Steel Dragon 2000

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This article is about the roller coaster. For other uses of steel dragon, see Steel dragon (disambiguation).

Steel Dragon 2000
Steel Dragon 2000
Location	Nagashima Spa Land
Type	Steel
Status	Open
Opened	August 1, 2000
Manufacturer	D.H. Morgan Manufacturing
Designer	Steve Okamoto
Track layout	Out and Back
Lift/launch system	One lift hill with two chain lifts
Height	318.25 feet (97 m)
Drop	306.75 feet (93.5 m)
Length	8,133.3 feet (2,479 m)
Max speed	95 mile per hour (152.9 km/h)
Inversions	0
Cost	Over $50,000,000 USD
Steel Dragon 2000 at RCDB
Pictures of Steel Dragon 2000 at RCDB

Steel Dragon 2000 is a roller coaster at Nagashima Spa Land Amusement Park in Mie Prefecture, Japan. Built by Morgan Manufacturing, this gigacoaster opened, appropriately, in 2000 - "The Year of the Dragon" in the Far East. It debuted only months after Millennium Force and surpassed the Cedar Point coaster as the world's tallest complete-circuit coaster. It also set a record for longest track length - 8133 feet, 2 inches (2479 m), which it currently holds.

[edit] Trivia

Steel Dragon 2000 is the tallest coaster to utilize a traditional chain lift. Because of the length of the lift hill, two chains are used - one for the bottom half and one for the top half. A single chain would have been excessively long and heavy, at least twice the weight of one of the trains.

The building of Steel Dragon 2000 required far more steel than other coasters for earthquake protection. This put the cost of the coaster at over $50,000,000.

On August 23, 2003, Steel Dragon 2000 was involved in an accident during a run in which one of its trains lost a wheel. The coaster did not operate during the 2004 and 2005 park seasons. It is open as of September 3, 2006.