PaTim
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Posts posted by PaTim
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First and foremost, this expansion looks dope. I’m definitely in the “the current entrance is cool and quaint but it doesn’t work for a park this large” group.
Another interesting thing for me as a local, and something that’s become increasingly interesting over the years, is the Hershey/Dorney dichotomy. In the late 90’s I would say they were fairly similar in stature; you could even give Dorney the edge because Hershey didn’t have a waterpark at the time, but it’s crazy to see the different routes each has taken. Hershey has emerged into a destination park with a roller coaster collection that stacks up with the best in the country, and Dorney has remained relatively stagnant and has been relegated to a local, sort-of-regional-but-not-really park that I would imagine most enthusiasts/park goers are ambivalent about.
I have the same fascination with as you say, the Hershey/Dorney dichotomy.
I live in Eastern PA and we always had many large amusement parks to choose from, but for the most part Dorney was the park of choice in the late 80's/early 90's. As you said the water park was a big reason.
What really gave Dorney the edge was when they built Hercules, which made the headlines as a record(and back) breaking coaster. Then they added Steel Force several years later and it seemed to cement Dorney as the go-to park in this region.
Then the late 90's-today happened and Hershey just blew them out of the water(pun intended) with steady coaster additions and eventually their own water park(with arguably better water rides).
Not that Dorney is bad, but Hersheypark is just superior in almost every single way. This new entrance looks absolutely stunning, and you can't really go wrong with a B&M hyper.
I'm excited for this time next year when I assume they will announce the specs of the new coaster.
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I've never noticed those two particular spots being bad, but yeah it's a very aggressive ride and that's why I love it. You are fortunate enough to have missed out on the disaster that the triple up became last year.
I saw that. I guess it had a poorly placed ledger in that triple up and the person I rode with told me it developed a serious pothole. I agree about the aggressiveness of the ride, it's great and it's something CCI never held back on.
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Finally got to Lake Compounce and rode Boulder Dash for the first time in my life on Friday the 18th. I was very surprised with how much airtime it had in both the front and back seats, not quite the Intamin or RMC ejector level, but still very strong and throwing me up into my lap bar on just about every hill. There's two spots of significant roughness; the bottom of the first drop and the bottom of the hill next to the rocks on the out run. Those spots are BRUTAL, but other than that it was fairly smooth. What a ride....its definitely an elite coaster wood or steel, and it's utterly beautiful offride and on.
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Millenium Flyers are actually heavier than PTC's. GCI even discussed that being a challenge on HP Wildcat, saying that when they decided to switch to MF's they had to shave about 40 lbs of weight of each car to get the weight to match the previous PTC's. Of course MFs also track way better and have a suspension system, so that likely takes bite out of a ride too.
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Does anyone know if the park has considered buying Timberliners for The Voyage?
Yes, they have considered it.
A few years ago (gosh, maybe it's been like what... 5 years now, or longer?), they had some Timberliners and were testing them on Voyage, but for whatever reason they stopped and it never happened. I can't remember why it never happened, but they have most definitely considered it.
EDIT: After some research, it turns out they were testing them in August 2010.
According to Coaster-net.com, the Timberliners were scrapped because they ran slower due to their lighter weight. They claim Holiday World highly values the Voyage's intensity and the slower running trains took a lot of the bite out of the ride.
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Here's the thing though, if it wasn't for the Timberliners, the ride couldn't do half the things it does. This is just a thought, but I wonder if it's the track work. I know that sounds crazy with it being brand new, but that's the difference between GCI and TGG. GCI has their own team that goes around does all of their track work, as where with TGG, they do the design work, and the park hires all of the workers to build the ride. So there's a pretty good chance the track was built by a crew who has never built or rebuilt coaster track before. You can probably feel those differences, as the traditional wooden coaster track has to be cut and built to precision on site and with a crew who doesn't have any experience, there's a lot more room for error. GCI's team has been doing it for years and have it down to an exact science.
That's so true. There's a reason why GCI gets the bulk of the work in the refurbishing/retracking market. They've mastered their craft in construction, as a matter of fact one of their engineers claimed on Reddit that their coasters don't cost any more to maintain than steel coasters of the same size. TGG seems to have less precision with their trackwork. Their Timberliners are a great design, as a matter of fact it would be interesting to see how well they'd run on a new GCI construction.
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Sorry folks, it IS boring, LOL. As a matter of fact I lucked out because I did skip ahead and landed on the part of the discussion where they were talking about the Timberliners.
