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CAROWINDS
Charlotte, NC
Cedar Fair Entertainment
---- THE LATEST BUZZ ----
(1/11/2025) Carowinds - Nighthawk Demolition Begins
(12/18/2024) Carowinds Confirms Three Rides Are Leaving This Winter
(12/13/2024) A New Ride Removal Rumor Any Why It Could Be True
(11/16/2024) Carowinds' Fury 325 Can Now Lay Claim To Several Roller Coaster Records
(11/14/2024) Carowinds To Get Record-Breaking Attraction for 2026
 Park News - (1/11/2025) Carowinds fans, a photo has been posted showing sections of Nighthawk’s track that have been taken down. While the piece in the foreground appeared to have been taken down with some care, the piece in the background appears to have been cut apart, so as suspected, Nighthawk looks like it may be going to the scrapheap.
(12/18/2024) Carowinds announced earlier today that the park would be removing three rides over the winter season. As per the latest rumor, the park did confirm that Nighthawk, the park’s Vekoma flying coaster would be no more.
The next victim of the cuts was on the previous rumor list… Drop Tower is also no more, which is probably for the best. As far as drop towers go, Carowinds version was on the small side, with a 174 foot tall tower and a drop height of just 160 feet. This made it the smallest of all the former Paramount Parks’ Intamin Giant Drop / Gyro Drop attractions, with the rest standing between 224 and 315 feet tall by comparison.
The third retired attraction isn’t one we heard on the rumor mill, but very nearby… Scream Weaver. Unfortunately Scream Weaver, a Schwarzkopf Enterprise, is a bit of a rare ride to find in a theme park these days. According to a list on Coasterpedia, there are now only three left running… one at Fun Spot America in Orlando (which may also be in danger of removal), one in the Netherlands at Attractiepark Slagharen, and finally the Orbiter at California’s Great America, and that entire park is slated to close for good sometime within the next decade.
(12/13/2024) Just a couple of weeks ago the rumor floating around Carowinds was that the park was looking to remove Drop Tower (Intamin) and Carolina Cyclone (Arrow) to make way for future expansion concepts. This also served the general purpose that the corporate office was rumored to have wanted, which was for every park to shed some of their older less popular rides, or those rides that were just costly and difficult to maintain. This week however, the rumor mill took a more dramatic shift, with rumors now being posted that Nighthawk instead may be the coaster to be sacrificed to the coaster gods.
For starters, I’ve heard nothing about this rumor myself from my own sources. It is also worth saying that neither Carowinds nor Six Flags management have come forward to confirm or deny either of these rumors. That may not be saying much, as management hasn’t been very vocal to confirm the last days of a number of rides that have closed for good over the past few weeks until those rides were already shut down.
Currently Nighthawk is already closed for the rest of the year, as it traditionally is shut down during the Winterfest event anyway, so if this really is the end of Nighthawk, there would be no way to offer any sort of last ride event anyway. My personal hunch on this however, is that the rumors just might be right on this one… as Nighthawk absolutely fits the bill for the kind of ride that Six Flags management is looking to close down and remove from their parks right now.
Nighthawk actually started out at California’s Great America as Stealth back in 2000 where it was the working prototype of Vekoma’s first ever Flying Coaster concept. It didn’t last very long in California, as it was shut down in 2003 and shipped off to Carowinds where it opened under the name, BORG Assimilator in 2004, as the only Star Trek themed roller coaster in the Paramount Parks chain.
Vekoma opened two more near-clones of the ride for Six Flags in 2001, Batwing at Six Flags America (still open) and X-Flight at Six Flags Ohio, the later of which was moved to Kings Island to become Firehawk when Cedar Fair bought the Ohio park and soon after shut it down. As a sort of sibling coaster to NIghthawk, Firehawk fan at Kings Island from 2007 to 2018. Upon demolition, it was said that the trains and many spare parts were handed over to Carowinds for use on Nighthawk.
As for Batwing at Six Flags America, I believe the only real difference there is that Batwing (like Firehawk) was built with a dual-sided loading station to try and increase capacity due to the slow-loading nature of Vekoma’s first flying coaster concept. This added some overall length to the stats of Batwing, but otherwise I believe the actual functional gravity-fed layout is virtually the same at both parks. I’m not sure if Batwing offers more reliability or a fast loading experience than Nighthawk however. Regardless, Batwing fans should take note if Carowinds really does remove Nighthawk, then Batwing’s days may also be numbered.
There aren’t too many days left in the year before Carowinds shuts down for a rest at the end of WinterFest, and then we’ll maybe get to see if there is anything to these rumors or not.
