Sadly, knowing this company ... there is nothing fresh about their products. Once it is stored in warehouses with cool cells, the freshness of the vegtables goes out of the door. That's the nature of the beast.
Maybe wood warps with rain when Made the coaster they should use treadlock or lock tight on on the bolts or it there is no damage # el Ryan likes you videos so listen how things work
I hope so too this coaster was on my bucket list. Based off of those long trains and that momentum going into this drop, the giant camel backs and airtime hills I would probably have this above Steel Vengeance in my opinion. Hopefully they get it up and running soon! Edit: I would hate for them to get it running and switch to shorter trains that would take a lot of the “whip” out in the back row especially on that drop.
Wow they built the absolute heck out of El Toro. Have always been a bit scared of wooden coasters but it's great to see how the designers really know their stuff and they're safely constructed. I am impressed at the design and construction details here, super interesting! Thanks for the deep dive on the structure!
Well then again, I don’t know if you heard Ryan talk a bit about this, but because of the nature in which wood coasters are built, they are actually safer than steel coasters to a certain degree
Amusement park roller coasters are some of the hardest things to engineer and design for, as there are so many different loads experienced on the coaster frame, frame foundations etc. I've had experience in the engineering design of some coasters at my local amusement park. It's crazy how many different variables you design for, but always see new issues crop up after the structure is built and running.
It's just so sad that parks maintain these rides so badly, but you see that all over the US. US companies are great at building huge and initially very safe structures, only to then see the owners/operators fail to keep up that safety by neglect or skimping on maintenance.
One of my fondest memories is marathoning el toro 42 times in about an hour and a half in 2017 after a thunderstorm.. hope they can get this reopened we can’t lose dragster and toro in 1 year
Other channels: Maybe a bolt broke... El Toro Ryan: It's possible the drier than average weather caused unexpected warping sure to a lack of moisture in the wood.
What I'm getting from this is, wood coasters are really heavy on maintenance, much like steam locomotives on railroads are. I'm just glad that the future is not all dark for El Toro. And I do hope that if it ever gets RMCed or anything like it that the layout stays exactly the same. Or, y'know, slight adjustments to account for forces if needed, but nothing that changes the ride completely.
I love, that in all of your videos like this one you include baseline explanations of what you're saying. You didn't have to explain tension and compression, but you did. you even include definitions of things you say, it's all very friendly for newcomers and yet still not boring for those who know what you're talking about. Really like it! ❤️
Thank you for making these videos. I really wish content like this would be highly recommended to the General Public, in order to quell fears about coasters, to provide much needed knowledge about them, and to hopefully tone down the amount of misinformation that gets circulated with the GP. I try my best to get content like this out to people that may be on the fence about, or completely against coasters for reasons that aren't founded in truth. Hopefully someday El Toro will return to its former glory, however if it doesn't, it'll be completely understandable. With the way Six Flags is running their parks now, the lack of adequate maintenance and staffing may lead to more incidents. I truly hope more rides in the Six Flags chain don't suffer the same fate as El Toro. As it will only further deepen the GP's distrust in rollercoasters, and cause even more unfounded misinformation to be spread. It also doesn't help that media outlets milk incidents like this like crazy. Making people believe coasters in general are unsafe and dangerous. Again, Thank you Ryan. Your content is crucial for people to truly understand the intricacies of these works of art.
What's actually interesting is that my sister was on El Toro when it initially 'derailed'. She didn't get hurt but noticed it jolted. The train after hers was the one that had injured riders. And then on the way home she was almost hit by a lightpole. What a day.
You did one hell of a job research and explain in the situation it's great to see someone that has a love for roller coasters like I do. Please continue on all your hard work is well worth it thank you for informing us on things that we would have never been able to know about. Your research is amazing to thank you once again.
I'm still so impressed by how cohesive and all encompassing your videos are. Like, you seriously cover every last part of the roller coaster, without glossing over the nitty gritty details. Thank you so much and keep it up good sir.
I hope this stays open for at least a few more years. I found out about this coaster before I became an enthusiast and haven't been to great adventure yet. I would be heartbroken to not experience it; I've heard nothing but amazing things about toro
They could go the heide park route, they also have a prefab Intamin called Collossus, it closed in 2016 because that too had significant structural failures. In total it stayed closed for 3 years and reopend in 2019 fully repaired and retracked and it is going strong atm
I’m happy that I got a chance to ride Son of Beast before they took that loop out, also got to ride it in the rain that night before it got shut down for the lightning. The beast will forever be my favorite roller coaster because it’s an absolute classic. Son of Beast was super rough, even for a 7 year old me, I’d say even rougher than the beast.
I've never been on El Toro but your multiple videos and pure enthusiasm for this coaster makes me want to fly across the country to ride it! I'm glad to hear it'll most likely live long enough for me to get the chance!
Son of Beast (though I managed to enjoy it in its first year) is a ride that was not well liked and probably should have never existed. But El Toro is probably the best ride in the entire Six Flags chain. So I wouldn't worry about it just yet.
Your deep dives are always excellent and impressive. Well done sir! I was at Great Adventure on Monday (Columbus Day), and although I booked the trip specifically to get rides on El Toro (I booked it prior to the accident, and this also happened to me last year), I still had a great day. I snapped a couple of pics of my favorite wooden coaster and went back to riding Jersey Devil, which was walk-on all day (and also closed when I went last year along with Nitro).
