texcoaster

OK, after the slate of new coasters announced at SF parks this year, it seems pretty obvious that SF isn't putting a lot of effort into coming up with new, unique names for its coasters. Evil Kneivel is the only one not being re-used (and it was pretty stupid to begin with... I mean, 30 years ago, that would've been a great name, but NOW?) or recycled. So, let's think of some cool coaster names and/or themes to help them out for next year!

I think that this current trend of manufacturers making their rides more comfortable is AWESOME. First, Premier reworked those LIM-launch trains and Mr Freeze moved up more than 100 spots on my faves list. Poltergeist at SFFT followed suit and that coaster moved up even farther. It went from my bottom 10 to my top 25! Now it looks like Vekoma is getting the hint. It makes sense that if you are going to do all that engineering on designing a bitchin layout, and if the park is going to drop $10 million or so, that you'd want a ride that people actually enjoy. Duh. Vekoma.... if you're reading this, I have one word for you: GOUDURIX It's such a pretty coaster and a killer layout... and yet it's number 481 on my faves list. Dead last. I wonder if the migraine and bruises that it gave me after only one ride could be the reason?

Boardwalk Bullet is already doing this. http://bullet.photogra.com/index.cfm I rarely buy the pics because if I'm spending $10-$15 bucks for a photo, I want the quality of the photo to be a LOT better than what gets printed out at those places.

I don't think it would've been questionable to put in a BTR when there's one at SFOT. That park is a few hours away, so folks would think "yay, now I can ride one of these in my home town!" What *IS* questionable, though, is that there is already one in the same town that has been there for many years. Nearly everyone has already been on Great White at Sea World, so I don't really see this drawing a lot of extra local business. If they do something "special" with it (like a tunnel, different trains, some really close clearances to nearby structures, etc) to make it seem like a totally different ride, then it could work. If they absolutely HAD to put in a BTR there, I'd have rather seen it perched on the edge of the cliff. Coming over the lift and swooping out around the drop right at the edge of a 100+ft cliff would've been seriously cool, and reason enough for me to drive to San Antonio....

I don't know why folks think that buying Flashback would be a bad move for a park.... [1] It's a truly 1-of-a-kind ride. NOBODY else would have one. [2] Visually, it's very cool and would attract attention [3] Retrofit the trains, remove the OTSRs, and run it with just lap bars. Voila! Seriously cool unique ride that doesn't take up much space and has a decent capacity. It beats the hell out of just buying another SLC

Did anyone else have a problem with the videos not playing correctly? I would get a second or two of motion, then stop, then after a bit, another second of motion, etc... It was like I was on dial-up or something, but the rest of the site didn't do that.

That "bizarre reason" might be that even though they like airtime, and ET has it, that they ALSO like their wood coasters to feel like wood coasters. I love airtime, and Germany's Colossus has buttloads of it. It's waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down in my list, though, because it just doesn't feel like a wood coaster should feel to me. Interestingly, had it been a steelie it probably would've ranked much higher with me.

wow! just last year that margin was more like 2-1, glad to see people coming to their senses!! Voyage is solidly at #1 for me, but I haven't been on El Toro yet. However, I'm not sure that it would beat out Voyage, since I rode the well-regarded Colossus at Heide Park (another prefab woodie) and was seriously underwhelmed. My biggest beef with it was that it felt like a steelie. From all accounts, so does El Toro. Voyage, Boardwalk Bullet, and MegaZeph are my 1, 2, 3 woodies. I like a good rough ride!

re: How did they do this? Look carefully, and you'll see that all of the "bodies" in the crash scene are dummies. The second or two of footage that shows the car toppling over and crushing the riders was actually cut from the re-release and from the VHS version. When the film was shown at PKD for ACE's convention, the original version was used. During the crash, when the car crushed the riders, lots of cheers went up. I had to quickly explain to some horrified first-time viewers that they were cheering for the park getting the original version, NOT for the idea that people were killed on a coaster! Re: Was anyone injured? I think I remember hearing that a few people were injured, but I believe they were on the ground in that scene and were hit by flying stuff. Re: Could this really happen? VERY unlikely. In the film, the Young Man places the explosive device under the lip of the track, where it would never stick due to the grease on the track AND the train's upstops would've knocked it off on the first test run of the morning. Even if someone were able to blow up a rail on the track, it's highly unlikely that the cars would fling themselves spectacularly off into the air like that. They would be much more likely to grind to a halt with much damage to the train's chassis and perhaps a loss of some wheels. Still, that scene gives me the heebie-jeebies every time I see it.

