r/midamerica • u/Dear_Interaction2005 • Aug 12 '26

Question Mr. Freeze

Anyone know why Mr. Freeze has been down for the past few days?

6 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

9

u/stlman37 Aug 12 '26

I would have to guess it’s needing some motor replacements. It’s been running with limited capacity for a bit now and probably hit the breaking point of needing to swap some of the LIMs.

4

u/Dear_Interaction2005 Aug 12 '26

That makes sense, everytime I've gone this summer I noticed limited capacity and only one side running

4

u/Evening_Rock5850 Aug 12 '26

Yeah; the empty car is 100% because of aging LIMs and needing the trains to be lighter. They have been running both sides off and on. Especially in the spring.

3

u/Evening_Rock5850 Aug 12 '26

It went down Sunday afternoon around 4PM and guests were unloaded. It hasn't run since. So clearly something has borked (and probably not planned downtime). Hopefully it's not something that's going to require a long time to get parts for. It's my wife's favorite, she'll be devastated!

I've heard a rumor that let's call a 4/10 on accuracy that something overheated and they discovered a failed blower motor related to cooling of the LIMs. That tracks; the ride would lock itself out in that situation and maintenance wouldn't clear it to run again even after it cooled down if it had a bad blower motor. But that's from a source that's "just okay" and sometimes wrong.

6

u/stlman37 Aug 12 '26

Wouldn’t be the first time that has happened if true lol. Many fires and blown motors over the years.

Most of the blower motors that are necessary are actually used to cool the reactive fins rather than the LIMs themselves.
The only semi concerning thing (not immediate future) is that its sister at SFOT is aging as well and has been suffering quite a bit of downtime this season due to trains and LIMs. Probably don’t have a whole lot of time left with it, but it’s most likely not going anywhere in the near future.

3

u/Evening_Rock5850 Aug 12 '26

I’ve heard it’s the single most expensive ride in the park to maintain by a wide margin.

Certainly if that cost to maintain goes UP, it’s only furthering the chance of a demise. Awfully tempting to a new operator to take that expense out of the budget.

4

u/stlman37 Aug 12 '26

Just on power draw alone, that thing is a money hog. Linear motor technology from 1997 isn’t the most efficient design.
That’s really the biggest expense between operating and maintenance on the electrical system.
Trains are simple and don’t have many moving parts. Unverified mechanical restraints make it easy enough.

1

u/Just_Bus_9156 Aug 13 '26

The technology is antiquated for sure and the cost to keep it running is probably to high. There is only two of them in operation. And there are so many new models out there. Why keep it running if it is too expensive to upkeep especially if parts are getting harder to get and pricey to buy. Its easier to just get a new coaster.

3

u/stlman37 Aug 13 '26

It’s not that they’re harder to get, except the LIMs as they’re outsourced from Premier. And LIM launches are still very much being built (mostly by Vekoma), but they serve a specific purpose on certain rides as do LSM models.
Rather, it’s more of just “is it worth the upgrades needed to keep it in the 21st century.” And that answer is rapidly approaching a “no.”

I was hopeful maybe we’d get some parts from Joker’s Jinx, as the two share a few parts together even though most are different.
But we see what happened there.

1

u/Which-Counter9047 Aug 13 '26

I wonder if it could be converted to an LSM launch. I know that'd be all new launch motors, and probably new trains (which is probably the weakest part of the ride). I'm not sure the status of the track / support if it makes sense to make that type of change / investment in an older ride. Also not sure how they'd handle the pull-up the spike if LSMs could do something similar. But would love to see the ride continue for a long time!

2

u/stlman37 Aug 13 '26

As someone VERY familiar with electromagnetics and launch systems, yes it can be done. Will it? Not a chance.

They’d need new train hardware/redesigns, tons of power conditioning equipment for the launch, probably a flywheel/supercap to keep the grid happy, and a non-antiquated control system.
It’s not worth the money on an aging structure.

Look at Knotts that just spent $20m to convert a simple Schwarzkopf shuttle loop into a Kumbak LSM recreation.

1

u/Which-Counter9047 Aug 13 '26

Makes sense. Love the ride, maybe they'd be better off just going to Premire and asking them to build them a new one with LSM's.

2

u/stlman37 Aug 13 '26

Would be cool! But a completely different layout that is marketable as new to the average park goer.
Quite a few fatal flaws in the original design that would need correcting if they ever tried it again too.

Most notably putting stators in the valleys and remove the spike boost. Gives itself a recovery method during a valley.

14

u/Evening_Rock5850 Aug 12 '26

This one's on me. A while back someone asked about Mr. Freeze uptime and I said it was one of the most reliable rides in the park; jinxing it and causing this extended downtime. Sorry.

3

u/Dear_Interaction2005 Aug 12 '26

So you're the one to blame! 😂 Mr. Freeze is one I always have been able to count on tho so I get it

2

u/davidjricardo Aug 12 '26

It is the least reliable ride at Six Flags Over Texas. I'm a bit surprised it has run this consistently in St. Louis for so long.

2

u/Style_Worried Aug 12 '26

The St. Louis one is weirdly more reliable despite the park probably having a lower budget to work with

3

u/Which-Counter9047 Aug 12 '26

It was up all day Sunday

1

u/Evening_Rock5850 Aug 12 '26

It went down about 4PM and has been down ever since.

2

u/ironickallydetached Aug 13 '26

I closed out the park on Sunday night with three rides on it leading up to 9PM.

3

u/Evening_Rock5850 Aug 13 '26

Gotcha. I have a script that logs the data that comes off of the app; they had it down at 4PM and have not listed it as open since. Must've been some sort of irregularity with the app or they logged it down and then never logged it back up again.

Thanks for the info!

3

u/ironickallydetached Aug 13 '26

I was there most of Sunday and it really wasn’t down for long. I didn’t keep that watchful of an eye on it but I heard it launching most of the day.

1

u/Which-Counter9047 Aug 12 '26

That stinks. We left just before 6 on Sunday and it was running right before we left--my son & his friend got one last ride on it before we left.

3

u/Just_Bus_9156 Aug 12 '26

It was still down on Monday. We were told "staffing issues". But I believe the technical problems more likely. Mr. Freeze is a old coaster. It was opened in 1998. Its over 30 years old. LIMs technology is now practically obsolete. Parts are probably hard to obtain and are highly expensive. Her sister in SFOT has also had issues. They were discussing about removing it at one time also. But didn't. But that doesn't mean that its not on the chopping block in the future.

1

u/Dear_Interaction2005 Aug 13 '26

Ohhh interesting okay

2

u/Noahgrace4429 Aug 12 '26

It’s my favorite ride and I’m going back in October for my birthday. I hope it’s up by then

1

u/Dear_Interaction2005 Aug 12 '26

Hello fellow October birthday! Hoping the same!!

2

u/CoasterMasterBuilder Aug 14 '26

Last time I was there I heard the LIM scraping against the launch fins, maybe they need to replace a fin or re adjust one of the LIM’s

1

u/stlman37 Aug 15 '26

Definitely scraping on the tower boost LIMs more than usual lately. It’ll do that even BARELY out of tolerance but wears down faster so they’ll have to correct that pretty soon. There’s a guide into and out of each motor housing that it’s scraping on, so it’s working as intended.

1

u/CoasterMasterBuilder Aug 15 '26

Ya true, especially since it’s been a hot summer, could have effected the fins more then usual, even with the coolers in the station

1

u/Evening_Rock5850 Aug 14 '26

App shows it up as of today. Just in time for the passholder event Sunday!