The Making of a Roller Coaster
Conceived for years, the proprietors of this Pittsburgh amusement park has the world’s newest, zippiest, loopiest, scream-inducingist new ride
For more than 20 winters, Jerome Gibas, has driven almost every day from his home outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, past the old steel mills scattered about Allegheny County across the McKeesport-Duquesne bridge to a place called West Mifflin for work on a site that — for a man who loves the laughter, sunshine and merriment of the arcade — could prove a bit depressing: an amusement park in the off season. But in early March 2019, as Gibas’ no-fuss Toyota Corolla made its right turn over the frozen Monongahela River, he couldn’t help but do a double take. There, on the horizon before him stood two winding, contorting black and gold steel bars — a post-modern, double-helix in the sky. He had to slow down, tilt his neck and make sure he wasn’t seeing things.
The tracks had made their first appearance at Kennywood, one of America’s oldest amusement parks, in late November 2018 as a single rising sceptre barely perceptible to Gibas. But even as the Christmas season — and the Kennywood Holiday Lights festival — passed, Gibas, the park’s general manager, remained in good cheer, watching the tubes dance among the clouds. In January, the month that drags in every industry, especially amusements, Gibas came to work overjoyed: the billets had multiplied in the shadow of a giant construction crane. In February, the gold bars started to braid, and the crane had started adding pieces of track. By March, Gibas called up the management of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the region’s seminal American football team, to come and take a look at the objet d’art they were making together as she entered gestation. “I just couldn’t believe my eyes, how this beautiful thing was growing and changing right before me, every day,” Gibas says.
By mid-March, Gibas felt the structure needed an unveiling, a debutante party — naysayers, roller coaster enthusiasts, industry pundits be damned. On a chilly, yet sunny late morning, about 75 journalists came for the Kennywood hard hat tour of the machine Gibas had been watching mature for months: the Steel Curtain roller coaster, Gibas’ pride-and-joy and the attraction that could potentially thrust Kennywood to the top of North America’s local theme-park industry. As Gibas proudly stood at the podium, wearing a hard hat and an orange safety vest, waiting to introduce his contribution to the theme park’s legacy, he couldn’t resist the plug and the pun. “It’s a sure touchdown!” he crowed before several heavy-set cameramen and eager, young TV correspondents. But no audible groans came forward, as they might have in New York, Philadelphia or any other cynical, self-conscious Eastern U.S. city. Rather, a clap went round, the journalists began their camera chatter and the tour commenced with a spring in everyone’s step, even in Gibas’ bad knee.
The rise of the Steel Curtain — named not as a parody of the famed Winston Churchill Cold War speech, but rather for the 1970 Steelers’ defensive line — represented a resurrection at Kennywood when it opened on July 13, after a last-minute construction push. Long the local pass time for the middle-and-working-class of Steel City, Kennywood had needed a bit of zing, zip and kapow to its rides lineup for several years. That became glaringly evident when the Facebook Page The Decline of Kennywood and Idlewild appeared in 2015, then gained 2,500 members in two years. Moreover, the competition had begun setting country-wide — and even global — records. In 2018, Six Flags opened six new roller coasters, including Maxx Force, at Six Flags Great America, which accelerates riders to 78 mph (125 kph) in two seconds before they first, undergo the fastest inversion in the world with a “Zero-G” roll at 60 mph (96 kph) and second, endure a record-breaking 175-foot (53m) double inversion. Next door in Ohio, Cedar Point, the “Amusement Capital of the World,” had all the fans talking with Steel Vengeance, offering a top speed of 74 mph (120 kph), a rise of 205 feet (62m), finished off by a stomach-clutching drop of 200 feet (60m). Then, in early 2019, Universal Florida threw down the gauntlet with its Harry Potter roller coaster: the $300 million Hagrid’s Magic Creatures Motorbike, which has the most car launches in North America: seven, including a 17.5-ft (5.3m) free fall. The ride had a 10-hour wait time when it debuted in early June.
