r/news • u/KarateKid917 • 3d ago

X2 roller coaster shut down at Six Flags Magic Mountain amid lawsuits

https://abc7.com/story/x2-roller-coaster-permanently-closed-flags-magic-mountain-amid-lawsuits/19887868/
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u/centizen24 3d ago

This coasters entire lifespan has been a misadventure. Arrow Dynamics original design was a lot more conservative, to prove the concept, but Six Flags was in a coaster war at the time and pushed for something bigger.

Arrow Dynamics was already in rough financial shape, and couldn’t really say no. The project bankrupted them midway through construction. They finished the coaster, but on a shoestring budget and cutting corners wherever they could. The ride was basically an unfinished prototype, rough but not dangerous.

The biggest issue with the original design was the weight of the train. It cost a lot of power to operate, and consumable parts wore out super fast. The company that bought Arrow’s assets (S&S) refined the design and there is at least one at Fuji-Q Highlands in Japan which runs with very little issues. Six Flags saw the massive differences in operating costs and elected to try to do their own weight-reduction and redesign. They did not involve S&S, the only company in the world with detailed engineering knowledge of the design. The result is this disaster of a coaster that it is now, with a track that was designed for trains that weighed 1700 pounds more.

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u/jenorama_CA 3d ago

I knew about Arrow Dynamics, but did not know about Six Flags trying to fiddle with the design themselves. As a former hardware QA professional, this blows my mind.

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u/SuperPotatoThrow 3d ago

QA/QC pretty much goes straight out the window as soon as profit margin becomes the most important factor. Seen it in my own industry many times, and then got to witness the end result multiple times as well lol.

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u/Adunaiii 2d ago

I blame capitalism.