 Welcome back to the fourth installment of Whatever Happened To. I'm going to be discussing the fourth dimension roller coaster, which was introduced by Aerodynamics in the very early 2000s. I'm going to talk about why I think this concept really took off initially, why it died down after a few years, and whether I think we could see more being built in the future. Real quickly as a disclaimer, talking about fourth dimension coasters, I'm talking about these very intense high thrill coasters and not the much more common SNS 40 free spin model, which would be introduced many years down the road. In the 90s, the legendary roller coaster manufacturer Aerodynamics was very much on the brink of bankruptcy and not doing very well at all. In an attempt to sell more products, the designers that were part of the company at the time were trying to think of new concepts that they could try to successfully market to potential clients. The legend himself, Alan Shilke, who we now know very well, came up with this really radical interesting concept, which would come to be known as the fourth dimension coaster. Originally intended to be a smaller size compact thrill coaster, they started trying to sell this concept to many different parks, and Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California, decided that they wanted this model, but the management at the time wanted this to be a massive ride, a centerpiece for the park, and something that you saw immediately when you came up to the park. They wanted this to be a gigantic ride in a sink or swim situation. Aerodynamics reluctantly decided to take on this project. This was a very intensive process and required a lot of research and development, which really drained a lot of funds for aerodynamics. X, as it was originally called, was actually the most expensive standalone coaster ever built, which basically, when I say that, I mean the most expensive coaster in and of itself, and not like a Disney ride, where they spend a hundred million dollars, and half of that goes into theming and special effects. They spent 46 million dollars on it, and aerodynamics was not even able to finish this project, which led to the park having to finish this for themselves. After several delays, X finally opened to the public in January of 2002. This is a very impressive coaster by itself, standing at a height of 175 feet, featuring a drop of 215 feet, having a top speed of 76 miles per hour, which was actually only 70 miles per hour when it was X, and having a very steep drop at 88.5 degrees. But what was most revolutionary about this coaster was the seating arrangement, featuring winged seats, not too dissimilar to modern B&M wing coasters. These wing seats actually spun forward and backwards freely, leading to each ride experience being completely different and unpredictable. This led to a very intense ride experience, and something which was highly praised, and still is highly praised to this day by many around the world. X, or X2 as it's now known, is the only of these fourth dimension coasters to ever be built in the United States. Another one called Ageneka would open at Fujikyu Highland in Japan in July of 2006. This was even more impressive than Stature. Standing at a height of 250 feet and reaching a top speed of 78 miles per hour and featuring three inversions rather than the two found on X, this was another extremely intense ride, receives great reviews to this day, was also designed by Ellen Schilke, as all three of these fourth dimension coasters are. The third and final fourth dimension coaster to be built to this day opened at China Dinosaurs Park, and that is Dinaconda, opened in April of 2012. Since then, we haven't heard anything about parks installing any more of these fourth dimension coasters. I believe this is because of the very high cost of these rides, even though X2 was by far the most expensive one that was built. As far as I can tell, they're still in general very expensive rides. Also, there were a lot of issues that plagued X, which kept it from opening to the public for a very long time. After it did open to the public in 2002, it was open for about six months and then closed for another couple months so they could rework some issues on it, and then it ended up being closed again at the end of 2007 so they could do extensive refurbishments to it, including a new name, a new color scheme, having newer lighter trains built, which would lead to it becoming X2 and would also increase the speed from 70 miles per hour to 76 miles per hour. Understandably so, these fourth dimension coasters were a really huge deal at the time, and still are. They're a very revolutionary concept, and we haven't really seen anything else like it, besides the 40 free spin models, which are much less intense and more of the compact type of coaster that Alan Shilke originally had in mind for these. I believe that a lot of parks seeing all the issues that X had in its opening and seeing how expensive it really was to carry it out, I think that really drew a lot of potential customers away from these fourth dimension coasters, and they're also extremely intense rides, so they're not marketable to a really wide audience, they're very much a thrill coaster, and among the most intense rides you can find anywhere, they're very well received by many enthusiasts around the world and provide a really unique one-of-a-kind ride experience, and you get a different experience every single time you ride it, which is really cool. Do I think we'll see any more of these fourth dimension coasters being built in the future? Well, after aerodynamics went bankrupt, Ageneka and Dino Kanda were built by S&S, who took over Aero's assets after Aero's bankruptcy, so if any more were to be built, they would be built by S&S most likely, and I'm sure they would be a great success, but I don't really see any more of these opening anytime soon. In this case, this model is a little bit different than the other ones I've talked about in this series, because there are less of these that have ever been built than all the other models I've talked about, and they were also built over the course of 10 years, so they're fairly spread out, but at the same time we have not seen a brand new one for seven years at this point, we haven't heard anything about anybody wanting to get one of these anytime soon, so I don't believe that these are ever going to experience another surge in popularity, but I'm sure many people would be happy to see another one of these being built. So what do you guys think about this? Are we going to be seeing any more fourth dimension coasters built by S&S anytime in the future? I know I for sure would love to see it, so what do you guys think? Make sure to like, comment, subscribe, and make sure you let me know in the comments what model you guys want to hear me talk about next. Thank you so much for watching. This is Coaster Daddy. Bye.