Turtleggjp

Makes me wonder why they went with LSMs for this ride. After seeing what Intamin went through with Superman at SFMM, it seems to me that LIMs are the better choice these days.

What about the Extreme Passes with free parking and flash passes included? I didn't see those on sale yet.

Well, here it is Monday morning, and I got to see my co-worker for the first time since taking her home Friday night after the Colossus marathon. I'm happy to report that she is doing just fine, and despite a few bruises is not really in any pain this morning. On Saturday, the day after, she was pretty sore, but the next day she was fine, and today she seems like her normal self. She said that it was her competitive nature (READ: stubbornness ) that got her all the way through it, she was not about to let a bunch of 20 year olds beat her! Oh, and she made me promise to correct her age, she's only 52. She only looked 65 that day. Even though doing a marthon like this was a life long dream of hers, she said she never wanted to do it again as we left the park Friday night. Today though, she says she'd be willing to do another one, as long as it's not wooden! Especially if it's Tatsu (which btw she still has not been on, but will be soon!).

The Psyclone trains have head restraints, that's why they have to use them.

Is this her? That's my co-worker! She made it all 13 hours, and yeah we'll see how well she's doing Monday morning...

15 people made it all 13 hours! My co-worker was one of them. So for all you guys that said you couldn't take it, you just lost to a 52 year old woman!!!

My co-worker was able to get on the list for this event, and she's out there now. For those who were thinking 13 hours on Colossus backwards was too extreme, well they get a 15 minute break every hour. So it's 45 minutes on, 15 minutes off. That can't be that extreme...

I assume that applies only to new spam threads, not if they reply to an existing thread. Do we need to grind an existing discussion to a halt until an admin deletes the spam?

Has anyone actually been able to sign up for this yet? My co-worker called the morning I got the email, and the recording said to leave contact information, which she did, but hasn't heard anything else since.

Great! I was just about to ask again about Xcelerator, since I was planning a trip to Knotts right after Ghostrider came out of rehab (according to the schedule on the Knotts website). I thought about cancelling the trip when I heard Xcelerator was down as well, but now it sounds like I might go.

Dispatch times of 4 minutes for two trains, 6 minutes for one? That doesn't sound much better than X. Sounds like the dropping floor isn't speeding things up that much. Then again, maybe the ops haven't quite mastered everything yet.

I was just thinking to myself today how this must have been a terrible day to be out at Magic Mountain, since it was so hot here in SoCal today. Did you shoot the photos today (Saturday) or yesterday (Friday)? Was anyone out there today in this record breaking heat?

Given how low to the ground those supports are and how they are banked, can we officially rule out a wing walker? It seems to me that the lower side of the train on that curve would be scraping the ground at that point.

I sure hope that one day X will do this. There are supposedly 3 X trains as well, but only 2 are at SFMM right now. It sucks when one breaks down, because then it drops to single train op, which totally sucks! I don't know what to think about the full-full. Watching it in the videos makes me think it might not be that great, only because of the way you always seem to be right side up. Then again, you can't tell what the forces are going to be like from a video. I didn't know what kind of crazy forces I would be feeling on Tatsu's pretzl loop, but as it turned out it was a very simple force: Plastered against the back of my seat! Anyway, I think that if I ever get to ride this, the part that I think looks the coolest is that backflip during the first raven turn.

Don't use Movie Maker!! I hate it! Stick with mpg, or better yet XviD. That's what I use. What format does it come off your camera as? If it is a DV camcorder, you could even MPEG2 compress it and use interlaced mode. Mmmmmm....... 60fps goodness. If that is too big, XviD should be much smaller in size, and still excellent quality. But yes, dump Movie Maker, and say hello to my friend VirtualDub! Matt

As this thread's local X junkie, let me point out another observation: When driving into SFMM, the first thing you notice now is X's two raven turns (inside and outside) side by side, with the inside one much taller than the outside one. It's as if they were trying to say "hey everyone, check out these two new insane elements!" On Eejanaika, the outside raven turn is tucked back much further away from the big inside raven turn. This is probably because the overbanked turn is much shorter than X's big curve, so it doesn't take as much distance to go through the (probably also shorter) half-half and then into the outside raven turn. Also, that brake run looks a bit steeper than X's brake run. Should be interesting, considering it also has that extra little forward seat flip move that I've seen in the video. Matt

I wonder if that is one of the "improvements" S&S made to this design. They did want to make the trains lighter didn't they?

