Physical

Just a heads up guys, the park will be closed tonight (10/2/15) due to adverse weather conditions.

As long as you were an employee at Dorney Park during the 2015 season you can get in for free I feel you on that ride op money though According to my team leads and area supervisor that deal ended on Labor Day. A few people went last year on Columbus day and still got in though. I dunno. I'm going to Knoebels for PPP so if they give me an all day wristband when I show my ID chances are SF will too.

I need to reprofile that, might add a tunnel or something instead of increasing the height of the pullout. When I depumped the crest of the lift it did some weird stuff to the verticies so that needs some work as well. Thanks for the tips!. What I mean when I say "It did something weird" Not quite fixed, but better, and the lift is actually perfectly straight now Reprofiled first drop and an (arguably majorly overkill) attempt at custom supporting the main lift. Also, is it possible to determine where the train stops on the lift if it were to stop to prevent a block violation? Right now it stops on the very crest of the hill with about a third of the train dangling over the first drop and away from the evac platform. How do I make it stop about 3/4ths up the lift? I've worked out a solution that I don't find ideal, I basically split the lift into 2 lift sections, and extended the block length of the second lift section all the way to the MCBR. Is this the only way to do this? It'd be much easier if I could just set a negative extra block length.

Yeah I just slapped down some prefabs and didn't worry too much about it. I've never actually done custom supports until this coaster, I thought it would be a lot more difficult than it actually is. I'm going to go over and re-do all the supports at some point. Ask and ye shall receive

Basically I decided to get into NL2 a few months ago, after many, many failed projects, I think I mostly got basic designing down. Lemme know what you think. Overview of the main run First ever attempt at custom supports (I had to clear the storage shed and transfer track somehow) More custom supports

First off, you absolutely cannot stop the hype train on Skull Mountain. This is now a movement and we'll stop at nothing to get this monster to the tippy top of next years Mitch Hawker. Secondly, I get the surging thing you are talking about, I feel that too. But I'm too distracted by the excellently bad blaring death metal and two randomly placed half A$$ props keeping me giggling beyond control anytime I ride to really care. I never noticed any props on my last few rides, gotta keep an eye out next time I'm at SFGadv (Should be Columbus Day, but I won't be able to go if Six Flags doesn't honor the whole 'Dorney Employees get in for free' thing anymore. Those one day tickets, too expensive for Ride Op money)

Just to stop the hype train on Skull Mountain, the only bad thing about that back row, there's a lot of "surging" in the train (at least the last time I rode it) to the point where it felt like the entire train was punching me in the back over and over again. That being said, last car airtime is /still/ worth it. Also that picture of Toro's wheels coming that far off the track is just insanity. That ride provides the most sustained ejector airtime I've ever felt, but I had no idea just how far the main wheels came up. As much as I love Toro's airtime, I feel that Phoenix provides more enjoyable airtime. I much prefer that feeling of touching nothing in the train, then being pinned to the restraint on Toro.

Weird, last time I went to Knoebels Impulse was a 10 minute wait tops mid day. We walked on it twice later. Flying Turns however... 45 minute wait consistently throughout the day.

I'm not familiar with the flume at BGW, but the one at Dorney, the trough is cut directly into the terrain as seen here. So if an op needs to go up to the tower, we just walk next to the lift. We cross the channel either with metal planks (when the ride is closed) or by walking on boats, but only in the station. In the upper flume you can access everywhere without having to cross the channel once. Adding an removing a boat requires the use of a crane, and stopping the lower lift to park a boat near said crane, lower right of this photo If we're having a major issue with a boat, lets say it's filling up with water. We're allowed to park it on the other side of the station (Thunder Creek Mountain used to use a dual channel dispatch, but now we only operate one channel at a time, and alternate day by day)

The first time I ever rode Skull Mountain I was with a larger friend, and I'm very small myself. I had a solid 4 to 6 inches of clearance between me and the lap bar. That was incredible, got back into the station and my buddy turns to me and goes "I thought for sure you got thrown out on the first drop"

That "oh shit" moment when you're not even half way up the lift and you're accelerating at an alarming rate.

At Dorney, most of our rides, the transfers are done by the ops, we even have a code to call in to comms if we need to add/remove a train. There's some exceptions, like Thunder Creek Mountain, where maintenance puts X boats in for the day and that's what we have to work with. It seems Dorney allows a lot more things to be handled by the ops instead of maintenance. Basically, if we're capable of fixing it ourselves, we can. The only exception would be anything that involves mechanical or direct electrical work. Those are handed off to maintenance. Some rides have checklists if the ride gets stuck, so operators can /sometimes/ unstick them without having to phone up maintenance. It's nice, I like to get hands on with the rides. Having to climb a 131 foot tower every morning doesn't sound appealing, until you start doing it. Then it's quite nice.

Excellent, that's what I like to hear. I'm anticipating the Flyers to have a longer line, but I'm more than willing to wait. The ones at Knoebels are /so/ worth it. Hopefully we don't get the no-fun-allowed op that turns the speed down once you start getting good snaps.

That reminds me, in the morning, part of the daily tests that the ops have to do on Demon Drop, consists of testing all the e-stops and airphones on the ride. There's one on the brake run, one at the base of the tower, and one all the way up on top of the tower. Basically you set the ride to daily tests, and send people all over the ride to test 'em. The view from the top is actually pretty nice, and tbh I'd much rather climb Demon Drop than Steel Force

Anybody have any idea how crowded PPP will be this year? Going for the first time, but I'd like to get some ride time in before the crowds surge in.

Ahh the woes of a high demand, low capacity ride, that is also reasonably long duration wise.

On Demon Drop we utilize a ride lockout that cuts power to the lift, brakes, and station transports, stopping all of them. It doesn't, however, cut power to /everything/ like a normal e-stop does. Same thing goes on Thunder Creek Mountain, it cuts power to everything except the water pumps (if you cut power to those the flume drains) Demon Drop also has an ops console lockout, but this is rarely used. It cuts power to everything, acts the same as an e-stop, it just has the ability to lock as well. Demon Drop, unlike other rides, e-stops itself after 20 minutes of no activity, thus necessitating the need for ride ops to clear our own e-stops (as it's not a super popular ride, and sometimes shuts itself off mid day.) Simply start up the ride as normal, hit emergency reset, and you're good to go. Maintenance mode is only for manual clearing of blocks, and manually advancing cars, or the lift. Seeing Maintenance manually advance the lift is pretty cool actually, as it goes up super slow. They usually do that after rainfall to test the anti-rollbacks. Manually raise a car to each one, somebody down at the lift motor manually engages the lift clutch, lift drops slightly, but the car bites in the anti-rollbacks.

Can confirm Saturday was absolutely /insane/ Thunder Creek Mountain was over an hour wait, Demon Drop was over 45 minutes. Utter insanity for Dorney. If this is a trend for the rest of the season, do not go on Saturdays. I'm glad I got there early on Saturday. I was there from 11:30 to 2:30 and walked onto everything but when I was leaving, it was starting to get more crowded and when I drove by the park again around 7, I saw the main lot was full and the lot on the other side of the toll booths was filling up as well. It was a nice surprise to see Thunder Creek Mountain open, I thought it was closed for the season. TCM doesn't close until either the leafs start clogging the filter, or it gets too cold, whichever comes first. Landing and Canyon are down for the season though. If you want to ride TCM do it as soon as possible, because it's the only water ride open it's been getting /packed/

Can confirm Saturday was absolutely /insane/ Thunder Creek Mountain was over an hour wait, Demon Drop was over 45 minutes. Utter insanity for Dorney. If this is a trend for the rest of the season, do not go on Saturdays.

ah I forgot about haunt sim night. Missed it! I got to see them build Cornstalkers all year though, it does look really well done.

First car, on the unloading side, there's a number. I believe there's the same number on the loading side, but I'm not sure. I don't usually work Hydra.

After 4 rides, we finally got assigned the front seat (The person assigning seats wouldn't allow us to wait even though it was only a one train wait) The only thing I could say the entire ride, was coming over the lift hill, "I'M GOING TO CRAP MY PANTS"

Got the chance to ride 3 new for 2015 coasters this summer. 1. Fury 325, it's just in a class of it's own. Seriously a phenomenal ride in every respect. It's very well rounded and does pretty much everything you could want on a coaster. 2. Impulse, I like it more than Fahrenheit, butter smooth, and I still cannot believe how quiet it is. I could hear the polyurethane on the wheels sticking and peeling up from the track. If you were having a conversation at a normal level on that ride, people in the queue line would hear you. 3. Laff Trakk, all around a very fun ride. First spinning coaster for me so I don't have much to compare it to. I'd be willing to wait about 20 minutes for it, while the line currently sits around 45-60 minutes the last few times I've been.

Hydra, back row, first drop and airtime hill. Even if you're stapled, you just go flying. Shame Train 1 is a rattley, rough mess these days. Rode it today on Train 1 (We were only running 1 train, park was dead, even by Dorney standards) and walked away with a headache. Hopped on Train 2 yesterday though, and that was perfectly fine.

Maybe someone could back this up, but I guess that all models operating at corporate parks such as Six Flags will only run in automatic mode. As for the ride itself, I think it fits a nice gap between family rides and big roller coasters with inversions. I remember riding one at a travelling fair in Spain that had lapbars only with a huge amount of padding. It was scary but so much fun! The one at SFGAdv was being ran in manual mode at the beginning of the season, and in early July. I'm going again on October 15th, I'll check to see if it's still being ran manually. I don't think this style of ride could operate automatically, the balance is different every time, along with other factors that would make it difficult to set a pre-programmed cycle.