The Top Thrill Dragster, which at one time was the fastest and tallest roller coaster in the world, is being scrapped — in its current form, anyway.

Cedar Point — the Sandusky, Ohio, amusement park on a peninsula along Lake Erie — said Tuesday morning via social media that the thrill ride is "being retired." It didn't say why or what would replace it, only that "more details and information" would be coming "at a later date."

The announcement was of little surprise, but it likely made some nostalgic.

A new kind of ride nearly two decades ago, the Top Thrill Dragster worked like a slingshot. Hydraulic pressure shot you down a half-mile track, tipped you over the top and sent you racing down the other side. It would take you to 120 mph in 4 seconds and directly up 420 feet, almost as high as the Penobscot Building.

It went so fast, if you sat in the coaster's front car, it would blow your contacts right out of your eyes.

Yet despite the thrills and hype when the ride opened, for much of its 19-year run, it was plagued with problems.

Last year, a piece of metal the size of a hand fell off the ride and struck a then-44-year-old Swartz Creek woman in the head. Ohio officials said it was an L-shaped bracket that sat at the back of the train car. While the ride was in descent, the bracket hit the coaster’s track and came off the coaster train. 

The injury sent the Michigan woman to intensive care, clinging to life.

After that, the amusement park shut down the ride. It was cleared in a state investigation, but remained closed.

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The only hint at whether the Dragster would be remade into something else or replaced was that it said the amusement park's "legacy of ride innovation continues," and that "our team is hard at work, creating a new and reimagined ride experience."

When the Dragster opened in 2003, the park's then $25-million centerpiece attracted long lines, in part because it was the thrill of a lifetime, but also because it was constantly breaking down — not so much that it put people in danger, but cars would race up the track at more than 100 mph and, at the summit, it stalled and fell back to Earth.

Built by the Swiss company Intamin AG, TV commercials that summer promoted the ride. But there were so many problems with the ride that one park employee called it "the world's tallest, fastest roller coaster that doesn't work." In 2003, the ride was shut down from June 27 to July 3, and daily breakdowns made the three-hour wait to get on it even scarier.

Computers calibrated the force required to get over the top based on the weight of the passengers and weather conditions. If there isn't enough force, the cars wouldn't make it. Other problems: air bubbles in the hydraulic fluid and overheating.

It was a complicated, but safe machine, Cedar Point officials said.

In the years that followed, faster and taller coasters in other places ended its reign. And newer rides at Cedar Point drew riders away.

Still, if you rode the Top Thrill Dragster when it was one of the world's top thrills, you now have a story to tell.

Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.