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2025 - Rampage Returns - (12/3/2024) Just curious, but has anyone heard of seen anything about Alabama Adventure performing any track replacement on the park’s Rampage wooden coaster? Early in 2024 the park announced that Rampage would remain closed for all of 2024 to upgrade the coaster, replacing specific track sections with a new steel track system. It wasn’t ever clear if they planned on using RMC track or GCI’s Titan Track, but the basic gist was that the high stressed track sections would be replaced in order to reopen Rampage next year.
    Unfortunately, it is now December 2024 and I haven’t seen a single report from anyone claiming to have seen any work being done to Rampage all year to make this happen. Hopefully it was taking place and just went unnoticed, but if it hasn’t happened, we could be looking at another season without Rampage.
    Anyone know more?
 
    (3/15/2024) A Screamscape source has sent us an update on the Rampage upgrade at Alabama Adventure. While the video announcement made it sound as if the entire ride were being converted to run on new steel rails (either RMC or Titan Track) I’m told that this will not be a 100% conversion. Much like we’re seeing done to Preadator at Darien Lake or the wooden coasters at Silverwood, only select high-stress sections of Rampage, including the first drop and most of the unbanked turns, are expected to be upgraded to use a new all-steel track system.
    Hopefully once they process begins, Alabama Adventure will hopefully be able to confirm a more solid statistic for everyone, either by saying how many feet of track has been replaced, or maybe a percentage of old vs new track. This does make sense as benign the more financially responsible way to handle the retracking project, plus there are areas of the ride where new steel track simply isn’t necessary, such as the brake-run, station and lift-hill segments.
 
    (3/14/2024) Alabama Adventure has posted an update in a new video blog about what is going on with Rampage. Unfortunately, Rampage will still be closed for the entire 2024 season, as it typically has cost the park $500,000 a year in maintenance costs. As this level of cost isn’t sustainable, the park is taking steps while the ride is closed to perform some serious upgrades to Rampage that will involve “from the ground up work to make sure Rampage will last for years to come at a substantially lower cost.”
    While no company names were dropped, the exact quote in the video to describe the kind of “retracking” work that will be taking place is as follows. “Where we take all this steel and wood and we replace it with solid steel. So get ready for smoother rides, faster drops and even more thrills coming from Rampage in 2025.”
    So from the sound of things, Rampage will become a hybrid coaster for 2025, with only two main questions to be answered. Will they be converting it to an RMC style track like iBox or the 208-Retrak systems, or go with the new Titan Track system from GCI / Skyline Attractions. My gut feeling that they will leave the layout alone, other than some general reprofiling to improve the experience where appropriate.

 
    (1/29/2024) A quick warning to anyone thinking of visiting Alabama Adventure & Splash Adventure this year. According to a surprise announcement at the ACE South Central WinterFest event the other day, the park’s wooden roller coaster, Rampage, will remain closed for the entire 2024 season while the park “works to find a partner to refurbish the ride”.
    I’m sure this is a bit disappointing to many, especially as the ride sat closed from 2012 to 2014, before it was refurbished and reopened then. Now, 10 years later it is closed yet again, though one interesting thing to remember is that Rampage is a near clone to Megafobia in the UK, which just underwent a fairly impressive transformation effort from The Gravity Group who reprofiled some sections in addition to replacing about 40% of the track with their new vertically stacked track system. So far the response to the work on Megafobia has been extremely positive. With that in mind, let’s hope that Gravity Group and Alabama Adventure may have time to work out a similar plan for Rampage.