General Carowinds discussion
#80680
Well...lol...I wouldnt go as far to say I'm happy to see TR leave since on the surface its still a good ride. Ut the underlying issues did it in...
#80706
Me watching this thread:

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Anyway, as stated, this project is SPECULATIVE FICTION, it is NOT real...yet. I don't want to reveal too much about the plans for this coaster but what I'm planning has been mentioned here. I do, however, feel the need to share with you all this link, which was the inspiration for this project: http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/ ... g-the-ride

Anyway, hope that clears some stuff up, now onto today's (somewhat somber) Vortex update!

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Coast Carolina Forums > Carowinds > Vortex Gets Flushed September 24

Posted by Blitz [ADMIN] on 21 August, 2016

Sad news out of the park today. Today, the park confirmed on Facebook that Vortex would be closing down at the end of September.

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Personally, I don't agree with the decision. Standup coasters are a dying breed and this is the last one standing (no pun intended) in the Cedar Fair chain.

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Everybody was hogging the ride today after the announcement. Disagreement was in the air around the ride plaza, both on the frustrated looks on faces of riders making special trips to get their last rides in, and having read the nasty backlash it had on social media didn't help.

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Vortex is on the smaller side, but I did enjoy watching it tower over me on Carolina Goldrusher. No more Vortex means that ride will never be the same.

[img][img]https://i.imgur.com/V5fq8ih.png[/img][/img]
I always loved this little loop.

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Ready to go!

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Vortex spirals around its corkscrew for one of the last times it will ever do it.

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So sad...

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Moping aside, whatever the reason for Vortex's closure it has to be related to 2017. The park posted this picture of Vortex's reflection in the pond captioned "It sleeps in the deep blue depths below... #Carowinds2017 #VortexGetsFlushed

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Could we perhaps have the orange track culprit?
#80784
RollerBee wrote:Hehe, just push it into the river and take Nighthawk with it. It is a shame you can't do that on RCT3!

Don't forget Hurler! ;)

coaster129 wrote:I'm quite confused right now... Someone please help me....


cwgator wrote:^What is there to be confused about? This is an RCT3 simulation of what a POSSIBLE closure of Vortex would be like in the future. It's not real.

Correct, this is speculative fiction playing out over RCT3. This is all coming from my head and that news article from the previous update, Carowinds hasn't touched Vortex yet.

dabrian wrote:#savevortex

#savemyneckandcalvesandeverythingelsevortexhascausedpain

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Coast Carolina Forums > Carowinds > Vortex Gets Flushed September 24

Posted by Pete [ADMIN] on 26 August, 2016

Things are starting to get interesting around Vortex!

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I hit up the park with Blitz today to discuss various admin stuff when we saw Michael Fehnel walking around the park casually, though he didn't seem to be doing much and I was curious why.

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It was a fairly busy day.

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However, it didn't keep us from noticing this guy. Sure, it was a bad parrot animatronic on a ship's wheel, but it didn't belong there. And someone hooked up to a microphone elsewhere kept repeating, "in the fountain" over and over again.

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Well looking in the fountain, we found this message in a bottle.

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Inside the bottle was this transparent piece of paper with some squiggly line and a red X drawn on it. I was confused at first, but then noticed that the paper was about the size of my smartphone. So with a little messing with the mobile map, I lined the start of the squiggle up with where we were and it lined up with the rest of the path, showing us that X marked the spot at Fury 325!

In the heat of the moment, we both made a bee-line for Fury over to the X to find a large wooden treasure chest where the X was. Guarded by a man dressed as a pirate who said his name was Edward Teach, we were told to run the chest back to Carolina Showplace and open it.

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As much as I didn't appreciate having to lug that giant chest halfway across the park, it was so worth it and so great to be part of the teaser campaign for whatever 2017 brings! Dan and I posed with the chest before I grabbed the key they had put in the parrot's mouth and opened it...

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The chest was really heavy because they put a lot of Carowinds stuff in there such as souvenir mugs, a bolt from Thunder Road (RIP), t-shirts, and even a few signs from the soon-to-be-doomed Vortex that has has all this attention swirling around it. However, the most prevalent thing in there was this roll of parchment alongside a smashed model clipper ship (that I hear was sent with the parchment in smaller chests to media outlets).

So this note. It states a sailor's legend (and cites Charleston pirates; a very famous Charleston pirate was named Edward Teach) about a beast that sleeps below the water and nobody had encountered it and lived to tell about it, this sounds like the theme of whatever 2017 is.

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Really starting to think we have the theme of a Vortex Rougarou treatment...

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It sits on the water, so I guess the theme they're hinting at will fit that.

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Orange you excited for Labor Day weekend? Coast Carolina admins will be at the announcement to cover it!
#80787
A floorless conversion would make vortex better. I rode Rougarou/updated mantis and it is way better than it was in the past few years.

Maybe I'm spoiled now but I wouldn't think that converting vortex would be enough of a "new" attraction for one year. It just seems to me that time could be used better. Than again... It is a relatively cheap way to improve a ride by a good bit. So I understand why it will probably happen someday.