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The Cyclone was designed by Bill Cobb who worked on it while hospitalized recovering from a heart attack. 



He was once quoted as saying about designing coasters "You have to be a little bit mean. Sometimes you have to be a little bit sneaky. You get them going on a nice straight track and they think 'This looks smooth,' and then you dip it down a little to give them a good jolt. Or you have it so that when they go over a hill it looks like they're going to get their heads chopped off at the bottom".  There was certainly a lot of "mean" put into his design of the Cyclone.



If you look closely here you can see where Six Flags raised the bottom of the Cyclone's first drop as the track is still there covered up with structure.  I would love to have experienced this with that little bit of "mean" still a part of the ride.



The thing with such an intense and aggressive ride like Bill Cobb designed with the Cyclone is a park is going to have to expect higher than normal maintenance costs over time.  That is just the nature of the beast.  Unfortunately the accountants decided it was less expensive to neuter the ride than keep up the level of work required to have an intense coaster.  If you look at the track you can see a little of the recent work done to reduce maintenance costs as they replaced the top layer of wood with steel "topper track" from Rocky Mountain Coasters.  A little topper track is not the last that Rocky Mountain is going to have to do with the Cyclone.  Read on and you will find out more.



To people in the know this year was the last year to ride the Cyclone in its current state as a wooden coaster.



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Paul B. Drabek