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peteb

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Everything posted by peteb

  1. The loops should be set up somewhere as garden sculpture or a museum piece; I always thought the original Arrow corkscrew loops with the over the top support system were really cool looking. I can't imagine how many times this has been photographed.
  2. I hate to see all the old Arrows and Schwartzkopfs disappear. It's easy to complain about these rides, but remember they were designed over 30 years ago with just pencil and paper and a lot of trial and error (and huge financial risk). These companies invented the steel looping coaster without the benefit of CAD and lots of other modern tools. Sure they were replaced by better more refined designs, but that's always the case in things technology based, but you still need to acknowledge the contribution of what came before.
  3. What I'm curious about is the Unicoaster; the gallery pictures on the website make this thing look like a couple seats hung off the side of a shopping cart. More like a napkin sketch than what the final ride will look like.
  4. Here's a press release from Chance Morgan that announces cooperation between the two companies in the US. Here is the link: http://www.chancemorgan.com/graphics/chanpics/PR_CMI_Vekoma_Partnership_2006-10-12.pdf Another interesting development is the Chance Morgan logo now appearing at the bottom of the Unicoaster website. Maybe Chance is working with Bill Kitchen to realize this ride. Anyone know more about either?
  5. KK will be a pile of rust in no time the way SFGADV takes care of things; thank goodness El Toro doesn't need paint or much track maintenance like a traditional woodie or else it would turn to junk like Rolling Thunder. This park is a proving ground for the robustness of ride design. SFGADV unfortunately draws a nasty crowd; most of it not local. And the staffing this time of year has always been a problem. Add broken rides to the mix and it's just not a pleasant place to visit which is unfortunate considering the excellent variety of coasters there.
  6. You would think reading some of these posts that GCI has absolutely no clue how to build a coaster. I haven't been on a bad GCI coaster and have no desire to criticize it pretending to know what it's supposed to be or is before riding it. Or rank it vs. El Toro or Voyage. I'm sure we wont' be disappointed.
  7. El Toro's track is made using laminated veneer lumber technology; various plys of wood are layered, oriented, bent, and glued together then machined to exacting tolerances and strength requirements to create beams (rails) that have performance characteristics similar to steel. That's probably why some people cry that these are not real woodies, but it's just technology being put to use on wood coaster design. It takes all the guesswork out of building a woodie and these rails should not change much over time, but that remains to be seen. The massive airtime that is designed into El Toro probably wouldn't be such a great idea on traditional wood track construction since the train would tear the track apart pretty fast. That's the big advantage this track system has and probably what will sell more of these in the future; low maintenance and future re-tracking costs. I think El Toro is a great ride, but I also wouldn't want to see all the hand built woodies disappear for these; they are much different types of rides in my view. Variety is good.
  8. It's just getting depressing; the only things you'll be able to do in any shore town in a few years is eat, shop and sit on your ass in a condominium and watch TV. There is getting to be less for families to do in many shore towns due to "re-development". The problem is coastal real estate has become so over valued that owners are cashing in and local governments don't have the power to stop developers from bulldozing any character the area has to throw up more condos that are only designed to make tons of money for developers. What's sad is the demand is there and as long as this is profitable, it's going to continue.
  9. With so many parks in the US having financial troubles and selling off or closing parks for real estate development it's easy to see that it's really not a good time for ride manufacturers in the US (or Europe). I can't see S&S going out of business since they have so many installations worldwide they probably have a fairly good parts/service business. Chapter 11 would just mean a little downsizing and restructuring. (if this rumor is even true) There is a lot of capacity and not much demand right now in the amusement industry, so while this could only be a rumor it's not unlikely.
  10. If you walk around SFGADV and make a list of all the rides and attractions that have been lost over the past 20 years it far outnumbers what has been gained. I love the new coasters too, but that is all this park is about these days. Suck em in and grab their money on junky souvenirs and games. Trade Kingda Ka for all the flats that have been lost (which may total less money than KK) and we'd have a much better park.
  11. Maybe the execs at SF need to look at some of the TPR european trip reports to see what theme parks are supposed to look like. It seems as though these large corporate owned parks in the US are becoming experiences equivalent to going to the mall. Nasty enironments, no character or history. Sure the corporate money brings in the high dollar rides but the parks always seem to lose a lot in many other ways. I think about what a cool place Dorney park was years ago before Cedar Fair took over and tore many old historical rides and sanitized the place. Or how SFGADV has been butchered over the years. Maybe the best thing for some of these parks is to get sold off; maybe they could become on their own places as unique as Hersheypark, Holiday World, or Knoebels.
