texcoaster

By the way, the pic I posted is not photoshopped. All I did was reduce the file size before posting... Other than that, it came right out of the camera that way. Also, the overhaul was all about the chassis and wheel assemblies, and the speed increase was noticeable. Too bad Travel Channel used the blue train... A dozen more rides on black would've been epic!

Here's a teaser pic of the black train, fresh from its upgrades and overhauling. Hope the red train performs as well when it gets back! Black Train, fresh from its overhauling

Went to SFOT this weekend for the Travel Channel shoot. Had a great time, and also made a quick (5.5hr drive each way is quick by Texas standards!) trip over to Magic Springs to get a couple last rides on X Coaster. The shoot was fun, the park looks good (save for the cheesy "cobwebs" made of ripped cheese cloth stuck to bushes), and the black train on NTAG was screeeeeeeeamingly fast. One of the ride ops said that it was recently overhauled and the red train is getting done right now. Shockwave looks great, but they were just running one train (WTF?) and the line was really long. Got in a couple rides after the TC shoot on Sunday, though. I'll try to upload some pics tonight.

Wow, not even one page in and someone is already complaining! --Robb "Can we maybe have a ride announcement where people don't make stupid, embarrassing comments? Oh, wait... no." Alvey I wasn't trying to sound like I was complaining. I've just heard from some friends who live in germany that gripping the handles infront of the seat on Blue Fire could be somehwhat discomfortable. I've never personally been on Blue Fire myself so I can't say that for certain. I would love to ride this coaster and it seems like a great new addition to the park in 2014. I'll put your mind at ease: I rode Blue Fire this year and I thought those were some of the most comfortable trains ever. I had no problems with the front grips, the restraint portion fit me just fine without being too restrictive and they even let me "worry" a bit on some of the inversions (although I was never in any real danger of falling out). The minute I saw that this coaster was using the Blue Fire system, I started making travel plans.

For those of you waiting to hear word, be patient. I just got word late this afternoon with details for SFOT, which is scheduled for day-after-tomorrow(!) I had sent a friendly inquiry several days ago, but didn't get anything until today and it was the mass email to everyone who got in. So if you've signed up for one, plan to go just in case... I'm having to scramble to see if I can get the day off work tomorrow now. If not, I'll be driving all night to be there Saturday morning. So if you see someone on Travel Channel next season who looks like a zombie with sleep deprivation, that's me!

The point wasn't made clear enough, obviously, so I edited down your post into the important things, highlighting what should become your mantra from now on so you won't get your undies in a bunch next time a ride stalls with you on it and the park doesn't reward you to the extent that you think you deserve. You got a (one-ride) flash pass out of it. You said that the park had gotten busy during your delay, so that pass for the one ride might've just saved you that hour you "lost" on Titan. SFOT didn't have to do ANYTHING for you guys. At all. But they did, it was more than a lot of parks would've done, and yet you still found the need to whine about it here because they didn't buy you lunch.

^ So what you're saying is that you got a ride on Titan that lasted about 100 times longer than everyone else's ride and then got a Flash Pass on top of that, and you're pissed they didn't throw in lunch, too? Seriously, you wanted lunch for "all that time wasted" but what about the folks who had already invested their time in the queue, then had to wait the same amount of time you did while the ride was stuck, but never got to ride at all? What about their time wasted, which was considerably more frustrating than yours, since you not only got to ride, but got a Flash Pass as well? A coaster is a machine. Machines occasionally have down time. Once in a great while, you might be on it when that happens. Deal with it. OK, so you were cold. Big deal. It's not like you were upside-down or dangling from a chair swing 200ft in the air or anything. The park didn't owe you anything. You assume those risks when you get in line and you know it. I've been stuck on rides several times, and have never been compensated for my "wasted time" nor my discomfort. I never expected them to, and surely wouldn't have gone online afterward and whined like a little bitch that my precious time had been wasted and I deserved more than what the park gave me. /rant

Like this: http://coasterguyonline.com/coasterblog/2012/8/7/x-coaster I liked the ride a lot (obviously) but the locals didn't seem to be riding it much at all. There was a pretty substantial wait (20-30min, which is substantial for Magic Springs) on the other stuff that day, but X-coaster was usually a walk-on, or a one-train wait at most. While I'm sad to see such a unique coaster go away, my preference is for the park to do whatever it needs to do to stay financially healthy and popular.

Copyright 2012, Mars, Inc. Wait, what?

Simple, but incorrect.

