From Record-Setter to Scrapped: The Story of Steel Phantom and The Phantom’s Revenge at Kennywood

How Kennywood Built a Record-Breaking Coaster

In the midst of the coaster wars, one unlikely park joined the contest.

The family-owned Kennywood Park, just outside Pittsburgh, carried a spirit rich with history and memories. However, the hometown park overshadowed giants in the 1990s by summoning the record-breaking Steel Phantom. At the time, it was the world’s fastest coaster and had the longest drop ever built.

Steel Phantom, nonetheless, lasted only one rough decade of operation. Its massive, twisted layout was partially scrapped, but not entirely removed. The infamous looping coaster was resurrected and rebuilt into a legendary airtime machine, haunting thrill-seekers to this day.

This is the story of Steel Phantom and The Phantom’s Revenge at Kennywood Park.

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The Classic Atmosphere of Kennywood Park

Western Pennsylvania’s Kennywood Park is a timeless amusement park with a living history unlike most others.

This time capsule feels like a step back in time because its beginnings date back to 1898, being among the countless trolley parks across the nation during that era. Through the decades, many trolley parks closed for one reason or another; Kennywood, however, has thrived as a hometown park. It’s a leisurely escape from the industrial day-to-day life of the Pittsburgh area, honored as just one of two U.S. amusement parks with a National Historic Landmark status.

Kennywood preserves a traditional atmosphere through a collection of historic rides—from vintage mechanical attractions to century-old wooden roller coasters. Some are the last of their kind, with the park featuring attractions of essentially every decade from the 20^th century and beyond.

The park has held onto these rides and its legacy by being careful in choosing which attractions to remove or replace; such decisions have lasting impacts. That thoughtful selectivity has allowed Kennywood to preserve classics like the Old Mill boat ride and the Jack Rabbit roller coaster—dating back to 1901 and 1920, respectively.

Many parks have removed aging rides to make room for new-fashioned attractions; Kennywood, uniquely, has done both. Despite its history, Kennywood has embraced modern thrills to stay up-to-speed in an ever-changing industry.

Kennywood Flips Upside-Down

Roller coasters by the 1970s had become more sophisticated than the classics of yesteryear. Steel looping roller coasters revolutionized amusement parks thanks to the state-of-the-art designs of Arrow Development and Anton Schwarzkopf.

Nearby parks were raising the bar with looping coasters such as Corkscrew at Cedar Point and SooperDooperLooper at Hersheypark. To stay competitive in the region, Kennywood welcomed the future by rolling out a looping coaster of its own.

The park, in partnership with Intamin, contracted German engineer Anton Schwarzkopf to manufacture a new installation of his shuttle loop model. The $2 million investment was built on the former site of the park’s oldest building, once occupied by a funhouse and, later, a bumper car attraction; the structure was demolished in 1979 to make way for the new Schwarzkopf coaster.

Laser Loop Opens

Known as Laser Loop, Kennywood’s latest coaster debuted April 19, 1980. Laser Loop’s flywheel launch accelerated to 54 mph in 3.8 seconds into a vertical loop, up a spike, and falling back to complete the layout in reverse.

A staff writer from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette shared an interesting review of the shuttle loop, explaining, “It is a thrill—you feel as helpless as a sausage in a rocket blastoff.”

Laser Loop quickly became part of Kennywood’s identity. At times, its signature spiral structure was strung with holiday lights in the winter and used as a launch point for summer stunt spectaculars.

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Laser Loop Throws Kennywood for a Loop

While Laser Loop was a hit with guests, management described it as a headache to maintain.

Kennywood may be a smaller local park, but it puts great care into maintaining its coasters. For example, the park’s maintenance team routinely inspects and replaces the thousands of feet of wooden track across its historic coasters. Each section of wooden track is replaced as needed, resulting in a complete rebuild of each layout over the course of about every 10 years.

Kennywood’s dedication to keeping its wooden coasters in tip-top shape was impressive to say the least.

Maintaining Laser Loop, however, was more of a challenge for the park. Upkeep included daily morning inspections by a two-person crew, taking around five hours to cover both Laser Loop and its wooden neighbor, Thunderbolt.

To fully inspect the track, the crew would walk and climb Laser Loop’s layout, including its 139-foot spike. In a 1981 interview with The Pittsburgh Press, a maintenance worker described the dangers of the job, sharing, “Being such a tall ride, it does move in the wind. When you’re up there, you can feel it sway a bit.”

The task also required climbing halfway up Laser Loop’s 72-foot vertical loop to visually inspect the upper half of the inversion. As one crew member told The Pittsburgh Press in 1984, “You really have to be careful. If you slip, you’re history.”

The German-engineered shuttle coaster came with its own set of maintenance challenges. Unlike Kennywood’s other coasters, Laser Loop relied on an advanced computer system that only understood German, according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report. Also, replacement parts for the coaster were expensive, being shipped from Europe.

