Carowinds Discussion Thread

[CedarFlags]

One more coaster question.  Are there any rides that are significantly better at night that I should prioritize?

[clem2754]

1 hour ago, CedarFlags said:

One more coaster question.  Are there any rides that are significantly better at night that I should prioritize?

One thing to keep in mind the park will close Copperhead Strike early for 50 nights for their fireworks and drone show, so if you want a night ride on that you need to figure out when they will be closing it.  

With that said Fury 325 is a great night ride and would be my choice as the one not to miss at Carowinds. 

[HavenHamilton]

Holy crap, Fury 325 is going to be down for quite some time. There was a massive break on one of the support beams. Thankfully a visitor reported it before something bad could happen. Wow.

I tried to link a video from Twitter, but I guess we can't?

[ilrider]

Just now, HavenHamilton said:

Holy crap, Fury 325 is going to be down for quite some time. There was a massive break on one of the support beams. Thankfully a visitor reported it before something bad could happen. Wow.

[Satans Hockey]

The video is pretty wild to watch. I wonder how many trains passed through it like the way it was before someone actually noticed. Certainly looks like it could have been a really bad situation if it wasn't spotted when it was. Thankful that they avoided a potentially big disaster. 

[ilrider]

^Pretty amazing it was not worse with the train going through. Kudos to B&M I guess. I have never see this on a B&M coaster before. Obviously a lot of force through there. 

[tndank]

Some pics from last week show the crack starting. Seems a guest spotted this first and alerted the park. That is a bit crazy. 

This has the potential to be somewhat big. Wonder if any other hypers will be closed a bit for extra inspections this weekend. Wonder how many maint guys have an early call tomorrow to inspect supports. 

Lots of questions here that need to be resolved.  Crazy it got this bad and seems to have completely severed. 

[PeggedSole]

Here's a YouTube version of the previously mentioned video: 

 

[grsupercity]

I wonder if that section of track will get replaced as well

[teacherkim]

Holy crap. On Fri 6/23 Fury was on morning and evening ert for Con and we were marathoning it until midnight and doing infield walks.

[coasternut]

Glad I got to ride it last week.

[BotanicalStig]

Love how someone saw this and thought "quick! Get a video!" 

 

Glad someone told the park before something bad happened.

 

Amazing that the track held up to that kind of stress WITHOUT SUPPORT. B&M has a great reputation for a reason, they know they're doing. 

[CedarFlags]

Not to be an armchair engineer here, but the more I've looked at this, it strikes me as odd...

The supports of that turn aren't braced against the force of the vehicle, they're parallel to the force.  You would expect the supported to be in opposition to the direction of the force to brace against it.  Compare it to the turn going into the Treble Clef.  But instead, they're positioned in a way where the force of the vehicle creates tensile force right at that joint area, where we would normally expect to see compression.  Obviously, a real engineer checked this and it passed the calculations, but clearly something about this element didn't work out correctly.

[MoreyMan]

16 hours ago, CedarFlags said:

Not to be an armchair engineer here, but the more I've looked at this, it strikes me as odd...

The supports of that turn aren't braced against the force of the vehicle, they're parallel to the force.  You would expect the supported to be in opposition to the direction of the force to brace against it.  Compare it to the turn going into the Treble Clef.  But instead, they're positioned in a way where the force of the vehicle creates tensile force right at that joint area, where we would normally expect to see compression.  Obviously, a real engineer checked this and it passed the calculations, but clearly something about this element didn't work out correctly.

I asked the same exact question to a friend who's an engineer and got this response:

"You have three different reactions going on. Compression from the cars coming towards the support, tension from the cars going away, and rotation because the support is so high off the ground. So you add all of them together and you can figure out the resulting force and the direction it's going in, and the support goes opposite of that."

He went on to say "The load isn't being transferred to the support. That could be because the support is too stiff or the material isn't strong enough, or they miscalculated the resultant force...if they pick steel with too little carbon in it it becomes brittle and can break like that. Or sometimes the manufacturer adds too much carbon"..."That's something that happens from the compression/decompression of the cars coming across, and the crack comes downward in the direction of the force so that would indicate the load isn't properly transferring."

This one's out of my ball park - I know nothing about engineering - hopefully they'll figure it out.

[Invertalon]

On 7/1/2023 at 7:12 PM, CedarFlags said:

The supports of that turn aren't braced against the force of the vehicle, they're parallel to the force.  You would expect the supported to be in opposition to the direction of the force to brace against it.  Compare it to the turn going into the Treble Clef.  But instead, they're positioned in a way where the force of the vehicle creates tensile force right at that joint area, where we would normally expect to see compression.  Obviously, a real engineer checked this and it passed the calculations, but clearly something about this element didn't work out correctly.

In a nutshell, it does not matter which way the lateral support goes... It either puts that lateral column in compression or tension depending on which direction and is typically chosen based on space considerations. Nothing odd at all here.

[mikeykaise]

It's just scary seeing how much the top part above the crack moved to the right as a train went by. It was a good couple of inches, this could have been really bad but am glad it wasn't.

[tndank]

Love the communication here and how open they are with what has to be done.

 

[thrillseeker4552]

I greatly appreciate the transparency. Reminds me of Jeffrey over at SFFT and how transparent he is about things like this at that park.

If only SFGAdv did the same for El Toro......

[ricklap77]

Nice to know B&M is already making a new support.  

[prozach626]

On 7/1/2023 at 12:12 PM, teacherkim said:

Holy crap. On Fri 6/23 Fury was on morning and evening ert for Con and we were marathoning it until midnight and doing infield walks.

Fury is worth the risk.

[teacherkim]

On 7/8/2023 at 6:08 AM, prozach626 said:

Fury is worth the risk.

We agree which is why we were marathoning it til midnight. My husband doesn't get it, he would have gone back to the hotel several hours before for drink, a movie and bed 

[coasternut]

The new B&M support is being installed this afternoon. That was easy...

[tndank]

Man, this thing might be open in a week.  Impressive work happening there. 

[coasternut]

^ That's one of many reasons why I'm a B&M fanboy!

[tndank]

They were testing Fury around midnight last night. No idea how long they were running it.