Lake Compounce Discussion Thread

[BoulderDash]

I'll write more about this later in a few hours, but the green train collided into the blue train at full speed. I watched the whole thing next in line for the front. Unbelievable.

[Sluggo77]

Sounds like they may be able to salvage one train using the halfs that didn't get damaged.

[coasterbill]

[Chasehat]

^ Holy shit what a bad year this has been for Lake Compounce. And the one time they decide to run two trains it crashes into itself

[Pear]

Yeah there's no way they can get this up and running before the end of the season. It took them 3 extra months to get Wildcat working and it's still not finished.

 

I really hope the park gets their act together soon as it used to be one of my favorites but after the operations and management this year it's not been as great as it used to be.

[BoulderDash]

The mechanics came up to put two trains on so that was pretty exciting. Green train gets locked down and dispatched. They started the transfer while the other train was going around the circuit. They were having issues getting the transfer track to line up properly so the control booth mechanic goes to help. I see the green train coming back on the last hills and next thing I know it barreled through the brake run full speed (no brakes) into the blue train.

 

Imagine if they didn't get the transfer track lined up properly?? The damage would have been catastrophic. I have no idea why they were doing a transfer while there was a train going through the circuit.

 

 

 

[Chasehat]

Sooo they didn't think stopping the other train on the lift was a better idea then letting it run through the course while trying to transfer on the 2nd train? I mean ik they haven't run 2 trains on BD in like a million years but come on how could you have a brain fart like that lol.

[SFOGdude25]

I can only imagine the sound of two trains colliding...

[ajfelice]

Sooo they didn't think stopping the other train on the lift was a better idea then letting it run through the course while trying to transfer on the 2nd train? I mean ik they haven't run 2 trains on BD in like a million years but come on how could you have a brain fart like that lol.

 

It's really easy to point the finger and question how someone goes about doing something. Especially when you do not have any knowledge of how maintenance goes about transferring trains or any of their processes. The first thought in my mind looking at the photos is an awful feeling of sympathy for anyone who was involved with it. One of the biggest fears of the mechanics I work with is two ride vehicles colliding when they shouldn't; whether they are loaded or empty. This is not only about the thousands of dollars worth of damage, it is about the feeling of a worst fear happening involving safety, and for the park employees involved being able to remain calm and move on from this experience.

[Ed Farmer]

Damn. That looks bad. Not going to speculate as to why this happened as I've never operated a ride, but adding a train while the other is actively cycling the course (if that is indeed what happened) sounds like a poorly thought out plan. Wouldn't think parks actually do this. Hopefully, Lake Compounce can get Boulder Dash back up sooner rather than later.

 

I can only imagine the sound of two trains colliding...

 

, I'd imagine.

[Sluggo77]

It was definitely a maintenance error. Jerry himself said it. Work starts at 6 AM tomorrow to see what they can do to get it up and running this season. The damage to the track was the transfer track so that's not an issue. It's really seeing if they can salvage one train from the two. If they can they will definitely try to have it running for the golden ticket awards. He already contacted PTC to get them to evaluate where things stand. Park just can't catch a break this year.

 

I will say that even with all of this happening today he still took the time to talk to the group that was there for the ACE event. Definitely a great guy who really cares about the park.

[Chasehat]

Sooo they didn't think stopping the other train on the lift was a better idea then letting it run through the course while trying to transfer on the 2nd train? I mean ik they haven't run 2 trains on BD in like a million years but come on how could you have a brain fart like that lol.

 

It's really easy to point the finger and question how someone goes about doing something. Especially when you do not have any knowledge of how maintenance goes about transferring trains or any of their processes.

I seriously seriously doubt this is how they would normally go about transferring the 2nd train onto the track..... There's so many variables that could go wrong and cause an accident like this. They're so damn lucky it wasn't 100x times worse. I hope LC gets it together tho, between this issue now on BD, never running two trains on BD, the Wildcat fiasco, the skyway being shutdown hopefully they just forget about this year and look forward to righting the ship next year.

