Six Flags announced today the permanent closure of its embattled X² ride at Magic Mountain in California. Though most riders ride fine without incident, there are a terrifying number of brain injuries attributed to the ride, including one woman now spending months in a coma, and there are now serious doubts about the coaster ever being able to operate again within the bounds of what is considered safe by the industry and its regulators.
X² sidecars rotate independently of the train.
(Photo: Jeremy Thompson)
X² opened originally as simply X in 2002 — no, not the rebranded Twitter. It was the first “4-Dimensional” roller coaster, where cars pitch rotate independently from the train. The upgrade to “X2” happened only six years later in 2008, which added some immersive elements like onboard audio, but was in large part to upgrade the trains in the service of making the ride experience smoother.
Such a revamp and rebrand does not mean a coaster is necessarily doomed. Top Thrill Dragster was reborn as “Top Thrill 2” after its hydraulic launch system popped a bolt out with sufficient speed to cause serious injury to a guest waiting in line. The hydraulic launch was replaced with a new electromagnetic one, and the ride experience was altered to be longer, providing multiple passes over the launch system to gain speed, resulting in something engineers were confident posed less mechanical risk. I rode on it less than two weeks ago — it’s a smooth ride that remains extremely popular.
X² was built by Arrow Dynamics, and many older Arrow and Vekoma rides — they shared the same track manufacturing techniques — were retrofitted upgraded trains that better handle the fairly rough nature of that type of track. Notably, Ninja was revamped as Blue Hawk at Six Flags, running new trains that put less strain on riders bodies, particularly their heads. Though this style of track is smoother than wooden coasters, steel coasters typically put riders through far more intense elements at higher speeds, giving a lot of these rides a reputation as “headbangers.”
Arrow Dynamics, however, shortly went bankrupt after the construction of X². They initially considered X to be too ambitious in scale for the first 4-D coaster but Six Flags was offering them an extremely lucrative deal with the company needed a big win. However, it was not enough to save them, and ultimately the X2 upgrades were completed by S&S, a company that bought up all the assets of the failed Arrow. (Vekoma, on the other hand, continues to be a successful coaster company to this day, now producing track with more advanced methods that rival its competitors in smoothness.)
Even well-maintained rides tend to get at least somewhat more rough as they age — and X² was never exactly smooth. With the nature of most rides, that can be managed and does not pose safety risks, but four dimensional coasters can subject riders to some particularly and jarring forces, as the track elements combine with the rotation of the car.
Furthermore, while the Blue Hawks of the world have managed to eliminate ways for the riders to bang their heads against the restraints, the needs of something like a 4-D coaster in that regard are far higher. Rough track and heavy restraints are a bad combo, but super intense coaster experiences with light restraints cause their own sort of safety pitfalls.
S&S continued construction of 4-D coasters after buying up Arrow, and Intamin — the same company who built Top Thrill — now makes them as well. As of yet, there are not signs the later coasters will develop the same problems, though hopefully the parks running them are vigilant. The second one ever built, Eejanaika, used Japan’s extremely high earthquake resistance standards, which upped installation costs but undoubtedly helped stabilize the ride as well.
The past several decades saw massive advancements in what was possible with coasters, driven by parks in a perpetual race to one-up each other with records and novel concepts. The human body can only withstand so much, but engineers somehow keep finding new and interesting ways to taunt and tease us.
However, it is critical that we ensure we are doing everything we can within reason to protect the safety of riders — not just in initial designs but with full consideration of how a ride evolves over its lifetime of service. X² gave a lot of coaster fans memorable thrills, but let’s hope it also gives industry stakeholders a memorable cautionary tale about ensuring that people can trust that the roller coasters they ride are as safe as they are fun.