Another reason Son of Beast was closed and tore down was because Paramount was the owner of the park when it was built. They also pushed RCCA to have it ready for the opening day of the park in 2000, and when there were delays and some of the initial deficiencies found during construction they fired RCCA and took over building it themselves. Paramount rushed to have it done in time but the second lift hill collapsed by itself in January of 2000 during a wind storm. Once Cedar Fair bought Kings Island in 2006 and after the accident plus the attempt to fix it couldn’t come anywhere close to the ridership numbers previously as well as more issues it was easier for them to pull the plug on it. I don’t know this as a fact but my guess is the reason it took until 2012 for them to officially announce its closure is because they were talking to RMC about trying to remodel it but more structural deficiencies were found and RMC was just starting and didn’t want to deal with the headaches. I hope some day in the future they will revisit the idea of building a coaster based off the lineage of The Beast and Son of Beast.
I think another big difference between El Toro and Son of Beast is that Cedar Fair has proven willing to dump problematic rides from Paramount parks (effectively saying that they bought the parks and don't care as much about individual rides) whereas Six Flags were the ones to put in El Toro. CF has removed a lot of rides from Paramount parks that predate them buying the parks when they get problematic (Volcano) or too expensive to refresh (Vortex)
I REALLY hope El Toro gets to open next season. I'm planning a trip to the US next year, and visiting SixFlags Great Adventure is something I'm majorly looking forward to, mainly for this ride.
It's actually really surprising how much detail Intamin went into to make this, I've always loved roller coasters and this has just fascinated me more about them!
This analysis was amazing! I really enjoyed this video & love it when you do videos highlighting things no one else does in terms of how coasters operate.
I feel like El Toto was received as pretty smooth and overall a ranked coaster while son of the beast quickly received rough review and only remains famous cause of the cult enthusiast following. I’ve ridden them both. Kings Island is my hometown park but I still believe that’s El Toro is miles of head of what SOB ever was. I think the coaster community would be far more devastated by a permanent closure of El Toro to a degree that SOB’s closing never received.
GREAT VIDEO! I rode EL TORO many years ago and fell in love with it. Smooth, fast and scary....needed to ride it several times. It brought me back several years later where I felt it had lost its mojo and was much shakier. I didn't even ride it a 2nd time. I hope hey redo it enough to keep it and make it smoother again.
I just gotta say as someone who went to engineering school, it’s nice to hear someone nail the distinction between design strength, factor of safety, and ultimate strength. It’s simple but I think commonly misunderstood. Nothing is designed for the planned load, it’s designed for 4-10x that. Something can be “overloaded” per its design before it’s at its ultimate failure point. The design load is what engineers are saying they can guarantee with that stamp of approval, based on all current knowledge. Everything in engineering is ultimately an estimation of error, and by what level of accuracy you can be confident. As long as you just design something 4x stronger then you *think* it needs to be, it’s probably good enough. The Golden Gate Bridge probably uses about twice as much material as would be optimized today, but since they knew they had a bigger error and worse tolerances in measurements, they just overcompensated and that’s just how they did things. Still perfectly safe.
My nerdy kids love coasters and this kind of content definitely helps get their engineer brains going. It's great for them to get somebody who actually knows about this stuff doing deep dives into structural issues.
I’m glad to be watching this again in 2024 and El Toro is alive and kicking. Can’t wait for the 2024 season to begin and ride the best ride at the park
El Toro means a lot to me over the years because of the unfathomably large amount of memories I've made on it, sometimes visiting every weekend in the summer. It's become part of NJ lore itself. That's why It will always be here, maybe become like the cyclone in the future, an ace classic
The thing I immediately started wondering is how this structure compares to the wooden support structures of RMC hybrids, which often pull some pretty significant forces. I know that RMC basically never just uses the existing structure unmodified, and they have things like steel ledgers that wooden coasters don't (and a few actually have steel structures, and many have a steel truss supporting the tallest bit). But it'll be interesting to see how the wooden-support hybrids fare over the long term.
RMC did build El Toro tho. Also NTG and Iron Rattler still held surprisingly well beyond what SoB did. Espescially considering both were Dinn and RCCA respectively and both were structurally questionable. Also looks like Schilke learn from the failure of S&S Wooden Coaster (Which ways legit Schilke layout attempt like RMC, but they self destruct themself when using normal speed)
I gotta say, I love watching a lot of your videos, and you put a ton of effort and work into them, but I think this video was really impressive to me because most people report on events like this and just repeat what the general public knows based off of companies putting out statements in stuff but you did a big deeps dive into every aspect of el toro, and also gave a ton of information about all parties involved into the investigation and ongoing maintenance, and gave a really unbiased opinion, and accounted for all the factors possible as well. Again really great video and keep up the great work!
Rode both. Rode Son of Beast and will never forget the positive G forces going into the loop pushing you into your seat. Rode El Toro the first year opened and loved they used the elevator system like Millennium Force for the first hill. Gotta love a good Wood Coaster.