With all of these coasters competing for not only the thrill-seekers, but also headlines, Gibas knew that he had to take drastic measures — to fire a Barrel Roll across the amusement industry, so to speak. He made the head-over-heart decision in the summer of 2018 that Kennywood would take out the Log Jammer, the park’s beloved 40-year-old water ride, and move forward with Project 412, named after Pittsburgh’s area code, to disguise the park’s plan to ultimately build an immersive football-and-coaster land that would host the Steel Curtain as it sped across 4,000 feet (1,200 m) of track at 75 mph (120 kph) though a record-breaking nine inversions, one of which is 197-feet (60m) high. Designed by primo coaster manufacturer S&S Worldwide, Steel Curtain, breaks a Pennsylvania record (tallest roller coaster), a North American record (most inversions), and a world record (tallest inversion). “Building a roller coaster is like building a really fun, really fancy restaurant kitchen,” says Gibas, after divulging the design of the cars in a series of lead-up events over the fall of 2018. “All the components are basically the same — the loops, the rises, the cars — but it’s what you do with them that produces a Michelin one-star or a Michelin three-star.
“We’re not only the first park to collaborate with a professional sports franchise, but we’re building a pulse-pounding, high-flying roller coaster that fits in with Kennywood’s tradition of innovation,” Gibas says.
Game on.
Adrenaline-addicted, scream-loving, internal-organ-twisted seekers of endless summer fun — or not — one cannot deny the oohs and ahhs that emanate from the lips of a group of people when they encounter a set of iconic tracks suspended mid-air. Since the day the very first roller coaster opened in 1884 on Brooklyn’s Coney Island — traveling approximately six miles per hour at a nickel per ride — nothing calling itself an amusement park can survive without one, even in the Disney empire. “Originally, the old wooden colossi were put there so couples could cuddle as they pretended to risk death … highly romantic. These days, the steel monstrosities that could double as NASA training grounds eschew the couple’s hormonal experience for a full-on adrenaline rush,” says Stephen Silverman, the author of the new book The Amusement Park: 900 Years of Thrills and Spills and the Dreamers and Schemers who Built Them. “Surviving the ride puts one in a happy frame of mind with a feeling of accomplishment. Besides, when you’re up there about to plunge down a peak at superhighway speeds, you’re not thinking about paying the mortgage.”
To stay relevant, the management of the thousands of amusement parks around the world — even those attached to the Mickey Mouse silhouette — must constantly survey and reinvent, according to Martin Lewison, an assistant professor of business management who researches and teaches the amusement park business at Farmingdale State College, just outside New York City. Although many locals felt that Gibas took the community for a ride when he razed the Log Jammer, “You have to put yourself in the managers’ shoes, and they have to keep a lot of people happy. You’re not going to get the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette psyched for new awnings and a fresh coat of paint on an old ride,” says Lewison, who has zoomed along more than 1,900 different roller coasters in 32 countries. Moreover, he says, “Kennywood has already kept so many rides alive,” including the Thunderbolt, a classic wooden coaster that inspired Lewison to start teaching the business of amusements, and “ride repairmen can’t just stop at Auto Zone and get the part to fix a decades-old ride.” While it may not have the love of Harry Potter groupies, Gibas is betting that the double devotion from both roller coaster lovers and Pittsburgh Steelers fanatics will more than make up for the estimated $20–30 million Kennywood has shelled out for the new “best roller coaster” — at least for the summer — amid all the twists and turns the amusements industry can take.
The Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida, located a mere six miles through big-box stores and on the doorstep of Walt Disney World, makes for an obvious choice for an amusement industry show in November. In fact, every year, hundreds of amusement businesses, from the trinket company that stocks the gumball machines to the multi-million-dollar ride manufacturers, flock to Orlando for the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA)’s ‘Attractions Exposition’, which takes up almost all of the centre’s 2.1 million-square feet. It was here, at the 2015 convention, that Gibas and Rolf Paegert, the Chief Operating Officer of Palace Entertainment at Parques Reunidos Servicios Centrales, which owns and runs the formerly family-operated Kennywood, started talking plans to somehow spice up it’s vintage park. Gibas, a stout, plain-spoken Pennsylvanian prone to wearing droopy khaki pants, golf shirts, blazers and comfort shoes, stands in some contrast to Paegert, a wiry showman with a trim figure, fitted business casual and a California disposition. But the two men agreed: the global market for amusements was primed to reach $44 billion by 2020, driven by the recovery in leisure spending, the growth of the middle class and the rise in international tourism, while Kennywood was suffering blows from the local press and some of its most loyal customers. “We had an area of the park that was reaching the end of its useful life. Beyond that, we wanted to re-invest in Kennywood,” Paegert says, while sitting in the booth of S&S Worldwide. “We said to ourselves, ‘Kennywood is a National Historic Landmark and we need to do something to embrace that classic history,’ while innovating — setting trends, like we used to.” Gibas and Paegert were joined by a burly, pragmatic engineer named Jeff Savelesky who added that Kennywood had entered the era of the “roller coaster arms race”, an epoch in which companies with endless budgets “could make a 29-inversion roller coaster” if they wanted to. “I reminded these guys,” he says gesturing toward Gibas and Paegert, “that whatever we did, we had to make it fun and not just add a loop for a loop’s sake.”
Over the next two years, the trio of distinct executives — the boots-on-the-ground manager, the parent-company overseer and their good-cop, bad-cop engineer — tackled the creation of the zippiest, loopiest, scream-inducingist roller coaster to ever post stakes in a theme park. They picked a lead structural engineer, a former NASA scientist with a background in aeronautics. And they took trips around the world to check out, literally, a few of the hundreds of themes available. As the men recounted their tale of creation — the four of us huddled up amongst the IAAPA expo’s discordant noises and endless distractions — I realized that although relatively dissimilar at face value, they had one common denominator: all were coaster junkies of equal measure, their eyes lighting up when explaining the way some rides seemed to hover over tracks, while others creaked along. Or the way a surprise dip could enliven a ho-hum turn.
But why are these guys so jazzed about a two-minute ride that’s costing them millions? There are newer studies, but most find the same result as the 1989 original. Researchers at the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow Scotland, measured the heart rates of riders from the double-corkscrew Coca Cola Roller Coaster at the 1988 Glasgow Garden Festival and found that their heart beats per minute more than doubled from an average of 70 before the coaster started to 153 shortly after the ride had begun, thanks to the “fight or flight response” found in all mammals. That stress response, replicated in bungee jumpers in the 1990s, naturally triggers a shot of glucose to the muscles for energy boost and increased levels of the stress-management hormone cortisol. But after their falls, the bungee jumpers reported increased feelings of well-being, wakefulness and euphoria accompanied by raised levels of endorphins in the blood — well known to produce feelings of intense pleasure. It begged the question: how can a person simultaneously experience stress and pleasure, according to an online article in Scientific American. Researchers from Tilburg University in the Netherlands believe that there exists a thing called Eustress — from the Greek “eu”, meaning good — which explains sensations that accompany “fight or flight” within a non-threatening or controlled environment. In other words, roller coaster riders get the rush of danger, without the actual manifestation of it. “Where else but on a roller coaster can one play both daredevil and athletic champion without ever having to get off your rear end? The contraption really does all the heavy lifting — while, at most, the most the rider can do to shed calories is raise the arms and scream,” Siverman, the author says.
Fair enough, but who wants to pay $50–75 dollars a day for shot after shot after shot of this feeling? Why not go for a run, or ride your bicycle in Manhattan? I remained skeptical. My parents — cerebral attorneys — didn’t see the value (time-kill, thrill or otherwise) in amusement fun, and as a New Yorker in my 40s who runs and cycles to work, anything that involves high-mileage, sideways turns and a racing of the heart is neither out-of-the-ordinary, nor necessarily fun. I had made the trek to Coney Island’s Cyclone in 2007, and found it palatable, mostly for ‘tick the box’ reasons. Before that, I was content to occasional adolescent trips to the Zingo at Bell’s Amusement Park in my hometown: Tulsa, Oklahoma. As it turns out, I am in the minority. In 2016 approximately 384 million people took 1.7 billion rides at 450 North American amusement parks in 2016, to experience velocity not usually encountered in a plane, a train or on the Autobahn. The repeat-riders or repeat-repeat-repeat-riders usually fit into a category of people called “dopamine seekers.” A recent review instead looked at the role of dopamine, another chemical messenger substance in the brain that is important in the functioning of neurological reward pathways. The review found that individuals who happen to have higher levels of dopamine also score more highly on measures of sensation seeking behaviour. A 2015 article in the journal Behavior Brain Research found that people who have higher levels of dopamine — the neurotransmitter that send signals to other nerve cells in the brain — tend to want more of it, and therefore score more highly on measures of sensation seeking behaviour. In a world that is becoming more controlled, more expensive and more monotonous, a quick spin on a nearby roller coaster fills that need. “That’s hardly climbing Mr. Everest, but it does provide a thrill. In a classic sense, it’s the ultimate challenge of the human versus the machine,” Silversman adds.