I didn't listen to the whole thing....I swear
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[youtu_be]
[/youtu_be]Great info in this video about why they ditched the Timberliners on the Voyage. As it turns out (according to what these guys found out), the lighter weight of the Timberliners led them to run much slower than the PTCS thus taking a lot of intensity and airtime out of the ride. That makes a lot of sense, and apparently Holiday World didn't want to sacrifice those aspects of what the coaster came to be known for.
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It may not be the tallest or longest woodie out there. . .
Well, you know what they say... It's not the size of the woodie that matters, it's how good the ride is.
And this ride looks awesome!!
I'm loving both the new GCI's in China this year. Between those two and Mystic GCI are on for a great year.
I'm really interested to see how these compare to the recent Gravity Group rides in China as they've been knocking it out of the park recently. Some of the Jungle Trailblazers are exceptional coasters.
It's nice to see the GCI continue to be successful in their craft. It seems there's a perception that the traditional wooden coaster is going to be obsolete, yet they continue to prove otherwise.
As far as how they compare to the new Gravity Group installations, I'd be interested to see that comparison several years from now since GG has been using the Timberliner trains. I wonder which ones will get rougher at a faster pace.
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Unfortunately, I've only ridden one RMC, Goliath at SFGAm.
I freaking love it, but it does seem to be consistently rated last among RMC's by those who have ridden a handful or more of their coasters.
A common criticism seems to be that it's way too short, which seems on the mark to me because the ride does seem to end a little too abruptly.
But looking at the RCDB stats for other RMC's, Goliath doesn't appear to be substantively shorter than most of the others. the 1st grouping of four below are all significantly longer, but the 2nd grouping of seven are all within several hundred feet of each other, with Goliath right smack dab in the middle of the pack.
1. Twisted Colossus - 4,990 ft
2. New Texas Giant - 4,200 ft
3. Wildfire - 4,150.3 ft
4. Lightning Rod - 3,800 ft
5. Wicked Cyclone - 3,320 ft
6. Iron Rattler - 3,266 ft
7. Joker - 3,200 ft
8. Goliath - 3,100 ft
9. Medusa Steel Coaster - 3,000 ft
10. Outlaw Run - 2,937 ft
11. Storm Chaser - 2,744 ft
A question for those who have ridden Goliath and some of the others in the second group above: why does Goliath seem so much shorter than the others? Is it the height, and henceforth speed, of the ride that just eats up track more quickly compared to the others? Or is it more that the individual elements are just bigger and more drawn-out and not as numerous, hence the ride doesn't feel like it "does" as much as some of the others in its length range?
In any event, if Goliath really is the weakest of the bunch (and i LOVE it), I guess that just means that I have a whole hell of lot more RMC goodness out there to seek out and ride once I can start getting out to parks more often (I'm lost in babyland these days with a 2 year old and a 1 year old). I'm already making plans for a Cedar Point 2018 trip, so at least there's that at a minimum.
The reason it seems so short is because of its height in relation to its length. The speed generated from the large drops propels it though the course very quickly and there's slightly less elements than the other RMC's.
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Certainly the most exciting project since 2007 at Cedar Point, if not 2000.
Absolutely. It's almost funny because if you think about it there's been talk of MS being reimaged in some form even long before RMC has been doing conversions. Because of this we can laughingly make an argument that this is their most anticipated project ever
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Cedar Point does a great job at making their coasters unique from each other I'm regards to elements. If I were to speculate based on what RMC has done in the past I would guess that the new MS will turn out to be the park's most "complete" ride. It only makes sense to take a ride from worst to first, right? No matter what the final creation gives us it doesn't seem farfetched to say this is one of the most exciting coaster projects in recent history.
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Awesome announcement! I love how TGG(and GCI) absolutely PACKS their layouts with elements, where even if the track length is short you feel like you got a "complete" ride.
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Maybe the conversion will be similar to NTAG where the MCBR was kept and didn't hurt the ride quality. Whatever they do this is exciting because pretty much the entire coaster fanatic world has been discussing a rehab of this ride for almost two decades. #finally
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Monstre, Mean Streak, Predator, the two CW woodies, GA Cyclone, Timber Wolf, KD Grizzly.....
I wonder if a park would be interested in hiring RMC to convert older steel coasters. Magnum is fun but there's no questioning its roughness, imagine if RMC was brought in to reimage it with T-Rex track. Of course that's just an outside the box idea but it appears that refurbishments may be a huge part of the coaster industry's immediately future.