I saw you mention his earlier, but I was surprised during that video that you attributed the problem to a portion of the track towards the end of the ride, since when I finally rode in during the last 2 days of May 2022 and the 1st two days of June 2022 I found the trough after the 1st turnaround to be by far the roughest part of the ride. I also heard loud cracks at the bottom of the Rolling thunder hill, but that was no where near as rough as the aforementioned trough. But now I feel vindicated to have my experience proven to back up what I felt was the most problematic aspect of El Toro. Luckily that issue wasn't as bad sitting in the middle row of any car, and I'm still grateful I was able to ride it many times, usually in row 17. I even ranked El Toro as the best ride in the park with Nitro coming in at #2; J.D. coming in at #3; K.K. coming in at #4 and Medusa coming in at #5. Thanks for posting!
2017 was the year myself, son & daughter came 900 miles to Great Adventure and rode three of the best coasters in the park. KINGDA KA, NITRO and EL TORO.
Great video Ryan!!🔥Yea it’s sad the park needs to put time into really focusing on and fixing the major problems that it’s facing. Hope for the best for this coaster.
That's a major design flaw and any competent structural engineer should have known the posts would split like that. The anchor sleeve should be a box tube, that would prevent that from occurring at the anchor point. At the very least, they will likely need to make that retrofit but I think ultimately it's going to be up to their insurance company whether or not they are willing to take on further risk. It may become cost prohibitive, especially given that the attraction is getting up there in age and now has a tarnished reputation. At this point, it's likely that Six Flags have recouped their investment and it may make more financial sense to close it.
I’m sorry to hear about the woes of El Toro. I have had the privilege of riding it several times, and it’s all that and more. Hope they get it back to snuff. It would be a regional tragedy if it were scrapped. Thanks for your amazing detailed reporting.
Other wooden coasters like Hades 360, The Voyage, and Texas Stingray use a steel support structure with wooden track which kind of makes them hybrids only wooden hybrids. A lot of RMCs too use a steel support structure on their lift hills, tallest points, or points of high force/stress for extra strength and stability. Obviously, it's too late to change the supports but I feel if El Toro were built like this it would've definitely held up much better. Hell I even think this could've worked for Son of Beast too. I'm hoping SFGA can follow through with their statement they released and get this reopened.
It's hard to just subtitute several members to steel, because wood is springy with less force, whereas steel isn't. They could somehow mimic the "springiness" (Like Titan track did, it could still maintaining full steel wheel without feeling the grittiness sensation). Or just you know, rebuild the entire structure with steel, which also not cheap either.
I was at KI the day of the Son of Beast accident and it also was the last day I got to ride it. I ended up moving away from Cincinnati and never rode the loopless version, but I didn't hate Son of Beast the way many did. I didn't love it, but it was intense enough to have some charm.
Interesting trivia : Son of Beast was built when Paramount owned King's Island. It was built by a company that KI actually fired and sued for failure to build the ride correctly. Then KI finished the coaster in house. When the first failure happened, it was the same year that Cedar Fair bought Kings Island from Paramount. Cedar Point then spent something like 4 million dollars fixing it with new trains and no loop. The 2nd time it failed, Cedar Fair decided to scrap it due to the headache it had been since owning it.
FANTASTIC RESEARCH!!!! How could you get and pick so much information and documents?? Are you a Team of Engineers working directly on Coasters projects?????
Another possible contributing factor: Snow and ice packed around these lower areas of the wooden bent each winter? Even with treated timbers for decks, these lower areas get affected first on wooden decks I have seen?
I probably won't ever return to Great Adventure if El Toro doesn't open, it was my first Number 1, my first coaster marathon (24 times in one day), my first conscious back seat ride (As in the first time I ever chose the back), and my first moment of Ejector Airtime, this coaster means a lot to me and is my reason to drive 10 hours to New Jersey to ride it. Great Adventure is a great park, don't get me wrong, but nothing at that park comes close to that wooden beast, it's currently my number 4, but that's only cause I haven't ridden it since 2018 and have since ridden other coasters that knocked my socks off
I rode El Toro a good dozen times this year, a few days before the incident it was so rough I told my kids I thought it rattled my nervous system. We didn't go on for another ride despite there being no line.
People who say El Toro is rough have never gone on Rolling Thunder when it was still around and it shows. That thing gave me massive headaches back in the day
I think it's just that the particular design is so tough on this structure that it couldn't keep up with the stress. It lasted a long time. A lot of the structure is still good. I think the best plan is for Rocky Mountain Coaster to have a go at hybridizing it to reduce the stress on the structure while providing a new thrilling experience to riders.
0:44 "There was one neck injury, two back injuries, and two mouth and tongue injuries...or roughly what used to happen every 15 minutes at Action Park."
As someone who has gone on el toro a bunch of times, there has always been a rattle/bump on the first turn. I don’t know if it was like that in 2021 before the close, but it’s been like this since the start of the season
The big difference between El Toro and Son of Beast is that Son of Beast was already built bad, El Toro was built great but over time great adventure neglected a lot of its structure. The ride itself can be repaired easily without any massive changes. Son of Beast on the other hand well that was snake bit from the start
Son of Beast was designed poorly from the start by a company that was known for being sketchy in its construction practices. El Toro was designed by a company that has good construction practices, but many of their bigger projects have proven to be maintenece nightmares for the parks that own them. I really hope El Toro can be saved, even if it ends up getting the RMC treatment. I've heard nothing but good things about El Toro from people who rode it prior to the accidents.