Closing the Loop

Though the behind-the-scenes maintenance was demanding, Laser Loop was always popular. However, its complications proved too much for the small park. Its days at Kennywood were numbered.

Relatively speaking, Laser Loop was a smaller coaster that had been outclassed by others in the region. It was located on the edge of the park near the paid parking lot, which management had been eyeing for a possible expansion; the coaster was a headache and stood in the way of future developments. In addition to those challenges, the 1990 season marked Kennywood’s lowest attendance since the ‘70s, largely due to a rainy summer.

Park officials had to make a change to get visitors through the turnstiles the following season.

“We love the Laser Loop, but something had to go.”
Harry “Henny” Henninger, park president of Kennywood, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1990

Thus, Kennywood announced Laser Loop would be retired. The coaster, having thrilled more than 12 million riders across its 11 years of operation, launched for the final time on Sept. 3, 1990.

The coaster was purchased by a European firm to be relocated to another amusement park. It was disassembled shortly after closing, making room for Kennywood’s next major project.

For a park with more than 90 years of history, retiring a major attraction was significant, but it was necessary for something bigger. It was a decision many parks were making at the time, and one manufacturer in particular was taking the industry to the top.

A Race to the Top

And the Arrow That Shot the Amusement Industry to the Top

As with many amusement park stories, the 1955 opening of Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California, deserves to be mentioned. A great deal of Disneyland’s opening-day and early attractions were manufactured by a company called Arrow Development.

Arrow opened its doors a decade earlier, staying afloat by taking on equipment-related jobs. Their work eventually shifted to manufacturing kiddie rides and later connecting with Walt Disney himself. The Arrow-Disney partnership led to major breakthroughs in the amusement industry, including the development of the first modern tubular steel-track roller coaster, Matterhorn Bobsleds.

Arrow, following its partnership with Disney, moved forward under designer Ron Toomer and Dana Morgan, son of co-founder Ed Morgan.

The company threw the industry for a loop in 1975, engineering the prototype for the first modern roller coaster with inversions. Arrow’s latest innovation, Corkscrew at Knott’s Berry Farm in California, was just the beginning for inverting roller coasters.

The Corkscrew model was a breakout hit in the mid-‘70s, appearing in amusement parks across the U.S. and Asia by the end of the decade. Building on that momentum, Arrow evolved the design and pushed the limits of height, speed, and intensity.

Arrow’s Mega-Loopers

By the mid- to late-‘80s, Arrow, which became Arrow Dynamics, manufactured a line of custom mega-loopers that rose above the rest of the industry.

Vortex at Ohio’s Kings Island turned riders upside-down a whopping six times—a record in 1987. That was surpassed the following year by Shockwave at Chicago’s Six Flags Great America, climbing 170 feet high with seven inversions. Arrow hit seven inversions once again in 1989 with The Great American Scream Machine at New Jersey’s Six Flags Great Adventure.

At California’s Six Flags Magic Mountain, Arrow outdid itself once again with Viper. This seven-inversion mega-looper had staggering stats for its time—standing 188 feet tall and clocking in at 70 mph.

Back at Kennywood, park officials were well aware of Arrow’s accomplishments with mega-loopers. The park’s general manager, Harry Henninger, took firsthand notice of Viper and its impressive banked first drop.

Yet, Arrow’s engineering capabilities magnified beyond the heights of Viper.

Arrow Surpasses 200 Feet

In 1989, Arrow took coaster engineering to the next level with its latest installment, Magnum XL-200 at Cedar Point in Ohio.

It was originally designed to be 187 feet tall, but Cedar Point requested to break the 200 foot barrier for a more marketable investment. Promoted as the first hypercoaster, this 205-foot giant dominated the Lake Erie shoreline with its record-breaking height and speed for a continuous-circuit coaster.

“In 1989, 200 feet might as well have been somewhere to the moon. It was incredible.”
Anne Irvine-Ondrey, CEO of Irvine Ondrey Engineering, 2017

The opening of Magnum XL-200 has been considered the start of the coaster wars, a period in which amusement parks competed year after year to open the next record-breaking thrill ride.

“I think there’s no limit now. I think the only limit we’re going to see is what people will get on.”
Ron Toomer, president of Arrow Dynamics, America’s Greatest Roller Coaster Thrills in 3D, 1994

Kennywood Dreams of New Heights

Kennywood, although a much smaller park than the likes of Cedar Point, was eager to modernize its ride lineup and enter the race. Park officials noticed what Cedar Point achieved with its attention-grabbing hypercoaster and wondered what a ride like that could do for their local park. A record-breaking ride in the place of Laser Loop would be great for marketing.

Realistically, though, building a record-breaker was a pipe dream for Kennywood. The hometown park could not build a traditional hypercoaster for a few practical reasons. Big coasters required big commitments.

For one, the only way a coaster could achieve record-breaking heights was with a large, land-consuming lift. A traditional lift hill climbing about 200 feet would logistically take up a long, continuous stretch of land. The landlocked Kennywood could not dedicate space for a towering lift hill, let alone a massive out-and-back layout like Magnum.

