DrachenfireOP

Well, I've been stopped on every coaster at BGW (minus tempesto) at one time or another, either as a guest or intentionally for part of training while working there. As a guest, before I worked there, I was stopped at the top of lift 2 of wolf for about 20 minutes, and also on the block brakes before lift 2 for about 10 minutes. I was stuck about halfway up Drachen Fire's lift as a guest once too, once at the very bottom of the lift, and evac'd off the block brakes 1 time. I was evac'd off Loch Ness as a guest 3 times (twice while I was working for the park, but on my day off as a guest, once when I was a kid), two times from Lift 1, and once from Lift 2. LNM does more evac's in a season than the rest of the coasters combined, so this isn't really shocking. Fortunately I was never stopped on the block brakes of LNM/wolf or on the safety brakes of wolf, which are notoriously long evac times. I also got evac'd off Alpengeist from the feeder wheels just before the lift once as a guest, which was frustrating because that usually is operator error when that happens, and while it was my day off, I was the lead at Alpengeist at the time >< My only time stopped on AC was early on the lift because some doofus had a camera with them, so that was a short, op initiated stop. Also I was on the holding brake outside the station for Verbolten once during a first-season shutdown, but that was only about 10 minutes before it reset. Opening season of Griffon I was stopped briefly on the mid course block brakes, but that was maybe 3 minutes before we were moving again. That may sound like a lot, but I grew up in the BGW area, then continued to live there through college/work at the park, and had season passes every year up until my cast member ID would get me in for free. When the park is 20 minutes from your house, and you're a coaster enthusiast kid, you tend to go a lot! I'd say the ratio of rides I have under my belt to times of an issue is like 0.01% of rides having issues. Now, as for times I was on the ride and evac'd off for training, that list is long, so rather than list them all, I'll give a few memorable ones. I got evac'd off the block brakes of wolf as part of training onces, which was a very interesting experience. They had these big rolling staircases that you had to climb down, but there's no swing-lock on that section, so the car would move a tiny bit while you step out and a supervisor had to hold the car steady. Because of how high up the trains are above the platform, a person has to stand below the car with a long rod to push up on the harness release mechanism, and hold it steady with the car moving a little bit. My harness was halway up and they slipped slightly causing the harness to re-lock Also, one season Alpengeist blew it's transformer. They brought in a diesel powered backup generator that was housed in a tractor trailor truck to try and get the ride back up while we waited on a new transformer. The ride was testing fine, but there was concern about how the generator would handle powering the lift under load. I was a sweaper that season, so I was one of the 25 or so odd sweapers/merchandise people they had get on the ride in the morning to test the load. We got about half way up the lift when there became a noticeable slow in the lift chain. Just shy of 3/4 of the way up the generator tripped and they had to come evac us off The ride stayed down until a new transformer came a few days later. Interestingly, Wolf blew a transformer a few seasons later, and they did the same tractor trailor truck generator, but the generator had no problem running wolf. Somewhere I have pictures of the massive generator cables running from the Drachen Fire site where the truck was parked, under the wolf village, and all the way to the transformer house near the lift 1 motor. They ran it like that for over a week, and the ride had no downtime the whole week! Pretty amazing! Outside of BGW, I have been stuck on the lift of Anaconda 1 time (maybe 15 minutes), and earlier this summer I was stopped on Magnum for a few minutes near the bottom of the lift (again for some dumbass with a cell phone out). Nothing too exciting. I have a feeling that if I didn't spend so many days at BGW over a 20+ year span, I likely would have those two as my only incidents. It's kind of amazing to realize that I've been evac'd off a BGW coaster as a guest 5 times, because usually there's only 4-6 evac's per coaster in an entire season. The season I worked Alpengeist, there were only 3 evac's the whole season and I was on one of them as a guest Though to be fair, 3 of those were LNM, and I've worked that ride where they've had 2 evac's in a day. Still, even with a higher level of them, it's not like LNM is an Intamin, for a 40 year old ride, it's is insanely reliable, and even when it does go down, it's VERY rare that it's more than a half hour/hour before they have it up and running again. The maintenance staff at BGW is PHENOMENAL, and if you don't believe me, go take the coaster tour!

