JeromyL's Content - Page 24 - Theme Park Review

There is always a chance... I hope Magic Mountain someday takes the opportunity. If they marketed the whole "restoration" properly (in a NON-YOLO way) it could be a huge success for them. That would be dreadful. We have enough rip your face off short rides at the park. Seatbelts maybe, but the bars work fine on Shock Wave, Mind Bender, sooperdooperLooper, Montezooma's and Scorpion. Heck yeah! Those train bodies are classic! You crazy!? The shape of those dramatic hills diving all over the hillside are a work of art. You can have wild speed bumps on other rides. The progression of the bigger drops and curves are what make this ride so special (well, before the painful shoulder bars). I did my Senior Engineering project on the ride back in 1995. My finding was that the shoulder bars were there mainly to keep riders upright while entering and exiting the loop; the immediate entrance and exit to the loop are a hair too tight. It's very subtle, but it's a different radius than what was later used on sooperdooperLooper (and then even different for the Anton loopers after that). Also, the approach is different on those rides; the acceleration happens earlier so riders are better prepared for the G spike in the loop.) I figured you could re-profile the long ramp to a very slightly steeper angle, and have a much larger pull-out before the loop. Same thing after the loop... This is very expensive, of course. My other plan of action was to come up with new lap bars with a higher grab bar to encourage riders to sit upright. The universe saw my idea and the bars appeared later on Premier coasters! There were most likely similar bars on other coaster, but it was cool anyway. Ironically, I had a call from Peter Schnabel of Premier after my Senior project, but the interview never happened. (I'm no longer in the Engineering field, btw. Good luck to my fellow coaster nerds looking to get into parks/coasters! Get to know EVERYONE! That summer of 1995, I was an intern at SFOT and had the pleasure of meeting the whole group of SF engineers. Unfortunately, the internship didn't include much engineering and I ended up doing game management most of the summer culminating in a little hands-on with the interactive "Chameleon" up-charge ride. It was the first year of the intern program and they didn't know what to do with us. Good thing is they let us work whatever we wanted so I got to spend a few days on the wood coasters. I was pushing for some cool stuff, but most of it never happened. Thanks to then SFOT Bob Bennet, I was able to meet those engineers. At the end of summer, I transferred to Magic Mountain. They were so unorganized when I got there, I ended up leaving and going back home to Chicago.) I figure mag brakes would be a given, sooperdooperLooper got em for it's restoration. The other Anton coasters in the chain could use em too! Yup! One train would pull right behind the other, same as Whizzer at Great America (Whizzer doesn't unload there anymore). Yes! I often think rides in trees look nice painted to match the trees, but the white really POPS and like the shape of the hills, is one of the ride's hallmarks. 3 at minimum. The ride originally had 6. I think it comfortably ran 5 back in the day. Ha! Imagine how great this ride would be running like it did originally but with all the current trees!? So cool and dark under those trees on a nice summer night! I remember the accident, but not sure if the system has been changed? I always remembered the loud drive chain pushing a train onto the lift, then another train being pulled into the station after that. When the ride was new, two trains were lined up in the station; the single chain would push one train onto the lift while another was pulled from unload to load at the same time (I never saw that, but that's what someone told me). I remember seeing 4 trains for sure operate.