Goooose

WGN morning news report with Marcus Leshock! http://morningnews.wgntv.com/2014/05/14/construction-tour-of-new-coaster-goliath-at-great-america/

Holy smokes, BDG. You are everything. It looks like we will see the real thing by end of day today! Just one piece to go!

Unless most of that work has been completed already and we are just waiting on the track, the chain lift, and the electrical on that unfinished lift structure. Popping the track into place is the easiest and quickest process in this construction site. Its all lined up ready to go and they can install several hundred feet of track a day. Getting everything else ready is what takes longer. Theyve already done work on the break run, the station, the transfer track, and they can load trains into the station whenever. Six flags Great America likes to pour cement for queue lines and finish landscaping the day before. I grew up in gurnee since 2000 and I remember being at v2's opening, superman's, and hurricane harbor's and it is always the case.

I imagine that they'll attach one or two more lift pieces, and leave them suspended from a tall crane while they weld the pieces on and leave them supported by the crane until finally they add the absolute top out and join the structures together so that it can support itself. As for that wider piece they added to the structure today where they attached the old with the new, I imagine that that piece will be cut off eventually and it is perhaps there to reduce stress on the bolts that are supporting the bent piece of the drop until the structure is complete and stabilized. Just a guess!

That drop is flippin LONG

Swing and a miss

Cool weather update:

I love madrid's batman queue! The mansion! Soo pretty. That park looks excellent I gotta go!

Goliath update: Right now, the crew is extending the break run walkway all the way up to the negative G float entryway into the break run. The train will be going fast enough that I anticipate airtime into the final break, and the walkway is now extending the entire length of that. Grout is being poured in that very location, and crews are also working on the zero g stall, where the track will be placed. Earlier today they added some steel to the first drop, so you can see where the next piece before the exit of the first drop will be placed. Marcus Leshock, a coaster fanatic turned WGN news team member, took a construction tour this morning and a member at sfgamworld shared this information with their discussion of goliath. He will have a morning news segment on WGN airing Wednesday and I'm sure the story will be posted to their site for later viewing. He also took some amazing pictures that are on his Facebook page, and his photos show some great news: a Waukegan contractor is constructing the roof over the first drop and zero g stall exit, confirming that it will be a "tunnel"/enclosed!

In addition to being custom built for our park and the conditions of of that site, with the sharp turns around the pond and in that landscape dividing orleans place from yankees harbor, the ride is also arguably better than some other batman clones because it runs an 8-train car. Most batmans do, but I have noticed that the clone at fiesta texas, called goliath, runs a 7-car train. This ride would be slower and thus less intense. In conclusion, if you've written off batmans because of a clone at another park, please give ours a whirl. It is a classic and still rides like brand new. Bull and Batman are my favorite coasters and I will always wait as long as it takes to get on batman!

The clonability of the ride is because of the characteristics of the park. The same characteristics responsible for batman's. The park is at most 100 acres versus great adventures 300ish. The lots are small so the coasters need to be custom built to fit in those lots. American Eagle, raging bull, and superman are the exceptions- their lots are huge and able to accomodate a higher capacity/3-train operation coasters. Superman was supposed to go where wizzer is, but the public faught it. Shockwave was rough and unpopular by that point so we replaced a 3 or 4 train-operating coaster that was in 1988 the tallest and fastest coaster in the world (may have had or been tied for most inversions) with superman. It is wildly successful but in my opinion, beyond opening year, I have never been happy with that decision. Hardly liked it then. We didnt get the double station and the lot could fit a much larger coaster. The timing was bad anyway so an alternative to superman wouldnt have been too interesting. If superman ended up where wozzer is, and the park decided a few uears later to get rid of shockwave, they probably would gone with a b&m floorless looper- so we really didnt miss out on anything. Again, no reason to be too upset because the public still loves it. Batman beautifully fits in its environment and was designed for it. When i go to other six flags i dont even ride their batman's. Where we have a pond and weeping willow trees, they have rocks and asphalt at the lower elevations. Goliath is incredibly clonable, though I doublt parks will clone it. Magic mountain will go for an I box, great adventure has el toro, new england has no land, over texas already has an i box. Its too tall for discovery kingdom. St louis has a huge wooden coaster already and it is oje of their newer investments. The ride was well designed for its lot. The park gave Alan/rmc that land. Im sure he thought up possibilities involving the wilderness theater property as well. Had he been granted that land or askd for it, say goodbye to the clonability of the ride because it would be too sprawling and oddly shaped. But the work of a designer for a client is not to ask for those things. You need to design within the existing conditions and in any project, those conditions are unique.

Http://www.Choosechicago.com

Photos at sfgamworld from Sunday the 11th, today, are flawless. http://sfgamworld.com/gallery/imagegallery.php?ride=Goliath%20Construction%20May%2011th Track is waiting in the parking lot to be installed. Welding work on the zero g stall and lift is going on. Break run is getting work and so are its railings. Lots of nice close up shots that really show the structure in a new light. Same with views from sky trek tower. if I had to guess, the second set of switchbacks for the queue moght be taking place to the right of the entrance, near the old fastlane entrance for wolf, cutting into the midway in front of the tran station. There is a lot of open space there so it makes sense. Its also shaded by some mature trees. Replacing that black asphalt with cement would be a great bonus to mitigate heat as blacktop makes the park 10 degrees hotter on a summer day.

