Thunder Striker
roller coaster
Thunder Striker, formerly known as Intimidator, is a hypercoaster located at Carowinds in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States. Built by Bolliger & Mabillard and located in the Thunder Road section of the park, the ride opened to public on March 27, 2010. It features a 232-foot (71 m) lift hill, a top speed of 75 mph (121 km/h), and a track length of 5,316 feet (1,620 m).
The roller coaster was originally named after NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt, who was nicknamed "the Intimidator." Following the expiring of a license agreement with Earnhardt's estate in December 2023, Cedar Fair renamed the coaster Thunder Striker for the 2024 season.
History
Construction on Intimidator began during the summer of 2009 with land clearing and footings being constructed. Track pieces first began to arrive at Carowinds on August 7, 2009. About three weeks later, on August 26, 2009, Carowinds officially announced Intimidator. Along with the announcement, Carowinds reached a licensing agreement with Dale Earnhardt, Inc. to use the late NASCAR racing legend Dale Earnhardt's brand as part of the ride. One of Earnhardt's sons, Kerry Earnhardt, was on-hand for the press conference announcing the attraction and endorsed the ride on behalf of the family.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Thunder Striker” is roller coaster. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Thunder, Striker and roller, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1671491. Authority coordinates are 35.101, -80.938. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010, 2023, 2024 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thunder Striker” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.