It is a hybrid, but the wood/steel description refers to the track. The reason that topper track coasters (regardless of the material of the structure) are being argued over is that the track is literally both. There is a traditional wood stack, but the upper layer is steel. As for wood tracked/steel supported hybrids being classified as wood coasters, the answer is YES. Not only Great White, but a long list of others including Voyage, Villain, Hades, and even the Coney Island Cyclone. Likewise, steel tracked/wood supported hybrids are classified as steel coasters (Gemini, Cedar Creek Mine Ride, New Texas Giant) even though the parks sometimes continue to refer to them as wood coasters.

...and I rode it with you, hah!

Whenever I ride Iron Shark in Galveston, I'm reminded of my rides on Mystery Mine.... specifically how every time I got off MM, my first thought was how awesome that ride would be without the OTSRs.

For a side-friction coaster, that one isn't bad at all. I was on a tour bus group from Vienna and there was a two-hour stop for shopping as part of the tour. Of course, the minute the bus stopped at the shopping area, I hailed a cab and raced over to Vidampark. They don't use Euros there, so I had to come up with some cash (they didn't take credit, either) from an ATM, wasting valuable time. I was able to ride the Schwarzkopf once, then headed for the woodie. It's a beautiful structure with great old trains and the brakeman rides in the middle of the train. After two quick rides, it was time to race back to the tour bus, which had warned us that they had NO PROBLEM leaving our asses in Hungary if we were late getting back. Naturally, the shopping area and the park were quite far apart, but we made it back with five minutes to spare. Really wish I'd been able to spend some time at the park. What I did see was pretty nice, considering.

It's not even an organization that puts it on, it just sorta "is", although there are organizations that hold their events as part of the Gay Day. Basically, it's just a day that's picked on a weekend of Pride Week where everyone agrees to go to Six Flags on that day. I doubt that SFOT even know it's happening until they see all the rainbow flag stickers on the cars coming into the lot that day. I was there for Lone Star Coasterthon and as I was leaving the park after the morning ERT on Saturday, I happened to look around at the GP streaming in and thought, "hmmm....". I took out my phone, googled "Six Flags Texas Gay Day 2012", looked at the results, and said, "Yep! It's Gay Day!" Disney's Gay Day is much more organized, but Disney actually gets involved with that one.

Not to mention the hefty "one way fee" for dropping off the car in a different state than you picked it up in... IF you can even rent a car at all. By the time you paid for the car, the fuel, the under-25 fee, and the one-way fee, it would probably be cheaper to fly. ALSO: if you want to do an epic coaster trip through the US, the parks you mention aren't the ones I'd head to (except for Cedar Point). I'd skip California completely (sorry, SFMM and Disney fanboys) and also skip Orlando. YES, the parks themselves can be amazing, but for the better coastering experience, I'd go with the midwest (CP, Holiday World, etc) and head east (SFGAd, KD, Hershey, BGW, etc). Coming to the US for coasters and doing California and Orlando is sorta like heading to the UK for coasters and doing Lightwater Valley and Thorpe, but skipping Blackpool and Alton Towers. [edit] I'll add another vote for "do a TPR trip" - You'll likely get to do a LOT more coasters, have perks like ERT, have folks to ride with/talk to, won't have to worry about transportation or lodging, AND the whole trip will probably cost you 1/3 as much.

I think that unless you got to ride [wood coaster] in its heyday, you really can't justify an opinion that it should be Iron Horsed (radical changes to layout, wood track replaced with steel I-beams) rather than Toppered (layout kept in or returned to original form, but with smooth Topper Track added). As good as NTAG is, I'd still rather have seen them leave the layout intact, re-install the double-up after the second turn, and Topper it. Yes, the current version is amazing, but that entire ride is still not as good as the "flying carpet finale" from the old ride was, let alone the whole ride experience from 1990-1993 or so. Seriously, it could give Voyage and El Toro a run for "best woodie" again if it were to run like the old days. Rattler, however, was all about the first drop and the rest of the ride wasn't much. Toppering it would give you a ride with the world's best wood coaster drop and nothing else. The Iron Horse treatment makes much more sense for this ride than for TxGiant, but it's too late to change that now. Looking forward, SoB is getting razed, so that leaves Mean Streak. That layout is completely uninteresting and even during opening season it was just a TxGiant wannabe. I understand that SFOT's problem with trains due to the violent layout (by the time ACE had Coastercon there in June of the opening year, they were already down to two of the original three trains, one of which was a frankenstein train comprised of the front half of one train and the back half of another) led CP to order a much tamer layout to reduce maintenance. They got that, but also got a snoozer of a ride. Iron Horse that thing, pronto. Ghostrider, Boss, Grizzly, Gwazi, Colossus, Boardwalk Bullet... good Topper candidates, as all of them had exciting layouts when they first opened. Toppering those can not only greatly improve the rides, but can also leave intact the memories of the fans who loved those rides in years past. No remorse from anyone. Beast, on the other hand... I'd go either way. Part of me says Topper it because even though it doesn't really do anything back there in the woods, it doesn't really need to. Speed is the thing, pure and simple. You're on a rocket sled from hell, screaming through the forest, ducking into tunnels, trying to outrun god-knows-what. It's coaster zen and it also is a near-perfect combination of intensity and fun that appeals to thrillseekers while not being too frightening for the rest of the folks. Changing the layout to include overbanks, violent airtime, etc would erase a lot of its unique charm. Of course, having the thing TRIMMED TO DEATH has already erased a lot of that charm, which leads to the next statement: The other part of me says to hell with the people who can't take it, there is a LOT of track on that thing and all of it could be DOING SOMETHING. Even if it's just some bunnies or trick-track or some other such thing that injects a little excitement into going from point A to point B. Bottom line, as long as they can go back to running the thing full-tilt without brakes, I'm a happy guy... no matter what kind of track it's on.

