texcoaster

^ and ^^ I don't know whether to applaud or cry. I'm going to cautiously go for applause. In one sense, this is a completely new, first-of-its-kind, absolutely outlandish makeover and it deserves something truly unique for rolling stock. I get that. But horny Caddies? On the other hand, I like the contrast of a cutesy, whimsical, family-friendly-looking train rolling along totally badass extreme coaster track. I just hope the "nose" on the front isn't too big. I hate getting a front seat ride and still not being able to see the track because of some lame lead car decoration (Vekoma mine train, anyone?) The nose on Xcelerator is even too long for my tastes, although it does add a bit of excitement to the top hat by keeping you from seeing any track until you're completely vertical.

The is worth a look. This is from the early days: no trim on the first drop, no hard trims in the lift helix, and very little midcourse braking at all. Notice also that the double-up after the third drop hadn't yet been removed. This is the Giant that sat at #1 on my list for so long. ...and Agonizingly slow over the lift, trim on the first drop, no double-up, trims in the helix, s-l-o-w in the helix, decent finale. Also rough as all hell, even in the non-wheel seats.

Curses to the evil forces that made me forget about not discussing this.

There has been much talk in the Texas Giant rehab thread about the ridiculously awesome "flying carpet finale" that the old layout had. In my (and several others') opinion, it ranks as one of or maybe THE best finish of any coaster in history. Most coasters do their thing right at the start, then basically burn up momentum in some way before hitting the station brakes. Giant saved the best for last. What other coasters have noteworthy finishes? Two immediately come to mind for me: Rampage at Alabama Adventure brings the train to a halt on the holding brake before the station. Everyone is chatting about the great ride they've just had as the brakes release and the train creeps forward into a twisting final plunge to the station brakes that's a very nice surprise. Thunderbolt at Kennywood is great fun. Not only does it roll into a ravine drop right out of the station, but it returns to the ravine later, saving the two biggest drops on the ride for the end.

re: Mean Streak -- it wasn't rough its opening season, but it was boring. The only way a makeover could turn it into a good ride would be a complete reprofiling like they're doing with Giant. I understand why they're doing the big changes with Giant, creating something completely new for the GP to get excited about, but they could've simply left the profile as it was, installed the steel rails, and removed the trims. Much less money... and it would probably rocket Giant back into every top ten list on earth. From a rider standpoint, there was nothing wrong with that layout. It was absolutely insane. From a maintenance standpoint, it was a disaster. re: flying carpet -- I don't know who coined the term, but if you think back on cartoons of folks riding a flying carpet, the carpet was always undulating under the riders in waves while the carpet was hauling serious azz. The finale of Giant began with a drop off the last helix, hit a tightly banked S-turn at breakneck speed, then made a large 180 curve completely inside the structure with undulating hills that mimicked the way a flying carpet flies. Unlike the cartoon riders of a flying carpet, though, Giant riders were usually hanging on like crazy the whole time -- or getting tossed around like rag dolls.

No way. X-Coaster at Magic Springs. One train (duh) and 16 riders per circuit. Here's the process: Teen girl opens the main queue and lets 16 people into the seat queues. She closes the main queue and saunters over to her station box. She signals Teen Girl 2 to open the gates to the train. Gates open, people step through the train to put their stuff in the cubbies. People return to seats. Teen Girl 1 and Teen Girl 2 then begin the restraint process. Each takes a front seat rider and moves the lap bar over, then snaps the seat belt. Then they check that everything locked. Good? Good. Now, let's ask the riders if it's their first ride on it, where they got that cute outfit, OMG shoes!, etc. Both girls move to the second row and repeat the process. If the people in the seats are uninteresting, or if they talked to them already on previous rides, then the girls talk to each other. A lot. This goes on for eight rows of seats. Once the train is checked, the girls (still gossiping and talking to each other) return to their respective boxes. TG2 gets behind the controls and checks for green lights. To do this, she must cup her hand over each one to see if it's lit since the sun is directly on the panel. Then she takes a clipboard, checks something on the second page, nods to TG1. TG1 gives a thumbs-up, TG2 returns it, and off we go. When the ride is over, less than a minute later, everyone exits the car... and waits at the exit ramp for TG2 to get her key and unlock the padlock(!) on the exit gate. TG1 joins her at the gate so they can talk some more as people exit. TG2 then re-locks the gate, the girls finish whatever conversation they had started while people exited, and then (and ONLY then) does TG1 cross the tracks. TG2 opens the gates between the queue and the train, TG1 steps through, and the gates close again. TG1 then returns to the main queue to unlock it and start the process over again. Time between dispatches? At least 10 minutes. Sometimes 12. At 10 minutes per dispatch (I'm speeding them up to make easier numbers), 15 people per train (there was always at least one single rider on EVERY train, no attempt to pair them up), that's a whopping 90 pph throughput. Good thing it wasn't crowded.