Very interesting to learn. B&M hyper have a similar though simpler version of this. Unlike inverts or other OTSRS models, hyper will "lock" the harness while open (as you may have noticed if you've ever tried in vain to pull the harness down before the op has enabled you to do so). The reason is simple: so you have something to brace against while standing up, particularly while be evaced off the lift.

Those are awesome shots! This looks like a really fun trip. It's a shame Goliath was down. While not the greatest rides on the plannet, those Deja Vu clones pull some of THE strongest g-forces you can experience on a coaster, especially backwards! The only coaster I can think of that is more intense doesn't exist anymore, because it was pre-modified I305! Then again, current 305 is still stupidly intense. Also, I wish some of my "odds and ends bucket list coasters" (such as Thunderbolt) didn't have such outrageous single-ride ticket prices. $10 for one ride on Thunderbolt? I mean, come on, that's criminal even by NYC standards! There's a few rides (Manhattan Express, Canyon Blaster, Thunderbolt, El Loco) that I really want to get on some day, (especially since some of them are hated enough to be at risk for removal in the coming years), but it's really hard to justify making a trip or pit stop so far away, to shell out such a stupid amount of money for a single ride.

This! Zero head banging for me on any B&M, ever, including old Mantis and IW. However the new ones sit on my crotch horribly, so even if the vests didn't dig into my neck, and even if I did get head banging on the old, I'd still take the old because headbanding is infinitely more tolerable than crotch crunching any day.

It's funny that people are so up in arms about having two coasters of similar color in the same park. Iron Dragon and TTD are right next to each other with similar colors, but no one complained about that. Then you have parks like BGW that can't seem to stop building blue coasters, but people don't hate on it. Also the Valrvn track looks coser to brown to me than orange, but then again, Alpengeist has blue supports that I and many other people see as more greenish, so meh.

I do like splashdowns, but I don't think they're 100% necessary just because a particular model of coaster can have one. Also, I would like Griffon's if they had been able to scoot it a few feet forward so it didn't hit the track awkwardly like this I feel that the "chop" the water takes disrupts the image of the rooster tails shooting up, and the effect is MUCH stronger on SheiKra where this doesn't happen. (Honestly, I like SheiKra better than Griffon, even though technically Griffon is the 'more advanced' model with an extra loop and wider trains).

Why are people so obsessed with tunnels and splashdowns? Griffon doesn't have a tunnle, and people love that ride. It's splashdowns is in a stupid location that makes the water hit the track in an awkward way that is not as visually stunning as SheiKra or Diamondback. I remember watching Griffon test right after they filled the pool and thinking "wow that's a little ghetto, and looked better when it was dry testing." Would a tunnle have added even a tiny amount of thrill? Would a splash down have actually made the ride feel different? No. They are visual gimmicks only. If you think this ride isn't going to be visually stunning to watch from the many vantage points they are building, then you and I are looking at different concept art. This is going to be one of the most photogenic rides in the world. And I say all this as someone who isn't a big fan of Dive Machines.

Ok, that's a little better... I just think sometimes Coaster Enthusiast forums can be so nasty, and our hobby is supposed to just be a fun diversion from the harsh realities of life.

Um, I'm tall and disagree with you 100%, so please don't call my opinion invalid just because it differs from yours. Also, I've heard lots of tall and large people complaining, and you're the first tall/large person I've heard say you like them. That doesn't make your opinion invalid, because it's an opinion. However, it also doesn't make other peoples opinions invalid just because you disagree. If they did away with all the old restraints, as you suggest, I and many other people would be pissed. As someone who likes the old, forceful rides like Alpengeist, Montu, BTR, Kraken, Kumba, Rougarou, etc. yet also as a person who can't stand the new restraints, I'd consider those rides ruined. At least so far the new restraints seem to be confined to rides from the new/forceless generation that I'm not much fond of to begin with. Judging from the poll results, I'd call this far from a "decided" issues, and of the people with an opinion, it's pretty evenly split, so going 100% with one or the other (which fortunately will never happen) seems like it would make a pretty evenly large chunk of people upset no matter what.

