Giga

Ultimately, Millennium Force didn’t retain the title of the world’s only gigacoaster for long. Less than three months after its debut, Nagashima Spa Land in Kuwana, Japan cut the ribbon on Steel Dragon 2000… a ride six feet taller than Millennium Force, manufactured by Morgan. Yep, the firm who lost the bid to build Cedar Point’s 300-foot behemoth succeeded halfway around the world.

In fact, having been in negotiations with Cedar Point allegedly gave Morgan insider knowledge in exactly how tall the Ohio park planned to build, ensuring they could easily snap up the record in Japan. When Steel Dragon’s statistics were finally revealed, Cedar Point officials were apparently incensed, with Morgan’s team going so far as to suggest that if Cedar Fair hadn’t whet their whistles to the idea of a 300-foot coaster and pulled the rug out, Morgan never would’ve pursued the idea elsewhere…

As to the main question that plagued Morgan’s giga design – how to get riders up the hill – Steel Dragon manages to alleviate the issues inherent in such a massive chain lift hill by using two chains, with the train swapping between them halfway up (a trick used by later B&M gigas). The ascent still takes about a minute-and-a-half.

And don’t misunderstand – though Steel Dragon 2000 is clearly closer in substance to an Arrow / Morgan hyper than to what Intamin did with Millennium Force (i.e. most of its course being made of increasingly-smaller, out-and-back airtime hills), it’s still an absolutely stunning ride. By far the longest roller coaster in the world (8,133 feet), Steel Dragon 2000 is a landmark in its own right. (And made all the moreso by swapping its Morgan trains for open-air, elevated, B&M clamshell-restraint trains in 2013.)

Which is perhaps why, according to Coaster101, Morgan officials claim that Cedar Fair representatives approached them informally at the IAAPA conference later, suggesting that they wished Cedar Point had gone with Morgan’s proposal over Intamin’s. That’s all hearsay, of course, but given that Steel Dragon reportedly ended up costing between $40 and $50 million, Millennium Force’s $25 million pricetag probably seems like quite a steal.

In any case, that means that Millennium Force was the world’s tallest full-circuit roller coaster (and only gigacoaster) for just 80 days. Despite the speed at which Steel Dragon ended Millennium’s exclusivity in the gigacoaster category, full-circuit 300 – 399 foot coasters remain exceedingly rare even two decades later. A third gigacoaster didn't arrive for another ten years.

Here at Theme Park Tourist, recently took a ride on each of the six existing gigacoasters on Earth. Of the four that came after Millennium and Steel Dragon, Intamin returned to the genre just once: Kings Dominion’s Intimidator 305 (above, a sort of fusion of Millennium Force, Intamin’s “Mega-Lite” model, and Cedar Point’s bucking, terrain-hugging Maverick). The other three are B&M creations, with various personalities (and varying levels of elemental divergence from B&M’s hypercoasters).

Of course, just as the 200-foot coaster was once unthinkable and now can be found dotted around nearly every major corporate amusement park in America, there may come a time when gigacoasters sprout across the industry like wildflowers. And you know what? That’d be alright! After all, Dick Kinzel’s assessment was right: you may not always be the only, but you’ll never stop being the first. And frankly, there’s not a better coaster than Millennium Force to retain the title.

The Wars End

As for the Coaster Wars? Well… At least spiritually, you might imagine 2000 as a topping out of the era. With Millennium Force crescendoing the decade-long redefinition of steel coasters, and – just a few hours away – the Lost Legend: Son of Beast opening to establish the upper limits of the wooden coaster, it seemed that every record that could be broken had been broken.

Which, of course, brings us to the controversial sequel to the story of Millennium Force… Though 11 years had elapsed between Cedar Point’s 100-foot record and its 200-foot record, then another 11 years between its 200-foot and 300-foot installations, the frenzied momentum of the Coaster Wars couldn’t be stopped overnight.

Just three years after Millennium Force, Cedar Point and Intamin together shattered every record all over again. That’s why we’d recommend making the jump to our Modern Marvels: Top Thrill Dragster feature to see how the world’s new tallest and fastest coaster – the world’s first stratacoaster – came to be… and why Dick Kinzel himself would call it “the worst decision we ever made.”

The continued story of the Coaster Wars, then, would briefly be that Six Flags retaliated with its own Intamin stratacoaster (Kingda Ka – currently the world’s tallest roller coaster at 456 feet), and that’s that. No one else has topped 400 feet, and no one seems interested in trying. (Why not? Suffice it to say that neither Cedar Fair nor Six Flags tends to work with Intamin anymore…)

Piling on staggering debt (Six Flags from overexpansion, Cedar Fair from the purchase of the Paramount Parks chain), both operators entered into a period of retraction, gently reorganizing their capital project calendars and reevaluating their reliance on $25 million roller coasters and the teenage audiences they drew.

And maybe that’s all for the best. As if waking from a decade-long slumber, in about 2008, Six Flags and Cedar Fair seemed to jolt into consciousness, looking around in a daze and recognizing that a decade of coaster competition had left their parks as sun-bleached midways of bare steel thrills at the expense of… well… just about everything else. Though their parks were packed with extreme, hyper-saturated, primary-colored coasters – each bigger and louder than the one before – neglecting the family audience had irrevocably changed parks’ audiences, pricing, and presentation, necessitating a decade of make-goods and re-orientations to convince families to return.

Which park has the most roller coasters doesn’t seem to factor much into marketing or even online discussion anymore. Maybe the idea of “quality over quantity” has finally taken root. Maybe – as we proposed in our in-depth look at Busch Gardens’ Pantheon and Iron Gwazi – a “New Coaster Wars” isn’t about breaking records, but about building customized, personality-filled rides.

Sure, Cedar Fair and Six Flags parks will always be coaster parks… but it’s not unusual to see five year gaps between headliners, filling the intervening seasons with “catch-up” improvements to dining; refurbishments of hotels; seasonal celebrations and food festivals; multi-year packages of flat ride additions and waterpark expansions; family-focused areas like 2023’s Boardwalk at Cedar Point or Carowinds’ Aeronautica Landing; even new and refreshed restaurants, restrooms, and dark rides… all components left behind in the fury of the Coaster Wars.

Legacy

But even if its drawbacks can now be plainly seen, living through the Coaster Wars was the thrill ride equivalent of growing up in the Disney Renaissance; a pulse-pounding, tailor-made era that can never really be recreated or recaptured. For those of us shaped by the frantic pace of the Coaster Wars, there are only the icons that remain. Millennium Force is probably the truest, purest example of the age… and certainly, its literal and figurative height.

Millennium Force pierced through the ceiling, shattering records at every turn. It’s bold, ambitious, relentless, and yet somehow, beautiful. A blazing blue Intamin icon of Cedar Point, it’s easy to see why so many people call it best steel coaster on Earth. But more to the point, from its powerful grace to its poetic layout; its infused technology to its 21st century style, one thing is certain: the future really was riding on it.