Not surprisingly, Disney leads the pack in amusements, raking in about $12 billion a year, while Cedar Parks, Inc. — Kennywood’s main competition — closes in on about $1 billion. Operational costs are high, however. A successful park spends at least $10 million a year, while the Universal theme parks have reported that they will spend $500 million a year on capital spending in the United States going forward — for just three theme parks. Tokyo Disney has announced that it will spend an average of $500 million a year for the next nine years across its two theme parks. “Theme parks make money the same way any business recoups an investment in any asset, through generation of cash flows over time. If the present value of estimated future net cash flows generated by the roller coaster is greater than the cost of the new roller coaster, it makes sense to build the roller coaster,” Lewison says. New roller coasters lead to higher cash flow for many years in the form of park admissions, food and beverage sales, merchandise, parking and all the other gimmicky things parents carry to the car after a sunburned day at the theme park — the name that has replaced amusement park in recent years. “The coaster will be a cash flow draw to the park for several decades, probably, and depreciation will reduce tax liability, also helping net cash flow.” In other words, amusement parks rake in money, but in the case of Kennywood, no one is sure how much.
Originating as a carousel, casino hall, and dance pavilion on a late 19th-century farm, Kennywood was the Monongahela Street Railway Company’s weekend retreat for mill workers and their families. In 1906, two entrepreneurs, A.S. McSwigan and F.W. Henninger, snapped up the park and began investing in rides, including Kennywood’s iconic Jack Rabbit (1920), Pippin (1924) and Racer (1927) roller coasters. These two families would run Kennywood for the next century and see it through the roaring the 1960s and 70s, when — along with the rest of the family-run amusement parks — Kennywood would begin to feel that Space Mountain-sized pressure to outdo Disneyland. During this time, Kennywood converted its signature coasters, such as Pippin, into bigger and better ones, like the still-standing Thunderbolt and added million-dollar amusements, such as the no-longer Log Jammer, the park’s first water ride. In 2007, Madrid-based Parques Reunidos, which owns local amusement parks such as Mirabilandia in Italy, Bonbonland near Copenhagen and Bobbejaanland in Belgium, offered an estimated $200 million for the Kennywood Entertainment franchise. Although the families turned down other offers — and had pledged to keep Kennywood Pittsburgh owned-and-operated — the European company would “share our vision and philosophy,” promised Harry Henniger, former chairman of Kennywood Entertainment. “The Kennywood experience as visitors have come to love and expect will continue.” Largely, Parques Reunidos, which went public in 2016 at $1.4 billion ($17.75 share) has let Kennywood do what it wanted without too much interference. But the parent company fully climbed aboard when the park decided its next move. “This new themed area is a milestone in our strategy to integrate sports in our entertainment offer,” said Fernando Eiroa, Parques Reunidos’ outgoing CEO, in a press release. Indeed, in 2018, Parques Reunidos and Fútbol Club Barcelona reached an agreement to develop five themed indoor entertainment centers in the next five years. These and other tweaks brought in about $650 million in revenue and attracted a own takeover bid: Piolin BidCo, a company formed by private equity funds EQT, Corporación Financiera Alba and Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (GBL) offered about $700 million for 55 percent (about $16 a share) of on Parques Reunidos, valuing the entire company at around $1.3 billion. The OPA (Oferta Publica de Adquisicion) is still pending.