  12. I was in line on GASM at SFGADV while KK was down and a bunch of teens behind me were telliing everyone (and they were serious) that it's closed because of all the people getting their necks broken on the ride, and they insisted it was at least 3 or 4 people. Naturally, everyone around us bought into it and passed the story around. I assured my kids that if this happened (which it didn't) the lawyers would have the thing hauled off to the scrap heap. All that chatter about the speed being different depending where you sit in the trains is always funny, as if the train were a giant slinky. But not many people know the difference between velocity and acceleration anyway and don't care, but continue to use the terminology in expert fashion.
  13. Six Flags plan to return to profitability involves tearing down as many rides as possible and replacing them with souvenir kiosks or crappy midway games at 5 bucks a pop. I hope there's a new ride coming; this end of the park is getting pretty dead. The Huss frisbee was pulled a few years back and never replaced, the Enterprise is gone, the Chiller is always half broken. Maybe it's part of a bigger multi ride Intamin deal, perhaps a new drop tower. I just hope it's not another overpriced record breaking Intamin monstrosity that sucks cash away from other things this park could really use. There's a lot of empty concrete pads that need rides everywhere.
  14. I'm impressed with the fact that S&S stuck with this ride and obviously has worked hard to improve the 4D concept. It's a good fit to have this ride in a park that will take care of it. The 4D coaster in my opinion is still one of the most ambitious coaster concepts that has come along in some time. EJ is only the second of it's kind and already seems vastly improved. I think S&S/Arrow has a lot more engineering capability than many give them credit for. Excellent trip report.
  15. Setpoint (builder of HersheyPark Roller Soaker) had a cool concept for a dueling coaster built around a single box lattice type track system (looks like Intamin box track) where there was a train that rode the two right hand two rails and a second that rode the left two rails. Looked like a 4 wide train split down the middle. This concept was on their website years ago and taken off. Setpoint doesn't really do much in amusements these days so you'll never see this one.
  16. Most of the Arrow/Vekoma rides that everyone complains about were based on the old Arrow chassis/track style that was develped in the 70's. All calculations, designs were done by hand or outright guesses. Everyone uses sophisticated modeling and CAD for building rides today where you can accurately predict the ride's performance before it's built; most of the dynamic and fabrication problems have been solved beforehand. Powder Keg, which is a new Arrow track/chassis style is a very smooth ride.
  17. Superman Ultimate Flight at SFGADV. Always a horribly long wait; slow dispatches. Add to this all the line cutting that goes on at this park and the typical guests all you remember is the line,not the ride.
  18. Great trip report.... gotta agree with you on Top Gun. Somehow this ride tucked in the far corner of PKI has been overlooked for years. I've always been amazed how smooth this thing is and how much fun the swinging action of the cars is, really like nothing else ever made. The accelerations of the swinging motions and dampening of the shock system create forces that cannot be replicated with a fixed track/chassis arrangement.
  19. You're right; that's the whole idea of these new track systems where the track is a structural member.
  20. If you dig back you'll find that Arrow was one of the first companies that tried a triple truss type track used on their suspended prototype. It was very strong but at the time expensive and difficult to make.
  21. The train ride is the best way to see the former DF grounds; it runs right next to it. DF was an impressive looking ride and not nearly as bad as people will have you believe. There are rougher rides still in operation. This one could have been fixed, but there must have been a huge falling out with Arrow that prevented this from ever happening.
  22. The great thing about B&Ms is how well they hold up over time; all the original inverts (Batman) still are reliable and haven't turned into headbangers. I doubt the Intamin launched coasters are going to get more reliable, but maybe we'll have to take this poll again in ten years. In terms of quality of design, manufacture and engineering, the nod has to go to B&M.
  23. Didn't a large section of this coaster collapse during construction? All the retracking in the world won't help this thing if the supporting structure is crap. You can see why the trend is toward hybrid structures like GG is designing and factory prefab structures from Intamin, it takes somes of the shoddy workmanship variables out and the coasters perform much closer to the design predictions. Structure movement and deflection doesn't always cause problems in a ride if designed properly, in many cases there's trouble if things aren't allowed to flex.
  24. EJ seems to be a lot smoother that X; just look at the seat position with respect to the chassis; on X there is a lot of backlash movement, even out of the station. Look at the train with respect to the track and background and it is tracking pretty smoothly. I like the big electronics box on the trailing set of wheels.
  25. Wow! Lots of small changes to the chassis and frame, x-rail wheel carrier. Also looks like they've added some seat sensors, maybe a remote harness release setup. All the trackwork looks beefier, double backbone throughout. Looks like the S&S/Arrow guys have been busy improving the original design; this could be a much better ride than X.
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