nannerdw

Just the thought of riding the Voyage on a cruise ship was enough to get my vote

A lot of companies offer free student versions of their software. I have downloaded the latest AutoCAD, Inventor, and ProE this way.

@picture^ That would be a cool way to re-theme Poseidon's Fury.

Though I would love to see a Rapture themed area, I think the subject matter would be a little bit too mature for the younger visitors. It would make an amazing haunted house, though.

I can see it now: Dad-"Ok, Timmy; bow to the hippogriff so we can get on the ride." Son-"Aww, that's lame. Do I have to?" random 40-year-old guy-"Hey, kid. Hurry up and do it. You're holding up the line!"

This is looking really cool. I can't wait to see pictures of "Thibteen" once it's finished.

A POV view looking down El Toro's drop would look really cool.

If I had a backyard big enough for a roller coaster, I would want to design and build it myself.

My first ride on Boss was awesome, because I was not expecting all of those enormous drops. The next time I rode it, the rough section leading up to the MCBR was unbearable. ...and a ride that just gets better every time I ride it: Mindbender at SFOG

I think it's impressive that they managed to reduce the vertical force by 50% (I'm guessing that's without passengers.) Is the train really that much lighter, or does it just have to do with weight distribution?

It's good to hear that this park is adding some more non-portable attractions. The last time I went there in '06 it felt more like a cheap carnival than a proper amusement park, with the exception of the KY Rumbler. I think it's kind of weird how the lazy river goes straight through the wave pool. That might lead to some "traffic jams" in the lazy river when the pool gets crowded.

Umm, torsion springs?

How about Wet 'n Wild in Climax, North Carolina?

No, it's really not. The first (and only) time I went down one of these bowl slides, I somehow managed to hit my head as I came back across the entrance tunnel gap. That was very painful.

You can take a screenshot with ctrl+s

I think it's typically 48" wide x 54" tall (Measured from the centerline of each rail). I don't remember where I found these pictures, but they might help with track and wheel assembly dimensions. http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a361/nannerdw/mavericktrain.jpg http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a361/nannerdw/mavericktrain2.jpg

I have not had any problems with Acrophobia. Those restraints only put pressure on my hip bones. Mystery Mine was pretty uncomfortable, though. A lot of people complain about standup coasters. You're supposed to have your knees slightly bent when the restraints lock. If you're really tall and have to put some weight on the seat, just let the family jewels sit in front (a little trick I learned from unicycling, lol.)

Why did you rank Mamba so highly over Mr. Freeze? When I rode Thunderhawk in the front seat, it had great airtime over every hill and wasn't painful at all. This was like 3 years ago, though.

Unless you're planning on seeing most of the shows, Dollywood should be a 1-day park. I visited the park on a busy day and was able to ride most of the major rides in under 3 hours. All of their coasters are great; but make sure you don't miss out on Mountain Slidewinder. IMO, it's the best ride in the park.

Speaking of Chernobyl, I thought this was pretty interesting. http://www.chernobylee.com/blog/2008/01/pripyat-amusement-park-usage-u.php Anyway, back on topic, lol. It looks like Pax is using the "yeah, that looks about right" approach instead of doing actual force calculations. I don't really understand RCDB's method for counting inversions. You are basically upside-down 3 times throughout the ride. To me, that means 3 inversions. If Hydra's inclined dive loop counts as an inversion, then this inverted spike should definitely count.

Awesome , but you shouldn't have changed the first drop.

The first drop looks awesome. The transition from - to + g's coming out of the camelback after the first MCBR looks kind of sharp. That radius at the top of that hill should be just a little it smaller.

You can download the latest version of the AHG and other tools from here: http://www.coasterchamber.com/forums/tools.php It automatically splits the track into short, equally-spaced segments, banks the vertices for minimum lateral g's, and offsets the track by the heartline distance so that all banking transitions cause the rider to rotate about the chest or head level. It is not meant to be a track smoother, so don't expect great results from a poorly-built track.

Delete the segments for the lift hill, station, and brake run; and save the rest of the track layout as a new track. Highlight the track segments where the train experiences negative g's, and set "Individual colors: Main track Color:" to pure black. This will prevent AHG from turning these segments upside down by preserving the original track banking. Now open AHG. For this track, you should probably use about 300 segments. It looks like you already heartlined the track by hand, and you don't want AHG to shift the track another 1.1 meters, so set the heartline value to 0. Remember to put in the entry and exit speeds in meters per second. You can just type into a Google search something like "25 kph to m/s", and it will automatically convert it for you. Since this is a hand-built track, set the filter to a high value to smooth it out a little bit; try something like 100. Anywhere you have a mid-course brake run or lift hill, you should split the track into two separate tracks to send through the AHG, and combine them as elements later. AHG won't make a hand-built track like this perfectly smooth, but with the right settings it should at least improve the banking.

I haven't gotten a chance to watch it yet. Did they even once mention skycoasters, SCAD towers, X, Perious Plunge, or El Toro?