Jackdude101

...you think indoor roller coasters are better with the lights on.

I'd modify the height of Millennium Force so that it is slightly taller than Steel Dragon 2000 (it only needs to be a about ten feet taller), so that it can be the new record holder for tallest, non-launching roller coaster. Cedar Fair could go about this by saying that they are going to replace the lift hill supports with nicer-looking supports like those found on Inimidator 305 and during that process, raise the lift hill height. This may also raise its max speed and could take that record, also (again, for non-launching roller coasters).

Would you happen to have some sort of online source for this juicy info? If so, I can add it to the ride's Wikipedia page so the world can see.

Wild unproven theory time: the manufacturer of the Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts roller coaster is the Canadian company Dynamic Attractions and is the first of their SFX Coaster models to be built, which was coincidentally announced officially to the public on 18 June. A few posts back, someone mentioned that this same ride system could be used for a new ride in the Jurassic Park area in the future and it would not be surprising if Universal had a similar copy of the same ride in a neighboring park. Here is the page where you can see video and a pic of a ride layout for the SFX Coaster: http://www.dynamicattractions.com/products/sfx-coaster/. I wonder if people lucky enough to have already ridden Escape from Gringotts see any similarities between it and the pic of the Dynamic Attractions SFX Coaster Layout. Incidentally, these guys, in collaboration with British company RoboCoaster (using robotic arms manufactured by German company KUKA), are confirmed to have made the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride.

Does anyone know any specifics for the Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts roller coaster? The manufacturer, height, length, speed, etc. rcdb.com has absolutely nothing right now and Google is no help either.

Does anyone happen to know the maximum TRACK height of the Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars roller coaster? The track length stat is all over (3,600 ft. / 1,100 m) and the speed stat in a few places (35 mph / 56 kph), but the only thing I could find height-wise was the height of the mountain facade, which is 88 feet (a key number in the attraction).

I have theorized that the 79 foot stat may be the height of the mountain facade. I don't necessarily automatically trust stat information given out by the parks themselves, because they only truely care about accuracy with this stuff to the point that they can easily market it, which leads to them making more money. Example: it's much easier to market the ride as being 1,000 feet long instead of 1,093 feet long, even though its not the correct figure. Ultimately, neither the parks nor the GP care too much about this stuff, so there is minimal motivation to have a precise stat sheet for their rides (which would be totally awesome, imho).

Oh crap, you're right! Canada's Wonderland DOES have more coasters now than Cedar Point! Even if you are audacious like me and count twin roller coasters as two separate roller coasters, the parks tie with their coaster counts.

So...the stats of Wonder Mountain's Guardian are... Height: 59 ft / 18 m Length: 1,093 ft / 333 m Does anyone happen to know the speed stat? Based on what little video footage there is, it looks like it may only be around 20-25 mph.

For anyone interested, I successfully uncovered the exact tech specs for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train from what I assuming to be a reliable source here: http://www.parkworld-online.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/2641/Seven_Dwarfs_Mine_Train.html Manufacturer: Vekoma First drop: 41 feet Second drop: 31 feet Track length: 2,000 feet Speed: 34 mph If you need a frame of reference to make sense of these stats, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad in the same park has a max track height (not the height of the mountain peak) of 45 feet, is 2,780 feet long, and goes 36 mph. Although Seven Dwarfs is shorter, it is supposed to have a couple of dark ride segments where the train is slowed to a crawl, so the total ride time should be about the same as Big Thunder Mountain. I also added these stats to its Wikipedia article and emailed Duane Marden to get the word out.

^^^Thanks, Garet! I chose the last picture and it is now on the Wikimedia Commons here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DisneySea_Electric_Railway.jpg.

Wow! Looks like I (accidentally) timed this request perfectly! Now I have the "It's a Small World" theme stuck in my head. Thank you for offering to take some legit pics of the railway!

A few days ago, I created this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Disney_Parks, which summarizes every rail system, past and present, to operate in a Disney Park on one page. One of the article's features is a series of picture galleries that have one pic for every currently-operating railway...EXCEPT FOR the DisneySea Electric Railway in Tokyo DisneySea. Unlike the other railways, which have pics available on the Wikimedia Commons here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, there isn't a single pic available for the DisneySea Electric Railway (not even one where its way off in the background in another pic). This is where you guys come in. Do any of you well-travelled types have a half-way decent pic that you personally took of the DisneySea Electric Railway that you will allow to be released to the public domain, uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons, and linked to the Rail transport in Disney Parks Wikipedia article? You can either upload the pic yourself and post the link for it here, or post the pic itself here and I will upload it (though, I think doing the former option would be better). Also, no text typed onto the pic is ideal. I attached a pic of the DisneySea Electric Railway, found elsewhere on the Internet, to this topic for reference.

I think I have the answer, based on translating the DisneySea Electric Railway's Japanese-language Wikipedia article (no English version exists, atm): in 1983, Japanese rail regulations required that any railroad, even amusement park railroads, must be treated like conventional railroads if they have more than one stop/station. If they have more than one station, the operator is required, among other things, to charge fares to passengers and is forbidden to use open-sided passenger cars. To avoid these types of things that would essentially "kill" the Western River Railroad in Tokyo Disneyland before it even opened, Oriental Land Company chose to have only one station for the railroad. Later, in 1987, Japanese rail regulations were relaxed, which allowed the DisneySea Electric Railway, opened in 2001, to have two stations and function as a normal amusement park railroad without having to charge fares. Side note: the Disney Resort Line (Tokyo Disney Resort's monorail), which also opened in 2001 and has four stations, requires a separate fare to ride, so it seems these Japanese rail regulations were only relaxed a little.

