Originally posted by coasterking1993
i agree... eventually if they keep trying to push the limits, the track/supports will just fail from the force and everything will come crashing down... [launch][shocked][xx(]
I actually don't think that's an issue. The structural integrity of any ride can be secured and made safe with the proper pre-planning. There are a few issues that might start coming up, though...
1. Cost. Faster coasters cost a lot more money, and eventually we will reach a point where building the world's fastest coaster is just not economically feasible, even for the biggest parks, because the attention it will grab won't last long enough to offset the enormous cost. We're getting into the $30+ million range already, and if it keeps going, it'll be in the 50's. But, I guess if Nagashima SpaLand spent $55 million, it's still technically possible. But still, in this post tech-bubble world where corporations are all in budget-crunch mode rather than the prosperity mode of the 90's, building a coaster like that is a HUGE risk, quite potentially putting the park's very existence into jeopardy.
2. Excitement/Originality. It's getting to a point that if you have such a fast coaster, you can't do anything with it. Fast coasters require bigger elements, and therefore more space and more money. This means that in order to achieve economic feasibility, it pretty much can't be anything else but fast. That's a big detractor, since once another park beats it, nobody cares about the coaster anymore because it's a one-trick pony.
3. Rideability. As coasters get taller and taller, and faster and faster, the crowd that wants to ride it is thinning out. We're getting to a point where most of the GP is saying "no way I'm riding that." Smaller coasters, however, are rides that the whole family will gladly get on, and even if they are much more intense, they are less intimidating. So building a smaller coaster that makes the awards lists, like, let's say "The Raven", is a much better long-term investment than a record-breaker because it appeals to more people, and can garner additional ridership in the future if it's good enough.
4. The coaster war is over. In the 90's, everyone had to have the biggest and fastest coaster of its type... but most of the records that were standing at the end of the year 2000 are still standing today. Alpengiest is still the biggest inverted coaster, Riddler's Revenge is still the biggest stand-up, Son of Beast is still the biggest woodie, Steel Dragon 2000 is still the biggest hypercoaster, and Millennium Force is still the world's only Intamin giga-coaster despite its tremendous success. This indicates that parks are less interested in breaking records nowadays, and more interested in the quality of their rides. And since to build a record-breaker for speed, you're pretty much confined to building a one-trick pony, when instead you could build a coaster that can become an adrenaline-machine that people will love, and want to come to your park to ride it for years to come, for only half the cost, why would you?
These are the reasons why it'll slow waaaay down in the future.
Perhaps Ron Toomer said it best, though, in a 1994 interview.
"If you'd asked me about this some fifteen years ago, I would have said 'well, we're getting close to the limit here.' We'd gone 125 feet, which at that time was the biggest one in the world. And I said 'Well, we're not gonna get much higher.' Well, we are. We're way higher now. We're over 200 feet. And by now I think there's no limit. I think the only limit is what people will get on."