It's true. Even though Giant was my #1 coaster for many years, the last five or six years were a study in diminishing returns. Do you throw a lot of money at a ride to keep it in it's current unridable state? Or do you throw even more money at it in hopes of changing it into something so new, so different that it can essentially erase all the bad memories? Giant wasn't even in my top 50 woodies last year. The finale was still good even in the later years, but you were so brutalized by the first 2/3 of the ride that you couldn't enjoy it. During ERT at Lone Star Coasterthon, the Giant would have a few people all waiting on the front seat while Titan got the crowds. Such a shame.

Don't you DARE jinx the flying carpet! I'm not going to speak of it until I see it go in... no jinx!

I need to get to El Toro... although I must say that the one plug-n-play (Colossus at Heide Park) that I've been on was meh for me. Airtime? Hell yeah. Speed? Smooth? Great pacing? Yeah, all of the above. I just couldn't seem to get excited about it, even after multiple rides. I kept saying to myself, "this has all those things I like in a wooden coaster... why don't I like it more?" But I don't. It felt like a steel coaster to me. There was that sense of being out of control that woodies have that this thing just didn't have. It was immaculately engineered and felt it... which I think was its downfall for me. Voyage certainly can't be accused of being too smooth! While it's rougher than I'd like (maybe the Timberliners will help), it always amazes me with its relentless intensity and the out of control feeling is higher than just about any other coaster I've ever ridden. No matter which one you end up liking best, Voyage is definitely a must-ride.

OK, maybe I'm missing something.... but why all the love for the installation of the midcourse brake? Opening season, the MCBR was barely used... just a little kiss of the brakes, hardly enough to notice. The train plummeted down the next drop into the structure (back seat airtime in spades!) providing a relentless finish with very little slowdown in the lift-wrapping helix and a flying carpet that was absolutely insane. As the trains took their toll on the track (and vice versa) the brake was used more heavily and in some seasons brought the train to a complete stop. IMHO, this not only ruined the pacing of the ride, but also took the thunder out of the entire second half. The brake run is needed for blocking if they're planning on running three trains.... but other than that, why all the love for this feature which has the potential for crippling the ride experience?

Don't count your brake runs before they're placed. There is a flat section of track where the MCBR used to be, but none of the pics I've seen so far show any actual brakes. If they plan to run three trains (do they?) then they will have to have brakes installed there for blocking, but that doesn't mean that they'll be used in normal operations. We'll just have to wait and see. At any rate, without the problem of excessive wear on the track, there shouldn't be any need for them to slow down the train there (or stop it completely) like they used to.

X-Coaster at Magic Springs last weekend.

Notice that the ledgers have slots in the ends like a tuning fork that surround the uprights. Looking at the pic, the overbanked portion have ends that aren't yet connected to an upright, leading me to guess that more uprights will be installed there. That would put the track in a tunnel-like enclosure of supports (awesome). It would make sense that they would install the long, curved track pieces there BEFORE they box in the track with the extra supports, so they don't have to try to thread them through the 'tunnel'.

^ The ballots are evenly distributed to four quadrants of the US, plus international ballots. Just because the winners are commonly in the midwest doesn't mean the voters are. Oh, and 20% of the top 50 woodies are outside the US. I seriously doubt that 20% of the world's woodies are outside the US, so it seems that the votes are skewed away from the US in that category.

I had fun using my school German in Germany. While in line for a ride, I would chat up some locals. They realized that I'm a native English speaker and they were excited to use their English when talking to me. I would reply back auf deutsch. For the most part, we all understood each other though each of us would occasionally have to explain a coaster-specific term from time to time, since those aren't usually covered in school language textbooks. I found that folks in the queues at Holiday Park were especially friendly and eager to chat. Be warned, however, that very little of your schoolbook German is going to do you any good in Vienna, or most of Austria for that matter. Folks could understand me, but I could rarely make out what was being said back in return.

In case the above comments were in response to my saying that the turns appear to need more support, it's not the weight of the track that has me wondering... it's the reprofiling, which puts forces in completely different directions and angles from the original layout. Some of those turns have T-shaped steel track supports that are only anchored on one end. I'm assuming that more structure will join what's already there so the ledgers will at least be connected to SOMETHING on both sides of the track...

Please, please, PLEASE tell me that there will be more substantial support added to those turns. There's just no way the current steel-hanging-onto-wood-by-a-few-bolts-on-one-end turn support is adequate.