The El Toro design error that I notice is that even though they did overbuild the structure by doubling things up they did not account for that extra weight at the bottom to hold it all up. The bottom was built as if it were a normally constructed coaster. The very lowest portions of the bent posts are undersized for the weight of the doubled up construction method. The only logical way to strengthen that would be the addition of tall steel members onto the lower end of the bent posts where the weight and forces are the highest. Reinforcing those structural deficits is going to cost a fortune but that will only happen if a structural engineer spots it and notifies the powers that be. There is a structural engineer on youtube with a channel named Building Integrity. He would be perfect for the job.
I went on to Six flags great adventure on August 25th and I must say that El toro was running extremely rough and overall it was a very bad ride experience but if and when it reopens I will be sure to ride it again because it’s a great ride it’s just it was failed to be maintained properly
I rode eltoro two days before the latest accident and bruised my back on what felt like a pothole and stopped riding it for the rest of the day. Usually my son and I would ride eltoro many times each visit but even he said he was done. Awesome ride , I hope they fix it
I wonder if after the wood track is built what if they impregnated it with resin. Making the entire track piece like a solid piece if acrylic. Would be very strong and wouldn't let ANY moisture in.
I'm agreeing that it's most likely weather related. August caused many trees and shrubs in my area to go dormant to survive. It's October in Ohio and my lilac bushes are blooming again, the apple trees have shot off new growth and are budding again, we're getting another crop of black raspberries, and none of this makes sense. The plants are treating the fall like it's spring again. If the weather has been harsh enough to mess with everything else, the very dry and hot August probably had something to do with it.
I’m not even really in to roller coasters, but this was a really interesting video (I really appreciate wooden coasters though. They feel more “alive” to ride). BTW, I wonder how many trees were involved in the making of the El Toro?
I can proudly say I survived Son of Beast. Rode it many times both with and without the loop, and I'm still not sure how my folks and I didn't suffer permanent neck and back damage. 🤣 It probably needed to go, but I still have fond memories of it.
Maybe they'll have to do something like Morey's Piers does with The Great White where they shut it down for an hour or two in the afternoon for a mid-day inspection.
I do appreciate ya pronouncing heide park correctly, it's a small detail but it just makes ya more credible :) alot of English speaking people would pronounce it as heydee park, which sounds very wrong 😂
Was there anything done on the turnaround after the derailment that stiffened the structure? People had been complaining of the ride running really rough since the incident which seemed odd. I'm wondering if perhaps something in the repair process caused higher forces to be exerted on the bent posts rather than being dissipated through flexing higher in the structure.
Thanks to HelloFresh for sponsoring today's video. Go to strms.net/EltororyanHelloFreshOctoberYT for 65% off plus free shipping on your first box!
I love your videos I want to be a roller coaster designer when I grow up and I went to six flags great adventure but nitro and el Toro were not open
Sadly, knowing this company ... there is nothing fresh about their products. Once it is stored in warehouses with cool cells, the freshness of the vegtables goes out of the door. That's the nature of the beast.
Maybe wood warps with rain when Made the coaster they should use treadlock or lock tight on on the bolts or it there is no damage # el Ryan likes you videos so listen how things work
I hate when my vertical member gets pulled in the wrong direction! Hope El Toro is back soon.
I hope so too this coaster was on my bucket list. Based off of those long trains and that momentum going into this drop, the giant camel backs and airtime hills I would probably have this above Steel Vengeance in my opinion. Hopefully they get it up and running soon!
Edit: I would hate for them to get it running and switch to shorter trains that would take a lot of the “whip” out in the back row especially on that drop.
I find it odd that my two favorite UA-camrs watch each other
As do we all.
0:53
Apparently a spokesperson for Six Flags said it's set to reopen for the 2023 season, could be wrong tho.
Those vertical members have been doing there job since I was in fourth grade. Six flags will fix it
Wow they built the absolute heck out of El Toro. Have always been a bit scared of wooden coasters but it's great to see how the designers really know their stuff and they're safely constructed. I am impressed at the design and construction details here, super interesting! Thanks for the deep dive on the structure!
Intamin gets a lot of criticism but they push the envelope and have made some groundbreaking rides.... even if they're problematic.
I think Intamin knew what they were doing to ensure El Toro was well engineered, just like any other manufacturer~~
Well then again, I don’t know if you heard Ryan talk a bit about this, but because of the nature in which wood coasters are built, they are actually safer than steel coasters to a certain degree
Amusement park roller coasters are some of the hardest things to engineer and design for, as there are so many different loads experienced on the coaster frame, frame foundations etc. I've had experience in the engineering design of some coasters at my local amusement park. It's crazy how many different variables you design for, but always see new issues crop up after the structure is built and running.
It's just so sad that parks maintain these rides so badly, but you see that all over the US.
US companies are great at building huge and initially very safe structures, only to then see the owners/operators fail to keep up that safety by neglect or skimping on maintenance.
One of my fondest memories is marathoning el toro 42 times in about an hour and a half in 2017 after a thunderstorm.. hope they can get this reopened we can’t lose dragster and toro in 1 year
dragster is gurenteed to reopen without a question
🤡🤡
@@R7SkIlZ for sure, but for me what made dragster dragster is that hydrologic launch which isn’t coming back
now im wondering would dragster with lsms be a new credit
@@R7SkIlZ I'd have to say so..they've removed enough track at this point
Other channels: Maybe a bolt broke...