^^^Eh...it's close enough for government work.

I did! No response. I have e-mailed a few other parks about their park railroads asking for this same information, and I have had a 0% success rate. Parks are very tight-lipped about revealing technical aspects for their rides to individuals, which I have found out the hard way. I have found work-arounds for most of them, though, like this work-around for the Zephyr Railroad. The only other park railroad that is still a mystery to me is the cable train at the end of the Marvel Cave attraction in Silver Dollar City. I THINK its track might be 48 inches wide (an unusual gauge), but I have no way of proving it.

After an exhaustive search for the Zephyr Railroad's track gauge, I decided to find it indirectly. In short, I have confirmed that the Zephyr Railroad's track gauge is 24 inches using the picture below. I researched the exact height dimension of that orange Igloo cooler to the left of the tracks and found that it is 23.25 inches tall (source: http://www.target.com/p/igloo-10-gallon-seat-top-beverage-cooler-with-cup-dispenser/-/A-10281492#prodSlot=medium_1_0&term=igloo+10+gal+cooler). If you copy the part of the image with just the cooler and paste it horizontally over the tracks, it fits inside the tracks with about one pixel row to spare on each side. So, based on this analysis, we can infer that Zephyr Railroad's track gauge is less than one inch wider than the height of an Igloo 10 Gallon Seat Top Beverage Cooler, which equates to 24 inches. This is not surprising, as this is a very common track gauge for amusement park railroads, such as those using Chance Rides C.P. Huntington trains, which are all 24-inch gauge. Feel free to tell me your opinion of this finding, and whether you think its genius, makes sense, or just nuts.

Yeah, it was first opened in 1935. Ironically, most park trains you see that resemble steam trains (though are diesel underneath) operating today are younger than Zephyr!

As a frame of reference, the Disneyland railroad and the Six Flags Over Texas railroad are 36-inch gauge, while the Lagoon railroad and the Canobie Lake Park railroad are 24-inch gauge. Also, the other railroad at Dorney Park, the Cedar Creek Cannonball, is 30-inch gauge.

I've searched high and low for the Zephyr's track gauge (space between the rails), but unlike many other park railroads where I could easily find this info, I can't for this one (probably because it's custom-built and not pulled by a steam engine). I also tried e-mailing Dorney Park, but of course, since it's a big corporate park, I never got a response. Do you any of you guys happen to know the Zephyr's track gauge? It is probably 24-inch or smaller.

^^^Thanks!

I found this image on the train's manufacturer's website here: http://www.severn-lamb.com/lincoln.asp Can any of you well-traveled people tell me the park where this train is located? It is a newer train named Nairobi Express built by Severn Lamb (UK) and appears to be somewhere in East Asia.

Special shout out to the Tweetsie Railroad in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. It's an oddball amusement park in that it has a legit, historical train ride around the park like many heavyweight parks, and yet it only has low-to-mid-tier carnival-type rides and no roller coasters. Also, fun fact, the guys that opened Tweetsie Railroad in 1957 also opened the Rebel Railroad in 1961, the park that would later become Dollywood. Tweetsie Railroad is still independently owned and basically looks like Dollywood pre-1986 before Dolly Parton's involvement.

I mentioned in my last post that three foot gauge railroads outside North America (mainly the US) are rare. Here are two more parks outside the control of US companies in unlikely places with three foot gauge railroads: Kuwait Entertainment City (Kuwait City, west of downtown) http://www.steamlocomotive.info/vlocomotive.cfm?Display=19844 Al Zawra’a Dream Park (Baghdad, near the former Green Zone) http://www.steamlocomotive.info/vlocomotive.cfm?Display=19838 These two railroads also have a notorious relationship. Kuwait Entertainment City first bought its train from a US company named Crown Metal Products and was either present at the park's opening in 1984, or starting sometime later in the 1980s. Later in the early 1990s, Iraqi forces took the train during their invasion of Kuwait and Saddam Hussein had it installed at the Al Zawra'a park complex in downtown Baghdad (hence the same very unusual track gauge for that part of the world). Kuwait Entertainment City later bought a brand-new locomotive from a British company named Severn Lamb who had it installed in 1995 and it still runs today. The railroad at the Al Zawra'a park complex still runs, but the locomotive in use looks like some makeshift diesel locomotive and not an American-themed steam locomotive. It's possible that the Crown locomotive in Baghdad was eventually lost during Operation Desert Storm or possibly even Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Another possibility is that the people put in charge of running the locomotive found out the hard way that running and maintaining a legit steam locomotive is a pain-in-the-ass even with the right skill sets and experience, so it may very well have simply broken down with no one knowing how to fix it and had it scrapped. Anyway, next time any of you guys are in Baghdad and you decide to check out Al-Zawra Dream Park (perhaps to see the new Vekoma SLC that is opening soon), make sure to get your ride credit on the park's railroad, the strangest and most nefarious park railroad in the world.

Special shout-out to the Santa Fé Express located in Fort Fun Abenteuerland. Through my research, I believe it is the most legit American-themed park railroad in a park that was neither built nor run by US-based companies. It's because it has a true steam locomotive and not a steam outline (diesel made to look like a steamer) and because the track gauge is three feet, which was a very common narrow gauge in late 19th Century North America and Ireland, but hardly anywhere else. http://www.steamlocomotive.info/vlocomotive.cfm?Display=10284