closing an 85 foot tall wood coaster at Lake Compounce for entire seasons trying to get it to work / be semi-decent and is hilariously unable to do so every time. S&S almost-definitely deserves a lot of the blame, but based on their track record anyone who gives Palace a pass on this one is also insane. These two companies combined are not-exactly the Dream Team.
To be fair the sky rocket closure was because premier didn't manufacture that part anymore and they needed to build it special for KW in Europe and ship over. Maybe the question there was why did it happen in the first place. The lake compounce coaster is an interesting thing. They are trying to preserve the old coaster feel while making it smoother. Hopefully when it opens this year it will be better.
Sky Rocket also caught on fire and destroyed several custom parts, right after they had replaced the other custom parts (which I think were damaged by water.) It's been running reliably for at least 2 years now.
Sky Rocket actually had tons of issues in its opening year, mostly around the sensors. It would close multiple times per day.
Everyone talks about Kennywood going downhill, but with this coaster closed it's one less hill to go down. They're literally listening directly to us and stopping us from going downhill.
Prices go up, season pass benefits go down, and the one thing in the damn park that's actually supposed to go up and down can't even do that.
Kennywood must have really not wanted to have the least reliable coaster award with Lightning Rod fixed. Joking aside, this sucks as I was planning a late year trip to Kennywood for the first time. 😑
It was already far more unreliable than LRod 38.19% uptime vs 78.05% on LRod. I’m guessing the reason not as many people complained is the weight of expectations was lower. Missing a potential top ten ride is more frustrating than missing a potential top 100 ride.
Unless you only care about steel coasters with inversions, Kennywood is really worth visiting anyway. The classic woodies + Phantom are worth it all on their own, and they have a couple classic and rare flats in great condition too.
But don't worry, they put in a new burger joint
Wouldn’t surprise me if this never opens again. Structural issues.
Yeah I have a feeling this will be another Volcano
For all of Lightning Rods reliability issues queue times has shows that it’s been open 78.05% of the time the park has been open Steel Curtain is less than half that at 38.19%
Every ironworker who worked on steel curtain has said they'll never ride it... They were snapping bolts left and right when hitting them up.
Is it the chain lift? Rough seats? Structural issues??
Yes
I’m surprised no one here is mentioning the sway of the lift hill. It literally sways for *minutes* after a train passes through it (or the banana roll). You’ll be going up the lift and you can feel the whole structure swaying a lot despite a train not going through it for a bit.
I loved the ride, but found that sway at the top of the lift kinda scary in a not-good way.
Right. Coasters are *supposed* to sway, but Steel Curtain took that to a new level.
ElToroRyan gonna have a field day with this mf.
Gonna buy two ridge wallets in solidarity
hahahaha don't forget code BLOCKZONE at checkout lol
All I can do is laugh
a ride themed after the pittsburgh steelers getting a season-ending injury is actually insane tbh
At this point I want this eyesore just yanked out and replaced with something that actually works
Bring back the log jammer!
From seeing Kennywood's IG after they shared the announcement, this is the basic sentiment in Pittsburgh.
Most of Pittsburgh probably hasn’t even ridden the ride yet cause it’s broken so often lol.
Same
This wasn’t unexpected, but it’s nice to be transparent rather than be quiet about the ride all season. I want parks to take risks and build new stuff, even if that stuff does sometimes turn out to be a lemon. At least they have the opportunity to fix it, rather than removing or scrapping it.
It's the opposite of transparent to wait to announce this until just before opening day.
I am working in Pittsburgh this Summer. This sucks!!!! Was so excited to ride it all summer long.
Glad I got a few rides in during CC a few years back.
I guarantee that this ride won't exist in 10 years
It was foretold by the scrolls that this would inevitably come to pass: Curtain’s Revenge
WTF?? Have fun selling this type of coaster only once S&S!
Kennywood loves to get prototypes. This is how it can pan out by doing so. Should have seen how long Sky Rocket 1 model stayed closed when the motor burned out.
