rjholla2003

So you would make Dodonpa. With these 100+ launched coasters, there's only so much you can do with the land/money/combination of both that parks have. Sucks, but it's true. Untill a park has a lot of land, and a lot of money to spend, they are all going to be "launch-tophat-space filler-brakes", or "launch, overbank, hill, space filler, brakes."

Nope. It breaks down for a month, re-opens for one weekend, and breaks down for another month to end the season. It all goes back to my "Intamin Problem" statement from the Kingda Ka POV thread.

rec.roller-coaster is a Usenet newsgroup. Also, the comments I'm talking about are not from a "mere mechanic", but an engineer that works for Intamin and actually played a part in designing the ride. Also, I doubt that they would thing that a coaster enthusiast that was invited to the topping off of Kingda Ka was "trying to steal their idea". Patents would protect against that anyway. Also, like Stew pointed out, a lot of people felt the pulses, so obviously it is a proven fact that the coaster does in fact pulse. You can't debate that. In any event, like I stated before, I'll go with the words of the engineer that helped design the coaster than someone who happens to have a lot of mechanical knowledge. As for the vibration and all of the other things bad with the stratas that were said, I also agree. Kingda Ka should not be so shakey in the back. When the train launches, you should not see the launch track rocking back and forth as if it were banking itself as the train was passing through. Intamin has a lot of problems with the strata coasters that have to be worked out, and I think part of the problem is that responsiblilty for their problems are usually deferred from them. If something happens with TTD, then the park is doing it's best and that's just the nature of the coaster. If something happens with Ka, then "Sux Flags sux0rz!!!111!!1!" and they should learn how to maintain a coaster. No one looks at the real issue, which is that Intamin is putting out problematic coasters. Now, this is not to say that I dislike Kingda Ka, because it's one of my favorite coasters and I think it delivers some of the greatest thrills that money can buy. But, that does not change the fact that it, along with TTD are not anywhere close to be reliable. For those that like to blame Great Adventure for Ka's issues, look at TTD's freshman season and say that Cear Point is to blame. People like to have it both ways, but you can't. Top Thrill Dragster had lots of attention, but it still had a major breakdown it's first season. Granted, it wasn't as bad as Ka's first season, but it was still down for a long time. Then take a look at this season. People like to say that these coasters have a "break in" period and that they perform better when they are broken in. At the beginning of the season (being when they were both running), they had nearly identical track records. Ka would overheat every now and again, but it would get back up rather quickly and everything was fine. Then it had it's big breakdown and it was down for around two months. It also was closed for another additional 3 days or so when someone's hat got caught in the launch track, and two other "mystery days". Top Thrill Dragster was closed for a week for what was found otu to be a problem with oil leaking into the lagoon, closed for a month for what people thought was a gearbox problem, but ended up being the lagoon again, opened for one weekend, and closed for another month to end the season. If the park that the coaster is in is the problem, and these coasters run better when they are broken in, why are the both about dead even with their downtime this season? Well, if CP is having problems with TTD, then it's obviously not a SF problem. And Lord knows that all of the fanboys in the world won't let anyone say that it's a CF problem. I'll tell you what it is, it's an "Intamin Problem" Intamin is to blame with these two coasters and their problems. Even though they are both great rides that deliver great thrills, they are shoddy and should have been designed better. Hopefully in the future Intamin learns how to design them better so that these issues don't happen. Hopefully these two stratas are fixed, or the parks learn how to deal with them so they can resemble reliable rides. It's kind of funny how all of this came about from a POV. I guess they are just as interesting as conversation pieces as they are to ride.

I'll stick with what I've felt in my many rides, and others felt at the commercial shoot as well. Also, if you do some digging on rec.roller-coaster you will see some stuff that an engineer that worked on Kingda Ka said that will back up what I said. I think that someone who worked on the ride would know more than any of us. Trust me, I had 62 rides to contemplate all of this. I wouldn't just say all of this just to say it, especially on an internet forum where I have nothing to gain from it.

Pretty much. Videos are nice, but you really need the whole "wind in your hair" thing going to get the thrill. This is 100% a front seat, or second row coaster. The wind in your face making yoru cheeks and eyelids flutter is just magical.

Intamn calls the under 300' tall coasters "mega", with MF being the lone "giga". The term "strata" is reserved for the 400'+ coasters. Intamin dubs all of the hydraulic launch coasters "accelerators." I'm personally a fan of B&M, mostly because I love their trains. Intamin definately has them beat when it comes to the OTSRs, but I'll take B&M's clamshell to Intamin's T-bar anyday. Also, I like the open air feel of B&M's hypers better than the feeling that Intamin's trains give you. They both are nice, but the ability to stick my feet out on a Beemer is the extra edge that I crave.

As long as things can fail, nothing is 100% safe. You can be close, but most times people are one burst hose or a bolt away from danger. Rocket coasters are no exception to the rule. Look at the two stratas. TTD chucked theming into the queue, sprayed shards of steel at people, and loves to pollute lagoons. Ka chucked brake fins into it's queue, scraped it's liner, and shot shards of miscelleneous metal around. All of those things were just "one of those things" where it was a small thing that went wrong and something big happened.