Shocking update, Goliath fans!! It is 7:30 am on SUNDAY, and not just any Sunday, but MOTHER'S DAY, and the construction crew is hard at work right now to keep this coaster on schedule!!! Perhaps they made the call to get work done this morning, goven that tomorrow there might be thunderstorms. Thank you RMC and Great America! Any doubt about opening or their seriousness about this may 29th media day date can be squandered by this serious gesture to its dedication. Share your gratitude for their Sunday and Holiday sacrifice here on the forum!

Hopefully it opens on time! They still have to track the exit if the zero g stall, the stall itself, drop, finish the lift. I assume lift is being build already, and im trying not to freak out when I dont see progress from the webcam. Only so much of what they do is cosmetic/visible.

In my perfect world, the queue entrance would be logger run's and a switchback would be on top of te first drop "tunnel." Hopefully they build a second switchback, perhaps a long rectangular one, alongside the length of tebride beside the existing set of switchbacks. The batman overflow was really cool. If stretched behind eat river crawler and had the right side of the bridge entering yankee harbor dedicated/roped off for it. They couldnt let the Goliath queue rope off forever like that because it would block the entrance to Camp Cartoon.

Yea it is just one switchback... Im concerned. I thought they were going to add another switchback but a forum member at sfgamworld said he talked to Hank Salemi, park president today, and Hank told him they were leaving the queue as is. Lets hope he just meant they were reusing it, and not leaving it exactly as is. It is simply too small. Its pretty obvious though that what we see isnt what we will get because they will have a single rider line and maybe even a test seat out front. So we really have no idea how itll all be set up.

The sign is standig alone like a monument in the midway, and there arent any construction fences aeound it (that im aware of). I was wondering if they would build a second set of switchbacks, possibly behind the sogn so people need to pass through it to enter the ride. But since theres no fences around it blocking it off, im not so confident that will happen. P.s. Favorite overflow queue/reuse of existig infrastructure at great america is tye boardwalk connecting yankee harbor and yukon territory becoming V2's line. very good scenery, placemaking, and views of the coaster.

Nice shot of the station. I dig it! More detail up close than shown in the panorama earlier, while that shor gave a nice over iew of the scope of the area. More photos from the video:

5:08 and the cranes are still active. Hopefully they work overtime today because they probably didnt get much done during the morning's showers and sunday and monday are both showing thunderstorms. We could run into more delays next week!

OH MY GOD THE TRAIN LOOKS SO GOOD! BTW those pieces of steel, those I-beams, in the photos on the previous page are for the lift structure. They are not topper track pieces. They are constructing the lift on the ground and bringing it up into place.

Despite being a new ride, the station doesnt scream "new." The concept art was pretty and theyv'e stuck to it fairly well. But in the concept art there were murals inside the square panels on the front of goliath's station building. Hopefully those will be installed before the opening! They would really give it some visual interest and better tie the building in with the sign. There are other details missing that we may or may not actually get, but hopefully we do! (I'm seeing though in the recent photographs that wood paneling has been painted where there were originally columns in the concept art )

I love talking to myself. But I had a thought. This might be the first ride on earth that ill prefer a middle seat on, because of the zero g stall. I take the back seat on everything else for stronger forces, and i love when the back of the train gets a negative g diring a zero g hill. But since its inverted, going faster in the back will make it an upside down positive and push riders into their chairs. Similarly, This also might be the first ride that i'd prefer an empty train on, and early ride, or a cold day! Cant wait to try it out.

I wouldn't say that it doesn't stand out - I'm a structural engineer, and though parts of it have been done before on coasters (I305, namely), I do think that cantilevering a portion of the design is pretty unique and, coupled with the track being inverted, should really be a stand-out piece to every person walking through the park. Is it structurally innovative? No, not really. Forces dictate design, and zero force here means that design can be very minimal - which, and I would imagine as a person who clearly appreciates (and works with) architecture you know, is one of the most visually striking things you can do with a structure. It's not something people expect, and it should prove to be pretty unnerving to most people riding. Thanks for sharing your perspective! Much appreciated.

Hmm except that it isn't. I've never ridden an outerbank turn but I imagine that it pulls some positives on the ascent, whips you over and exposes you to the outside of the turn, where you pull a quick negative G, before twisting you back inward to catch the positives of the inside of the turn during the descent. Maybe its a zero G element, but I have always imagined that outerbanks are like bunny hills on a turn-where your banking creates air from the laterals. An outerbank turn is much more chaotic with faster pacing in the G and directional changes. The zero g stall will leave riders upside down, uninterrupted, for 3 seconds. They wont feel like they're "falling out of the train," pressing against their lapbars by any means but the zero g experienced as you travel through it, if effective, will leave people with the unsettling weightless feeling in their stomachs. Add that to the fear/disorientation thatt people get when upside down, and you've got yourself a zero g stall. The entrance and exits both contain half a heartline roll and some hard positives, I'll give you that. But I think the zero G stall has more in common with the lateral float than the outerbank. The track's elevation mimics that of a zero g float hill. The intended force upon riders is weightlessness/zero g. But they are just being achieved at different angles. On a lateral float, the train follows the zero g hill while riders are turned 90 degrees on their side. On Goliath, the train will follow a zero g hill shape, and riders will experience weightlessness, except at 180 degrees.