Gav

Fantastic photos inside DarkKastle, those 4-D dark rides are one thing that have always fascinated me. Did they explain exactly what the car does to make it feel like you are falling?...That's one effect I have never been able to get an answer on.

I think this one has a bit more air than i305...What about the first hill and those 3 rapid fire hills right at the end? To me this one seems a bit more 'balanced' than i305, a good mix of turns and hills, whereas i305 perhaps puts a little too much emphasis on the turns. (For the record, I think both of these rides will be really good)

On Supertubes Hydrocoaster at Whitewater World there is actually a touch screen at the top that shows a diagram of the layout which shows the occupied blocks, so in many ways it uses similar procedures to how you'd run a coaster. When the rafts valley (It does happen), the op comes and rescues them by undoing zipper on the netting that covers the slide, pulling the raft out and carrying it back manually. But there are log flumes that have lifts, drops, and airtime (Though from my personal experiences with this model of slide, there is next to no airtime on the hills...It wouldn't be safe anway since there aren't upstops preventing the raft from flying off) Besides, it can't be a 'credit' anyway because it is a water slide, and not a roller coaster.

I'd imagine they'll use a flywheel power storage system, identical to what is used at IOA for Hulk...Though obviously with twice the storage capacity.

Just an update. When I was in Dubai I went to the Dubai Mall...It wasn't open, but there was a preview center, which consisted of a roped off area where you could play on a few arcade machines and go on a small simulator for 4 Dirhams (1.10 USD)...I didn't bother with it since I wanted to see the fountain show, but I did grab this flyer for it: It got scrunched up in my pocket...

They're building those bloody flying pterandons again? Lets hope this time they actually make it so it can take more than 6 people in total. That aside, this park is looking better and better each time I see it. This could well be one of the worlds better rapids rides...Actual elaborate theming, with a vertical lift and drop!

I didn't find Rita particularly painful.....There is that sharp transition into the first turn where a 'neck bash' can happen, but its not particularly hard to avoid if you hold steady for a couple of seconds. The rest of the ride is quite fun, a good feeling of speed, with a couple of fun pops of airtime.

I think that is pretty much it. I'd also say they do it because when visitors take happy snaps of the rides, the park name will be right there...Good if for example you show it to other people, and they can then see the name of the place you visited....Its sort of like those photo ops parks have, such as those murals you stand behind, with your face showing through the hole. Without exception, they always have the park name. They wouldn't do it to remind people what park they are in when they are there riding it on the day.

Sort of like a dark ride inside a mountain that goes slowly past scenery, it is all above ground. Did you ever ride the Eureka Mountain Mine Train at Dreamworld? It is similar to how that was (But not a roller coaster)

I was doing some googling about this since I'm going to be passing through Dubai in a months time, and I turned up a bunch of recent news articles (23/06) claiming the park will open 'within weeks'. http://www.bi-me.com/main.php?c=3&cg=2&t=1&id=36749 http://www.dubaichronicle.com/life/kids/middle-east%E2%80%99s-largest-sega-republic-to-open-at-the-dubai-mall-9665 I really do hope they can gun for the original opening date (Or close too it)...I never had the chance to visit Sega World in Sydney before it closed, and this looks like a fun little park.

I had always thought a theme park was a place where all the rides are themed, so the CF and SF parks sort of miss this definition...Whereas places like Disney, Universal, Busch, WBMW, etc fit this.

Dunno if that was aimed at me, but an electron gun is part of a TV.

Electron Gun?

Other factors are not efficiency... What you are referring to with respect to downtime/maintenance is reliability. What others have been referring to with respect to how fast it can accelerate things is performance. You could drive a gas guzzling SUV, it may be reliable for you on a day to day basis, but it certainly isn't efficient is it? What about valves, compressors, turbines, retracting brake fins, winch drums, launch sleds etc?

It seems as if people are using a mixed definition of what 'efficiency' is. Remember, efficiency is the the amount of useful work you get out of the system per unit of energy input: Pout / Pin = Efficiency It is not a measure of how fast it can accelerate things, or how much it breaks down, it is strictly energy in versus energy out. Using the formula for Kinetic energy, I worked out that a 20 tonne coaster train going at 100Km/h carries 100,000,000 J of energy. Therefore to get it going at that speed the launch needs to provide 100,000,000 J of energy. But the number of Joules of energy the launch system uses depends on Efficiency. If they system was only 50% efficient, then you would need 200,000,000 J of energy per launch. If it were 80% efficient then you would need 125,000,000 J per launch. No mechanical system can be 100% efficient. Also, I found a quote from the Maverick construction blog. ( http://maverick.cedarpoint.com/latest/diary/index.cfm?entry=9e71e6b4-eea8-4b63-8cb5-844a18a0f2a6 ) The reason why LSM gives more power is because more of the electrical energy is being converted into kinetic energy, LSMs are quite good at this. LIMs can push a train forward quite quickly, but it comes at a great cost as LIMs suffer greater heat and resistive losses. Even though LSM is more complex to operate, the reason you put up with this is because it is a more efficient system, and over the rides life cycle the more complex maintenance is a small price to pay considering what they will save on the power bill. One thing that is interesting to note is that LSMs are getting better these days in terms of acceleration performance....iSpeed gets to 100km/h in 2.2 seconds using LSM , Rita gets to 100km/h in 2.5 seconds with Hydraulic. As a final point, there is no way Hydraulic or Compressed Air launches can be the most efficient way...There are many moving parts in these systems, so they suffer higher mechanical and heat losses.

