Official Drachen Fire Thread [Merged]

[trustkill22]

I also have to agree with the B&M stuff. Look at the end of the ride, Its tight with corks and with helix's and extemely low to the ground. Look at many of the B&M's and how the end of the ride had the extremely tight style (thinking of the end of Mantis at CP).

[trustkill22]

I also have to agree with the B&M stuff. Look at the end of the ride, Its tight with corks and with helix's and extemely low to the ground. Look at many of the B&M's and how the end of the ride had the extremely tight style (thinking of the end of Mantis at CP).

[willski]

B&M had no involvement. That rumor needs to die.

 

 

Both DF and Kumba were to be Arrows. However, after Arrow failed to deliver with DF and after BGT management decided they wanted a loop around the lift (which Arrow "couldn't do" ), Busch went with B&M.

 

 

B&M had nothing to do with DF.

[bgeguy]

^You are wrong.

 

I have been corresponding with Larry Giles lately, VP of Design and Engineering for BGE and I asked him about DF and recieved this response...

 

We were talking to B&M at the time and were very close to a contract, while talking to Arrow. Arrow had produced several great coasters at the time, including our loch ness and BBW. B&M had several projects in production at the time, and were concerned on the timetable we proposed.

 

We ended up choosing Arrow due to the long relationship and B&M was a smaller company without a major coaster in operation.

 

We pushed arrow on the design of the structure supports to give it the more elegant look instead of the multiple towers supports they normally use.

 

Larry Giles

[eltorobaby]

^Yea, but where in there did they say that if it were a B&M that it would have the same elements or similiar elements?

[kraxleRIDAH]

^ No where. Because that wasn't the point.

 

He posted that to make a point that B&M was at one point closely involved with the Busch Gardens Old Country management for a roller coaster that eventually became Drachen Fire.

[eltorobaby]

^Im pretty sure people in the the page before this were comparing the supports and layout to B&M, so i'm pretty sure that that wasn't the point he was trying to prove but regardless, there was no proof B&M had any involvement on the final product of the coaster and just had involvement on creating a coaster to fit that area and if Busch Gardens wanted to but a coaster from B&M or Arrow.

[bgeguy]

If you read it it says they were close to contract, which means they messed around with ideas and had concepts for awhile and possibly gave some of those ideas to Arrow.

[premierrider]

How bad do you think it knocked peoples neck asses up?

[nast89]

Well, I'm new here, but I think I've noticed something. On a post on this site I read that somebody had talked to a Busch Gardens Williamsburg manager or something. He said he told him that Busch Gardens told Arrow Dynamics that for Drachen Fire they didn't want to see their regular supports. They wanted something more elegant and tasteful. You can see the base for the supports used in Drachen Fire in the Arrow Dynamics prototype pipeline coaster. I think the lift hill supports in Drachen Fire the way they were and the fact that many Bolliger & Mabillard sit-down and floorless roller coasters have the same design in their lift hills like Kumba and Bizarro is not a coincidence or Arrow having copied B&M. I think just looking at Busch Gardens roller coasters we can see that they do more than asking for things to be on the track. This is the company that had Arrow Dynamics interlock loops, change its entire building style, change its train design, build new elements; had Bolliger & Mabillard build a sit-down roller coaster, a hyper coaster, large inverted roller coasters: Montu and Alpengeist, and interlock flat spins.

My theory is that Arrow Dynamics didn't steal anything from Bolliger & Mabillard:

1. The cobra roll was not invented by Bolliger & Mabillard. It was invented by Vekoma. If you notice the supports in Drachen Fire's cobra roll, they're very similar to the supports in Boomerangs' cobra rolls. Besides, Arrow Dynamics built it before they did.

2. As already mentioned above. The lift hill supports were built that way by Arrow Before B&M. So, wouldn't it make more sense to believe Arrow engineers, at the request of Busch Gardens to change the supports, designed new ones based on their pipeline coaster prototype and Busch Gardens saw the finished Drachen Fire and told B&M they wanted to see something like that in Kumba. If you look at their early stand-up roller coasters, you'll see they used standard spread up supports which were first used by Schwarzkopf, later Vekoma, and Intamin AG. Kumba was a big change for B&M when it came to support design.

3. Another similarity is the interlocking corkscrews (flat spins) which Drachen Fire first had. I agree like other people that the corkscrews in Drachen Fire didn't really interlock, but nearly missed each other. Kumba's flat spins do interlock, but again it seems it was a Busch Gardens invention and not a B&M invention.

4. Finally, if we're going to talk about companies copying each other; we could say that B&M copied the corkscrew and the vertical loop supports from Arrow Dynamics.

In the end, Drachen Fire was such a big failure because Arrow Dynamics was a company known for taking innovative chances and this one was a fiasco.