If Project 412 trio wasn’t on the road touring — or amusement wheeling and dealing — Gibas, Paegert and Savelesky were spending hours and hours in dark rooms at S&S’s headquarters watching “tweaks, turns and everything else” simulated on dozens of monitors, Savelesky says. But out of everyone involved in Project 412, Gibas probably knows and understands the Kennywood zeitgeist best. A Pittsburgh native, Gibas grew up across the street from the park, and somehow knew “that I would run this place someday,” he says. During summers in college, Gibas worked as manager for Kennywood’s food and maintenance departments, then as a ride operator, “It just gets in your blood,” Gibas says. “Soon enough, I was riding coasters all over the world.” He spent 19 years at Kennywood’s sister, Idlewild — another historically landmarked amusement park in nearby Ligonier — before coming back.
Still, Gibas and the others admitted that they had an overwhelming number of choices for Kennywood’s of dopamine to the masses: the launch coaster, multi-launch coaster, reverse freefall (a free-fall ‘journey’ backward and forward) coaster, impulse coaster (featuring horizontal, downward twists), family drop coaster (minor loops for the kids) or multi-dimensional coaster (all-in-one). They could pick a wooden coaster (features a slight, yet unique sway as the train moves through the elements), a steel coaster (provides a smoother ride that allows for more — and more daring — components), or a combo coaster for equal amounts of stability and sway. Also available in seating arrangements: sit-down, stand-up, inverted (the train travels below the track instead of on top of it), suspended (the train travels beneath the track, but fixed to a swinging arm that pivots from side to side), or wing (the seats spin or rotate on their own axis, either freely or in a controlled motion). “We looked until we hit the ‘sweet spot’,” Paegert says. Cedar Point, for example, has 17 different roller coasters that feature at least one of each of those components; one of these shuts down at least once a day due to rider vomiting. The Kennywood guys wanted everything but that.
Aside from locals, tourists, families, safety inspectors and bean-counters, the Kennywood managers also had to consider one more factor: the coaster enthusiasts. Enthusiasts, a subset of mostly men (think Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Vacation), plan family trips just to ride roller coasters, know the longest fastest and tallest coasters on cue, will debate endlessly about the merits of a hip belt versus a shoulder restraint and can — and will — make or break a multi-million dollar coaster. “My wife and I don’t take normal tourist trips to France,” Lewison, the amusement park industry professor, says, cautioning me when I asked to shadow him on a coaster tour of Europe in the summer of 2018. “We stop at a park, ride a coaster, get back in the car, stop at another park, ride a coaster, and so on and so on until we get tired and find a place to stay for the night. The next day we get up and do it again.”
During the heyday of the theme park in the 1970s, groups such as the American Coaster Enthusiasts (ACE) and the European Coaster Club (ECC) ran monthly magazines, held some local club events and wielded a bit of lobbying influence. With the advent of the Internet, however, the coaster enthusiasts have morphed into a reckoning power almost as authoritative as the U.S. gun lobby. In addition to critiquing the new coasters on forums from RollerCoaster! to Funworld to the websites, screamscape.com and coasterbuzz.com, ACE holds several regional conferences in addition to its signature Coaster Con every year. They also preserve coasters, sometimes forcing parks to refurbish revenue-sucking rust magnets, rather than build shiny new money machines. “The charm of Kennywood is its nostalgia and historic attractions. I wouldn’t call the park dated but instead a blend of historically significant attractions and modern rides,” says Marcus Gaines, a 45-year-old enthusiast rom Southampton, England who creates point-of-view coaster riding videos for amusement parks around the world. He spends the equivalent of one month a year in a theme park. “If the park was to lose rides like Jack Rabbit, Thunderbolt or even Noah’s Ark — the last see-sawing, animal-themed fun house in existence — ‘then it would become just another amusement park, of which there are plenty in the U.S.” Gaines quotes the designation of Kennywood’s own Jack Rabbit and Thunderbolt as National Historic Landmarks, as one of park’s finest moments — as a result, these rides will likely never close unless the park itself goes under.