The key thing in that photo is that there are TWO cable car systems in it, running at right angles to each other. I don't think I've ever seen a park with one cable car ride running up and over another one, so I'm out this round.

Do you have some sort of personal vendetta against Voyage? Why is it "nice to see" that some coaster isn't in someone's top 10? Remember, it's all just opinion. If you didn't like Voyage, then so be it. Why is it so important that someone else agree?

Wow. I was ballot #273! This thing is really taking off quickly this year! My top 10 (out of 105) 1. Voyage (I never got a "trimmed ride") 2. Boardwalk Bullet 3. MegaZeph 4. Shivering Timbers 5. Boulder Dash 6. Screechin' Eagle 7. Raven 8. Coney Cyclone 9. Georgia Cyclone 10. Phoenix It should be obvious by that list that I'm not intimidated by a GOOD rough ride! Bottom 5: 101: Psyclone 102: Wildcat (Lake Compounce) 103: Predator 104: Grizzly (SFGAm) 105: Son of Beast It should be obvious by that list that I'm not going to like a BAD rough ride!

Whatever. There is no headbanging on it, since there are no shoulder bars. I've gone all day on Bullet before. Got 50 rides in. No biggie.

I posted this on sixflagshouston.com, but it seemed appropriate here, too. Regardless of what one might think of the Bullet, you gotta give it props for being unique. In this age of "clone wars" and "ride rotation" where everything is either a copy of something, a mirror image of something, or a moved something, it's nice to have a ride close by that is not only a custom layout, but is completely unlike any other wood coaster on earth. You may laugh when I say this, but I'm sticking by it: Boardwalk Bullet is for this decade what The Beast was nearly 3 decades ago. It just doesn't rely on any of the "old standbys" for wood coaster thrills. Before The Beast, people thought you needed lots of drops and airtime for a good wood coaster. Just as The Beast showed that you could have a world class ride with just two real drops and a lot of straight track, Bullet is proving that you can have a world class ride with insane intensity and genuine thrills on a VERY small piece of land. This goes completely counter to the trend in woodies over the last 10-15 years, where everyone wanted the biggest, tallest, fastest... I would bet that Bullet is going to make a lot of smaller parks take a good look at their land and rather than immediately think "flat ride", instead imagine a tight little twister in that spot, when they'd have never even imagined it possible before.

That's the second big drop. There are a few still shots of it in Robb's post, particularly the one that says "Geezus, you can't even see the track" and the one that follows it. In the layout, it's the big turn that sits right above the first drop.

Marvel Mania - Visionland Arkansas Twister - the first season t-shirts had a silhouette of Cyclone on them, and the coaster is an out-and-back Earthquake McGoon's Brain Rattler - Dogpatch (RIP) Zyklon - This was the name of the gas the Nazis used to kill people in the concentration camps. It's also German for "cyclone", but come on... Zonga - not much better than it's previous name: Taz's Texas Tornado Willard's Whizzer later shortened to just "Whizzer", but the damage was done. Shaft of Terror was changed to Tower of Terror, but again, the damage was done Tig'rr Coaster if you have to intentionally misspell it to make it sound cuter, it sucks. Two Face: The Flip Side is just barely better than Face/Off Fairly Odd Coaster is a mammoth stretch to include "theming" Sooperdooperlooper - 'nuff said

It was nice to meet you! As for the "don't know how I do it"... I work for UPS. There isn't much that my poor body hasn't been through at this point. Several dozen rides on the Bullet in one day is no big deal after doing what I do all week. ...although I must admit that the day of the shoot it was running rough enough to give me some neck soreness for a day or two afterward.