And Stew comes through with the save! Thanks for the back up. I actually only got 40 that day, my girlfriend and I cut out early. I could have gotten that rollback too since Stew and I were in the same train most of the day, but I was a whimp. In any case, 10 rides in one day + 40 rides the very next day + 10 more rides a few days later = a very sore and happy Reggie. Trust us, everything I said there is 100% true. When you ride it that much over the course of a day, you feel every little thing that the ride does. Also, if you talk to the ride ops, they will tell you that it does indeed tow you at top speed for longer than the accleration speed. Kingda Ka and Top Thrill Dragster look alike, but there were a lot of changes and improvements made along the way. The longer-than-necessary launch is one way of cutting back the rollbacks. The fact that 128 is an overlaunch in and of itself is another thing that cuts back on rollbacks. A weak launch on TTD = rollback, where a weak launch on Ka = creeping over. Kingda Ka is simply a very intriguing coaster with lots of little nuances that one can't pick up from a ride or two. Simply put, Ka is a skitzo.

Hey everybody. I'm Reggie, or you can call me RJ. You may know me as a staff member over on CoasterSims, the second newest moderator on GADV Updates, or just a poster on Thrillnetwork, GAInsider, or CoasterFuel. I use NoLimits a lot, but not as much as I used to. I go to school at Montclair State University, which is in Northern NJ, about 14 miles from NYC. I'm a proud product of Central Jersey, home of Kingda Ka, El Toro, Nitro, and other fine coastering experiences. I don't know how many coasters I've riddem, but I know it's not anything that's worth bragging about. My bragging rights lay with my 62 laps on Kingda Ka this season, 40 of them in one day. 8) I got to ride the coaster for the commercial, and WB-11 in NYC. Fun times... Other than coasters, I'm a USSF (United States Soccer Federation) licensed referee, bored insomniac college student, Red Bull addict (manifest itself during finals), and madly in love with my girlfriend (slowly converting her to coaster-ism, her riding with me in the Ka shoots helped) and roller coasters. Oh crap, I mentioned coasters in the non-coaster section. Anything other than that you'll just have to find out throughout the random journey we shall embark on with this whole interweb thing.

Very strange double post. Please delete.

It's slower than slow. So slow I can't wait to get back to Great Adventure to take more pics of El Toro's construction.

http://www.sixflags.com/parks/greatadventure/parkpress/photos.html Two new pictures

Well, anything looks big when it's going out of the park like that. Sure, it is big, but they are definitely using the "out of the park" trick to enhance it a lot. The lift hill facing the road, the largest feature other than the lift on the other side of the road, it's all very intimidating.

Coaster roughness pretty much boils down to design, age, and maintenance. Maintenance will keep the coaster smooth longer since you're replacing worn wheels, axels, and track. Age will affect it since after a while, the coaster will succumb to the stresses that are placed on it every day through use. The wear and tear on the track will play a part in how smooth the track is. Same goes for the trains. Design comes into play with the older Vekoma and Arrow models. These coasters aren't so much rough as they are brutal. For example, Great American Scream Machine @ Great Adventure isn't a rough coaster. In fact, when it's in the middle of a turn, going through a hill, or some other relatively straight section, it's really not rough at all. But, because of poor design with the lack of heartlining, the transitions are horrible. Every turn and twist jars the train, and people call that roughness, even though it's not.

One of my favorite pictures of me on the net: Day one, Kingda Ka commercial shoot. Good times. 8)

I didn't look at the video, but I've ridden enough to stop the "how long does it launch" debate. The launch gets you to 128 in 3.5 seconds as advertised. The difference is that where TTD has just flat track, Kingda Ka has launch track. The result is that you're crusing at 128 MPH for around 2 seconds at the end of the launch. Or, if the launch is weak, there is room for it to catch up. If you ride enough, you can tell how powerful the launch is by the number of pulses there are. If it's one solid tug, then you're just met when i liek to call "Ka the BEAST!" This is when Ka goes crazy and gives you all of the airtime that you crave. The tophat has ejector air, and the camelback gives you the wierdest airtime sensation that you can experience. You've got the ejector air, and when the deceleration kicks in softly at the top, you get a very cool sensation of floating foward in your seat as you're already thrown up in the air. End result: You're sitting in a completely different spot than you started. If there are multiple pulses in the acceleration that you can feel, then you got a slow launch. Usually if there is a pulse, you feel 2 or 3. Some people have said they felt more than 3, but I personally have felt 3 at most. That's when Kingda Ka is simply Kingda Ka. You'll get floater air at best, if any, on the tophat, and floater on the camelback. You really just have to hope that you get a good launch when you ride, which is exactly what I heard about TTD too. Either there's lots of air, or barely any air.

So this is what finally makes me post here. Your answer lies in the second section of this article. http://themeparks.about.com/od/sixflagsarticles/a/KingdaMalfuncti.htm