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My only problem is that I'm worried about how this coaster will age, as GCI's don't seem to age that well
Lightning Racers called.
GCI'S that run their Millennium Flyer trains right from the time they open tend to age much better than traditional woodies from other manufacturers past and present. Wildcat and Gwazi opened with PTC'S.
The jury is still out on larger TGG coasters that open with their Timberliners only because they're all overseas and opened within the last 2 years.
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It's amazing how much better tailored trains (non-PTC) work on wooden coasters, yet almost every single larger example has non-trailored(double-axle).
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I think SOB serves a great purpose in the amusement industry, which is to provide an example of what not to do. How they managed to get everything wrong in one coaster project is quite impressive, from using double-axle trains to a boring layout to subpar structural design and construction this ride had it all. Had it been manufacturered by a more experienced firm and used single-axle trains with a better layout things might have been different. It didn't deserve the opportunity to be RMC'd.
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Perhaps they're enclosing the entire first drop. It kind of fits the theme of the ride, it correlates to the work being done, and it possibly relates to the "Getting Closer, Interested" hint (getting closed in). Even the extra stakes can be indicative of extra support needed for the tunnel. It's already the middle of January, so I'm not sure how extensive the work being done is going to be.
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The ferris wheel type lift on Round About at Hard Rock Park was pretty interesting.
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Son Of Beast has to be the biggest mistake when you consider the margin of error beginning right from its conception. It's almost like everyone involved with the idea and design of the ride knew absolutely nothing about roller coasters. Not only was it a traditional wooden coaster that obviously would have greater operating costs, but to make almost no innovation as to how the trains would interact with the track is quite impressive when it comes to poor planning. But.... they didn't stop there. They also managed to create the most boring profile that a high-thrill coaster can possibly have, and that was in a time when firms were making leaps and bounds with designing things like airtime into their creations. Some other coasters were busts, but it's hard to compare any of them to the level of SOB.
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^Do you realize the only major accident in either chain in 2015 was a death at Cedar Point? And that these "accidents" are the park's fault less than 1% of the time? Come to think of it, the only other "accident" I can think of from either chain outside of the Raptor incident was the first Raptor airgate incident.
The fact of the matter is that both chains have nearly impeccable safety records. I wouldn't consider an incident like those at Raptor to be a negative on the park at all--in fact, I give the park credit for handling it as professionally as they did.
Regardless, I'd recommend at least visiting a SF park before claiming your distrust in them. Most of the time, you'll enjoy your time at the park (especially if it's at one of their better parks--Fiesta Texas, Over Georgia, Great Adventure).
Remember when that lady fell to her death on Texas Giant at SF Over Texas? Because I do.
It was a horrible occurrence, but if you feel that particular instance represents a jeopardization to your safety consider this: Millions upon millions of people visit Six Flags parks each year. They average around 25 million visitors per year across the chain, so over the last three seasons that equates to roughly 75 million. A one in 75 million chance of a fatal accident is safer than air travel, and considering the circumstances of that particular occurrence the chances are even lower. It was a freak incident influenced by the passenger's waistline undermining the ability of the restraint being able to secure her properly during strong negative g-force elements of the ride. These are extremely rare, and while they have happened and are tragic they should be examined closely as to why they happened and whether the would happen to you. Unfortunately people speak in nonsensical platitudes, for instance reporting to the media that a hydraulic lap bar didn't click.
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I can't play your video PaTim. But I could for sure see them doing some themeing not only on the woodies but in the older sections of the park. PGAV has done amazing work at Holiday World ever since that relationship started. And every season it seems HW has been using them for more and more. It seems the two companies work well together. It's like they understand each other and know and "get" what they are going for.
I hate when that happens. If you go to www.holidayworld.com and then go to the Holiblog there's a post discussing what's new for 2016. In it there's a video where the maintenance crew is discussing what they would like for Christmas. The head of maintenance is texting what they want to Santa Claus, and at 1:44 of the video it shows the screen on his cell phone with texts that say "nuts, bolts, wood" and "roller coaster tunnel" and a response text that says "You got it".
Perhaps there's more to it but since they're announcing it in January it sounds fairly reasonable.
Holiday World (HW) Discussion Thread
in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
Posted
So this is neat. The Voyage is getting Gravity Group's engineered precut track added and well as a less sophisticated horizontal version of a prefab track. I'm optimistic this prefab track may offer more permanent solutions to lower maintenance costs while keeping the rides smoother in the process, especially given the lower positive G profiles on traditional woodies compared to the Intamin prefabs. Here's the video: