Racerbret

I'm heading up to Utah on Labor Day weekend for the Grand American race. I think I might have to try and take a trip to Park City while I'm there to ride that thing. Looks like a lot of fun.

I came to understand that without the zero car, or the two rows that don't move in an up and down motion independently of each other, the train would not be level as it traveled, but would would be like a seesaw. Each car would tilt forward or backwards a little or something like that. Heres sort of an example. Just imagine each line as a car in the train. / \ / \ / \ / \ With the two front cars unable to "see-saw" or having a zero car on the front or back of a coaster doing basically the same thing, it forces the rest of the cars throughout the train to stay level and not see-saw. == - - - - - - - - - This isn't done on just B&Ms, its done on all coasters who's cars only have one axle. This is why rides like Viper at MM have what seems to be a very small zero car or basically a second axel on the rear of the last car while the rest of the cars only have one axel on the front of each car. This extra axle/small zero-car does the same as a zero car on a B&M or having two cars connected. Thats what I was told anyways. If I messed up anywhere, please let me know. EDIT: Here is a picture of Viper. Notive every car has a set of wheels attatched to the front end. The last car has a set of wheels on the front, and a set on the back side that look sort of out of place. http://www.coasterimage.com/pictures/sixflagsmagicmountain/pics/vp09.jpg

As others said, SFMM allows it most of the time. I've re-ridden on Batman and RR with lines becasue my frineds who rode after me had a seat open. The ops never really cared. I don't know about other CF parks, but I've never had a problem at Knotts either. Last week for example everything was a walk on. You didnt even need to ask to re-ride, just get up and sit somewhere else. Everyone did it and no-one cared. I re-rode, Silver Bullet, Xcelerator, Ghostride, and Monty along with the 20 other people who were actually at the park swithching seats in between rides and going from front to back. If someone was in your row, just get up and sit somewhere else. Always fun.

Big a$$ earthquake hits when near or at the top of the lift. Yup, that would pretty much scare the crap out of me.

I was wondering what was going on. I saw that and thought I had something wrong on my side. Shows how much I know about computers. Sorry to hear about the headache this has caused you Jim. Hope you get it worked out without too much more of a hastle.

Thats interesting. Very wierd looking Raven Turn. It looks like they took a loop on No Limits and just ajusted with it to much. Now that we know its gonna be inverted after the exit, I'm begining to think more and more its gonna be, more or less, just X mirrored with litte things here or there to help the ride run better. Hopefully they still do something different element wise, but we'll see. Can anyone thats been there give mabie a quick estimate to how tall the turn is? Having never been there I cant really get a baring on how big this thing actually is other then really, really big.

I've only been on Xcelerator, but I bet its pretty hard to top that launch.

I think no matter how you do it your gonna have a mess of supports with this kind of coaster. X already had a crap load. A couple more probably wont make much of a difference. As for what the ride does overall, since everyone else is giving their opinions, I'll give mine. Kind of a mix of whats logical and what would be cool. I'm gonna agree with the 180 right turn out of the station, lift hill, drop to bottom of the Raven turn that is being constructed. If the exit of the first raven turn does end up being Immelman-like, then the track should be in a standard coaster position for the rest of the ride. It goes trough the zero-g-flip-thingy and luge turn like X only the train will be upright. I doubt it would do all this with the seats backwards. It might, but I think its going to face forwards when not inverted (meaning facing foward up the lift and down the drop still doing a flip ant the bottom) as opposed to X. The footers look like they come back around the station and back towards where the crain on the left is. If you look, it looks like it is siting on a very large footer parhaps for a second raven turn similar to X's. Then it will go back into the station. The other elements, if any, I don't think anyone can tell. I would assume a half-half or full-full before the second raven turn meaning it could be either an inside or outside raven turn with either a half-half into the brakes or just brakes after the turn. It will be interesting to see what actually happens.

That is awesome. I've done little crappy drawings during class sometimes, but nothing anything close to the time and effort you put into this ride. Very cool, very well done and very well thought out. You've got skills.

Those smaller supports look like they might hold the cars in an up-right position rather then the inverted position that the trains are in at the top of raven turn. Is it possible it could do a half-half on an incline before entering(or after exiting depending on which way the train travels) the top of the raven turn, similar to an Immelmann as seen on Manhattan Express? If so, how disorienting (and fun) would that be?