Cable shavings hit 4 riders

Exactly! This ride has been a "pit" of money for Cedar Point, even if its not cost Cedar Fair a dime to maintain, its still leaves negative thoughts in my mind as when is Cedar Point just going to scrap it and refill in the lagoon with water. People mention TTD anymore and I just smirk. Again I am not bashing the ride I think its great but to be great it has to work not just be a Metal statue tower in the park, Until it does run continuously for not just one day but for weeks you will not see me camping out along the black fence unless of course there would be live cheerleader entertainment in the grand stands.

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juggaLotus writes:
So does that mean Magnum was a lemon...?

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Did Magnum go no more than 1.5 hours (on average!) before it broke down, for a season and a half? If so, I'd call it a lemon. If you think it operated that poorly for that stretch of time, then your recollection is different from mine.

1.5 hours.

That's my guess of how long TTD typically goes before breaking down. Sometimes it launches once and is down. Sometimes it runs for a few hours. Maybe once or twice it made it 5-6 hours without a hiccup (I know, I'm being generous). Dragster has been doing this since day 1.

What's your definition of "LEMON"? That sure fits mine.

Can it be fixed? Sure. "How long will it take?", and "At what cost?" are important considerations. Another question, maybe now more pertinent, is "Will people still want to ride it?" This is the third potentially dangerous incident now in the short time it's operated (the earlier cable break + the loose tire being the other two).

At some point, it will become a business/liability decision, not an emotional one. I sense CP is still at the "emotional" stage, where every attempt is being made to save it. Expect the accountants and lawyers to take over at some point though. Speaking of lawyers, expect a lawsuit between Intamin and Cedar Fair. I don't think either side will want to pay on this dog forever. It will take a judge to sort out who's going to foot the big bill, if (when?) it comes to that.

Geeze! We feel really bad that we did not say something after Memorial Day Weekend at CP.

Hubby and I always ride front seat and after our last ride of the night he said he'd had a 'bug' hit his eye at launch. We finished our weekend, but on June 3 he found it necessary to go to his eye doctor since his eye wasn't getting any better.

Long story short, the ophthalmologist (sp?) removed a small piece of metal shaving from his cornea and husband was fine on his vision a couple of days later.

We were at CP July 2-5 after cable work had been done, so we felt safe to ride again. We did without incident, but we keep our eyes almost completely closed on launch now.

We're not ones for woulda, shoulda, couldas, but perhaps these young people would not have gotten injured had we reported our incident.

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CurrentlyDownDueTo FillInTheBlank said:
Let's pray that he makes it! Cedar Point has never had a fatal accident...

:(

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't 2 people die on Wildcat 20-30 years ago after their cart derailed and flipped over?

Not to downplay the incident, but I highly doubt that any metal shavings from the launch system were large enough to embed in someone's chest and threaten their life.

Wasn't News Channel 5 the same great journalistic team that reported that a rider was "serious injured" on Corkscrew two years ago, when what actually happened was the lift chain snapped and the rider had a scratch on his face?

Any accident in which someone gets injured needs to be taken extremely seriously, but before we all sucumb to media hysterity we need to give some thought about the true nature of the accident.

As much as I LOVE DRAGSTER, I'd be lying if I said I won't be at all hesitant getting back on. I'd likely hesitate to ride Vertigo if it were still around for fear of the tower falling over again... but I would still ride it, and I will be lining up for Dragster again.

I'm an addict, plain and simple ;)

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't 2 people die on Wildcat 20-30 years ago after their cart derailed and flipped over?

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Absolutely not.

I think that guy got confused with an episode of CSI-Las Vegas.

CP has a clean safety record up until this point. Although it had some problems with employees and injuries, But i don't think it had any serious injuries with park guests.

Before I talk, I'm going to say that I hope for nothing but a full recovery for the people hurt on TTD.

As a super laid-back amusement park fan and collector, if a metal shard off TTD's cable got stuck in my arm without major damage, I'd think "WOW, what an awsome souvenir!" Of course, I'm sure that's not the victims are thinking, and obviously, anything more serious than that I would be pretty upset.

I'm with the group that thinks this ride maybe was a couple years ahead of it's time. They should've been able to foresee the stresses on these cables before applying them to the ride, especially if it's possible that snapped or frayed cables could injure riders. I thoroughly enjoyed the ride (my one ride), and I'd love to see it opened again, but I don't think they should until they find and test a new solution that works, as opposed to simply replacing the cable. I would like to think that that's a priority for Intamin... as well as a seat belt fix.

