Revisiting Disaster Transport

On May 11, 1985, Cedar Point opened a new roller coaster called Avalanche Run on the former site of WildCat, which would later be relocated within the park. This exciting new attraction was known as a bobsled coaster, and gave riders the feeling of riding down the hills of a snowy mountain in the Alps.

Bobsled coasters are unique because they don't run on steel rails as conventional roller coasters do. In the case of Avalanche Run, riders would be taken up a 63-foot tall lift hill and be dropped into a series of steel tubes, which allowed vehicles to freely descend, being propelled only by gravity, and provide the thrilling sensation of riding on an actual bobsled.

This new attraction was a huge hit with guests during the summers of the 1980s, and added to Cedar Point's growing collection of unique thrills. It was a roller coaster with quick turns and moderate speeds, making it fun for the whole family.

In 1986, Richard "Dick" Kinzel became the new CEO of Cedar Fair, and he came with big plans for the future of the company, especially for its flagship park, Cedar Point. After noticing the success of the newly-opened Star Tours at Disneyland, Kinzel began to see value in heavily-themed, immersive attractions. This gave him the idea to redevelop Cedar Point into the "Disneyland of the Midwest", and he wanted to test this concept out by transforming one of the park's existing coasters into something reminiscent of Space Mountain. Seeing that Avalanche Run was experiencing technical problems due to its location on the open beach, where sand could easily blow onto the track and become a hazard, it became prime real-estate for redevelopment.

Kinzel's idea wouldn't see the light of day until the 1990 season. Guests hoping to ride Avalanche Run would instead find a massive, beige-colored building sitting in its place. Guests were confused as to what this new attraction was, and of what they would find inside. The only thing the park didn't keep a secret was its name- Disaster Transport.

The conversion from Avalanche Run to Disaster Transport cost the park a whopping $4 million. Aside from the construction of building itself, these costs would go towards the theming of the queue, special effects in the ride, and the addition of two new animatronic robots. It should be noted that the reason the building has such a strange design is because park officials had to work around the skeleton of Avalanche Run, constraining them from making a visually-appealing structure similar to Space Mountain's.

When the ride first opened, guests were eager to find out what would await them inside. This is where the problems began. Disaster Transport was marketed by the park as a "thrilling, outer space adventure", keeping the actual details of the ride somewhat ominous. It would later turn out that this vagueness was not intentional, as the coaster ended up having a very strange and extremely confusing story line.

Allow me to explain. When theme parks like those owned by Disney develop a new, highly-immersive attraction, they often base it around an original or preexisting story, and make it simple enough for all guests to feel immersed in the experience, without having to know all of the details and exposition before riding. Cedar Point's case was the complete opposite- they had to develop an original story around a preexisting ride, and when you're a company with almost no experience in storytelling and developing themed attractions, the creative side of things could get...complicated, to say the least.

It's going to be a little hard to summarize the entire story of the ride, mainly because it's so complicated and is obviously a cluster of several ideas, but I'll try my best to piece together the ride experience as it opened in 1990.

Guests would enter the building, designed as a space port, underneath a giant sign that read "12 E". This lettering was added by an employee from ITEC Entertainment, the company that designed the ride's effects, named Eric. This was the 12th ride he had worked on, thus resulting in the "12 E" signage.

Upon entering the building, guests would find themselves in the first room of the queue, titled "Mission Control". This section was themed to a space travel agency, obviously inspired by Star Tours. Neon posters illuminated by black lights would hang on the wall, advertising the various intergalactic locations you could travel to. The centerpiece of this room was an audio-animatronic robot named Dave, the unofficial mascot of the ride, who would advertise Dispatch Master Transport's (the name of the fictional space port) many travel destinations. Also, two video screens allegedly used to display footage of space explorers talking about their great experiences traveling with Dispatch Master Transport.

After exiting Mission Control, things would get a little creepier when guests would walk through a dimly-lit hallway full of alien hand prints and storage containers. This was unofficially known as the Cargo Unit. It can be added that in the early 2000s, guests could buy ChromaDepth 3-D goggles to use on the ride. This would make the black light effects appear to "pop out" at guests and in an attempt to make the experience more exciting.

After this portion of the queue, guests would enter the Repair Bay, where a space vehicle could be found being "retrofitted" by an enormous mechanical claw. Machinery would move on conveyor belts overhead, a security camera would "scan" and reject guests, and allegedly at on point in the ride's existence, a second animatronic robot (not sure if it had a name due to lack of footage/evidence) would monitor guests from the center of the room, which was filled with futuristic machinery. Allegedly, this robot would have a lot of banter and dialogue, like Dave, with the robots repairing the spacecraft.