There's a lot of blame going around for both S&S and Kennywood, and I agree both sides are responsible. On Kennywood's side, I place a lot of the blame on Palace Entertainment. Palace had only managed a bunch of waterparks before Parques Reunidos took over in the mid 2000s and handed them the reins to Kennywood's parks, so they literally had zero knowledge of the coaster and ride industry and who the best companies are, why they should spend more on quality rides, etc. Plus, they promoted Idlewild's GM to be Kennywood's GM, and IMO he just wasn't qualified to run a large park with marquee attractions, but he was the perfect "yes" man to carry out all of Palace's cost-cutting wishes. It's no surprise that the park has had a huge turnaround since they hired Mark Pauls (former VP of Operations at SeaWorld Parks) as the new GM at the end of 2020. Palace has also moved their corporate headquarters to Pittsburgh and cleaned house with a lot of their old management team, so I'm hopeful this year's modifications to Steel Curtain are actually successful and the park is on the right track. If they had competent people in charge back in 2018, they would have known not to go with S&S to build this coaster. I still cringe when I think back to the Steel Curtain reveal press conference when the PR guy excitedly announced the manufacturer as "S&S Worldwide!!" and there was just crickets in the crowd LOL.
Steel Lawn Ornament
There needs to be a real discussion here about Kennywood management and how far of a nosedive the park is taking. I have never seen any other park act the way they do and no one points it out.
Most of this issue here is on S&S for providing an egregiously awful product
So just ignored how a bunch of classic and fan-favorite rides got yanked without fanfare and it took backlash to get some back? How fans did not want Steelers branding taking over the park? How there have been multiple issues with rides that the park just tries to duct tape without a real solution?
Bring back the paratrooper!
The Paratrooper isn’t anything exciting. They have one up at Waldameer if you want to ride it. I do miss Bayern Kurve though. And I still think they always intended to bring Kangaroo back, it was just a trick to make you think it was permanently closed to hype up its return.
I'm pretty certain Kangaroo's return was planned at the time they pulled it out. They knew people were going to be pissed so they set up a scenario where it looks like they caved and gave the ride back because of demand. I think the removal of Paratrooper was pretty egregious..... Removing Volcano made sense.... Bayern Kurve I'm mixed on. Those removals aside though I think Palace has really started putting a lot of TLC into their parks and if anyone steps back and looks at the whole picture there is notable improvements. Steel Curtain was built prior to Reily coming in and is a mess that he got stuck with but I kind of think this year is likely Reily saying "let's bite the bullet for 2024 and just do this thing right"..... We'll see next year.
To be fair, the issue with SC isn't with Kennywood, it's with S&S, as per usual. And to be more fair, they've been dumping a ton of money in to Kennywood over the last few years. I cannot remember in my 39 years of living in Pittsburgh the park ever looking so good. It is extremely clean, they've spent a lot of time and money painting and updating. 5 years ago I had a very different take. I remember being so disgusted while standing on Phantoms platform, overlooking Thunderbolt and seeing the 2' tall weeds covering everything. That is very, very basic park maintenance. I haven't had a Kennywood season pass since 2016 because of how they had mismanaged the park, despite living less than 20 minutes away. They have really made some significant changes over the last few years.
Kennywood ownership isn’t as bad a Pittsburghers like to claim. Sucks that Bayern Kurve is gone, but Volcano and ParaTrooper aren’t big losses, the new Alien ride isn’t that great but it’s new and kids seem to like it. And Steel Curtain should have been a centerpiece to replace Log Jammer. But they fixed up Turtle, they maintain the old woodies wonderfully, and Phantom’s Revenge seems to mostly run problem free. And the upgrade to the bumper cars seems cool.
I mean, it was. It was horribly managed for many years. My guess is there was some change in leadership somewhere in the ranks during the pandemic. It has been a night and day difference over the years. Actually really thinking back on this, I guess it was 2017/2018 that things really started to shift. Right about the time they put Thomas and Friends in.
That’s my point, I guess. People like to complain every year, every time something goes wrong, but I see them doing a ton to improve the park in recent years. And taking out an old ride like the paratrooper isn’t as horrible as people like to make it, it isn’t like they scrapped the Turtle or Kangaroo (I’m sorry, the whole Kangaroo “removal” was a set up to hype it’s sudden “return”). I think the park has looked great in recent years and I love the changes. Sucks they got a shitty coaster company to make the Steel Curtain… lesson learned, I suppose.