WHAT?! What's wrong with the vest restraints? They're extremely uncomfortable for tall people and large people. As a tall person, I hate them. They dig into my shoulders and neck, and the bar sits on my crotch weird. I don't have a problem with the old OTRs, and consider the vests a massive downgrade, but obviously considering this us subjective, I suppose some people find them a huge upgrade. Also, given the nature of a dive, I could see the vest part locking, like gatekeeper used too and that would make it even worse for tall people, though we should wait to see before assuming the will lock.

How many coasters at Cedar Point have extensive theming beyond maybe nice looking trains and a station? I mean, even Millennium Force has a "toaster oven" station, fairly basic trains, and nothing really out on the course and that ride seems to be HUGELY popular with everyone. So what's the problem? Took the words right out of my mouth. Since when is CP about Disney or Busch level theming? This fits the park dynamic perfectly and is clearly going to be a great ride. If you don't think that zero g roll is going to be bananas on the end seat, you're crazy! I mean, dragster is themed, but they took a bunch out in the first year. Maverick is a little themed, but only to a degree and I don't know anyone who cites the water canons or hut building as to why it's worth going on. After that I'm drawing a blank, so if there's themed rides I missed, it shows how memorable they are. Or should we be expecting a 2016 theming overhaul to corkscrew where they hand you a bottle of wine when you get off the ride? Let's not even go down that road on Magnum...

I don't think the new restraints create a wider envelope, and if they do, it's marginal. Otherwise how could rides like Banshee have them? Are the banshee trains actually wider? Even if the seats were a tiny bit wider, I don't think it would account for 2 peoples worth of seats coming off. I honestly think that the reasons for 8 over 10 are a lot more to do with operational forces on the structure, and nothing more. Doing a zero G roll on a train this wide is a crazy problem, with g-forces much harder to deal with on the outer seats than I think people are giving it credit, which is probably why until now, every DM with one has been 6 across instead of 8. And again, Griffon has had some pretty major issues crop up both in design and since opening as a result of being 10 wide. (Also, fun fact, the reason Griffon went floorless is because the track couldn't handle the weight of a 10 wide floored train. It wasn't originally supposed to be floorless). The weight and stress on the structure of dive machines are known issues. The 10 wide being a problem is a known issue. Unless someone has measurements that prove that Banshee is wider than normal inverts, or that Vlaravn is as wide as Griffon, I'm going to assume that this is not the reason behind 8 over 10.

So I could be wrong, but to the people complaining about the 10 vs 8 seats, it might be we've seen the end of 10 across trains. Griffon actually had a fair deal of problems with the additional two seats, including a broken lift chain the year after opening. Notice that no coaster since has had 10 across. Just because Griffon has stayed in operation doesn't mean that 8 wasn't determined to be more optimal and that's what we'll see from now on. I'm more shocked not to see a dual load station like SheiKra. A massive park like CP really struck me as a place for a dual loader. Anyhow this looks fantastic, and I'm looking forward to riding it. Being tall I'm also in the camp of preferring the old OTRs to the new vest ones, as the vests I find uncomfortable and hurt my shoulders, but I honestly don't care so much as to stay off an otherwise dynamite ride.

Nice pictures! Thanks for all the construction nerd shots!

Awesome! Can't wait!

Thanks for sharing that Robb! Any chance you have an old b roll pov from the park from before 2003? I'd throw money at you to see a nostalgic pov from the old lift 1 speed and with the cheesy special effects in the tunnle!

Fair enough, I was just saying that the people who looted MAY have been douchebags, but it's hard to look at the looting without considering the circumstances. Sorry to be a downer. In any event, the people who never got to visit SFNO weren't missing much. A BTR clone was their good coaster. Then they had a boomerang, a wild mouse, and one of the roughest wooden coasters I've ever been on (that made mean streak feel smooth). I loved the "Jester" coaster, but to be fair, it was a vekoma Arrow rip off that felt like an Arrow, plus it rode backwards so you had to guess where the slams would come. Still a huge shame everything that happened and how the park is now, but I wouldn't get too bummed that you "missed something great," because I'm not sure that'd be true. Still, I understand the mentality of "but I would have liked to judge for myself," so theres that.