El Toro Ryan: It's possible the drier than average weather caused unexpected warping sure to a lack of moisture in the wood.
What I'm getting from this is, wood coasters are really heavy on maintenance, much like steam locomotives on railroads are.
I'm just glad that the future is not all dark for El Toro. And I do hope that if it ever gets RMCed or anything like it that the layout stays exactly the same. Or, y'know, slight adjustments to account for forces if needed, but nothing that changes the ride completely.
There's a saying that you never stop building a wood coaster.
I love, that in all of your videos like this one you include baseline explanations of what you're saying. You didn't have to explain tension and compression, but you did. you even include definitions of things you say, it's all very friendly for newcomers and yet still not boring for those who know what you're talking about. Really like it! ❤️
And you include your sources. You really know your shit man. Love this channel! Greetings from Germany!
He doesn't have to explain block zones every time, but he does, and we love him for it
Thank you for making these videos. I really wish content like this would be highly recommended to the General Public, in order to quell fears about coasters, to provide much needed knowledge about them, and to hopefully tone down the amount of misinformation that gets circulated with the GP. I try my best to get content like this out to people that may be on the fence about, or completely against coasters for reasons that aren't founded in truth.
Hopefully someday El Toro will return to its former glory, however if it doesn't, it'll be completely understandable. With the way Six Flags is running their parks now, the lack of adequate maintenance and staffing may lead to more incidents. I truly hope more rides in the Six Flags chain don't suffer the same fate as El Toro. As it will only further deepen the GP's distrust in rollercoasters, and cause even more unfounded misinformation to be spread. It also doesn't help that media outlets milk incidents like this like crazy. Making people believe coasters in general are unsafe and dangerous.
Again, Thank you Ryan. Your content is crucial for people to truly understand the intricacies of these works of art.
🤣🤣🤡
@@Starlit43 ??
What's actually interesting is that my sister was on El Toro when it initially 'derailed'. She didn't get hurt but noticed it jolted. The train after hers was the one that had injured riders. And then on the way home she was almost hit by a lightpole. What a day.
I’m hoping El Toro can open back up. Thank you for this video Ryan!
It will🤦♂️
@@Starlit43 why the face palm bro
You did one hell of a job research and explain in the situation it's great to see someone that has a love for roller coasters like I do. Please continue on all your hard work is well worth it thank you for informing us on things that we would have never been able to know about. Your research is amazing to thank you once again.
When he explain fatigue is actually just a propagation of crack, he research it well.
I'm still so impressed by how cohesive and all encompassing your videos are. Like, you seriously cover every last part of the roller coaster, without glossing over the nitty gritty details. Thank you so much and keep it up good sir.
I hope this stays open for at least a few more years. I found out about this coaster before I became an enthusiast and haven't been to great adventure yet. I would be heartbroken to not experience it; I've heard nothing but amazing things about toro
It will🤦♂️
@@Starlit43 why the faceslap? Did I say something that's obvious to other people that I'm not aware of?
@@SkyrushFanboy he said that to me as well. It’s cringe tbh
@@jzckvsn awesome Zenitsu profile pic! I freaking love demon slayer
They could go the heide park route, they also have a prefab Intamin called Collossus, it closed in 2016 because that too had significant structural failures. In total it stayed closed for 3 years and reopend in 2019 fully repaired and retracked and it is going strong atm
I’m happy that I got a chance to ride Son of Beast before they took that loop out, also got to ride it in the rain that night before it got shut down for the lightning. The beast will forever be my favorite roller coaster because it’s an absolute classic. Son of Beast was super rough, even for a 7 year old me, I’d say even rougher than the beast.
I've never been on El Toro but your multiple videos and pure enthusiasm for this coaster makes me want to fly across the country to ride it! I'm glad to hear it'll most likely live long enough for me to get the chance!
Son of Beast (though I managed to enjoy it in its first year) is a ride that was not well liked and probably should have never existed. But El Toro is probably the best ride in the entire Six Flags chain. So I wouldn't worry about it just yet.
Your deep dives are always excellent and impressive. Well done sir! I was at Great Adventure on Monday (Columbus Day), and although I booked the trip specifically to get rides on El Toro (I booked it prior to the accident, and this also happened to me last year), I still had a great day. I snapped a couple of pics of my favorite wooden coaster and went back to riding Jersey Devil, which was walk-on all day (and also closed when I went last year along with Nitro).
I hope El Toro is open for your next visit to the park!
Another reason Son of Beast was closed and tore down was because Paramount was the owner of the park when it was built. They also pushed RCCA to have it ready for the opening day of the park in 2000, and when there were delays and some of the initial deficiencies found during construction they fired RCCA and took over building it themselves. Paramount rushed to have it done in time but the second lift hill collapsed by itself in January of 2000 during a wind storm. Once Cedar Fair bought Kings Island in 2006 and after the accident plus the attempt to fix it couldn’t come anywhere close to the ridership numbers previously as well as more issues it was easier for them to pull the plug on it. I don’t know this as a fact but my guess is the reason it took until 2012 for them to officially announce its closure is because they were talking to RMC about trying to remodel it but more structural deficiencies were found and RMC was just starting and didn’t want to deal with the headaches. I hope some day in the future they will revisit the idea of building a coaster based off the lineage of The Beast and Son of Beast.
