El Toro_Ryan

Wait what? Intamin Farts? Only the best coaster noise ever dude.

1,258,387 rides were given on El Toro in 2016. Theoretically, this means each of the two trains traveled at least 17,478 cycles around the track. That's 76,903,200 feet or 14,565 miles each. And if you factor in the 4 "Intamin Farts" given off during the ride, that's approximately 139,824 farts combined between the two trains.

Glad you enjoyed the park man! That operator at Bizarro was most likely my friend Leo. He's a huge coaster enthusiast and he's been pushing the Bizarro crew like crazy the last few months.

Toro only saddled once this year on opening day (which could have been easily avoided lol). Usually it will saddle several times during the preseason, or twice during park operating hours like it did in 2015. Honestly, I think Toro would be okay to run for a longer period of time even if it did get much colder out, I'm talking like 40 degrees or even slightly less. The only time Toro runs too slow for comfort is during the early season where all the wheel components on the trains are brand new or have been sitting around for months after being rehabbed. Maintenance gives the reasoning that the trains are tight and need to be loosened up and broken in. This combined with the cold weather means near saddle conditions for Toro unless you fill the trains with weight. However by fright fest, the trains only run slightly slower in the morning due to sitting for a night, and it often drops to 30 degrees at night. After loading up a few trains with riders, the trains start moving at summer speeds again (40+ feet per second into the brakes.) During the early season, you're lucky if you can get a fully loaded train to run above 30 feet per second into the brakes, and this is at roughly the same temeratures. Last year during fright fest, there were times when the temperatures dropped well below 40 degrees but Toro would continue to run like a champ. Basically after running all season, the trains are loosey goosey.

Wow I would have never called this. Doesn't Maverick usually do one million riders a year as well?

Lol we have staff from Six Flags New England and Six Flags America at the park this week to help us out. (Seriously if you need a job, apply now or next year for 2017!) Was the operator Donovan by any chance? That would be Nitro with most likely about 1.4 or 1.5 million riders for the year (I'll try to find out the exact stat.) They were the first in the Six Flags chain to hit one million just like they are every year.

Nice! I didn't expect Valravn to do that well. I didn't think its throughput was so high with only 24 passenger trains. It's a mix of corporate not wanting to staff the rides and just a lack of staffing in general. 2016 was an awful year for staffing. If any of you guys live near GADV and want to work in the rides department, please apply! haha Corporate has been looking into budgeting rides to run with 4 people on the train. They were experimenting over the summer. They gave Nitro 4 one day and the crew was pulling 1,650s an hour.

I think the seat belts were shortened heavily after the incident where someone was ejected from Superman Ride of Steel back in 2004. And then in the years following the incident, the seatbelts were gradually lengthen again. I'm not sure if Cedar Point or Intamin mandates this requirement.

There are ledgers heading up the lift hill now as well! Im so hyped for RMC Mean Steak.

Wow, congrats! The most Toro has done was about 1.6 million back in 2010 when the crews were allowed to sprint on the platform. I've always wished we could have the staffing your park has. It's a rare day in hell when we get more than 2 people to check any of the trains at our coasters. Do you know how many riders Valravn and Gatekeeper did this year?

Almost every single time I ride El Toro I end up on a train where people have a hard time getting the seats to verify lol I know it's not your guys fault. I've also seen idiots who just don't listen and they pull the lap bar down first before locking their seat belts which causes even a longer delay when the car has to be unlocked. Yeah there's always chunky monkeys in the park who don't know how to buckle seat belts. Another weird fact, the first few weeks Toro was open, there was no system to tell you what cars were not verified. You might hear the operator calling car 4, car 5, etc which means that car isn't verified. But back then, you just had to guess which car was not verified. And if you had to unlock a car, you had to unlock the entire train. Now we can unlock individual cars.

Awesome that's really interesting. And yeah I know all about those Intamin anti-rollbacks. Occasionally at Toro, the rollback wheel will slip going up the entire lift hill and the entire park can hear the anti-rollbacks going off. Now does Millenium Force also have a verify system for the lapbars or are the seatbelts what determine if someone can ride or not? All the times I've been to CP, I've never witnessed anyone get kicked off the ride and you guys seem to hit every interval which is awesome! The verify on Toro is super strict and some days it can be super hard to hit intervals due to the amount of chunky monkeys in the park. Fright Fest is generally the worst time of year to run the ride because people's jackets lower their chances of verifying and sometimes we end up kicking several people off the same train. Also, do you know what the total ridership for the season was for Millennium Force? I know you guys usually do around 1.7 million which is super impressive. We've done about 1.25 million on El Toro so far this season. Definitely wrapped around the ride and heading towards the bridge to Bizarro. A full q-line takes an hour if the ride is running at about 800-900 people an hour so it's probably only been about 2 hours at most. If we're rolling trains, that line may only take about an hour and a half. Now when the ride first opened in 2006 and only one train was used combined with 5+ minute dispatches, I'm sure the line was much longer.

After a little nerding out, it takes roughly like a minute and a half from when the train dispatches the station until it hits the block (based on a youtube POV). That's 40 trains an hour if the crew hits that interval every time which is 1,440 people an hour. Toro and Millennium Force come in at 1,296 an hour so T Express is definitely an improvement . But again, this is based on a Youtube video so its probably not right. The ride could be capable of sending trains even more trains an hour. Yup! As soon as the computer gives you the light, you can press dispatch. We will only send out a train this early however if the train on the track is filled with riders because the full trains glide through the brakes much more quickly which avoids setting up the train on the lift hill. With an empty train, you have to wait until it hits the first set of brakes. However to get the dispatch light, the train has to be verified already, so all the chunky monkeys have to be stapled first. lol

1. That's awesome that you get the crew hustling like that, congratulations! 2. Interesring note about Intamin's capacity. Even though Millennium runs 3, adding an block (and train) between the final break run and the loading station doesn't increase capacity at all. Millennium Force's max number of cycles per hour is also 36. Thanks! and wow that's interesting. I guess that makes sense with the way the blocks are set up for Millennium Force. But i would assume having that unload station probably makes it easier to hit the 36 cycles. Sometimes we will miss an interval due to people taking forever to exit the station. Plus with the unload station, I would assume it makes loading the trains much faster because there is no delay while loading guests wait for the exiting guests to get off the train. I've always wanted to work Millennium Force, I love the way it is set up. And a quick question, does the computer make you wait to send the next train until the train on the course is at a certain point near the end of the ride? El Toro will not give you a dispatch light until this hill right here.

Awesome, I'm coming out with my old manager from my last job tomorrow (The one I was with when we saw you at Power Surge at Knoebels during PPP) She's never ridden Toro or Ka, only been to the park for last years HitP. If we see you, we'll say hi, as always. Word man! I won't be working unfortunately but hopefully soon man.

Sounds good! haha @Ryan - is it true Toro is done for the season? A buddy was up yesterday and said some employees told him that. I'm trying to go up this weekend if its still gonna be open. If not I'll probably just wait til HITP. No Toro is open until November 13th. Along with El Diablo, Ka, and Zumi. Also Im sure you guys know already but we are open this Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday as well.

No worries! And yes, I'll be at the Joker every Sunday!

You probably came while we we're trying to hit the theoretical max number of cycles for an hour, which is 36 trains. We got to 32 trains with 5 minutes left in the hour and then we basically broke the ride. Then we just stuck with one train for the rest due to the lack of guests in the park. 32 dispatches in 55 minutes. Holy crap that's amazing. Congratulations to you and your crew! Thanks my dude! The record is 38 trains which blows our minds because theoretically it's impossible. I think that was done back in 2010 when sprinting on the platform was allowed. It would have been nice to meet you. I think I was the entrance greeter at the time. It's so dark at Toro at night, it was probably impossible to see anything.

You probably came while we we're trying to hit the theoretical max number of cycles for an hour, which is 36 trains. We got to 32 trains with 5 minutes left in the hour and then we basically broke the ride. Then we just stuck with one train for the rest due to the lack of guests in the park.

I couldn't agree more. Attendance at GADV was awful this Summer due to the extreme heat. It was much better last year.

I'm honestly surprised that there's such a big difference between the Cedar Point Sky Ride numbers and the Great Adventure Skyway. Yes they have better operations by a mile, but Great Adventure has been good about running 2 cables and Cedar Point only has one (though they still have better capacity but it makes it a little closer), they also have very few wind closures compared to Cedar Point and Great Adventure opens in late March as opposed to early May. Also doesn't Skull Mountain usually hit 1 million? VR must be hurting them quite a bit. How many cabins does that Skyride have? Cedar Point's location of their skyride and attendance may have something to do with it. Afterall, it is right at the entrance. We hit a million riders on August 6th, and that was by running 26 cabins until 11:15am every morning and then going up to 37 for the rest of the day (unless the weather had something to say about it). Also, how late does that park stay open during the summer? Wow you guys beat Nitro to one million riders then, and Nitro was the first coaster in the Six Flags chain to hit one million this year. Nitro got one million August 13th and El Toro got it August 29th. As for the Sky Ride capacity, each side typically runs 20 units max per side. On days they only run one side, the park still does not go over 20 units. And I don't believe there is always a line for the Sky Ride at our park either. And Skull Mountain typically beats El Toro to one million. This is the first year Toro has beat Skull Mountain since 2011. Skull has an unusually high throughput but VR and down time killed it this year. But even before the mess happened with Skull, Toro was still beating them

Sky Ride has. They had their "1 Million Rides, Keep it Rolling" sign up when we were there on Labor Day weekend. You're probably right on all of those and you can confidently add CP&LE Railroad to the list too. The only ones we actually noticed the signs on were Sky Ride, Millennium Force and Gatekeeper. I expect Raptor and Rougarou to be way down since they lost Early Entry (and Rougarou lost Haunt Fridays) but 1 million is easy for them. Iron Dragon may not make it for the first time between losing Early Entry, adding VR and being down to 2 trains for the last few years. Does anyone know where Dragster and Maverick are? They usually cut it close. That's awesome the Sky Ride hit one million that early. Ours at GADV just hit one million about a week ago but I guess that's expected since CP destroys GADV Ride operations. So far only Nitro, Toro, and the Sky Ride have done one million.

Random question but does anyone know what rides have given over a million rides so far this year? I'm assuming Gatekeeper, Millennium, Raptor, Rougarou, Magnum, and probably Valravn?

I'm a little late to this but I know GADV has been doing track work on El Toro for the past few years and the carpenters do it all in house. They remove entire track sections, cut out the portions of track that are bad, and then rebuild the track sections using the same tactics used when the track pieces were originally manufactured. I'd imagine Heide Park will either do the same thing or simply purchase new track pieces since the manufacturing plant is in Europe. I've seen the carpenters retrack little bits of Toro during the regular season and it's pretty cool to watch.

I love little facts like these. Thanks! On Toro's anti-rollbacks is there tires that spin to retract them up to make the lift silent? Is that how it works on Millennium Force? When those things drop it sounds like the entire train is breaking apart. You can hear it from anywhere in the park. Yes, there are 6 anti-rollback dogs on a Millennium train in pairs of 2 underneath car 1, car 4, & car 9. There's a separate tire for each rollback that spins a magnetic wheel causing the rollbacks to lift up. So when the train stops, a tire goes bald, or a tire goes flat the rollbacks drop and I agree it sounds like the train is falling apart lol. Or if the track is wet or it's raining the tires can slip causing the anti-rollbacks to drop at random spots going up the lift. That's awesome! And yeah Toro's rollbacks work the same way. There are just less of them on a Toro train for whatever reason. Yeah for whatever reason, John felt it was his time to move on and let someone else step in. He's been the president of the park for 6 years I believe. But he was also the guy who closed the path between Ka and Toro