I think that I too pointed it out in my description. I wasn't sure exactly how it was going to be done, but I figured that a full backflip was in there somewhere. I didn't see a whole lot of the overbanked turn in the video though. Plus, it looks like the give you a face full of the catwalk during the brake run. Can any of our Japanesse speakers elaborate on all that text we see going by in the video? EDIT: I just noticed the Guiness World Record certificate on the site. I couldn't imagine what record this ride could be holding, but if you read it carefully, it says it has the most inversions... 14! I'm gonna have to sit down and think about that one...

The bolding almost stands out better in black and white

Quite a few rides, and lots of off-ride studying/photography. Plus, I always love to know how things work. I hate being in the dark about things. Needless to say, I had lots of fun at media day studying the workings of Tatsu's seat rotation and locking system.

I'd consider myself to be a pretty good X junkie. Here's what I can tell so far: I'll use the same Right Side Up (RSU) and Up Side Down (USD) terms for the train, but I'll try a different notation for the rotation of the seats: 0 - 540 degrees. 0 is when the rails are closest to the running rails, or at the tip of the track, and 540 is as low as I believe they go on X, which is 1½ turns from the 0 position. The seat rotations are approximate, I have no idea what the exact angles are, but that should give you a pretty good idea what is happening. X's Layout (based on my own experience) Train leaves station: Train RSU, seats ~135 (recliner-like position). Train climbs lift hill: Train RSU, seats ~135 (now upright, due to lift hill incline). Train goes over first drop: Train RSU (vertical), seats flip forward to 360 (facing forward, and down). Train reaches bottom of hill: Train RSU, seats continue forward to 540 (upright, facing backwards). Inside Raven Turn: Train now USD, seats rotate gradually to 360 (upright, facing forward). Full Backflip: Train USD, seats rotate to 0 (still upright, facing forward). Big Curve: Train USD, seats 0 (no change). Half Half: Train now RSU, seats rotate to 180 (upright, now facing backward). Outside Raven Turn: Train now USD, seats rotate to 360 (upright, facing forward). Half Half: Train now RSU, seats rotate to 180 (upright, facing backward). Brake Run: Train still RSU, seats return to recliner position of about 135. Eejanaika's Layout (based on pictures) Train leaves station: Train RSU, seats ~135 (recliner-like position). Train climbs lift hill: Train RSU, seats ~135 (now upright, due to lift hill incline). Train goes over first drop: Train RSU (vertical), seats flip forward to 360 (facing forward, and down). Train reaches bottom of hill: Train RSU, seats continue forward to 540 (upright, facing backwards). Inside Raven Turn: Train now USD, seats rotate All the way to 0 (upright, facing forward). Full Full: Train flips from USD to RSU to USD again, seats rotate forward to 360 (still upright, facing forward). Overbanked Curve: Train USD, seats 360 (no change). Half Half: Train now RSU, seats rotate backwards to 180 (upright, now facing backward). Outside Raven Turn: Train now USD, seats rotate to 360 (upright, facing forward). Half Half: Train now RSU, seats rotate to 180 (upright, facing backward). Brake Run: Train still RSU, seats return to recliner position of about 135. I've bolded the differences on Eejanaika. The last 3 elements on Eejanaika after the first Half Half I am just guessing they are the same as X. Comments/Corrections are welcome! Matt

Ok, I was able to get my FTP server set up. I won't be running it until later tonight, so PM me if you would like to download more of the Tatsu news reports that I recorded. I also put up my photos from that day. Nothing much you haven't already seen, unless you want to see what my guest and I look like, or some of the plant life around the park.

0-106.9 in 1.8 seconds... How many G's is that? That's got to be up there with Tatsu's Pretzl Loop. I'll probably never get to experience it for myself, but hey if I ever do I can probably ride Eejanaika too!

Still having trouble uploading. It looks like it starts to upload for a couple seconds, then it loses the connection. I also saw the file size limit go up to 60MB, and then drop back to 40MB. Is there work being done on the server right now? If so, I'll keep working on some other clips while I wait...

Ok, I finished the KTLA live feed. I tried to make an MPEG1 last night, but the file came out too big and quality was already pretty bad. So instead, I made a 60fps XviD version at 360x270. Just tried to post it, but I keep getting the message "No Post Mode Specified." Gotta get to work now, will try again later today... Matt