Grandson of Beast lol
I think another big difference between El Toro and Son of Beast is that Cedar Fair has proven willing to dump problematic rides from Paramount parks (effectively saying that they bought the parks and don't care as much about individual rides) whereas Six Flags were the ones to put in El Toro. CF has removed a lot of rides from Paramount parks that predate them buying the parks when they get problematic (Volcano) or too expensive to refresh (Vortex)
I REALLY hope El Toro gets to open next season. I'm planning a trip to the US next year, and visiting SixFlags Great Adventure is something I'm majorly looking forward to, mainly for this ride.
It's actually really surprising how much detail Intamin went into to make this, I've always loved roller coasters and this has just fascinated me more about them!
This analysis was amazing! I really enjoyed this video & love it when you do videos highlighting things no one else does in terms of how coasters operate.
I feel like El Toto was received as pretty smooth and overall a ranked coaster while son of the beast quickly received rough review and only remains famous cause of the cult enthusiast following. I’ve ridden them both. Kings Island is my hometown park but I still believe that’s El Toro is miles of head of what SOB ever was. I think the coaster community would be far more devastated by a permanent closure of El Toro to a degree that SOB’s closing never received.
GREAT VIDEO! I rode EL TORO many years ago and fell in love with it. Smooth, fast and scary....needed to ride it several times. It brought me back several years later where I felt it had lost its mojo and was much shakier. I didn't even ride it a 2nd time. I hope hey redo it enough to keep it and make it smoother again.
The bed connectors not being aligned adds character to the coaster too: it'd be weird to see it with supports that are perfectly aligned/neat
nice to hear it will reopen as it is my number 1 bucket list coaster
Someone definitely did their homework on material science! Very well explained!
When he explain "Fatigue is just propagation of cracks", I know he did really well job researching
I just gotta say as someone who went to engineering school, it’s nice to hear someone nail the distinction between design strength, factor of safety, and ultimate strength. It’s simple but I think commonly misunderstood. Nothing is designed for the planned load, it’s designed for 4-10x that. Something can be “overloaded” per its design before it’s at its ultimate failure point. The design load is what engineers are saying they can guarantee with that stamp of approval, based on all current knowledge. Everything in engineering is ultimately an estimation of error, and by what level of accuracy you can be confident. As long as you just design something 4x stronger then you *think* it needs to be, it’s probably good enough. The Golden Gate Bridge probably uses about twice as much material as would be optimized today, but since they knew they had a bigger error and worse tolerances in measurements, they just overcompensated and that’s just how they did things. Still perfectly safe.
I honestly think the park cut corners on the repairs on the last accident
Knott's Ghostrider is my favorite west coast coaster and Cyclone on Coney Island is my favorite east coast coaster. Great watch....
My nerdy kids love coasters and this kind of content definitely helps get their engineer brains going. It's great for them to get somebody who actually knows about this stuff doing deep dives into structural issues.
I’m glad to be watching this again in 2024 and El Toro is alive and kicking. Can’t wait for the 2024 season to begin and ride the best ride at the park
El Toro means a lot to me over the years because of the unfathomably large amount of memories I've made on it, sometimes visiting every weekend in the summer. It's become part of NJ lore itself. That's why It will always be here, maybe become like the cyclone in the future, an ace classic
YAAAAAASSSSSS, come through ElToroRyan with the HelloFresh sponsor!! My guy is making waves!! 👊
21:54 Good ol' Dave Robinson, I took an elective class of his in 2009
As an Orlando, Fl native, Hollywood Rip Ride Rocket had too much rattle when I road it in August.
The thing I immediately started wondering is how this structure compares to the wooden support structures of RMC hybrids, which often pull some pretty significant forces. I know that RMC basically never just uses the existing structure unmodified, and they have things like steel ledgers that wooden coasters don't (and a few actually have steel structures, and many have a steel truss supporting the tallest bit). But it'll be interesting to see how the wooden-support hybrids fare over the long term.
They actually built el toro
RMC did build El Toro tho.
Also NTG and Iron Rattler still held surprisingly well beyond what SoB did. Espescially considering both were Dinn and RCCA respectively and both were structurally questionable. Also looks like Schilke learn from the failure of S&S Wooden Coaster (Which ways legit Schilke layout attempt like RMC, but they self destruct themself when using normal speed)
This was addressed in eltoro's video about mean streak/Steel Vengeance
I gotta say, I love watching a lot of your videos, and you put a ton of effort and work into them, but I think this video was really impressive to me because most people report on events like this and just repeat what the general public knows based off of companies putting out statements in stuff but you did a big deeps dive into every aspect of el toro, and also gave a ton of information about all parties involved into the investigation and ongoing maintenance, and gave a really unbiased opinion, and accounted for all the factors possible as well. Again really great video and keep up the great work!
Wake up babe, ElToroRyan just posted!
Epic in-depth video loved the structural engineering explanations, can’t wait to ride El Toro again!
Rode both. Rode Son of Beast and will never forget the positive G forces going into the loop pushing you into your seat. Rode El Toro the first year opened and loved they used the elevator system like Millennium Force for the first hill. Gotta love a good Wood Coaster.
I saw you mention his earlier, but I was surprised during that video that you attributed the problem to a portion of the track towards the end of the ride, since when I finally rode in during the last 2 days of May 2022 and the 1st two days of June 2022 I found the trough after the 1st turnaround to be by far the roughest part of the ride. I also heard loud cracks at the bottom of the Rolling thunder hill, but that was no where near as rough as the aforementioned trough. But now I feel vindicated to have my experience proven to back up what I felt was the most problematic aspect of El Toro. Luckily that issue wasn't as bad sitting in the middle row of any car, and I'm still grateful I was able to ride it many times, usually in row 17. I even ranked El Toro as the best ride in the park with Nitro coming in at #2; J.D. coming in at #3; K.K. coming in at #4 and Medusa coming in at #5. Thanks for posting!
I've been waiting for this video and wasn't disappointed. Thanks for the effort you put into it!
Finally a worthy explanation of SOB and eltoro! Thanks mang
These modern wooden coasters just cannot capture the structural greatness of rides like the beast.
I love this ride and these videos
Rode El Toro three days ago. It gets regular maintenance and seems like it's gonna keep going strong :)
2017 was the year myself, son & daughter came 900 miles to Great Adventure and rode three of the best coasters in the park. KINGDA KA, NITRO and EL TORO.
steel vengance comes to mind. that thing flexes and sways like crazy if you pay attention in line.
I’ve learned more about building with wood from ElToroRyan than I did my Structural Engineering courses
I was just here in August. Crazy to think that this could’ve happened while I was riding it
They already started to repair it and is slated to open next season
Great video Ryan!!🔥Yea it’s sad the park needs to put time into really focusing on and fixing the major problems that it’s facing. Hope for the best for this coaster.
30 MINUTE ELTORORYAN VIDEO ABOUT EL TORO LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Well if somehow El Toro was removed, I guess we would have KingdaKaRyan.
That's a major design flaw and any competent structural engineer should have known the posts would split like that. The anchor sleeve should be a box tube, that would prevent that from occurring at the anchor point. At the very least, they will likely need to make that retrofit but I think ultimately it's going to be up to their insurance company whether or not they are willing to take on further risk. It may become cost prohibitive, especially given that the attraction is getting up there in age and now has a tarnished reputation. At this point, it's likely that Six Flags have recouped their investment and it may make more financial sense to close it.
The consequence of relying too much on computer system design
Most of the split photo is from SoB tho
8:30 I didn't even know your wife was a science teacher. That's pretty dope!
He made a whole video for her class once
The intro even said something like “Hello 8th graders”
I’m sorry to hear about the woes of El Toro. I have had the privilege of riding it several times, and it’s all that and more. Hope they get it back to snuff. It would be a regional tragedy if it were scrapped. Thanks for your amazing detailed reporting.
You’re pretty amazing. Thanks for explaining all of this!
Other wooden coasters like Hades 360, The Voyage, and Texas Stingray use a steel support structure with wooden track which kind of makes them hybrids only wooden hybrids. A lot of RMCs too use a steel support structure on their lift hills, tallest points, or points of high force/stress for extra strength and stability. Obviously, it's too late to change the supports but I feel if El Toro were built like this it would've definitely held up much better. Hell I even think this could've worked for Son of Beast too. I'm hoping SFGA can follow through with their statement they released and get this reopened.
It's hard to just subtitute several members to steel, because wood is springy with less force, whereas steel isn't. They could somehow mimic the "springiness" (Like Titan track did, it could still maintaining full steel wheel without feeling the grittiness sensation).
Or just you know, rebuild the entire structure with steel, which also not cheap either.
It is really impressive to me that you continue to put out fire content like this while working a full time job. Good stuff as usual bro
I was at KI the day of the Son of Beast accident and it also was the last day I got to ride it. I ended up moving away from Cincinnati and never rode the loopless version, but I didn't hate Son of Beast the way many did. I didn't love it, but it was intense enough to have some charm.
Interesting trivia : Son of Beast was built when Paramount owned King's Island. It was built by a company that KI actually fired and sued for failure to build the ride correctly. Then KI finished the coaster in house. When the first failure happened, it was the same year that Cedar Fair bought Kings Island from Paramount. Cedar Point then spent something like 4 million dollars fixing it with new trains and no loop. The 2nd time it failed, Cedar Fair decided to scrap it due to the headache it had been since owning it.
Absolutely amazing video. Love all the research and time that clearly went into making this. Keep up the amazing work!
It's funny how this was one of the not only smoothest wooden coasters but smoothest coaster period. And look how it has changed over the years.
FANTASTIC RESEARCH!!!! How could you get and pick so much information and documents?? Are you a Team of Engineers working directly on Coasters projects?????
I feel like this should be shown in statics, dynamics, and strength of materials courses for engineers and architects
Another possible contributing factor: Snow and ice packed around these lower areas of the wooden bent each winter? Even with treated timbers for decks, these lower areas get affected first on wooden decks I have seen?
I probably won't ever return to Great Adventure if El Toro doesn't open, it was my first Number 1, my first coaster marathon (24 times in one day), my first conscious back seat ride (As in the first time I ever chose the back), and my first moment of Ejector Airtime, this coaster means a lot to me and is my reason to drive 10 hours to New Jersey to ride it. Great Adventure is a great park, don't get me wrong, but nothing at that park comes close to that wooden beast, it's currently my number 4, but that's only cause I haven't ridden it since 2018 and have since ridden other coasters that knocked my socks off
im curious to know what your top 3 is
I was a ride operator at worlds of fun in KC. On patriot. We are getting a new coaster next year.
