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Cedar Point (CP) Discussion Thread

P. 2037: Siren’s Curse tilt coaster announced for 2025!

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^^ People love Midway Market. I’ve been preaching about how much it sucked for years but I was starting to think it was just me.

 

Midway Market is honestly the most efficient and brilliant setup for a buffet that I’ve ever seen at a theme park. It backs up to the picnic area so the kitchen is already there, they just charge people a ton of money to eat the horrible picnic area food that they’re already cooking in that kitchen anyway and people happily pay for it in droves.

 

I respect the concept of Midway Market but it’s awful food. Midway Market will never die though, the kitchen already needs to be there and people keep eating there. I guess it’s an improvement over Coasters Drive In.

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I've never eaten at the Midway Market. What I am surprised with is that I would have thought Melt would be more popular but of all the times I have been the last 2 years I have never seen a wait

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we ate at Midway Market when we went for CoasterMania! last year, and it was ok.

 

actually, I'd rate it as slightly better than OK: For the price, and options variety-wise? it was a good deal, and most of what I tried was from decent to so-so, nothing so awful I spit it out.

 

it was perfectly serviceable "bad" buffet food.. but I like crappy buffets, so I was happy.

 

yep, nothing stellar, but nothing terrible either.

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^ Me, and I think that was my first course...the salad plate. Like Bert said, it was okay. Nothing to go back to, if I did go back to the park.

I remember the dessert area being really nice with hot and cold fruit compotes, etc. Very yummy! But now that it's been open for a year, I think I'd rather go to MELT and eat and drink there, for an afternoon meal. But - MM is good for families trying to budget them self a bit, here and there.

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What it looked like, before I demolished it, lol. June 3, 2017.

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RMC seems to have made some major updates to Steel Vengeance's Final Brake Run! Hopefully we'll have two train operations back shortly! (If I had to guess, this is probably how trains were supposed to slow down on the final brake run all along.)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZXkE2EuFks

Great video! It's impressive to see how many changes they've implemented on the final brake run. It really is a night and day difference.

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Saw these today at Steel Vengeance, dont know if they are new or old but that pallet was not there yesterday. Also as we were leaving today driving on the outer road from hotel Breakers at around 2:15 there were a bunch of work trucks outside of Steel Vengeance by the lift hill and i saw 5 people, 3 with faded dayglo green Rocky Mountain shirts and the other 2 had blue Cedar Point shirts. Hopefully this means 3 train operation for the holiday weekend.

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Great video! That certainly does look like a major improvement, even if it's a much more abrupt stop at the end. I, too, hope the park can get at least another train on there very soon.

 

especially for my trip in mid-june...

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Very interesting. Hopefully two train operation will come this weekend, and once more of the kinks get worked out, we can see them run all three trains in the summer like planned. This is Cedar Point so I fully expect them to get this ride running at optimal capacity ASAP.

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Sorry to be slightly off topic on 1st question:

 

Favorite restaurants around Sandusky? I'm already planning to head to Bay Harbor for dinner one night.

 

Is there any type of side entrance to enter / leave the park during the middle of the day from Breakers Hotel, or need to go through the front?

 

Assume water rides will be open throughout the park after Memorial Day given that the waterpark is open?

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As I see the before and after video of the brake run changes and other POV footage, I am wondering if the brake run is long enough for three train operation if the trains have to stop completely in the first brake. If that train hasn't cleared that brake before another gets to the mid-course brake, the mid-course would have to stop the train there. I guess they can slow the chain to remedy this to some extent, but that brake run looks pretty short. And what if all three trains have to be at the station at the same time?

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Favorite restaurants around Sandusky? I'm already planning to head to Bay Harbor for dinner one night.

 

 

Thirsty pony is fun with a good menu.

 

Brick oven bistro has awesome pizza.

 

Diana's is decent diner food.

 

Chet and Matt's has good pizza as well.

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As I see the before and after video of the brake run changes and other POV footage, I am wondering if the brake run is long enough for three train operation if the trains have to stop completely in the first brake. If that train hasn't cleared that brake before another gets to the mid-course brake, the mid-course would have to stop the train there. I guess they can slow the chain to remedy this to some extent, but that brake run looks pretty short. And what if all three trains have to be at the station at the same time?

 

The brake run is most definitely long enough for three train operation. It will run like most 3-train B&Ms (that have 2 blocks before the station and a MCBR).

 

If all the trains need to be at the station, there's one in the station, one in the block behind it, and the third one on the final brakes, again, just like the B&Ms. Also, the ride is very long and the time between the lift and MCBR and the MCBR and final brakes is quite a lot. The way the coaster's layout and block system is set up, it should be able to run three trains without any stacking at all, no problem.

 

Why the trains bumped is still a mystery for sure, but I am totally confident that Cedar Point and RMC intended for this ride to have three train service.

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There are two blocks on the break-run. In the after part of the video where the train comes to a complete stop the first time, that's the first block. The second one is located right before the station. So they can totally do a 3 train operation. Now the question is how comfortable are they going to be doing a 3 train operation? The fear would be a train completing the circuit coming in so fast that the drive wheels on the 1st block can't slow it down to a complete stop in time and keep it from bumping into the train sitting on the 1st block. That seems to me to be what happened when the incident occurred. The train was moving so fast coming into the 2nd block that the drive wheels couldn't stop the train. Of course, that's all speculation. They really have two options to make sure this doesn't happen again. One would be using the MCBR to slow the ride to the point that the train hits brake-run at the speed it was designed to. The other would be adding friction brakes to the brake run so the drive wheels aren't the sole thing bring the train to a complete stop. Based on the pictures we've gotten today, the latter of those two options is what they've opted to do.

