willski

lol I can list you about 20 coasters that could be great but are killed by trims. This one has a trim on three consecutive hills! I think it could be because B&M are not certain of the characteristics of these new vehicles, which IMO are absolutely terrible. They have enough problems filling every seat on Goliath at SFoG, so it seems B&M decided to make it even harder. I can see lots of empty seats as a result of this really poor design. The old trains could seat 4 more riders in a lot less space and were easier to load and check. Oh yeah, and they looked better too. The design has some potential, but the trims will kill it. Silver Star v2.0.

None of those rides have MCBRs.......... The best would be Kumba or Dragon Khan. Raptor is okay after MCBR, really it only has the helix going for it, the rest is boring and drawn out.

Well, the model name is "Water Coaster", so I'd say that it counts. Also, it has road, guide, and upstop wheels, like almost every modern coaster (log rides do not have that).

Yeah, definately make sure when (and if) you return to SFoG to ride Cyclone in the second to back. It's a bit rough, but the ejector air on 3 or 4 of the drops is amazingly violent. Also, the operators don't mind if you have your lapbar down only one or two clicks, as they pull up on the bar to check it. It's a great ride, especially when running well (and when the trims are off, but I haven't experienced that in over two years now).

As stated earlier, it's doubtful that very many people will pay full price admission (like any theme park). However, I think it's a bit ridiculous to pay $71 and get a single day (maybe 8 hours) in an exceedingly lackluster park like MGM Studios. For two dollars cheaper, I was able to purchase a season pass good for unlimited visits to any Six Flags theme park, plus the benefits/coupons that come with the season pass. Now, I realize that the market is extremely different (SFoG has no comptetition, whereas Central Florida is, well, Central Florida), but I still think it's ridiculous. Instead of complaining about how overpriced Disney is, perhaps you should spend your money elsewhere or on a non park related trip. Better still, save your money and your vacation time, so when you do have enough money, you can do the "Disney thing" the right way. Only $19 more at Carowinds.... Yes, and back in the day rides on the Cyclone were a nickel and you could buy a car + a 2,500 sq. ft. house for under $3,500.....

Yeah don't. You'll waste your money unless it's a Saturday. If you go on a Tues, Wed, or Thurs and plan decently (get there at opening), you can do everything by 2. No need to spend any more than you already have to.

Haha, the devil thing with the guitar on the go cart reminded me of an SNL skit with Will Ferrell. Fred's Slacks is a winner!

^Most likely he was removing the upstops/uncoupling the cars so a crane could lift the cars off the track. That is not the best outcome, but it will get there with time. The problem is that they really have no way of wearing in the bearings other than running it, but they don't want to valley it again. I would think the best time would be a bit earlier (4-5 pm) when the grease is warmest and thinnest. Also, they could try more or less weight in the trains. They know what they're doing-it will be ready when it's ready.

^Yeah, any racing car would be great, open-wheeled or not. I actually have looked into getting lessons at Road Atlanta (which is about an hour from my house), but it is so expensive and there's such a small chance of breaking into anything. I do cart race, which is great fun, but there aren't enough tracks in Georgia, at least non-dirt tracks, because I'm not racing my street-tuned cart on dirt and messing it up.

Rock the Bells this past weekend in NYC. Parts of it were the sickest show I have ever been to, RATM was amazing (of course), as was Public Enemy. Really though, the rest was not all that great, as I'm not really a fan of hip-hop (and that's pretty much what the festival was with a few exceptions). A good time for sure though. I think I'm going to go to the Voodoo Music Festival in New Orleans now to see Rage for the second time. Great show.

I rode it this week and it did. You could see the brakes close and open. When did you last ride it? If it didn't do it then, i can tell you it is doing it now. June 3rd and this coming Saturday. I seriously doubt they would turn it on, as the Koch's have always been against trimming or otherwise slowing any of their coasters. They run them as they should be, which is great (hence the lack of trims on Raven and Legend).

^Yeah, Ted is right. They absolutely do not slow the ride down with the MCBR.

Centripedal acceleration. There is no such thing as centrifugal force as you define it. It is simply a normal force exerted due to centripedal acceleration. EDIT: Wow, what the heck happened? Were they evacuating the ride when this happened, or did the restraints just pop open? Definately not good.

Ok. When a ride has two stations, you can't place your loose articles in bins to pick them up after the ride, because they won't be there. Therefore, you have to have lockers in front of the ride for people to store their loose articles. If the park wants to charge a dollar for necessary lockers, that's not a big deal. I do think it's a bit stupid to charge more for lockers that aren't necessary and force people to use them. If you want to provide lockers on a ride where they aren't necessary and make them mandatory, they should be free for a certain amount of time (a la Universal). If you have to charge more to get in the park to make the lockers free (also a la Universal), so be it, I'm buying a season pass anyway. Plus, higher ticket and season pass prices would help to keep some of the riff-raff out.

^Because you have to have lockers or something on rides with separate load-unload stations (MF and TTD). SFoG doesn't have to do this, they're doing it only to make money and it's a pain in the ass.

You are correct in that it isn't trailered, but you are sitting in a different position in the front of the car than in the back. In the front of a car you are basically sitting near the middle of the car with your feet and arms extended to the front of the car. In the back you are sitting over the wheel with your feet and arms extended to the middle of the car. The difference is extremely noticable on Gerstlauer trains. Anyway, to answer the question, anywhere in the back car is great for me. I know, I was just saying, there are 2 wheel assemblies and 2 seats. Except with one you're right on top of them, and the other your feet are right on top of them.

I think the reason so many people are annoyed by this is because it's an obvious money-making scheme. The park should have said "no comment", but instead chose to say it was to increase capacity. First off, Goliath has no problems with capacity-even on busy days the line is short. Second, the reason the ride is slow loading is because the ride ops are terrible. They could not walk any slower or be any more slack in checking restraints. Capacity my ass, they just want to make money. And that's what is causing all the uproar.

Well, the ride is only 4400 feet long, and it was kinda shoehorned into the park (hence the 45 degree lift hill). If they had added a second station or MCBR to enable 3 trains, the ride would not have nearly as many air hills. It didn't make sense to go with three trains when the ride is only 4400 feet, since if they could run three trains, it would stack and probably double stack. Maybe it's not annoying or ridiculous to you, but you've been a coaster enthusiast for an extremely long amount of time. You know what to expect when going to parks. The general public (99% of all park visitors) is certainly not as well informed or prepared when visiting a theme park. They tend to focus more on the visit as a whole and don't micromanage things the way enthusiasts do. Hence, the outcry against this rule, because although it won't affect enthusiasts, it will most certainly effect parkgoers in general.

That's the problem. The ride only has two trains and no mid-course blcok brake, so the train can't leave the lift until the other one is in the station. This creates a capacity ceiling that even the fastest load/unload times can't break. Speeding up load/unload helps a tiny bit, but the ride still takes about a minute from lift peak to final brakes, so the best method to get good hourly capacity is to just not stack the trains. With last year's crew, speeding the loading up would have actually caused more problems, as the PLC got touchy if the train climbing the lift had to slow to allow the other train to clear the final brakes. It actually got stuck a couple of times on the lift and they did a full evac. On Goliath, unlike most other coasters, there really is a dispatch interval/capacity limit, and last year's crew did a pretty good job of hitting that. This year's crew, however, sucks and stacks train like crazy. The locker thing doesn't seem to help them either. What they really need is a head op/team lead who is competent, efficient, and motivates the other ride ops to move at more than a snail's pace. Unfortunately, they won't find that with the wages and hours they offer, so the new locker rule will become solely a money-making scheme and will have no real effect on ride operations (other than lowering the number of people riding and pissing people off).

Erm, every seat is a wheel seat. The train isn't trailered. Neither is Georgia Cyclone's. So you're over a wheel seat no matter what. It does so happen that the front of the car tracks better than the back of each car. My favorite seat is the very front, although the back is very good too. I just couldn't take that beating anymore after a while (around 20 of my 30 rides were in the back two cars).

Not at all. In fact, the loading was actually slower today with the new policy in effect than in the past. Every train but one stacked today. Really, it is a money making scam, just like splitting up a lot and leaving most of it empty so they can charge $15/$20 parking. It really is getting ridiculous.

I went earlier today for about 45 minutes (I was 5 minutes away looking at the new sewer tunnels in Atlanta, so I figured why not). I rode Goliath once, Acrophobia once, and Cyclone once. Goliath's lockers made no sense to me. If you desparetly want people to not take loose articles on the ride, make the lockers free for a short time (a la Universal). I saw plenty of people jamming a cell phone, wallet, keys, and camera into a tiny cargo pocket. IMO, the stuff was more likely to fall out because of the stupid rules. The sad thing is, they had 3 people staffing the lockers to "force" you to put stuff in, while they had 6 people staffing the actual ride, which was stacking. Honestly, before this policy, I've seen ride ops not stack the ride during a time period of 3-4 hours, while today, it stacked every time but one. Whatever the policy is designed for, it certainly doesn't speed up loading intervals, because they were awfully slow today. Also, they had no one staffing the Flash Pass line at any point, so people just walked up and cut in front of a good part of the line. Plus, there is no shade in front of the station. That's what bothers me the most about Goliath-the shading was poorly done for a park in the south with all asphalt paths. Stupid. The locker stuff doesn't affect me, but it is still rather pointless.

Yeah, it's because instead of waiting a year to get PTCs or finding them secondhand, they went with a pair of secondhand Gerstlauer trains, which are crap to begin with. Add 6 years of use on the Hurricane at the Pavilion (with no retracking) and you have some trains that not only track poorly, but also have terrible padding. I think they should custom order some of the new PTC 1-bench trains for next season, maybe that would help salvage the coaster a bit more.

Guy Fawkes* Well, I would guess a new area, but then where would employee parking go?

You enter the park and stay right towards Demon Drop. They'll look at your info there.