I remember Intamin mentioned it too with respect to their LSM ball coasters....Though I was trying to keep matters simple by looking at the standalone systems. I think down the track we will see manufacturers start tending towards LSMs again, since LSM with power storage would most likley be the most best way of launching these days...Higher efficiency, less moving parts, but still with lower peak load requirements.

In terms of energy in versus energy out, then LSMs are the most efficient. The thing to keep in mind is that although Hydraulic / Pneumatic launches have a lower peak load requirement since the electricity is drawn at a constant rate all day long to continuously pressurise the accumulators, they still use more energy overall because it is a less efficient system. On the other hand, magnetic launches only need power when the train is launching, but the downside is that they need to draw all this power in the space of a few of seconds, which means special infrastructure requirements to deal with this.

I laughed at 1:30 when they showed a couple of kids running around excitedly, and then cut to a no running sign.

Love that 8th photo down, I never realised what a beautiful little park it was.

Agreed..If you have some sketches of stuff that would actually be relevant to IOA , by all means post them but I don't see the relevance of a cheddar beach giga coaster being posted for the 4th time on here. Like Jurassic Park....Or Popeyes...Or Dudley Do Rights Ripsaw Falls? To me, IOA is a tough one, their coaster lineup is quite balanced as it is, and it's sort of tough to do something unique given what the competitors have...I think the look of a wooden coaster would be too 'amusement parky' for IOA, I do like the idea of a mega lite style coaster, since airtime is something lacking in the parks coasters...I'd be looking to do a new island perhaps, since the existing ones are quite 'complete' as it is. The new Alton coaster could serve as inspiration, have an outdoor section with lots of hills, combined with an indoor section to establish the storyline.

Quite a few people had thought it was going to be Premier, but there was an article about in First Drop. Loefet made a post about it over on CF.... When you think about it though, it looks nothing like Premier anyway so there was no real reason to presume it is by them on sight alone... Do premier have massive double spines? Nope. Cone shaped ties? Nope. Hence the door is open for this track to be by anyone....namely Intamin.

Not necessarily, I mean Kanonen has the square type of track too, but that is anything but a record breaker. http://www.rcdb.com/m/ig2905.htm?picture=12 It's a bit of a stretch to say that Intamin now have a special type of track they only pull out for record breakers. I think they have simply found some new efficiencies in their designs, and are applying them accordingly.

Wasn't it in First Drop? Anyway, Here is some further proof for those that still don't believe this is Intamin. Notice the supports on the F1 coaster that are circled are the new style used on iSpeed, and the same style that we saw a few days back being offloaded at KD. It's pretty clear to me that Intamin have just decided to redesign their track and supports....I mean if Vekoma can redesign their track, Intamin can too right Proof that the KD coaster is Intamin.

It doesn't. The track on site is already Vekoma (new style), and it looks nothing like either track depicted in the concept art. See http://www.thethemeparkguy.com/park/universal-studios-singapore/

The dispatch interval may be 23 seconds, but that doesn't mean it will only spend 23 seconds in the station, because they two figures aren't directly linked. The quickest explanation would be to compare with a car assembly line. Eg a car factory here in Australia has a car coming off the line every 3 minutes, but that doesn't mean they only have 3 minutes to make a whole car. On rides with continous loading (Eg Rapids Rides, People Mover, Mullholland Madness etc) the vehicles slow right down once they enter the station and all 'bunch together'. The station is designed to be long enough, and the vehicles moving slowly enough, so that they take enough time to get through it. Once they get to the end of the station they are free to speed up again (So the lift won't be as slow as we are seeing it) To do a calculation, say you made a loading station 20m (66ft) long, with vehicles going through at 2 km/h (1.2 mph) To have a 23 second dispatch interval the vehicles would be trailing each other with a spacing of about 13m (43ft) But, passengers would still have 36 seconds to load in and out because thats how long it would take them to get through the station. So you can see that if they wanted to give people more time to load, they could slow the vehicles down, or make the station longer.