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There are two blocks on the break-run. In the after part of the video where the train comes to a complete stop the first time, that's the first block. The second one is located right before the station. So they can totally do a 3 train operation. Now the question is how comfortable are they going to be doing a 3 train operation?

 

And that is basically my point. How comfortable can they do three train operation? Those blocks look pretty short or tight. I would think the drive tires were there to help expedite the trains moving forward to keep things moving quickly. Now that those are gone, it appears things will move more slowly. Realistically, I think the brake run needs to be longer to make it completely "comfortable".

.

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Realistically, I think the brake run needs to be longer to make it completely "comfortable".

Go to 2:19 in the video below.

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Storm Chaser's magnetic brakes (which SV also has) gets the ride to a slow crawl fairly quickly when coming towards the station. Yes it might be a longer brake run, but I'm confident Steel Vengeance's magnetic brake run will stop the ride "comfortably" enough (like what was shown in the video posted in the last page). RMC know's what they're doing.

 

The video on the previous page looks like it now has a longer solid strip of magnets to stop it harder instead of the previous "magnets + wheels" assembly.

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I think the fact that Cedar Point advertises this ride to run three trains is enough to prove that the brake run is long enough to hold them. As ZeroGravity said, the train can comfortably stop on the final brake run, therefore there are two blocks before the station. If this was not true, and a train would have to stop on the Mid Course every time there was a slow dispatch, I think it's fair to say that they wouldn't run three trains. Running three trains but sacrificing the intensity of the 2nd half of the ride for a fair bit of it's riders doesn't sound like something Cedar Point would do.

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I think the fact that Cedar Point advertises this ride to run three trains is enough to prove that the brake run is long enough to hold them. As ZeroGravity said, the train can comfortably stop on the final brake run, therefore there are two blocks before the station. If this was not true, and a train would have to stop on the Mid Course every time there was a slow dispatch, I think it's fair to say that they wouldn't run three trains. Running three trains but sacrificing the intensity of the 2nd half of the ride for a fair bit of it's riders doesn't sound like something Cedar Point would do.

 

Absolutely. The ride has 6 block sections: station, transfer track, lift hill, mid course brake run, safety brake, waiting brake. The safety brake is the first section of the final brake run that brings the train to a stop. Trains are able to stack here. The waiting brake the is holding area right before the station so the final brake run is definitely capable of holding two trains. (Random fun fact but if Steel Vengeance were built back in the 70s/80s, it may have been built so that trains would stack on the midcourse brake run if dispatches were not fast enough. Gemini, Iron Dragon, and Magnum Xl are all examples of this. The reason rides were built like that was to quite literally force high throughput. Something like that could really only work back in that time period however.)

 

Regarding the magnetic brakes, I believe Steel Vengeance and Twisted Timbers use a new generation of magnetic brakes. From what it seems, the original magnetic brakes that were installed were not strong enough to fully stop a train. I have heard RMC came in and completely replaced all the magnetic brakes on the final brake run with more powerful ones, hence the harder stop. The drive tires are placed on the brake run because the brake run is completely flat so they are necessary to get trains moving again once they have stopped. And now it appears that RMC will be replacing the newer generation pinch brakes used on Steel Vengeance with what looks like the older generation pinch brakes. It seems there was a lot of issues with the new hardware components that RMC released with these rides but they seem to be getting it all sorted out.

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Looking at making my first trip during Halloweekends this September. Staying at Hotel Breakers. Got a few questions. Is there anything that's closed due to the short 3-day weekend schedule? Or is everything (such as Perkins) open as if it's the regular operating schedule?

 

Also, Fridays and Sundays (not Saturdays) are the best for crowd sizes during Halloweekends, right? When's the best time to focus on rides and when's the best time to focus on haunts?

 

Thanks!

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I have a TR from Monday and Tuesday of this week that I'm finishing up (which probably isn't relevant after the practically over-night pre-station brake run upgrade video that was shown in previous posts), but after being at the park and riding Steel Vengeance with 1 train operations, I will say this...

 

3 train operation on this coaster really is not necessary.

 

The lift hill is tall, but pretty darn fast. At the speed the train is going throughout the course, with what I experienced as ZERO braking at the MCBR, it flies through the circuit. With the restraint design on RMC's which take a bit longer than let's say, B&M's to check, a 3rd train would be redundant and cause stacking.

 

With how finicky the RMC trains have appeared to be on this coaster (they spent half a day on Tuesday doing maintenance on restraints and doing test runs while we stood in the plaza outside the Steel Vengeance entrance) I would say a brisk 2 train operation on this ride would be just fine. Keep 1 in the transfers ready to go if one train is being a pain in the frickinass electronically or restraint-wise, and they're all good.

 

Even with 1 train operation, yes, the wait was a little more than you expect from Cedar Point: but it really was a less than 2 hour wait, more around 1 hour 15 minutes, if you were in the first 2 rows of the switchback queue before the straightaway. Seeing as how this ride does not have a long enough station or brake run to unload passengers at one location, to have empty trains show up and load at another like many coasters at Cedar Point (Maverick, Millennium), the ride simply does not have a layout capable of practical 3 train operation.

 

Hats off to the Steel Vengeance crew by the way, they really moved when the ride was actually operating, and even with 1 train operations, the line seemed to move along pretty consistently when the thing was going.

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