The cost was another issue. Kennywood entertained just over 1 million visitors annually at that time, according to the park’s manager in a 1990 Pittsburgh Press interview. Those attendance numbers, while fine for a park of that size, simply could not generate the revenue needed to outdo larger amusements in the region.

“It’s going to cost $4 million to $4.5 million, which we cannot justify for a park that entertains about 1.2 million per season.”
Harry “Henny” Henninger, The Pittsburgh Press, 1990

Also, tall roller coaster elements required a lot of material for supports to raise the track hundreds of feet in the air. Reaching those heights came at a steep price. The family-owned park had a more limited budget and could not possibly afford the materials needed to construct a record-breaking hypercoaster.

Kennywood was at a disadvantage, and a hypercoaster was unlikely. The park, however, did have one uncommon advantage: terrain.

The Upside of Kennywood’s Downside

Kennywood was situated along a ravine with steep slopes down to the Monongahela River. The hilly property, however, has not kept the park from building new rides. In fact, some of Kennywood’s longtime coasters made use of the area’s natural landscape; the dips and drops of the historic Jack Rabbit and Thunderbolt wooden roller coasters have hugged the area’s hillsides since the 1920s. Because of the terrain, both these coasters have drops right out of the station with their lift hills partway through the course.

“We’re able to do some pretty dramatic rides because of the topography.”
Mary Lou Rosemeyer, park spokesperson, 2000

Harry Henninger, or “Henny” for short, realized this advantage when dreaming of a record-breaking coaster. Henny, a third-generation employee at Kennywood, had the idea to use the ravine to break roller coaster records. The steep drop-off could theoretically be used for large, low-to-the-ground coaster elements without the need for tall structures. So, Henny drafted layout concepts that made use of the terrain.

Suddenly, Kennywood’s goal of a record-breaking coaster felt within reach. Laser Loop’s replacement could be on a scale never imagined possible, being a custom steel mega-coaster.

The next step was to find the right manufacturer for such a tall order.

Arrow Dynamics Breaks Records at Kennywood

Following the maintenance issues of Laser Loop, Kennywood chose not to partner again with the shuttle coaster’s manufacturer nor its distributor—Schwarzkopf and Intamin, respectively. Park officials ordered proposals from a few companies, but one stood out for its track record of successful mega-coasters: Arrow Dynamics. Henny’s concept combined a few of Arrow’s innovations—such as Viper’s drop, Magnum’s height, and a mega-looper’s intense inversions—into one thrill ride. Arrow had proven to be the clear choice for the job.

The Utah-based manufacturer calculated and engineered Henny’s layout concepts under the direction of designer Ron Toomer. The design followed a style similar to Arrow’s other coasters, featuring a moderately tall lift hill and a quadruple-looping finale; what set this one apart, however, was a creative use of the park’s steep ravine, resulting in the world’s longest drop. That massive drop would also make it the fastest coaster in the world.

Kennywood: home of the world’s fastest coaster with the longest drop. They could get used to the sound of that.

It was a custom design with a unique mix of elements—just what Kennywood needed to draw attention, but at what cost?

A project like this—Magnum XL-200, for example—could easily cost around $8 million, which was well out of the small park’s budget. However, the terrain-hugging design of Kennywood’s coaster kept costs to a more reasonable $4.5 million.

The stats, price, and excitement matched exactly what the park was looking for. The project was greenlit, and Kennywood would never be the same again.

Developing “The Big One”

Construction began as soon as the former Laser Loop was disassembled, with its original station being relocated and repurposed for the new coaster. “Engineering changes” delayed some prep work on the site, but the job was on track soon after. Sections of Arrow’s signature tubular track arrived at Kennywood by summer 1990.

In the meantime, Kennywood held an employee poll to name the new coaster, which was tentatively called “The Big One.” Possible names included “Nightmare,” “Lightning Express,” “Excess Express,” and “Steel Phantom.” “Steel Phantom” was the clear winner, receiving three times as many votes as the next closest contender. The name, which was officially announced in July 1990, matched the magnitude of the ride Kennywood was building.

Construction for Steel Phantom continued through the off-season, though having twists and turns of its own. Park president Carl Hughes was optimistic the coaster could be ready by opening day, but the weather was not cooperative.

Rain and wind delayed the job, costing several workdays. The weather pushed back the coaster’s debut by about a month, but the crew made up for lost time by working 10-hour days, six days per week. As the project neared completion, some crew members worked nearly around the clock to catch up.

The hard work paid off as the coaster was ready to open by May 4, 1991—just weeks after the original target date. In early May, brave media members and employees were the first to take on Pennsylvania’s newest and largest coaster. Half-joking, a reporter from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette admitted he wondered whether he could “avoid the assignment by getting hit by a car.”

Needless to say, Steel Phantom was intimidating—unlike anything built before—and the general public was ready to strap in.

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