That would be mine! It's my third MINI. I had a 2003 Cooper (red, Union Jack on the roof). I named it "Scooter" (you MUST name a MINI, it's tradition). I traded it in on a 2005 Cooper S (I should've known not to accept that offer to drive my friend's "S"!). It was cream colored and named "Spunky". Some jackass made an illegal turn in front of me and I wrecked that one, so now I have the 2007 Laser Blue one, named "Traver". It's my favorite of the three.

I looked all over YouTube for your vids, but didn't see them. Can you cut/paste a link here?

OMG, who peed in your Cheerios? I'd go back and defend myself and say that there was nothing in my post to warrant ANY of that stuff you just said, but it seems obvious enough to everyone but you that I'd just be wasting my typing. I think I understand your rant now. You thought that I was griping that a park wouldn't let me choose my own seat when they have first-come, first-serve seating. Not true. If you notice, I said that I GO AROUND MULTIPLE TIMES. This means that I understand that the system depends on luck of the draw, and if I want a particular seat, I will probably have to re-ride multiple times and hope to hit it just right. I never said that I try to coerce the ops to let me have a seat, or wait back and hold up the line. YEAH, that crap is annoying, and that's why I don't do it. My gripe was that the park would use a first-come system in the first place. It's rare that a station doesn't have gates to line you up for each seat. Why not let your customers line up behind whichever seat they'd like, rather than hiring another person to work the line and dictate which gate to go to? You save money on an extra employee, and you make your customers happier. Duh. As for the "little brat", I saw this happen at Ratanga Junction. South Africans aren't used to coasters and many of them are terrified when they realize that their spot in line will put them in the front seat of the SLC. The smaller kids especially will FREAK OUT. My point was that when you've got a kid who's crying and begging not to ride in the front, it's a simple thing to ask the next person in line if they might like to take the front seat and let the kid ride farther back. Instead, the op talked the kid into riding in the front anyway. The folks who ended up in seat #2 were disappointed because they missed a front seat ride by just one seat, and the kid in the front was hysterical before he was halfway up the lift. It wasn't a good thing for anyone.

I hate when a ride's queue line dumps everyone right at the front seat queue. People want to wait for the front, they block the rest of the queue, and the line stretches out into the distance, while the whole rest of the train is going out with empty rows because nobody can even get to that part of the queue. Astroworld's Viper was about the worst example of this nonsense I've ever seen, though there are others. The other queue line crap I can't stand: not allowing me to choose my own seat. I don't want to have to go back around multiple times just to get the seat I want on luck of the draw. Even worse is when the kid that ends up in the seat I want starts screaming "NOOOO, not the front, I'm scared!!!" and instead of the ride op asking "would someone else like the front seat?" she talks to the little brat and convinces him that it will be better up there.

The insurance companies would beg to differ. Screw the insurance companies. Revolution ran perfectly fine for YEARS with a single lap bar. Rev has ONE vertical loop. A Schwarzkopf shuttle has the same kind of train, uses only a lap bar, has a single vertical loop, and it goes through it twice... forward AND backward without mishap. The one time that one in Belgium got stuck upside-down, the plain old lap bars held everyone in just fine... for about a half hour! So no, insurance company people, Revolution does NOT need freakin OTSRs.

I was surprised that most of the group didn't go back and ride some more. Guru and I went right back after the video shoot and rode until lunch. After lunch, we rode until the crowds got bad. I got a total of 24 rides. That's actually below my average for a trip out there! I lost my notebook that I keep count in at the bottom of the first drop. After the video shoot, the mechanic found me and gave it back. That was pretty cool. I had to keep track on the iPhone during the interim. 261 and counting....

That was me. It was the infamous ride #12. On ride #11, the lapbar ratcheted down to a painful level. When we got to the station, we stopped, paused a second, then rolled right out. They didn't release the bars so they wouldn't have to spend time checking them again. By the bottom of the first drop on ride 12, I was SERIOUSLY stapled into the seat. Every little millimeter that the train shook, I shook, too. I was OK, but I was spewing profanities. That's Guru next to me laughing his a$$ off at me.

Well, OK. It's sorta like that too, actually.