At the 2017 IAAPA show, after what seemed like an eternity of coaster comparisons, the Kennywood team inked the deal with S&S manufacturers. All decided that Project 412 would go for broke. No Frankenstein-ed coasters made of old parts. No imitation coasters. No recycled coasters — a viable, yet frightening, option for parks that need coasters fast and cheap. Moreover, Gibas suggested that Kennywood not just put up any ol’ cowboy or spaceship ride, but give Project 412 a real vision that resonated with the community. They had seen an infinite array of concepts, from the horse-and-gunslinger trains of the Pioneer roller coaster at France’s OKCorral park to the Viking ships of Valkyria, Sweden’s highest and longest dive coaster. None seemed appealing. But one day — none of the men will necessarily say when or whom — there was an ah-ha moment: why not bring the beloved Pittsburgh Steelers to the table and give the coaster a football theme? “It soon became an obvious decision. If you grow up anywhere near Pittsburgh, there are two things you know: Kennywood and the Pittsburgh Steelers,” Gibas says. With little fuss and much fanfare, the Steelers went for it. Since then, the team has lent Kennywood quite a dowry: its logo, name, colors, licensed products and even some of the retired players to support Steelers Country, the interactive game-day experience that will surround the Steel Curtain. Steelers Country will not only include a tailgating area, touchdown contests and game highlights on a giant video screen, but also a climbing wall called the Terrible Tower, named after the Steelers’ Terrible Towel, a 40-year-old black-and-gold good luck charm known by every fan. “There is a lot of nostalgia at Heinz Field and there is a lot of nostalgia for Kennywood. This is a different way for us to tap into that nostalgia and get fans to connect with the Steelers,” says Ryan Huzjak, the Steelers VP of Marketing, while walking around in March with Chris Hoke, a former Steelers’ defensive lineman. “The Steelers and Kennywood are a great match — it was kind of a no-brainer.” Gibas still reminds nearly everyone he encounters that Steelers Country makes Kennywood the first amusement park to collaborate with a pro sports franchise on an official ride.
For the rest of his spring commute, Gibas marveled as the rails of Steel Curtain rose piece-by-piece, until 15 June, when Pittsburgh steelworkers bridged both halves of the coaster and it connected — the realization of Gibas’ three-year vision. A lot of work had already gone into the Steel Curtain and even then, much remained. The Steel Curtain’s investiture had already been pushed back to mid-July from mid-May due to construction delays. And while federal oversight of amusements rides does not exist, Pennsylvania has a rigorous inspection process that includes assessments on nearly every part of a roller coaster, from wheel alignment and chain tension to brake pad wear and safety belt functionality. In late June, Steel Curtain had about 1,000 test rides to pass.
Finally, when even the roller coaster junkies — had begun to give up hope, and the members of the Decline of Kennywood and Idlewild Park Facebook group, now 3,000 members strong, had started griping again — ‘People love Kennywood for the nostalgia…’ ‘changing rides in an effort to compete with bigger parks like Cedar Point is fruitless and completely pointless…’ — on 9 July, Kennywood sent out an email to journalists and enthusiasts inviting them to Steel Curtain’s official media and VIP debut on 13 July with the public opening the following day. For the second time, I was overseas when the invitation landed in my inbox and had to quickly arrange a flight to Pittsburgh for a Kennywood Park event. It seemed excessive. But unbeknownst to me, my girlfriend, whom I had been dating for more than a year, had been a closeted roller coaster aficionado all along. She asked to join me. I obliged, and at 4am on a steamy Friday morning we set off for Steel City.
The Steel Curtain did not disappoint — in scale, in speed of completion, in fervor. The park had not only awakened; it had set its clock radio to gusto. Those thick gold-and-black billets I saw in March had multiplied by the dozens, rising and rolling almost as high as the mountains surrounding them. Kennywood employees wearing personalized black-and-gold jerseys handed out media and VIP passes, along with a commemorative Terrible Towel to twirl around — or absorb sweat from palms — as we all streamed into the park, where we were met by two Kennywood mascots, Kenny Kangaroo and Parker the Arrow, and the Steelers’ own Steely McBeam, dancing with anyone they could grab with their stuffed hands. Following an introduction by Bill Hargrove, the Steelers own play-by-play man, Gibas stood at the podium once again and once again eschewed his PR man’s remarks for his own. “We got a lot of great thumbs-up from the American Coaster Enthusiasts after they got off this morning. I can’t say it any better than that.”