^I dunno... but all the stuck-in-the-sky incidents I can recall off the top of my head have involved Windseekers, not Starflyers. Even so, the odds that you'll actually be ON the ride when it stalls are extremely slim.

The SFOT version will be a Star Flyer rather than a Windseeker. The one in Vienna, which is almost as tall as SFOT's will be, used the same seating configuration as the others, as far as I could tell.

1. thunderstorm on stuck ride! Wind gusts creates airtime on ride that had none previously 2. (heard from the queue) "Woah, how is it raining? There's not a cloud in the sky!"

Been on lots of racers and Grand National is by far my favorite. The new trains knocked it pretty far down my list of favorite coasters, but it still remains my favorite racer. Have y'all noticed that most of the racers are wood? How awesome would a Bizarro-style Intamin racer be? I'm betting that the big reason we haven't seen such a thing is the price tag of not one, but TWO big steel coasters. That said, it could be done... the park could build a good steel coaster and then a few years later add the second side and make it a racer.

For those who missed Lone Star Coasterthon last weekend, check the SFStLouis thread for some Flashback deconstruction pics I just posted. Here are some of Chute-out: Inside the tower of Chute-out Peek inside the core of the tower. You know the maintenance crew just LOVED it when they needed to climb to the top on that ladder in high winds one last "ride" before it goes away

The train cars were nowhere to be seen at SFOT. You could read that as "maybe they've been ditched in favor of new ones" or "maybe they've been sent off to get upgrades" but it's probably "they took them to a covered storage area somewhere." YES, the track is greasy and nasty and the equipment all shows its age. As 20+ yr-old coasters go, though, it seems to be in good shape. Station and queue area removed, train missing track in good shape, despite needing some fresh paint Half-expected to see that it was powered by hamster wheels buying stock in degreaser now!

Firstly, it's really odd to see "I hope that [park] is getting a new boomerang" in print, even though I know you mean "instead of a used one." Anyway, after touring the site last weekend at Lone Star Coasterthon, it's definitely being taken apart rather than demolished. It was made pretty clear during discussions at the event that it's going to St Louis.

In general, I like ramps better than stairs, but I agree that the ramp there is very narrow. The station is very roomy, but they've filled it with switchbacks and created a situation that plagues a LOT of coaster stations: the feed into the area where the individual seat queues are comes in at the end. In Rattler's case, it enters at the back seat queue, but I've seen a lot that enter at the front seat end. This creates a big problem when the folks waiting for the front or back seat stack up and block the main queue. Astroworld's Viper was the worst offender I've ever seen of this, as there were stairs leading right up to the station at the front seat queue. When the front seat line backed up, other people in line were a couple of steps down and couldn't see that the people in front of them were waiting for the front seat, so they stayed put rather than maneuvering around them. This led to many instances where the queue would come to a screeching halt and multiple trains would dispatch with empty cars in the middle of the train, despite having a long queue for the ride. In Rattler's case, SFFT has "solved" this issue by putting an employee at the end of the main queue and funneling people into the individual queues with assigned seating. Whether or not you'll be able to wait for a specific seat is entirely up to the person staffing that spot in the queue. I don't mind having assigned seating on a coaster (it makes the queue go faster), as long as I understand from the beginning that it will be that way. I hate being able to choose a seat in the morning, then waiting for an hour later the same day with the intention of riding in the opposite end of the train from my earlier ride, only to be told that now I don't get to choose. Pick a policy, state it clearly at the entrance to the ride (ala Blue Fire) and stick to it.