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TTD is sinking too! said:

Is there a single day that Dragster ran without issue? EVER? By "without issue", I mean it started up on time, ran without downtime throughout the day, and closed with the close of the park. '

As far as i can rmemeber there was only a hand full of days before the cable snapped last year at the beginning aof the season. It ran consistantly for the 5 days i was there and the line was only about 45 minutes when it ran consistantly

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I don't know much...well anything...about the design of this ride, but it seems to me that this cable is something that probably should be replaced a couple of times durring the busy season, but they were just trying to stretch it out and make it last for cost cutting reasons. Was this cable something that got the coaster launched?

Hey hey lets slow the hell down. **** you drama queens. I was there right next to the Dragster when it went down, and my friend and I never even saw the ambulance or any medical people or anything. Whatever happened it couldn't have been THAT bad, because they let people stay in line for a while before they decided it was down for the night. Had people been hurt they would've kicked them out immediately. I really doubt anyone was seriously hurt, or hurt at all. I was right next to the **** launch area and didnt even see or hear the cable break. This all sounds suspicious to me.

Edit: Please watch the offensive language - Walt

*** Edited 7/13/2004 6:31:18 PM UTC by Walt***

I think some of you are going overboard with how serious these injuries are, fueled by the news media, especially WEWS.

WKYC said the injuries were comparable to bee stings, which makes sense if the riders were only offered front of line passes. A previous story on WEWS made it sound like the shards were large pieces of debris, I couldn't figure out how those could come from the cable, that's why I thought it might be liner material from the sheaves or material from the groove the catch car rides in. Small bee stings makes sense if some wire broke loose.

This really isn't that big of a deal. Sounds like it's no worse than when some people were cut when the Corkscrew chain broke, or people who were a little banged up when the White Water Landings boats crashed together, or even years ago when a hitch pin broke on a Corkscrew train.

CP does have a great safety record, but machines will break in less than ideal ways from time to time. It's the severe injuries or deaths that CP is great at avoiding.

That would make complete sense with what I saw. Thanks for the info Pete.

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pip7441622 said:
http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_fullstory.asp?id=20729

Doesn't seem so bad does it?

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I agree with Pete, read the link...this news story does not make it out to be that big of a deal as some of the other ones.

I bet I'm riding this thing in Aug when I'm up there.

I think all of this is crazy! It sounds to me that the left hand is not talking to the right! One news station is saying large pieces of metal...blood all over the place, while another news station is saying bee stings. Which is it? With the way that CP is acting it sounds as though its the bee sting story. AF_187, I agree with you! If something serious were to have happened they (CP) would not have thrown front of line passes to the injured to make them feel better. Lets be serious! We all know CP, and we all know that it can not be serious if this is how CP reacted! I do know this, I am leaving Saturday to go to CP from Sat-Monday. If the ride happens to be open while I am there, guess what, Im riding! Stuff happens all the time. I live in Springfield MA which is where a man died while on SM Ride of Steel at SFNE. Yes, it was the talk of the town for a few weeks, but the ride opened again and everything is running fine. Did CP happen to have a fatality? NO! Will CP keep TTD running, YES. In the mean time why dont people stick to the facts and stop trying to make this seem 100 times worse than it really is. Come on, we all know how CP operates...

Whether or not these were serious injuries, the fact that they are still having problems with metal shards is cause enough in my opinion for CP to be as conservative as possible. Maybe this time the shards didn't cause serious injury. Is anyone here ok with there being a next time?

Willidc,

I am sorry to hear about your husband's injury. Thank goodness he (and his vision!) is all right. I am sure you thought it was an isolated incident. I doubt that I would have thought to report it, either.

BettyCv

The ride is so technologically advanced for its time there are going to be problems. And people should stop comparing it to other rides that were down for a few years. It doesn't make Dragster any better. It is still bad it is down almost every day and usually doesn't open on time. Some rides will have problems but don't compare them to make it less bad. Also I don't think it was a good idea for CP to make those claims about how great it would be running this year. Believe it or not it ran better my weekend trip last week than this May. There are problems with the ride and people have to face up to that. I still love it though. *** Edited 7/13/2004 7:18:09 PM UTC by Sean_N***

Just curious, What train did this occur on? If anybody knows...

I hate the news. it dose us know good. so good but most of it bad. I mean it sucks they got hirt. i write a paper on this. well about roller coaster being unsafe. i mean people die from orthe stuff all thie time and more oftin. but some one gets a cut on a ride. so the news make it as bad as they can make it, so we can scare people. do you think they can do some thing so they dont have to us a cable. *** Edited 7/13/2004 9:04:58 PM UTC by thepoint4life23***