texcoaster

A good coaster doesn't need theming. Terminator and X2, for example. Wasted money.

Except for the fact that RMC said the bolts are farther apart than the width of a regular wood coaster's steel rail. If it were to shuffle side-to-side far enough to hit the bolts, then the Dinn version would seem smooth by comparison.

Why don't we just call it a steel coaster, since that's what it is. YES, it's a hybrid. Just like Gemini - which has always been called a steel coaster. Just like Cedar Creek Mine Ride - which is a steel coaster. Just like Excalibur - which is a steel coaster. ...conversely, there are lots of coasters with wood track and steel supports. They are also hybrids. They are also called wood coasters. There has never been a discussion, for example, about whether or not Voyage, Villian, Hades, or (yes!) the Coney Island Cyclone is a wood coaster. The only reason this is even being discussed about Giant is because it used to be a wood coaster and because SFOT still refers to a "wooden coaster drop". Let's drop it now, please.

I have mixed feelings now that I've read the glowing reviews.... The $10mil price tag is really steep, but this was a learning curve project, and part of the expense involved the labor-intensive process of removing part of the existing structure without damaging it, retrofitting new supports onto the structure, figuring out and engineering a new layout that fit onto the previous layout's footprint, etc etc etc. The cost should be considerably less when the coaster can be designed and built from a clean slate and construction doesn't have to tiptoe around what's already there. The mixed feelings come from the suspicion that as this technology becomes cheaper to produce (and that happens to all new tech), that the number of parks willing to build a classic wooden coaster will diminish drastically. If they can, for a slight percentage more upfront, have a smooth, low-maintenance, crowd-pleasing ride, then why would they build a coaster that will cost much more to maintain and has the potential of deteriorating into an unridable mess? I love the classic wood coaster experience and while I know that there are park owners out there who are of like mind and will continue to pamper their wooden creations and maybe even build new ones, I fear that a lot of parks will now say "build one of those Iron Horse rides instead of a woodie" or will give up on maintaining their existing rides when the costs escalate, figuring "why spend the money to keep it up when we can just Iron Horse it and be done"....

I think you mean catwalks. Ledgers are actors that provide surprise buttsecks in cowboy movies.

Cost is the main factor in this, and it's why the big coasters like TTD and KK go up, down, brake. I wonder if either of those parks has considered using one year that they planned on getting a new coaster and instead adding a full layout to the Intamin monster they already have? Phantom's Revenge shows that it can be done...

YouTube video posted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoWSsyYEh5k

You beat me to it. Every time I watched that drop on the video, my thoughts went to "OMFG film that again from the back seat!" I think the airtime on this ride will not be limited to the front of the train... which will make this bad boy a back seat must-do for sure. All of the ejectors without missing any floaters. Wait... I didn't see any floaters, all I saw were ejectors. You think the underside of those lap bars have cushy padding? I foresee bruised thighs! As for the delayed opening, we haven't seen any train other than the teal one on the circuit yet. I'm guessing that in addition to installing the special effects, they're going to need to cycle the other two trains the minimum number of hours and have them go through a final inspection before they can run them with people. That takes time, especially if you can't cycle trains while workers are still installing effects, etc. It would NOT be a good idea to open this thing with only one train running!

They only want people aged 13-22 for the shoot.

I saw a program (or perhaps read an article, I don't remember) on Superman at SFMM. One of the problems they had to work out in designing it was coming up with an adhesive that could hold the polyurethane "tires" to the steel wheels at insanely high RPMs. The faster the cars go, the more RPMs the wheels do and the hotter the wheels get. Heat breaks down the adhesive and there was a danger of the car literally losing the tire off the wheel. They solved the problem with a new adhesive and much larger wheels (which means lower RPMs). So it could be that in order to get significantly faster than Rossa, it might not just be the cost or the windshields or the G-forces that limit what can be done at the moment... it might be the wheels.

On the Six Flags website after you navigate to SFOT and then to RIDES, you'll see that the New Texas Giant also says "opening late spring" on there... and it says that NTG will NOT be available with a Flash Pass. I'm all for that! Maybe after it's been open a couple of years they can add it to Flash Pass, but those lines are going to be looooooooooong this year and the last thing I'd want to see is a bunch of folks doing a "legit cutting in line" to make it even longer.

I can't think of any coaster that's more Jeckyll & Hyde than Boardwalk Bullet, at least before this last round of trackwork. Some days, the circuit time from top of lift to brake would be 61 seconds and other days it would be 75 seconds. That's the difference between a ride with relentless intensity, airtime, laterals, and (relative) smoothness... and a ride that offers almost no forces other than shuffle and potholes and barely makes it back to the station. I've mentioned it before, but the more they work to get it consistently re-rideable, the less I like it. Not that I enjoyed driving down there only to discover that it's having a bad day, but the ironing out of the problems that caused the bad days have also ironed out the parts that allowed the insane days. It's consistently "medium" now.