As the Steelers pep band led the crowd, current player Cam Heyward and Steelers alumni Mike Wagner and John Banaszak — both members of the original ‘Steel Curtain’ defensive line, which led the Steelers to four Super Bowl in the 1970s — marched to the front of the line and took their football-shaped seats. As I watched Gibas monitor and direct unsuspecting teenagers trying to figure out the coaster controls, I chatted with two ACE members, Maggie and David Altman, who had already ridden the coaster at the VIP 5:30am start time. They were waiting for their third go. Having met on a date at Kennywood in the mid-1980s, the Altmans had traveled the world riding coasters together — recent favorites were FujiQ in Japan and Shanghai Disney — and even had their wedding vows renewed on a roller coaster. “If it’s not ‘one and done’, then it’s a good coaster,” says David, who rode Kennywood’s Thunderbolt 50 times in a row for its 50th anniversary in 2018. “There’s a difference between being ‘big’ and ‘good,’” Altman says as we heard the roar of the wheels and the screams of the football players. “I think some parks get it.”
Finally, the moment a year in the making had arrived, and I climbed into the football-helmet-patterned car. Gibas ensured I was belted into my seat and a crossbar lowered onto my lap, complete with handles to grip, in lieu of an over-the-shoulder harness — a concession to coaster enthusiasts who despise shoulder harnesses, complaining that they damage muscles and joints. Bill Hargrove suddenly came over the airwaves to announce the rules of the coaster ride; a recording of cheering fans sent us forward.
As we climbed the massive 220-foot-high rails to the top, I looked out over the entirely of Pittsburgh, but I didn’t look down, as my fear of the unknown began to wash over me. Within a minute, I was seated at a nearly ninety-degree angle, still climbing to the peak. I gripped the courtesy handlebars. Then… wait for it… wait for it… oh my god, we pitched doooooown and turned on our sides and flipped — inversion one, cortisol streams over my brain — then doooooown again, through a straight-away and up and flipped again — inversion two, more cortisol — then a mini-twist as my legs began to hit the lap restraint — inversion three, glucose in the muscles — another straight-away, twist, roll over — inversion four — straight-away, up, down, mini-twist and flip — inversion five — down, mini twist, flip — inversion six — over the Kennywood pond at 74 miles per hour, upside down roll — inversion seven — ‘this has to be it’, I yelled at my girlfriend, losing my sense of space and time as we climbed up, twisted, and looped again — inversion eight — and finally up, twist, over and done — inversion nine — slow roll to gate. And… dopamine. I stood up, shaking ever so slightly and walked into the Steel Curtain gift shop to contemplate how my body remained intact.
Before boarding Steel Curtain, I had contemplated riding the other six or so other roller coasters at Kennywood — a little compare and contrast for my article. Instead, we walked around the park, took some photographs and headed for downtown Pittsburgh for some less-jarring ‘fun’, passing multi-generational families out for summer Friday as we exited. Even without the new Steel Curtain, I saw that Gibas was right: Kennywood had, indeed, been woven into the fabric of the community. It was the Statue of Liberty to New York, the NASA Headquarters to Houston, the Trolley cars to San Francisco and the famed zoo to St. Louis. Later that night and the next day, the local media was awash in Steel Curtain stories. In the end, Gibas got his headlines and maybe, just maybe, started a new Kennywood tradition. Gaines, the ACE member and video producer, probably summed up Steel Curtain’s significance best. “Beyond the U.S. no one really gets what the name Steel Curtain means, but it’s a beast of a ride that is sure to offer a spectacular thrill,” Gaines says. “But on top of that, there aren’t many parks where grandparents can visit with their grandkids and ride the same rides they themselves rode as children.
“Imagine the joy as a 70 year old riding Jack Rabbit with your five-year-old grandchild for their first ride, when it was also your first roller coaster… This is the kind of thing that happens at Kennywood every day. And it will happen with Steel Curtain.”
