Canyon Blaster is a

steel roller coaster A steel roller coaster is a roller coaster that is defined by having a track made of steel. Steel coasters have earned immense popularity in the past 50 years throughout the world. Incorporating tubular steel track and polyurethane-coated wheel ...

located at

Six Flags Great Escape and Hurricane Harbor Six Flags Great Escape and Hurricane Harbor is an amusement and water park owned and operated by Six Flags. It is located approximately north of Albany, in Queensbury, New York. It was one of three Six Flags parks not to be officially branded ...

Queensbury, New York Queensbury is a town in Warren County, New York, United States. The population was 27,901 at the 2010 census. It contains the county seat of Warren County, located at a municipal center complex on U.S. Route 9 south of the village of Lake Geor ...

History

Canyon Blaster originally opened as ''Timber Topper'' at the now-defunct Opryland USA theme park in

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and t ...

. Manufactured by

Arrow Development Arrow Development was an amusement park ride and roller coaster design and manufacturing company, incorporated in California on November 16, 1945, and based in Mountain View. It was founded by Angus "Andy" Anderson, Karl Bacon, William Hardima ...

, the ride opened with the park in 1972 and remained its only full-size coaster until

Wabash Cannonball "The Great Rock Island Route", popularized as "Wabash Cannonball" and various other titles, is a 19th century American folk song that describes the scenic beauty and predicaments of a fictional train, the ''Wabash Cannonball Express'', as it tr ...

opened in 1975 as part of a major park expansion. It carried a rustic mine train theme, though unlike many similar coasters at other parks, it did not enter a tunnel or travel underground. In the late 1970s, the coaster was renamed ''Rock n' Roller Coaster'', when its park area was rethemed to "Doo-Wah Diddy City", paying homage to the

doo wop Doo-wop (also spelled doowop and doo wop) is a genre of rhythm and blues music that originated in African-American communities during the 1940s, mainly in the large cities of the United States, including New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chica ...

music of the 1950s. As part of the re-theming, its trains and buildings associated with the ride were repainted in bright

pastel A pastel () is an art medium in a variety of forms including a stick, a square a pebble or a pan of color; though other forms are possible; they consist of powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are similar to those us ...

colors. After Opryland closed in 1997, the coaster was disassembled and sold to Premier Parks. After being stored at the

Old Indiana Fun Park Old Indiana Fun Park was an amusement park located near Thorntown, Indiana off I-65 at 7230N 350W. The site is now used for a privately owned hops farm and processing facility. Early years (1983-1987) The park opened under the name "Middle Count ...

in Thorntown, Indiana for several years, the ride was relocated to The Great Escape in

and renamed Canyon Blaster in 2003. On May 30, 2013, Great Escape announced that their ''Canyon Blaster'' roller coaster would be running backwards for the first time ever during 2013 season for a limited time during the summer.

Ride experience and theming

The Canyon Blaster is a gentle family-style coaster designed as a runaway mine train featuring two lift hills and a double helix. The ride has a red track with beige supports. It has three trains, blue, brown & red, but in the past few years only the brown train has been used. When the roller coaster was brought to the Great Escape, the system was modified to only accommodate one train due to a change in design features to fit the Great Escape. In keeping with the Old West theme of the Ghosttown section of the park, the coaster is decorated with broken and crumbling artifacts from the era including a stagecoach, a broken steam train and the fake bones of dead animals. The outer fence is painted with mine blast warnings and notices of when the last (again fake) accident was. Many of the decorative artifacts were once part of the defunct Ghost Town Railroad route that Canyon Blaster replaced. The broken steam train is one of the engines from the Ghost Town Railroad.

References

External links

Canyon Blaster at Great Escape's official website
{{The Great Escape and Hurricane Harbor Roller coasters manufactured by Arrow Dynamics Roller coasters introduced in 2003 Roller coasters operated by Six Flags The Great Escape and Hurricane Harbor Steel roller coasters Mine Train roller coasters Roller coasters in New York (state) Western (genre) amusement rides