On an entirely other note, if you visit the park for Winterfest, before it gets dark take a peek around the park’s former Rapids ride area. I’ve heard that demolition crews are finally on site and have begun working to remove the long closed rapids ride to make way for whatever new water ride the park has planned for 2026.
(11/16/2024) Fury 325 at Carowinds can now lay claim to a collection to roller coaster records now that Kingda Ka at Six Flags Great Adventure has been officially closed.
This now makes Fury 325 officially the fastest operating roller coaster in North America at 95mph, and also tied in second place for the current world record with Steel Dragon 2000 in Japan. Fury 325 is also officially the tallest operating coaster in North America (325 ft), the Longest steel coaster in North America (6602 feet), as well as now featuring the Tallest Drop in the world at 320ft. Some of these records may shift if Cedar Point can get Top Thrill 2 to open in 2025 but that remains to be seen.
(10/21/2024) Would you believe a woman is now suing Carowinds because she claims she was knocked unconscious from hitting her head on the Boogie Board Racer slide in the waterpark? For those not familiar, the Boogie Board Racer side is probably the newest addition to the waterpark that was added during the pandemic, and as the name implies, it’s one of your average head-first multi-lane mat-racer slides. Guests are instructed to lie down on a foam mat that is curved upwards in the front by a pair of handles that they are hold onto while going down the slide.
The rider claims that during her visit on June 7th, she somehow lifted out of the water and struck her head on the top of the enclosed tunnel section of the slide. The lawsuit claims that the slide has a “dangerous, inadequate and unreasonable low vertical clearance” issue that has not been fixed.
You can actually watch a great POV video shot by a slider with camera sunglasses showing off exactly what the 15-second long experience on this slide is like in the video below to see what you think happened. While I’ve never been on this particular slide myself, I’ve been on about a dozen or more very similar style attractions at parks around the nation, traveling at a high rate of speed as I was usually racing against my kids (and winning), and I don’t think I’ve ever felt I was in danger of hitting my head. But I have seen a slider or two occasional freak-out on the way down and instead of lying flat as instructed, they might lift themselves up onto their knees and elbows, raising their head higher than it should be.
2025 - Camp Snoopy Expansion - (11/8/2024) Track for the new Snoopy’s Racing Railway family coaster has started to arrive at Carowinds according to the latest photos on social media.
(8/8/2024) As expected, Carowinds has announced an expansion of the park’s Camp Snoopy area, featuring two brand new rides: Snoopy’s Racing Railway and Charlie Brown’s River Raft Blast.
Snoopy’s Racing Railway will be a brand new family friendly launched coaster. Themed like a train, the locomotive will send riders flying from 0 to 31mph in just seconds on a trip to the mess hall and back to resupply the camp with Root Beer and Pizza for Woodstock and his pals. This will be a new coaster from ART Engineering, and a copy of the Snoopy’s Racing Railway coaster that they built at Canada's Wonderland for the 2023 season. That means a full POV video of the ride experience in Canada has been posted to YouTube which you can see below as a preview of what’s in store for Carowinds next season. You’ll notice that the version at Canada’s Wonderland apparently takes riders for two full cycles around the course, so lets hope that the Carowinds’ version does as well.
The other new ride will finally bring a little ‘wet’ fun back to Carowinds in the form of Charlie Brown’s River Raft Blast. In a bit of a surprising move, this is said to be a Mack Rides Splash Battle style ride, where guests so on a snow cruise around a waterway in a log-raft outfitted with squirt guns in order to shoot at interactive targets along the way as well as any bystanders gawking at your while on the ride. Watch out though, those guests on the outside are hardly helpless and they can grab their own squirt gun to fight back with.
Also new this season will be a new indoor air-conditioned Peanuts character meet & greet space, as well as a new Splash Play Zone area full of geysers of water erupting from the ground.
One more fun note, with this announcement Carowinds is also selling 2025 Season Passes in Silver, Gold and Prestige Pass tiers. The good news is that there isn’t much of a price difference between the Silver and Gold passes ($95 vs $99) and Gold comes with access to SCarowinds and WinterFest while Silver does not. However, perhaps the biggest difference is that having a Gold or Prestige level pass gives you the option to include the “All Park Passport Add-On”. For an additional $89, you can purchase this valuable add-on to your Carowinds pass that will give you access to the other Cedar Fair parks for the remainder of the 2024 season and all of 2025, and starting on January 6th, 2025 you will also gain access into the Six Flags parks as well for the rest of 2025.
This is the pass everyone has been waiting for… the season pass of all season passes… the one to rule them all, and I’m now expecting to see this launched at every park over the next few weeks.
(7/27/2024) A date hasn’t been set, but Carowinds has begun teasing their 2025 addition to Camp Snoopy (aka: Project Sparrow) on social media. I’d expect to get an official announcement sometime in the next couple weeks.
