KENNYWOOD
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Abbreviation: KW)
Owned by Herschend
 Park News - (5/10/2025) Great news for Kennywood fans, because the park has confirmed that Steel Curtain will reopen to guests once again starting on May 24th. Testing with dummies on the coaster trains is now ongoing as the park and S&S Worldwide move through the recommissioning process.
This follows a lengthy plan that saw three new major support columns and several new braces added to the ride’s support system in order to reduce some excessive “movement” of the structure as the ride operated. While the public opening will be on May 24th, there will be an exclusive Gold and Platinum passholder preview event on Friday, May 23rd.
(3/30/2025) Screamscape mentioned it on the corporate news page, but not here, that earlier in March, Kennywood and the other Palace Entertainment parks in the US owned by Parques Reunidos are to be sold to Herschend, the company behind park’s like Dollywood and Silver Dollar City.
(3/13/2025) Steel Curtain 2025 Upgrade Details Revealed
(3/8/2025) The local news confirms that a retired mascot at Kennywood will make a surprising return this season. Anyone remember Jeeters? Looking sort of like a giant pink furry muppet, the mascot from the 70’s and 80’s will return to the park in yellow overalls with a big blue hat.
Apparently Jeeters has even set up his own Instagram.
(1/19/2025) Kennywood has confirmed that the park will open for the 2025 season on April 12th as part of a 412 Day celebration. The park’s newest character, Tuft the Kennywood Easter Bunny will make an official debut as part of the park’s Eggcellent Easter Celebration event taking place April 12 to April 27th. According to Kennywood, 2025 will be a BIG year for the park, as they begin their “longest season ever” in the park’s 127-year history, as it will stay open for various events through to Jan. 4, 2026 before going into winter hibernation.
2025 will also mark the return of Steel Curtain to the coaster line-up, though they aren’t ready to give an opening date for that just yet.
On a side note, Kennywood’s sister parks have also set opening dates for their respective 2025 seasons: Idlewild & SoakZone will open on May 17th, and Sandcastle Water Park will open on May 24, 2025.
2025 - Kennywood Junction - (2/14/2025) Kennywood has announced their newest addition for 2025 will be called Kennywood Junction, which will take over the former Thomas themed area with five re-themed rides: Olde Kennywood Railroad, Kenny’s Cargo Drop, Packer’s Cloud Cruisers, Fire Bustin’ Brigade and Coal Hauling Convoy.
Look for Kennywood Junction to open along with the park on April 12th.
(1/12/2025) According to the local news, Kennywood will be retiring the park’s small Thomas Town themed area in order to replace it with something new. According to a statement from the park, the Thomas Town area will be replaced with an “updated thematic area complete with five rides” for this season.
No further details are ready to be announced at this time, though note that this is thought to just be a retheme of the existing land, dropping all the Thomas themed elements but will likely still keep the various attractions. This should include keeping the railroad attraction, as many guests forget that it was there before Thomas’s arrival six years ago, and that the park does have a second non-Thomas themed train engine already on site ready to go.
2025 - Steel Curtain Returns - (4/16/2025) A reader sent in a link showing off some of the work taking place on Steel Curtain at Kennywood where you can see staff performing some welding on the supports on Saturday. According to the trip report, operations at Kennywood were at a high, as they noticed what appeared to be full train operations on all the coasters… which was something they haven’t seen since before the pandemic.
(3/13/2025) Kennywood has finally revealed some information about what is going on with Steel Curtain ahead of the 2025 season. A new video released by the park confirms that a bunch of new support columns arrived at the park over the winter for Steel Curtain and they are currently installing them into the structure, integrating them into the existing structure. Once finished, the trains will be put back on the track and they will begin testing Steel Curtain this Spring. They should be able to announce a projected reopening date once testing begins and they get a feel of how things are going with the new additions, so if you visit the park next month (Opening Day is April 12) then keep your eyes peeled for testing to be taking place hopefully.
Now that we finally see some of these new supports being added it becomes a little more clear about what kind of issues the park was having with the coaster prior to this, as this is not just the installation of some extra braces beams between existing columns. Instead we are seeing the installation of some extremely large full support column from the ground-up being added to the structure.
A local news station posted a fly-over video of Steen Curtain yesterday, giving us a clear view of the structure, and you can make where several new support structures have been added, especially some large new additions beefing up the cobra-roll track at the far end of the ride significantly. I also spot what appears to be a lot of new angled supports added on here and there, especially beefing up areas that are holding up the tallest portions of the ride. The new pieces aren’t hard to spot, as they are freshly painted and visually stick-out from the rest of the structure. In the end, it sounds like the rumors that Steel Curtain was just so forceful that it was potentially damaging itself have held true, as the new supports should cut down on any horizontal swaying that might have been taking place, as the originally built structure appeared to mainly use a large number of primarily vertically oriented support pieces in these affected areas.
(10/5/2024) Kennywood issued a status update on Steel Curtain yesterday to confirm that crews are now on site working to add some new support structures to the closed roller coaster. According to the statement from the park President, “These enhancements and others will increase the coaster’s reliability and longevity, maintaining it for generations of riders to come.” You[‘ll see signs of work to update the coaster over the next several months taking place so they can reopen it in 2025.
You can see a video the park sent out and the full statement in the post below.
(4/17/2024) Kennywood dropped a bit of a bomb this afternoon when the park confirmed the worst fears for this summer’s guests… Steel Curtain will not be operating at all for the 2024 season. According to the video posted to FB (follow this link) the park confirms that they have worked with the manufacturer (S&S) and 3rd party engineers to come up with a plan to essentially “fix” the problems with Steel Curtain. This “extensive modification project” is supposed to be a “long term solution to increase its reliability and longevity.”
So as disappointing as this may be to many who were planning this summer with the hopes of finally getting to ride this monster roller coaster, we can only hope that this finally solves the issues and will let it run reliably for the park at last in 2025.
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