I dunno, I thought one of the reasons to tag someone in a photo was to identify who the person is - ESPECIALLY if it isn't already obvious. Case in point: the alpine slide pic where you see Rob's back. Someone looks at the pic and says, "hey, cool alpine slide. I wonder if that's a person I know in the pic or if it's just some random person?" and then they see the tag and they know it's Robb. Crowd scenes where you can't see the person at all? I get that. It's annoying. But identifying someone in the pic (background or not) because it's not immediately obvious seems completely legit to me. As for the "I look awful in this pic, don't tag me" - get over it. The pic was of you, the subject of the pic was you, and by all other accounts that's a good reason to tag the photo. How is the person supposed to know whether or not you like that pic of you? If getting tagged in a pic that you don't want to be tagged in is the most annoying thing you can find about facebook, then I'd say you're exponentially better off than most other folks on there.

Amusement Today said that they've hit the 40% completion mark now. It also said that the next things going up will be the 114* curves. Wait.... 114*? CurveS ?

Although a quick trip through the rest of the thread would've answered your question.... No, those are the rails, the whole rails, and nothing but the rails. There won't be any wood track. Yes, that means that it will go from being a woodie to being a steelie. Carry on.

When I rode it several years ago, there was only one trim and it was on a shallow downward run before the turn that leads into the insane bunny hop with the change of direction at the top. That trim was used pretty lightly... if you were in the front half of the train, you couldn't really feel it much. Were other trims added more recently, and those got removed, or was the trim I remember the one that was removed and it's now running full-tilt all the way through the bunnies? I got sick, sick, SICK airtime on those bunnies and the direction-change hill right after the trim was even more intense than the first drop. I can't imagine doing it faster. That's it. Going to Germany next year.

^ Um... whatever. I'm pretty sure I was typing, not talking.

Rampage and Marvel Mania, Alabama Adventure (then Visionland) Arkansas Twister, Magic Springs Revenge of the Mummy, USH Terminator Salvation, SFMM Zonga, SFMW Gwazi & Kumba, BGT Triple Hurricane, Cypress Gardens Batman, SFGAm Twisted Twins (then "Twisted Sisters"), SFKK Every Coaster at SFNO Loco Loco, Dixie Landin' Shivering Timbers, MA Geez, this list is getting really long and I'm only up to Michigan. I'll just end this with "and lots more."

^^ I rode The Boss in its first or second season and didn't find it bad at all. There was even a guy (can't remember his name, but he's the one who's always doing the marathon records) riding it non-stop for 100 days that year. In a utopian scenario, rides with amazing, unique layouts would be cared for by their home parks and the TLC would keep the rides in good enough shape to provide great rides throughout the life of the coaster. There are plenty of examples of coasters much older than Boss or Texas Giant or Rattler that still give great rides. (Yes, their layouts are simpler and not as extreme, but you get my point) We don't live in Utopia, though. The sad reality is that budget cuts, poor maintenance, brutal weather, and a host of other things can turn a once-great ride into a sadistic monster. Once a ride reaches that stage, a lot of parks opt to tear it down completely (Hercules comes to mind). While I will certainly mourn the passing of the once-mighty Giant, knowing that I'll never get to experience again the way it rode back in the early 90's, the fact is that those days were ALREADY gone and never to be seen again. If the options were [1] let it run like crap [2] taer it down or [3] retrofit it with Iron Horse track, then I applaud SFOT for taking the risky, but ultimately better road. No, it won't be the Giant I once loved, but it could very well be a hella good coaster in its own right. That said, I think Boss and Rattler are two coasters that have gotten to the point of being beyond a mere tune-up. They simply aren't ever going to run like they used to, no matter how much retracking they get. Let's mourn the passing of their glory days and look forward to the possibility that they could get a makeover like Giant is getting. Losing a woodie to a bad-ass hybrid based on the original design is far preferable to having it torn down and losing it completely. (Already drooling over the prospect of Rattler's first drop returning to the insanity it had on opening day)

That's still very different than a stalled train hanging by the upstops. In the laterals, the majority of the forces were sideways, not straight up against the upstops, even in the flying carpet section. When things go right, it will of course sail through the overbanked turn with considerable speed. Things don't always go right, though. Wheel assemblies can fail (Expedition GeForce), stuff can get caught up under the train (that pancho on the Eurofighter), and numerous other mishaps that can cause a train to lose proper speed and stall. It's rare, but such occasions have to be considered when designing a ride. It's this very thing that kept the infamous Arrow suspended corkscrew coaster from becoming a reality.