(3/23/2024) The overall plans for Carowinds Project Sparrow have been uncovered and posted to Reddit. For those who were expecting that it was time for Carowinds to build another major roller coaster… I’m sorry, this isn’t your year. The park’s latest big coaster addition was Copperhead Strike that opened in 2019, but instead 2025’s Project Sparrow seems to be an expansion to Camp Snoopy. (Sparrow could be a reference to Snoopy’s best bud, Woodstock, though officially Woodstock’s exact species has never been revealed.)
The plans for Project Sparrow would see the existing Camp Snoopy theming expanded toi cover the areas closest to the Thunder Striker (formerly Intimidator) roller coaster track along the park perimeter. The existing Snoopy Junction train looks like it will be removed, but a new “Junction Station” train ride would be built as a replacement just past the Wilderness Run kiddie coaster on a section of the site last used for the Dinosaurs Alive. Before that, the site of the new train ride was actually home to the park’s former kiddie car ride that run under various names and themes over the years before it was removed.
The unused Camp Theater venue is going to be demolished and replaced by “Rapid River Water Battle”, which sounds like a rapids themed Splash Battle style attraction. I’ve heard Mack Rides name already mentioned as a possible vendor for this new ride. For those who remember the River Battler ride that was once at Dollywood (also from Mack), I’d expect this to be similar in nature, but likely themed to the “Peanuts: Race For Your Life“ animated special. One other concept that I’d love to see, would be for Carowinds and Mack to bring a river raft themed version of their prototype “Rocking Boat” powered and tracked water attraction to life here. You can watch a fun video of the prototype Rocking Boat here, but jump ahead to 1:53 in the video to see animation of how a rapids themed boat version might look.
Meanwhile the site vacated by the removal of the current train ride appears to be earmarked for a new family sized roller coaster. Based on the layout of the one shown, this appears as if it could be a copy of the Snoopy’s Racing Railway coaster that opened at Canada’s Wonderland in 2023, a launched family coaster from ART Engineering.
Otherwise it looks like all the other existing rides will remain, a very small “Camp Fire” themed performance site added, a character Meet & Greet space added onto the existing Peanuts themed gift shop building, along with two proposed splash pads (one on the old Carousel site and the other within the Beagle Scout Acres play area.
One odd note however… while a new family roller coaster Carowinds is part of these plans right now for Carowidns, I’ve been told that the version at Canada’s Wonderland was added with an odd restriction. Apparently adults are not allowed to ride Snoopy’s Racing Railway at Canada’s Wonderland unless they have a child with them. From what I understand this is a rule created by Cedar Fair for that park for some reason, as the coaster itself is a copy of “Fridolin's Verrückter Zauberexpres”, built for Fantasiana in Austria. The pictures of that original version show off a train with ample space for adult riders to fit, along with pictures of many adult riders taking a spin and seeing to really enjoy it. So let’s hope they don’t do something weird at Carowinds like they did at Canada’s Wonderland.
(3/6/2024) According to a FB post on the Carowinds Fans Only page, initial permits have been filed by the park for something called ‘Project Sparrow”. While this could quite literally be for just about anything, we do have to wonder if there is a meaning behind the use of the name “Sparrow” that might be a hint that whatever is coming may be a ride that might offer a sensation of flight. Like perhaps a B&M Flying or Wing Coaster for example, or maybe even a Dive Machine? Just something to ponder…
2026 - Water Ride - (11/14/2024) A press release from Six Flags today confirmed that the company is planning to spend over $1 BILLION on the parks over the next two years. Some of this will come in the form of enhancements to the guest experience, such as new themed areas, dining upgrades and technology enhancements. While we’ve seen the 2025 capital projects ($500 million) already announced, they decided to post a list of teasers of what they are already confirming will come to some of the parks in 2026 as part of another $525 million capital investment plan.
Carowinds made it onto the list, where they promise that the park will receive a “record-breaking water ride” in 2026. This is especially important for Carowinds, as it is one of the only parks in the nation that no longer has even a single water ride left in their arsenal after the retirement of the three they had over the past 15 years, starting with the Powder Keg log flume in 2009.
I’m not sure where this will go, but I’ve got a feeling it could either be placed in the former river rapids location, or quite possibly down in the area currently occupied by Hurler, Drop Tower and Carolina Cyclone. I’ve heard some reports as of late about survey markings being spotted all over that section of the park, which possibly indicate that something big may be in the works and that those older attractions might find themselves on the chopping block between now and 2025.
As for some ideas about what the ride could be, Six Flags did ask a few questions about possible Flume and Water Coaster ride concepts in Spring 2024, which you can re-read below.
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