This was where the queue ended, as guests would then make their way past a Disaster Transport sign and up several flights of stairs to the station, aka, the Launch Area. Here, employees would wear brightly-colored, neon orange jump suits to match with the ride's theme, and a small control droid sat in the corner, blinking periodically. Guests would then enter their space vehicles (re-painted sleds from Avalanche Run) and depart up the lift hill.

Here's where things get really confusing. On the lift hill, smoke machines and a light tunnel effect gave riders the illusion that they were launching off into space, while a nameless in-flight computer welcomed riders and announced that all their cargo had been loaded on board. At the top of the lift hill, the audio would cut in and out, and the in-flight computer would announce that something has gone wrong. Supposedly, space pirates were attacking the ship and trying to steal all the cargo, forcing the computer to take "evasive maneuvers" as the ride plunged into complete darkness.

Notable effects that riders would see during this pitch-black experience included a projection effect of an exploding asteroid, a large alien spaceship (thing), and other cardboard cutouts of exploding machinery and space junk. Towards the end of the ride, the computer would announce that it's "losing control", and after passing by a snowy landscape, the ride would come to a halt in a dark tunnel illuminated by more glowing neon artwork. It can also be noted that throughout the ride's history, an alien figure called "Dorothy" would be hidden in various locations, but upon further investigation, I realized that this was probably never part of the actual ride, and was really just a cheap HalloWeekends prop owned by the ride's team of operators.

When riders entered the unload station, employees would say "Welcome to Alaska" and thank passengers for flying with Dispatch Master Transport. This confused many guests, and continues to do so to this day. Based on the details I described, I think the story can be summarized as a space vacation being invaded by pirates and ultimately causing you to crash land in Alaska (because... that's funny?).

Of course, this was just a compilation of details I found online. I was never able to experience the ride in it's full glory when it opened in 1990, and I've heard that there were a lot more story elements, special effects, and segments of the ride experience, but I chose to leave those out due to a lack of evidence.

After it's opening year, things started to go downhill for Disaster Transport, as many of the special effects on the ride began to break, and were never repaired or replaced by park management. For example, by the early 2000s, both Dave and the other robot were removed, the old Mission Control room was closed off to accommodate a seasonal HalloWeekends haunted house (guests would enter the ride directly through the Repair Bay), the Alaska story line was dropped, fog effects were turned off, the computer pilot and tv monitors were removed, and the list goes on.

By the mid-2000s, Disaster Transport would become a mere shell of the ride it once was, and there would hardly ever be a wait for it. Guests began to use the ride as an escape from the summer heat since it was the only Cedar Point ride to have air-conditioning (although that would eventually stop working too).

On rainy days, the ride would have to be closed due to leaks in the roof of the building causing water to fall on the track and become a hazard for the free-moving vehicles. This seemed to be the final nail in the coffin for Disaster Transport. When you're a park with only one indoor ride that cannot even be opened in bad weather, then you've done something wrong.

It wasn't until the 2012 season when the park announced that after two decades of neglect and deterioration, Disaster Transport, along with the neighboring Space Spiral, would be demolished to make way for Gatekeeper, a record-breaking wing coaster that opened alongside a new main entrance for the 2013 season.

Many long-time fans of Cedar Point were sad to see it go, but understanding of why, as it hadn't been in it's best state for over 20 years. The Final Dispatch: a Mission for the Kids, was a charity event that was held during the ride's last night of operation. After that, many of the props from the ride were either put in storage by the park, auctioned off, or demolished with the rest of the coaster. I've noticed several props from the ride being reused for the annual HalloWeekends event over the past few years, which has given me hope that a fair majority of the props from the ride, as well as the lost video clips and audio, indeed do still exist and are in the hands of Cedar Point management, however I cannot be sure.

For some reason, it has been extremely difficult for me to explore this attraction and track down old photos and video from the ride's early days, due to a lack of resources. To this day, I find it strange that a Cedar Point roller coaster of this scale was so quickly overlooked and neglected by the park. Almost no public records or glimpses of the ride's past can be found online, and I can only hope that this changes in the future.

If you have any old photos, home videos, props, or knowledge of the ride experience that you'd like to share, please do so on the forums, or contact me via email/direct message. Disaster Transport will forever be my favorite defunct Cedar Point ride, strictly due to the fact that it was new territory never before explored by the park.

It was something original, something different, something experimental...

something that would live up to it's name and become, well, a disaster in itself.

Until next time. -Max