[Canobie Coaster]

What is it with these transfer track collisions lately? It seems weird they'd run a train during the transfer. Hopefully they can get Boulder Dash up and running again this year. I was planning to check out Wildcat next weekend but will hold off if Boulder Dash is down.

[I Like Theme Parks.]

I was at the park for the Oc-Boulder-Fest event (ironic name since it isn't October and we couldn't ride Boulder Crash). I noticed the operations outside of Phobia were painfully slow, and rides weren't running at full capacity. The coupons given to us at the event were enough to pay for lunch, and the dinner they gave us was pretty good as well. There were some maintenance issues such as the Boulder Dash crash (everyone on the Ferris wheel was able to hear the crash, it was really bad), Zoomerang got stuck on the lift for a while, Wildcat took a long time to open, and there were two times where people vomited on family rides I was waiting in line for (that was quite strange). Despite the issues with the park and my concern about how it will be in future seasons, it was still a lot of fun, especially marathoning Phobia. Rides:

 

Saw Mill Plunge - It was supposed to be morning ERT, but it was open to the public so it was more of an ACE takeover. For some reason they were making everybody squeeze into the front of the logs. Awkward seating didn't ruin this great flume, though!

Thunder N' Lightning

Ghost Hunt

Down Time

Wipeout - Never ride this with someone else... It was easily the closest I've been to being injured by a ride. I'd rather ride an SLC.

Wave Swinger x 2 - Even crazier than I remember. Best non-screamin'-swing flat ride here.

American Flyers x 3 - I'm so torn on these flyers. The first visit when I rode these it was amazing, then this past time they sucked, and this time I got an awesome ride, a sucky one, and an okay one. I'd recommend giving it a shot if you have nothing else to do.

Pirate Ship

Giant Wheel - We heard the bouldercrash while we were riding it.

Trolley

Wildcat - Okay ride. They only re-tracked a little bit of it, and for the most part the trackwork was BAD!!! SO BAD!!! I got 4 or so floater air moments, and some decent turns. Ride it if you have nothing else to do and want the credit.

Phobia Phear Coaster x 12 - We didn't have Boulder Dash ERT, but an epic nighttime Phobia marathon isn't too bad either! Insanely forceful.

[coasterbill]

Phobia is awesome. I have no idea why it's so much better than Tempesto but it really is (and this is coming from someone who enjoys Tempesto). Phobia is insane.

[Jcoaster]

Phobia is awesome. I have no idea why it's so much better than Tempesto but it really is (and this is coming from someone who enjoys Tempesto). Phobia is insane.

 

Phobia is an incredible ride, after ridin both that and Tempesto I truly believe it has to do with the shorter cars plus no OTSR.

[Canobie Coaster]

Phobia runs as well as SFDK's Superman so I was pumped when Lake Compounce added it. I really don't mind if this coaster gets cloned a bunch like the free flies.

[SharkTums]

What is it with these transfer track collisions lately?

 

Pretty sure we're currently in the opening sequence of Idiocracy. Things are only going to get worse and less safe as our society devolves.

[robbalvey]

Pretty sure we're currently in the opening sequence of Idiocracy. Things are only going to get worse and less safe as our society devolves.

Let's be honest here - the amount of "user error" accidents in the past couple of years is getting terrifying. We are now at the point where as maintenance crews are obviously getting dumber and less able to do their jobs without making stupid life-threatening mistakes, that ride companies are going to have to take that control away from humans and put it back into the computer, or at least having more checks & balances that make an accident like this less likely to happen.

 

An accident like this should NOT have happened. And it's clearly user error.

Edited August 27, 2017 by robbalvey

[Rai Fox]

What the hell...how does a year like this even happen to a good park? This has been an absolute nightmare. If this were a bad movie we'd find out Canobie or SFNE were paying off people on LC's maintenance crew...but outside of bad movies, there's just no excuse...

[coasterbill]

I don't really want to comment on whether or not it's been a "good year" for the park since it's kind of an arbitrary thing, but I'll say that personally I'm pretty down on this place lately and I've never felt that way about this park before.