The reason the trains can't go through the loops at the same time is because the speed of lift 1 was decreased. This was done for two reasons, one of which takes some explaining. 1) three trains cannot stack on this ride. That means if they take too long to dispatch, a train stops on lift 2. The slower lift 1 speed gives more time for dispatch when loading disabled guests. 2) when the trains could do a "double looper," a train would leave lift 1 with another train on lift 2 still. This meant that if something went wrong bringing a train into the station that took longer than normal, you'd stop a train on lift 2, with a train already clear of lift 1. That means the train off lift 1 would stop on the C block brakes just before the tunnle. For some reason, Arrow made those brakes too short and perfectly level. So, if a train stops there, they need to send a maintenance person out to manually winch it forward into the cave. This is a huge pain and takes a lot longer than just turning the lifts back on. On the new settings, if a train "sets up" or stops on lift 2, the ride op can manually stop the train on lift 1 and prevent a block brakes set up. Basically, now they have far fewer setups while loading disabled guests, and far fewer block brake setups, but unfortunately they cannot do double loopers anymore as a result. The change was made in the 2003 season iirc. For those that have never seen it, here is video of the glorious double looper! https://youtu.be/QdyeiGPEywg&t=3m28s

^ woah woah hold up. That is 100% unfair and untrue. The bullshit that goes on in the French Quarter is all the tourists. The locals avoid that place like the plague and only put up with that crap because of the tourism revenue. In fact, a lot of the people working the FQ are not from NOLA and moved there to be "part of it." Also, MANY of the vandals and looters to SFNO have come from out of town to go "urban exploring." Then they put it up on YouTube etc. Yes, a lot of looting that happened early on was to salvage scrap to sell, and I'm not saying that was right, but considering the situation those people were in, I'm less inclined to jump down their throats. Unless you went to NOLA within one year of Katrina, and unless you left the French Quarter to see the damage and death yourself, no pictures or news article can capture the war-zone level scope of destruction. And the US did essentially nothing to help them. When your house is sitting under 20 ft of toxic water (and yes, the flood waters were toxic in addition to being horrible on their own) and half or more of the people you know are dead, probably floating down the street, and you were trapped there in the first place because the government gave an evacuation order too late and failed to aid people leaving, and you're starving to death, suddenly it becomes a different picture.

^ but I think the question I'm getting at is, from a business perspective, is there any reason to bother? Thats why I was asking if other people could actually feel something, since ride forces are subjective. Unless people really are feeling it and getting hurt (I can't feel it personally ) why would the park spend money to "fix" something that might not even be broken in the eyes of the manufacturer? The whole point of vibrations in construction is to prevent damage. As the old saying goes, "if it can't shake, it will break." It's entirely possible the minor vibrations on coaster trains are a design feature to reduce stress on the vehicles. If a train rattle is causing wear and tear on the rides, or is causing people pain and discomfort, it's an issue worth addressing. If a dynamite ride has long lines and high attendance, but a fringe minority of enthusiasts don't like the way a ride sounds, well...

^ the rollbacks are extemely loud on Arrows, but that didn't stop BGW from modifying Drachen Fire to be completely silent. If Busch wanted to ask a manufacturer for quiet trains with quiet rollbacks, I bet they'd get what they want. BGW has a very long tradition of insisting on non-traditional modifications to rides during the design process.

Honest question: does this negatively impact yalls rides? I hear constant complaining on here about it, and never even noticed it until I read all the complaints and started to "look" for what people were talking about. I can't ever feel it, only hear it, and honestly don't care. I'm genuinely curious if other people can not only feel something, but dislike the rides as a result? I mean, take Banshee, which I thought was TOO smooth and tame, but people say it has a rattle and that it's a bad thing...

BGW would be great with a woodie, but until Kingsmill goes away, or they invent a quieter wooden coaster, it won't happen. It's probably why there's no coaster on the DF site; they got constant noise complaints from morning testing, and even changed the rollback to be silent after the 1992 season. That said, you know what might be considered acceptable noise wise? An RMC!

I think it's funny that people only have "high capacity" and "low capacity" in their vocabulary, as if it must be one or the other. This will be a "medium capacity" ride, and that's ok. No, it's not the 1500 an hour that beemers and old Gen Arrows got, but it's also not the 200 an hour of a Togo standup. It will be a slightly longer wait, but most of the line will not be at this ride anyhow for so long as KK exists. It will be fine.

With the new dive coaster coming and pipescream "counting" as a coaster according to the park, maybe CP could build a dueling set of Fireballs and retake the Coaster Capital record