I rode El Toro a good dozen times this year, a few days before the incident it was so rough I told my kids I thought it rattled my nervous system. We didn't go on for another ride despite there being no line.
People who say El Toro is rough have never gone on Rolling Thunder when it was still around and it shows. That thing gave me massive headaches back in the day
Thanks again for another great video. Really enjoyed it - per usual. Hopefully I get to ride this one day !!!
3 Roller coasters closed in August 2021. Top Thrill Dragster, El Toro, Do-Dodonpa at Fuji Q Highlands is now permanently closed
Always wait for your uploads, you sent another banger.
got to 7 different parks this year! big hype.
I think it's just that the particular design is so tough on this structure that it couldn't keep up with the stress.
It lasted a long time. A lot of the structure is still good. I think the best plan is for Rocky Mountain Coaster to have a go at hybridizing it to reduce the stress on the structure while providing a new thrilling experience to riders.
What timing to log on to yt!!
I rode El Toro in its 2nd year and it was amazing. That being said it is a very intense wooden coaster and a rough ride on it would not be pleasant.
0:44 "There was one neck injury, two back injuries, and two mouth and tongue injuries...or roughly what used to happen every 15 minutes at Action Park."
I love your realistic, well-founded insight!
As someone who has gone on el toro a bunch of times, there has always been a rattle/bump on the first turn. I don’t know if it was like that in 2021 before the close, but it’s been like this since the start of the season
So glad I rode the hell out of this while I had the chance. Colossos was not the same.
Toro or Bust!
The big difference between El Toro and Son of Beast is that Son of Beast was already built bad, El Toro was built great but over time great adventure neglected a lot of its structure. The ride itself can be repaired easily without any massive changes. Son of Beast on the other hand well that was snake bit from the start
Son of Beast was designed poorly from the start by a company that was known for being sketchy in its construction practices. El Toro was designed by a company that has good construction practices, but many of their bigger projects have proven to be maintenece nightmares for the parks that own them. I really hope El Toro can be saved, even if it ends up getting the RMC treatment. I've heard nothing but good things about El Toro from people who rode it prior to the accidents.
The El Toro design error that I notice is that even though they did overbuild the structure by doubling things up they did not account for that extra weight at the bottom to hold it all up. The bottom was built as if it were a normally constructed coaster. The very lowest portions of the bent posts are undersized for the weight of the doubled up construction method.
The only logical way to strengthen that would be the addition of tall steel members onto the lower end of the bent posts where the weight and forces are the highest. Reinforcing those structural deficits is going to cost a fortune but that will only happen if a structural engineer spots it and notifies the powers that be.
There is a structural engineer on youtube with a channel named Building Integrity. He would be perfect for the job.
I hope it's not necessary, but if it's really necessary I hope they do rmc it and call it 'el hierro'
You hear that kids? Ya gotta stay hydrated
Personally, I kind of hope we would get new trains but overall, it is still nice to know that el toro has a chance
I went on to Six flags great adventure on August 25th and I must say that El toro was running extremely rough and overall it was a very bad ride experience but if and when it reopens I will be sure to ride it again because it’s a great ride it’s just it was failed to be maintained properly
I rode eltoro two days before the latest accident and bruised my back on what felt like a pothole and stopped riding it for the rest of the day. Usually my son and I would ride eltoro many times each visit but even he said he was done. Awesome ride , I hope they fix it
I wonder if after the wood track is built what if they impregnated it with resin. Making the entire track piece like a solid piece if acrylic. Would be very strong and wouldn't let ANY moisture in.
They need to replace the damaged section!
I'm agreeing that it's most likely weather related. August caused many trees and shrubs in my area to go dormant to survive. It's October in Ohio and my lilac bushes are blooming again, the apple trees have shot off new growth and are budding again, we're getting another crop of black raspberries, and none of this makes sense. The plants are treating the fall like it's spring again. If the weather has been harsh enough to mess with everything else, the very dry and hot August probably had something to do with it.
I’m not even really in to roller coasters, but this was a really interesting video (I really appreciate wooden coasters though. They feel more “alive” to ride). BTW, I wonder how many trees were involved in the making of the El Toro?
I can proudly say I survived Son of Beast. Rode it many times both with and without the loop, and I'm still not sure how my folks and I didn't suffer permanent neck and back damage. 🤣 It probably needed to go, but I still have fond memories of it.
Maybe they'll have to do something like Morey's Piers does with The Great White where they shut it down for an hour or two in the afternoon for a mid-day inspection.
I do appreciate ya pronouncing heide park correctly, it's a small detail but it just makes ya more credible :) alot of English speaking people would pronounce it as heydee park, which sounds very wrong 😂
one of my thoughts was maybe during the derailment incident, as the last car was dragged along the track that maybe lead to more unknown damage.
Was there anything done on the turnaround after the derailment that stiffened the structure? People had been complaining of the ride running really rough since the incident which seemed odd. I'm wondering if perhaps something in the repair process caused higher forces to be exerted on the bent posts rather than being dissipated through flexing higher in the structure.