 

We live about an hour and a half away and visit every few years. Before our visit this year (when Boldikus came up) I was trying to talk Brit into season passes for the first time (since they're a good deal when compared to the daily admission and parking price) but after we left I really had no desire to buy them. We had a lot of fun, but operations had gone completely to hell and Boulder Dash was running terribly. Seriously, 90 second dispatches on a log flume is hilariously awful and it had an hour wait when basically everything was a walk-on and I'm pretty sure their dark ride was running 3 cars. I've never seen ride ops on a Sally dark ride standing around waiting for a car to show up. A few days later they made the decision to close their most unique attraction because they don't trust people to safely ride a ride that people ride safely all over the world with skis on, running at much faster speeds and generally they need to ski on and off the ride rather than slowly walking over to a painted dot on the ground. WTF?

 

The fact that Wildcat didn't open until about a week ago (to mixed reviews which I can see since when we were looking at while we were there we noticed that they didn't re-track any of the rough sections of the ride, just the lift hill and straightaways) and the fact that they've managed to crash Boulder Dash (probably since running both trains on it is such a foreign concept to them that they literally forgot how to do it) has us down on the place even more. They charge a lot of money to get in (a single day admission is about 45 bucks), operations like that shouldn't happen at a place that charges that much and crashing 2 trains into each other like that shouldn't happen anywhere.

[BoulderDash]

I've had plenty of amazing visits to the park this year and hundreds of rides on BD, so it hasn't been a bad year ride wise. But entire park wise it has been abysmal. No Wildcat for most of the year, the Skyride closure, minimal operations on Ghost Hunt and Saw Mill Plunge, and now this happens. This is easily the worst year the park has had in a long time.

 

Anyway, I am hearing that they are starting work to get the coaster back up and running. It appears that the only major damage was to cars 1-3 on the green train, car 6 on the blue train, and the transfer track. I believe they are going to take all the cars off and try to make one good train out of the cars. Probably gonna be 1-4 blue and 5-6 green if I had to guess.

 

I don't know why the maintenance guys messed up so badly though. For the most part they seem to know what they were doing. I just couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the train coasting through the brake run.

[ytterbiumanalyst]

Man, this is terrible for this park. I had it on my theoretical NYC trip itinerary (no concrete plans at this point, and 2020 would be the earliest I could make that happen), but I'm rethinking it now. Boulder Dash was my main reason for going, so if it's running badly to begin with, and on top of that they have a boneheaded snafu like this.... Might just hit Quassy and skip this place. We'll see what happens between now and when I actually get to New York.

[MisterBrow]

What is it with these transfer track collisions lately?

 

Pretty sure we're currently in the opening sequence of Idiocracy. Things are only going to get worse and less safe as our society devolves.

 

With talk of THE ROCK running for president we are indeed starting to live the movie.

[Canobie Coaster]

I got a season pass for this year since they were so cheap and I figured it would be perfect to rack up rides on Boulder Dash, but I have only been once.

 

I was planning my second visit after Wildcat opened, which originally was supposed to be late May. The opening didn't happen until 3 months later. I was finally planning on going next week and then Boulder Dash crashed. Since I have both a SFNE and Lake Compounce pass, I cannot justify going to the latter without Boulder Dash.

 

I thought the offseason work to attractions paid off. While Wildcat isn't as smooth as you'd think, it at least sounds like it's faster now with the new trains by the accounts I have heard. The new guns on Ghost Hunt were a massive upgrade (they work and are easy to aim). Lastly I thought Boulder Dash was running well. The replacement for the triple up is significantly smoother. It's still an aggressive ride but I have never found it too rough.

 

My gripes are on the operations? I can only go on a weekend with my work schedule and I didn't want to be queuing in an hour wait with 1 train ops when they had a perfectly good train sitting on the transfer track. The flume and Ghost Hunt also run a third of the number of cars they probably should as well. The ops send out the cars/trains quickly when they come in, but there's just too much waiting going on.