If they wait all the way till Memorial Day Weekend, at the end of May, then I'm going to have issues with them plastering all over their page "SPRING 2011" Spring is Easter, not Memorial Day. Just sayin' OOOO, an Easter weekend opening! I can see the ads now: "This Easter, come take a spin on the New Texas Giant. It's been resurrected from the dead and it'll make ya see God!"

Just to clarify, Screamscape says that the modifications that allegedly need to be done are to the TRAINS to keep riders from sticking their hands out the sides too far. It also says that since the trains already have those "windows" on them to prevent such a thing, the rumor isn't exactly rock-solid. If the problem does exist and if a train addition or modification to the "windows" is all that's needed to fix it, then it shouldn't delay the opening as much as a track or structure modification would.

It will be like a train ride through the woods, riding on square wheels and braked to death. Seriously, that ride was never scary but it used to be hella fun. It's still an OK ride after dark, but the brakes just kill it. You spend the entire ride thinking about how much fun you COULD be having instead of how much fun it is. My God, if they could Iron Horse that thing and remove all the trim brakes, you'd see it in the top 10 (steelie list). That helix would be INSANE at full speed on steel rails. Hmmmm... if they JUST replaced the track without changing the profile at all... then Beast could be the only coaster ever to rank in the Top 10 wood AND steel polls.... a decade or so apart, but still.

Not at all. In addition to bringing awareness to really good SBNO coasters that might be salvaged, it also is fun to compare how today's rides compare to rides that have existed in the (recent) past. Since Mitch offers several filters to view the results, such as "rankings just looking at votes from people who rode the coaster this year" and such, he could easily filter out the SBNO and past coasters to tabulate "current" rankings. That said, I'd like to see more SBNO and defunct coasters listed in the poll. It would be interesting to see where MegaZeph, Texas Cyclone, Geauga Big Dipper or Hercules might rank against some current rides.

The fall of Voyage and El Toro remaining high are easy enough to figure when you consider the type of wood coaster each one is. Voyage got a lot of attention when it opened and a bunch of folks made sure that their travel plans included Holiday World. Those folks got amazing rides on it and continued to rank it #1 through the years, based on the memory of those rides. This year, Timberliners were promised for it, plus Will Koch passed away. Those two events put Holiday World back in people's minds and large attendance figures resulted. Lots of folks who had Voyage as #1 were back at the park for the first time since then and got to re-sample it... and got rides that did not live up to what they remembered from before. Count me among those folks. While I still ranked Voyage #1, it wasn't sitting there by the huge margin that it used to. If I had ever ridden El Toro, those two could've likely switched places on my list. So this year is likely filled with votes from people who had to re-evaluate what they thought of Voyage. El Toro, on the other hand, is a lot more consistent year after year due to the track technology. New riders get the same amazing rides that early riders did and returning fans get rides as good as they remembered. Without the rapid deterioration of the ride experience that other woodies have, El Toro can probably hold onto the #1 spot for many years... unless Intamin builds something more amazing. I was going to back up my theory by comparing Voyage's overall ranking filtering just the votes of people who rode it this year, but the server on Mitch's site isn't responding.

That's exactly how I felt about Heide Park's Colosus. It's also why I haven't made an extra effort to run out and ride El Toro. I'll get to it someday, but it's not a high priority.

coastercon.com has a bunch of new pics up, including a LOT of shots of the steel support beams and the way they're attached to the wood structure. There are also a few tasty shots of the tunnels and the magnetic MCBR.

Go back a couple of pages, there's a video of a full train test.

The sound you just heard, ladies and gentlemen, was the last bit of Hayzle's credibility flying out the window....

Video with some construction shots in angles you might not have seen before:

...and I've never had any problems with my iPhone 4's antenna, either. Just sayin'

The designers wanted to make a better looking/ more original phone. Also they had to cram in more stuff like the 2 camera's, faster processor etc. They had no place to put the antenna in a place where it would be blocked. Without an antenna a phone can't function. In this case they built the ride bigger, crazier faster to make it better. In the design process they realized they needed more support. So they did the only thing they could, add steel the way they did. Just like apple had to put the faulty antenna, SFOT needed to put in the ugly supports where they did, they had no other option. Wow. At 17 yrs old, you know EVERYTHING!

Speaking of the feeling of anticipointment that one can feel when riding a hyped-up coaster for the first time... I think that there's a significant danger, at least amongst the folks like us who pour over every new picture and video, that no matter how good TNG is, it won't live up to the pre-opening hype it has gotten.