What it’s like to ride the record-breaking Top Thrill 2 roller coaster
With the arrival of Top Thrill 2 at Cedar Point comes another chapter in the storied history of the record-breaking roller coaster.
Update, May 13, 2024: Top Thrill 2 is now closed for “mechanical modification.” See our story for more information.
By Marc N. Kleinhenz
With the start of Cedar Point’s 155th season this weekend comes the opening of its newest next-generation roller coaster, Top Thrill 2. While this, in and of itself, isn’t an unusual occurrence — the amusement park debuts a new attraction nearly every single year, and most are coasters — this particular ride does mark something of a first for “America’s Roller Coast.”
To get into that, however, requires us to first delve into a bit of backstory.
The History of Top Thrill 2
The original iteration of the experience, dubbed Top Thrill Dragster and (loosely) themed to Top Fuel drag racing, bowed back in 2003, becoming the world’s first strata coaster — that is to say, a roller coaster that breaches the 400-foot mark.
In addition to being the tallest coaster in the world at the time, it also claimed the title to being the fastest, though both records would be eclipsed just a few short years later by another Intamin Amusement Rides-designed behemoth, Six Flags Great Adventure’s Kingda Ka. Amazingly enough, both attractions remain, two decades later, the only two stratas on the planet.
Incident and Closure
Top Thrill Dragster would go on to “race for the sky” for 18 years, when an accident — a small metal plate flew off from the back of one of the trains, striking a guest who was waiting in line in the head, resulting in a “life-changing” injury — caused the massive ride to close, first temporarily and then, as of September 2022, permanently. In its wake, Cedar Fair proclaimed, a “new and reimagined ride experience” would be unleashed.
Introducing Top Thrill 2
Top Thrill 2 is the realization of that promise, taking what was once a simple, straightforward, and thoroughly thrilling ride profile and expanding and otherwise upgrading it.
On Top Thrill Dragster, passengers would rocket to 120 mph in just under four seconds, skyrocket up the 420-foot top hat at a 90-degree incline, and then zip right back down, twisting 270 degrees as they did so to coast back to the station.
Now on Top Thrill 2, the first move riders will undergo is a mere 74-mph launch, taking them roughly halfway up the top hat before sending them back towards the starting line — and thereby transforming what had formerly been an occasional, accidental, and, therefore, fan-coveted rollback into a deliberate and key feature.
A second launch speeds things up to 101 mph, just enough juice to propel the train car up a new 420-foot spike tower backward. Its reward is a second return to the starting line, a third launch — this time at the full, breakneck speed of 120 mph — and the original, iconic ride experience in its entirety. Oh, yeah; along the way, several seconds of “extreme” weightlessness are achieved, serving as the icing on this thoroughly exhilarating cake.
How is Top Thrill 2 Different from Top Thrill Dragster?
The result of all this tinkering cannot be overstated: Top Thrill 2 doubles the amount of “cloud-touching” towers, triples the launches, elongates the attraction run-time by a factor of nearly six (stretching it out to just under two minutes across 3,422 feet of track), and increases the thrill factor by a nearly exponential factor. It also allows for a whole new round of record-breaking and, thus, bragging rights for Cedar Fair, which now gets to claim the mantle of the world’s only reimagined and redefined strata coaster, the tallest and fastest triple-launch strata, and the only dual-tower strata (that’s a lot of fine print!).
There’s a small litany of added touches, as well. Zamperla Rides replaced the coaster’s original hydraulic launch system with a more modern, less-maintenance-intensive linear synchronous motor one. Additionally, the sleek new trains are not only far more open-air, they were also milled from a single piece of aluminum and crafted with a fiberglass and carbon-fiber body. The redesigned entrance pavilion is also resplendent with a new paint job and a new theme, switching out Top Fuel for the “thrill team” of CP Racing.
Top Thrill 2 Safety Guidelines and Lockers
All of this, however, comes with a catch, and it is a notable one: the restrictions that have been placed on this “next-generation motorsport machine.” Exactly like the other recent roller-coaster additions at Cedar Point, Top Thrill 2 bars glasses without an athletic strap and any type of loose article, including phones and hats, but then it goes one step further and also forbids any shoe that doesn’t feature either a strap or back (meaning, essentially, no flip-flops).
The real complicating factor here, though, is the absence of any free lockers to stow all these contraband items in, like what the similarly-envelope-pushing Steel Vengeance features within its queue. All would-be racers will need to pay for storage at a bank of lockers situated just outside the line’s entrance. While Cedar Point says rider safety guidelines were changed at the last minute, thereby preventing the “integration of the lockers into the queue,” the reaction has been nothing short of controversial within the world of theme- and amusement-park fandom, leading to charges of “pay to ride.” For our purposes, the moral of the story is to come prepared so as to not cause any friction between you and the sky-race of your dreams.
Top Thrill 2 Rider Cam and POV Videos
Top Thrill 2 is now open at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. Single-day park tickets start at $50 and season passes start at $110.
Take a virtual ride on Top Thrill 2 with these videos from the Attractions Magazine YouTube channel:
