BrandonR

Texas Giant was a very, very temperamental roller coaster, but I think its biggest problem was that it was a giant wooden coaster that sat through 20 brutally hot Texas summers. That kind of heat does horrific wonders on wooden coasters, and the Giant was no exception. And even though it basically turned into crap the last several seasons, if you were lucky and rode it after a good rain storm, it was actually somewhat tolerable.

Not this again...

I went Friday (HitP opening) and I think they had removed some of it (it was dark and I didn't really study it), notably the skateboarding guy up in the air between some of the first turns on the ride. Everything else seemed to still be there.

To me it just meant they're going to keep their current Looney Tunes and DC Comics-themed rides and introduce new rides at the same rate of themed ones as they've done in the past, not necessarily do more than what they normally do...

Not sure if it's been mentioned yet but it's pretty much official now: http://www.latimes.com/travel/deals/themeparks/la-trb-six-flags-retheme-20101122,0,3267615.story Good riddance to those thinly-veiled corporate advertisements that genericized the parks! It's just too bad the Tony Hawk Big Spin rides are just being renamed "Big Spin" rather than, you know, unique ride names and themes that actually make sense depending on what area of the park they're placed in for each park. Currently Tony Hawk at SFoT is basically located in the Boomtown section of the park, where every other ride has an old, mining theme to it. So of course Tony Hawk and his extreme skateboarding skills fit right in...

Seems like it'd just be cheaper to rent a cherry picker/boom lift to get some aerial shots.

For those expecting to take some pictures during Holiday in the Park, don't expect any aerial shots. The tower is closed during the event, and so is Chute-Out due to the Christmas lights they put on each.

This comment was totally uncalled for and completely disrespectful to all the members of TPR. Who the hell are you to tell people that they should have only voted for SFoT? And who the hell are you to blame the members of TPR for it? I think they made great choices that do a good job showcasing the diversity of the major landmarks in the DFW area. Wow, way to totally overblow my half-joking comment there, buddy. And in case you can't read, I made the topic to try and get SFoT voted in and I still appreciate everyone's effort. But seriously, someone needs to calm down... In the world of message board posts, mine was about as tame and non-disrespectful as they get. "Completely disrespectful to all the members of TPR."

Looks like SFoT didn't make the cut: http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2010/nov/17/legoland-discovery-center-miniland-will-feature-el/ Of course if you people had voted only for SFoT and not helped other entries get votes, maybe it would have made it! Oh well. It'll still be a fun exhibit.

Those of us that have been to the site all summer have repeated ourselves quite a few times saying there is plenty of room. Even if you can't see it in photos, in person it's a lot different. People still wanted to continue the topic because they seem to think the people who have seen it in person somehow know less? Anyway, it's a closed issue now... I hope. Hey now, the few times I [briefly] looked at it up close in person I still thought it was a tight fit (at least in the turns where the wheel would be more likely to hit the plate)... But in retrospect I suppose it's probably a decent enough gap when compared to the total width of each rail (which of course means there's quite a bit of unused space on both sides of the running rail).

I'll gladly admit I was wrong about the bolt plates being a permanent addition on the rails, but in my defense, it's hard to judge the size and scale of the plates to the track in the photos because apparently the new rails are so much larger than the old rails, if the space between the plates are indeed larger than the running rails of the original ride (which of course means the new rails are huge).

You know all of this armchair engineering is really kind of silly and pointless. Do you think they'd spend 10 million dollars on a project and casually forget that part of the track won't be able to support the forces? Or that they'd not run dynamic simulations and FEA on the structure and forces experienced by the passenger? I'm sure minor changes are likely, but major re-profiling and trimming? I'll say unlikely, assuming they did all the correct modeling and simulation.

Why do you think it won't open on time? The track work is nearly done, and I suspect it'll be complete within the next few weeks. That gives them more than three months for testing and tweaking before the park opens in March. Unless something is severely wrong, I don't see why it would be delayed until June.

It wouldn't surprise me, there's a lot of places the track likely needs adjustments or modified supports, such as here: http://www.coastercon.com/html/giant_c_29.html

Yeah, the park is closed til November 26 but the ACE Coaster Con website has new pictures up, showing a lot of progress has been done: More are here: http://www.coastercon.com/html/giant-album.html

So there's some new Legoland Discovery thingy opening near Dallas, TX and they're taking votes for which local attraction to re-create. And what better local attraction could be re-created than Six Flags over Texas?! Please click here and vote for Six Flags over Texas to be re-created in Lego! It says you can vote for up to 3 items but why you'd want to help another option win is beyond me. You can vote once per day until November 15. Let's get this done, TPR!

That banked hill before the turn under the helix looks unreal.

Meh, it's only for a day so I wonder if they'll even go through the trouble of changing the signs or anything.

Did you have a really long lens, and did your girlfriend also have a camera? If so, yeah I think I probably did see you. I'm sorry you had to visit the park on such a terrible day, as it was the most crowded I've seen it in a loooong time. I basically took my pictures and got the hell out of there as quickly as possible! I can assure you the park is much more pleasant when it's not jam-packed and the rides don't have ridiculously-long lines (but the Fort Worth zoo is really awesome too).

So it looks like the first overbanked turn is done: And the double helix has officially been replaced with a very tight low-to-the-ground turn under the helix that looks to be equally insane: I couldn't get any aerial shots as the Tower was closed due to high winds. I endured an insane number of people both at the park and at the nearby Texas Rangers stadium with the World Series game going on. Hope you people enjoy the update! There are a few more pictures here.

I plan on heading out to the park in a few hours and snapping some more pictures. Expect to see some updates this afternoon.

Is that even possible??

Yeah, I'd say gaps are pretty typical. If it's not gaps then it's supports not lining up with the track (I remember Titan had a support on the airtime hill that totally missed the track and that had to be re-done). When you think about it, a coaster track is a pretty complex system since its a continuous circuit and each track piece is going to have tolerances of probably a few millimeters. By the time they install the last piece, that tolerance stackup can be quite significant, especially when considering each track piece depends on a support which depends on a footer. To me, the fact that they can all these footers in land at various spots (with their own dimensional variations on top of the land's variation) and place supports on them (more variation, especially when supports consist of several pieces) and then track (even more variation) and have them the track fit snugly together is pretty amazing in the first place. Here's an image of a misalignment on the Giant's leadup to the midcourse that's probably a bit more unintentional:

Well in that case, an exceedingly few number of coasters have a "themed" experience during the actual ride; few enough for you to not whine about SFoT not having enough. Backpedal much?

Since when was a double helix "half" the ride anyway? Talk about hyperboles... Oh boo hoo, they removed the slowest and most boring part of the ride while simultaneously boosting the thrill on every other part. I really don't get some of these glass-half-empty comments... If you have any doubts whatsoever that this ride will not be heads-and-tails better over the old, ridiculously rough and unpleasant Giant, you need a psychiatric exam stat.