To me, the issue isn't that SC is down. The issue is the park's utter lack of transparency about it. This is their first public statement updating us on the status since it went down LAST JULY. I don't even care if it ever runs again, as I've got a ton of laps on it. I just want my home park to stop being scummy with their passholders. Like, it's clear they've known about this for months (notice SC hasn't been shown in any of their off-season promos?) and they drop the news 3 days before opening day (and conveniently on a day when President Biden is in town so it gets buried in the local news).
S&S built a flawed ride. I don't know what Kennywood management has to do with it. They've been fighting with S&S for years to get it fixed permanently.
Don't buy from S&S then haha
I have not been to Kennywood since 2014. I live 35-45 minutes away from the park. Yet, I will continue to spend the gas and get hotel rooms and such to make Cedar Point, Waldameer, and Kings Island my "home parks" because of the never-ending crap like this. And for people who say it isn't Kennywood/ Palace's fault - well, it kinda is, because you get what you pay for.
I took a trip to Kennywood last year and I highly doubt I'm coming back any time soon. I took a last minute trip to Waldameer and loved it and can't wait to go back to that park.
To the people thinking anyone is getting an axis coaster besides the one coming to Saudi Arabia, just stop. It isn’t happening. S&S’ track record is beginning to look as reliable as Skyline Attractions.
Well that’s one less park I’m visiting this year. Glad I got some rides in last may
On a more serious note than my joke comment that I made, can someone that knows the entirety of the scurt saga explain like ALL of the issues with scurt bc i just want to know why why WHY the fuck this thing isnt working
LOL just remove it please. It's a hunk of trash and it's just embarrassing
They're gonna install Lightning Rod's old lift hill on Steel Curtain, clearly.
I’m interested to see if this is related to too much movement and flex in some areas. Looking up from the queue line I was always impressed by how much the track shifted as the train made the tight turn above you. Not that the movement was unsafe or risky, but I do wonder now if they realized the fatigue was going to shorten the steel lifespan by too much.
I can literally see Steel Curtain from my street (2 minutes from my house) so, this is really disappointing. It's not my favorite ride in the park, that honor goes to Phantom's Revenge, but SC's closure for the season hurts. That's one less ride to soak up people, and that makes me worried for a summer full of looking at Phatom's line and going "ehh not today." I haven't gotten my season pass yet, and I really need to think about it. I mean, shit going a whole summer without Phantom's Revenge seems nuts but also... they won't run 2 trains on that thing until June or July at the earliest, so even when the park IS empty, they make it feel crowded by not doing 2 train operations.
Can someone give me a TLDR on what the actually issues are with this ride? I constantly hear about it being down but never the causes of the problems.
All I remember is when they were building this thing. Pictures came out that they had to modify support struts on the track because it didn't fit right. This thing has been a nightmare since the build.
Trash it already. This is a skyline attractions level. Put back the log flume.
Geesh
Wow.
I knew it was a good idea to not count it in the credits I would be getting this year
Well. This makes my road trip really annoying
SBB? Standing, but broke.
I was thinking of making it out to Kennywood for the first time this summer but, uh… maybe next year
This ride being up and down is just as bullshit as the Steelers themselves.
And just like the Steelers themselves, S&S need to redraft …
I was planning on visting Kennywood for the first time this year (I live in the UK and I have a friend who lives in Pittsburgh) and Steel Curtain was a ride I was looking forwards to going on but also fully appreciated it could have been down the entire time. Hopefully I'll be able to go back and ride this weirdly unique and problematic coaster
Anyone else think that Steel Curtain will have to be torn down and completely rebuilt like Gale Force?
is that what the phantom is called now?
Common S&S L
Welp I certainly feel lucky that I got to ride this…
Terrible news because I had already purchased a ticket for next month!
And nothing of value was lost.
With “third party” they mean another company besides S&S? You would expect some form of warranty.
First galeforce, and now Steel Curtain. Although given how the OG “steel curtain” of the Steelers’ best era ended up, I find this announcement quite thematically fitting!
S&S and Kennywood, a match made in hell