Comeagain?

Envelope testing! And something I don't know how to describe next to the track... Grain silo?

2015 hasn't been announced yet. Silverwood usually announces around January.

Yes, you can re-enter the park. No outside food or drink. At about 2:30 or so most people end up going to the waterpark meaning coaster lines are almost non-existent. (Personal opinion after opening Aftershock many times) don't run to shock. If you run anywhere at opening, go to Tremors or SpinCycle. Both will keep a fairly long line all day (which does shorten in the early afternoon like I mentioned) but after the initial rush Aftershock generally will have about a 15 minute wait. If it rains, everything except rides that can't run in rain due to their drive systems (Ferris Wheel, Tilt-a-Whirl, Trabant, Super Round Up, Sky Diver, Red Baron, Krazy Koaster) will remain open. Higher rides will close in lightning, but the park itself doesn't close for weather. Aftershock is pretty reliable by August, but there's really no way to tell if it'll be open when you're here until you get here.

Even a moderately efficient crew without the benefit of a grouper or lockers or anything can regularly hit 1:30 unload/load time. During West Coast Bash's Lunch, I asked that question, and they said they were getting 3 trains... The article with the POV video said they're getting 4 trains, with the goal of running 3 regularly. With 1 regularly out for maintenance.

Have no fear! Via Twitter...

Restraints "clicking up" is more common than you'd like to admit. But it comes from the restraint not completely latched in whatever "click" it's in when you leave the station. And the changing angle/forces of the lift/ride is enough to pop "out", since it was never actually "in". It's never a big difference in how tight the restraint is, but at the time because of the ride, you usually think it's much more dramatic. I had a guy claim his harness completely opened, but A) this is a GIB and it'd be obvious if you didn't have your harness on at the end, and B) if it were to have failed, the harness wouldn't lock again afterwards.

Diamondbacker27 happened.

I'm sorry but serious question people have been joking about the bolts but I'm actually wondering what happens to the can someone enlighten me? Nothing. The wheels will not hit the bolts. The trains don't move enough side-to-side for that to happen.

All year. It never really "starts" or "stops". Opening weekend this year we began talking about Halloween. By now we're thinking of internal improvements besides what the guests see.

The trick is to put the LEDs in the colored domes the incandescents were in. That's what we did when we started redoing the lighting on our SkyDiver and they don't look obnoxiously bright, still have (almost) the classic color, with the other benefits of LED.

Interesting. The original Corkscrew has the manual release pedals on the right side too. Wonder why that changed...

Strangely enough, we had to talk a couple of parents out of doing the same thing when they're kids were on a ride being evac'ed. Funny thing is, even if 911 dispatch got the call, they would contact the park and ask if we needed any help. We'd tell them we had it under control, and they wouldn't actually send anyone out. Also, the kids would have been safer and off quicker had we not had to evac them, since they were the only ones and now instead of simply waiting a few minutes to get the train back into the station, we had to completely stop and start manually unlocking harnesses and walking the kids down the tower.

Sometimes the height maximum is based on shoulder harnesses and the high probability that they won't close properly because of someone's shoulders. At least that's what we've been told as far as GIBs (and SpinCycle). And I've seen it happen, where someone's shoulders were high enough that the harness didn't actually close far enough.

I now think "That spot needs graphite..." After working a wooden coaster.

(I work in Rides at Silverwood) Trabant is a bad example, IMO. We have the rather slow loading and unloading because we regularly have operators (and guests) who hurt themselves in those stupid lap bars. Although 2 people shouldn't take more than 30 seconds at most to load and start (speaking from experience). Many ops don't seem to like to keep moving quickly though. As far as the woodies, the issue is that the ride isn't really long enough to have multiple trains. It'd take constant full staffing (which we've never had this year) whenever we were to run multiple trains. Even with 4 ops, cycles are around 3:10, and the rides themselves are about 1:20. There's not a lot of room for error or anything holding things up. I'm certainly not "happy" with how a few specific rides are ran, but some things we just can't control. As far as a Free-Spin for Silverwood, I'd love to see one at the park. Our coaster maintenance has more than proven themselves to be able to keep complicated coasters running. And, we generally like to do things that are slightly unorthodox.

Silverwood did it today too. Not sure how it went. I'm sure we'll see something about it soon.

Try clearing your cache and cookies. That usually solves most strange forum software confusions.

Considering it's just after midnight for some of us, it's not that impressive... I am happy to see Holiday World with what looks like it'll be an incredibly fun ride that most of their guests will enjoy. (Regardless of what the (incredibly whiny) coaster enthusiast community wants from the new ride).

Will the announcement be recorded for those of us who can't watch it live?

I would guess the added complexity and cost outweighs the benefit of a slightly larger lifting system to just "muscle through" the break run. I also was under the impression that the faster the car (for example) passed through the magnetic breaks the greater the force applied to the car is. So a slow moving gondola going up would have little resistance but a quickly dropping gondola would be slowed almost to a stop.

It's usually a manufacturer requirement. Just like Trabant and Sky Divers. The restraint is designed to hold two people and you keep each other in a proper riding position.

So in case you're curious. This thing is huge. And there is track sitting by the other building. Although not nearly as easy to speculate about as B&M track.

Isn't that the point of a test seat? Also, at what point are parks letting ride ops make a judgement call on safety? Most modern coaster restraints have sensors which indicate whether they are locked or not. If the restraint isn't locked the guest doesn't ride, seems straightforward to me. As a ride operator, I don't care what the sensor says on the seat. If the harness strap can't buckle, or the harness or lap bar won't click, or hasn't clicked two full times (for example) then I'm not going to let the person ride. Yeah, it sucks. It is one of my least favorite things to do. But it's incredibly straight forward. If all restraints aren't used entirely as designed, then the person can not ride. As you say, it's very straightforward. This comes mostly from working at SpinCycle, since the harness would click and the sensor would say the harness is locked while stationary. As soon as the person put enough pressure on the sensor it would think the harness was open, even though it wasn't, and e-stop the ride. I could easily turn away 50 people (out of ~70 cycles) a day. We had to trust what we heard, not what the ride thought.

Why is it such a big deal to you? It's a mistake. News reporters always make mistakes. It just happens. It wouldn't surprise me if the information Six Flags gave the station was correct and the reporter used old information pre-2010 that said it was fastest.

Yes. If a guest comes back from a ride injured (beyond things like head banging) you should (IMO) stop operation to find out why.