willski

There is a huge shortage of Civil/Structural engineers, and most college engineering graduates (or at least the ones here at Georgia Tech) receive an average of 5 job offers upon graduation. Talk about options...

Well, it was a video of a coaster built in No Limits (quite hastily/poorly built as well). The g's were very high in spots, and the transitions were awful for the most part. You can rest assured the final product will be many times better than that shoddy video.

To be quite honest, WoF is a regional park that is not as important to the chain as KBF or CP. KBF is in a very competitive area park-wise, while CP is the flagship park for the chain. I wouldn't expect a ton of rides coming to WoF any time soon, as there is not a competitive market at all in terms of amusement parks. Look how long it was between major installations (on average): Orient Exoress in 1980, Timberwolf in 1989, Mamba in 1998, and Patriot in 2006. That's an average of slightly more than 9 years between major investments. So, with the current rate, I see the park getting it's next major attraction in 2015, with some minor attractions thrown in in 2009 and 2012 (think a giant frisbee or family oriented coaster). Anyway, the Knott's coaster looks sorta...lame? How can you have a family coaster with a 48" height requirement? Same with Jaguar, it makes no sense...

The SFGAm one was/is the worst. The best is the one at SFMM (of the three Six FLags ones).

I can only imagine there has got to be a large amount of money to be made if a company can start offering "We will re-track your traditional woodie, with a pre-fab track system." Parks at that point parks really COULD re-market that ride. Can you IMAGINE what a ride like GhostRider would be like if they re-tracked with that type of system? I do wonder, are any US based companies researching making woodies with this type of system. At least it can be an option that they offer. GCI? TGG? You guys even thinking about it? --Robb Yeah, it's a great idea, but I think there are two problems. 1. Ingenieur-Holzbau Cordes and Herr Stengel own the patents for this style of fabrication. Unless they sell it to GG or GCI (which I can't imagine they would, or if they did it would be an enormous amount of money), they are the only people who can make it. 2. I think the cost of fabricating track for a pre-existing structure would be prohibitive. It would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to make the track fit perfectly, and unlike traditional wooden coasters, the track cannot be reprofiled to fit the support structure. In this sense, the track is like steel coaster track because you cannot modify it post-factory. I honestly think it would be about the same price to do a pre-fab retrack as it would be to build the same roller coaster from scratch again. I have no idea what a traditional retrack would run, but I would bet a prefab retrack would be 10 times more expensive due to the engineering obstacles. Just my two cents. Back on topic, it should be a good ride, I've heard Gerstlauer trains have gotten much better in the past few years.

She's terribly unfunny, I wouldn't mind at all if her show/all her gigs got cancelled.

I'm sorry that my post made me sound pissed off, I didn't mean to come off like that. I realize that they get attention too, it's just I don't think that Balder being #3 instead of #1 will make too much of a difference. If you're an enthusiast and you want to go ride Balder, you're going to do it because you know it's a good ride thanks to a lot of other enthusiasts' positive feedback. Personally, I would love to take a trip to Scandinavia, not just for coasters, but as a leisure trip. Balder being #3 or even #20 instead of number #1 wouldn't change my plans to go to Liseberg, because I've heard about how great it is.

And? Who cares about some stupid poll? I personally don't need one to tell me what my favorite ride is. I can pick that without a popularity vote or mass consensus. And you know what? If some random enthusiast from France thinks Balder sucks, that's one less person waiting in front of you when you go to ride it. Plus, if it's running better, that makes it even sweeter that the lines are (even a tiny bit) shorter. Yay for it running better though, there are plenty of coasters that could use that...

That's an easy one for SFoG. I guess Joe would beg to differ, but it's Goliath...

Wait, that's not the same thing? Oh yeah, nice TR by the way.

B&M had no involvement. That rumor needs to die. Both DF and Kumba were to be Arrows. However, after Arrow failed to deliver with DF and after BGT management decided they wanted a loop around the lift (which Arrow "couldn't do" ), Busch went with B&M. B&M had nothing to do with DF.

Haha, now Spyker can't get last! Poor guys race dead last every week unless someone crashes.

lol The only coaster worth riding at Carowinds is Top Gun. Borg and Vortex suck something awful. You know your park needs some new attractions when the 2nd best ride is a wild mouse. And what's up with retractable seatbelts on the woodies? They added them a couple years back before the CF aquisition and effectively killed the outbound airtime on Thunder Road (there was none on the return run to be killed). What a mess of a park...

^I can tell you where the trouble spots are. There are two of them. The first one is the inversely banked hills (mainly the first one). They give quite a nasty jolt to the knees. The other problem spot (and IMO the worst part of the ride) is the area before and after the third and final overbank. The turning back and forth is unnecessary and painful. If they fixed those two, they would be good to go. "I honestly don't know why they didn't go with Clair and his gang -- they haven't made a dud since Gwazi!" And they haven't made a truly great coaster since, let's see, ummm....ever? To be honest, GCI rides are fun, but they are not super thrilling or filled with airtime. Fun, but not epic like Voyage. And Gwazi wasn't a dud, BGA just has no idea how to take care of the damn thing.

Way to steal my awesome idea. In the same vein, I would do nothing. I would just sit on my ass all day and do absolutely nothing.

Sorry for the double post....

This: Newest dorm addition

^Whatever the park building it wants to call it. There is no logic behind the naming process. If there was, a 400 ft. coaster would be known as a Teracoaster. I think Heide Park's Intamin Megacoaster that would have broken 400 feet was to be called a Teracoaster, but it was never built. Shame...

Rap.... No one cares how paid you are or how much ass you get......stupid, be original.

Yeah, I used to play quite frequently and was on the middle school and high school J-V team back in 9th grade. My handicap has been right around 12-15 for 4-5 years now, since I don't really play that much (once a month). I did shoot a 124 on 27 holes the other day. Combining my best two 9 holes, I shot an 80, which is my best for 18 holes. My best for 9 is 38.

Gary Sinise at the Masters one year....no picture Oh, and obviously Tiger Woods at the Masters too.

Those were park made decisions. It's the same engineering core, but they are doing it a lot differently than they used to under Denise Dinn's management. They can now design and build it to the specs that they see fit, instead of the cheapest possible specs. The rides are much different, if you haven't picked up on that yet, it shouldn't take too many more. When was the last time you saw CCI's with those kinds of transitions, shaping, and banking angles? Oh, you haven't? That's what I thought as well. It's a different company with different goals and design style than CCI. As far as Intamins requiring less retracking, it's because they don't use traditional wooden construction. I've ridden it at night, and it is still my number 4 (and I haven't ridden that many great wooden coasters). 1. Voyage 2. El Toro 3. Shivering Timbers 4. Thunderhead My favorite, as you may have guessed, is GG, followed by Intamin, GCI, and Vekoma (current makers only).

And the rest of the hils on the entire ride? All at or around 0g. The airtime on that hill certainly isn't 0g, but the effect of the sudden drop adds to the effect that the airtime is strong ejector airtime.

Right....it's so wrong that you couldn't find the time to point out anything wrong with it? Haha, what a thought provoking and insightful post you've made! Thanks for contributing! B&M's Megacoasters rarely (if ever) go far into the negative vertical g range. They tend to go for a parabolic hill that will produce exactly 0g (or at most -0.2 gs). It's just one facet of their overengineering of rides. I am well aware of the fact that greater negative g's produce more of an "ejector" style of airtime. However, if you haven't ridden a B&M Megacoaster, I can tell you from personal experience that they do not have "ejector" airtime. They have a very precisely controlled and sustained "floater" style of airtime. Additionally, increasing negative vertical g's does nothing for the "amount" of airtime. That depends on a plethora of factors like hill shape, train speed, etc. Increasing negative vertical g's increases the "strength" of the airtime. Also, on a slightly unrelated note, I would hesitate to believe that you are 20 years old. Of course, I have no way of knowing, but it seems to me that a 20 year old would be slightly more capable of forming and expressing coherent thoughts than that post demonstrates. I'll address your self Q&As one by one. -Ahhh, you see, these trains are worse than their current design. Although it is only the equivalent of one car, each train does hold four fewer riders, lowering capacity slightly. It's not a huge deal, but when combined with the other factors, it will make a difference. -Loading times will absolutely be increased for two reasons. First off, the train is longer (at the very least 1.5 to 1.75 times longer than the current trains) and has alternating "in" and "out" seats. This means it will take ride operators longer to check harnesses. Secondly, if the strange seating arrangement doesn't throw riders off (which it undoubtedly will, even if a small amount), it will present problems for riders with loose articles. Note that if the rider on the load side in the back row of each car crosses over to place loose articles on the loading dock and the rider on the unload side pulls down his/her restraints, it will be quite difficult for the loose article rider to get back to his/her seat. -I was referring to the fact that in the front car, there will now only be two truly "front row" seats, and the seats in the second row of the front car will have their views obstructed slightly. In other rows it doesn't make much of a difference. B&M are certainly not idiots, but this design does not seem entirely thought out.

That is the absolute worst logic I have ever heard. The thing was just freaking designed. You design a ride to operate without trims. If they are necessary later, then the design was a bit off or more intense than expected, and the trims will help the ride to be less intense/last longer. However, you do not design a ride that has trims on three consecutive hills to begin with. It's completely nonsensical. Just lower the first drop and remove the trims. For example, you wouldn't build a coaster with the following elements: 200 foot first hill Heavy trim brake 90 foot second hill 75 foot third hill 55 foot fourth hill 40 foot helix 45 foot MCBR 3 hops with height below 30 feet Instead, you would just make the lift shorter, thereby saving money on: A. Track/catwalks B. Supports C. Lift chain (and chain maintenance) D. Installation of lift track/supports E. Installation and maintenance of trim brakes F. Accessories for trim brakes (computer controls, pressurized air tanks, etc.) Reducing the number of trims reduces maintenance costs to a certain point. It is just dumb to overengineer a ride to the point that you have a trim before each hill to ensure that the force is exactly 0g. Just design the ride well in the first place and have confidence in your design. This will make the ride more enjoyable, and will also prevent the park from turning the trims up, killing the ride experience (Raging Bull, Silver Star). Additionally, the ride should be designed to last. If there are welds breaking on the trains, you f***ed up as a designer, both on the train design and track design. No trims are going to fix poor design. In the end, it's about confidence in design. I tell you what, if I was shelling out $26 million, I'd want a hell of a lot more confidence in design from B&M than they/Stengel GmbH are displaying right now. Ridiculous amounts of overengineering. Actually, the view is fine from 4-across, it's the exact same from each seat. With this, the view will be obstructed a bit on the back/side seats. Fewer riders per train Longer load times Partially obstructed views So dumb.....