Cedar Point Announces New Water Ride for 2010 Season

Thunder Canyon is a family ride too, also a 46" height requirement, and I love it. Much more enjoyable than STR.

Great write up Ffej. I was supposed to be at Cedar Point this past Monday and Tuesday, but my trip was canceled. I was hoping to give StR a shot since it was obviously closed for my first trip over Memorial Day weekend. I guess I'll have to wait until next year now and hopefully some modifications have been done by then. I'm willing to give it a shot before I make any judgments on it. I thought the area looked really nice back in May...it would have been fun to actually ride it, lol.

Thanks guys. If they can speed up the flume by at least 2X and fix the balance / overflowing, I might add it back to my ride list. The current pace just zaps every bit of life out of it.

You know what bugs me? Pilgrim's Plunge hasn't been a downtime disaster, correct? Why didn't Shoot the Rapids use the same exact boats and have 2 elevator-style lifts? That style lift alone would have given the ride a modern, fresh vibe and drawn alot of excitement.

Also, check out the fun, bouncing rapids in the Pilgrim's Plunge youtube video... Was this the pace that StR was supposed to be?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6BiREMLgXA

^
Although I'll throw out the caveat of having not ridden StR, when I went on Pilgrim's Plunge this summer, I found the ride out to the lift to be a lot of fun with some swift rollicking and splashing. I remember thinking to myself that the video of StR contained nothing like this in its ground-level sections, and was wondering why this seemingly couldn't be achieved on a water ride built after PP.

Is the Youtube video still representative of the pace of the ride?

I rode it 3 weeks ago and it was sooo slow. I remember thinking "wow, it really is going to take 2 minutes to get to the first lift hill"

Break Trims said:

Is the Youtube video still representative of the pace of the ride?

If you're referring to StR, then yes, this POV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shCyUzTqdto

...feels just like the ride. I recall people saying it felt faster in person than the youtube video; I disagree...watching that video, if you can sit through it, feels just like riding StR again. So, put it on your television, get in a boat, have a friend pour a trough of water over your feet, and save the wait for other rides in the park.

I think Holiday world was getting complaints about the head on water in the first row for Pilgrim's Plunge. Now they have these small clear screens so it isn't a huge wet factor as it used to be.

^ That is true, they have a "windshield" on the boat that seems to deflect at least some of the wave that washes over the front of the boats. I'm not certain, but I think Pilgrim's Plunge had a fair amount of downtime and delays when it opened as well. And as I already mentioned, their boats suffer from the same balance issues that the STR boats do.

I wonder why they opted to make it go so slow? That's not very rapids-y. I'm no designer by any means, but couldn't this be fixed by having the water drain quicker where the lift hill starts and the trough ends?

It wasn't designed to go that slow. The ride, as designed, was supposed to have a duration of around 3 minutes, if memory serves. Based on the reviews of the ride, it takes almost 3 minutes to get to the first lift hill.

The speed of the boat is dictated by the drag on the boat, which is influenced by the displacement and speed of the water flow. There's an upper limit on how quickly water can be pumped through the flume (just like a gutter on a house, the flume can only handle so much water in a given amount of time), so they can only make the boats travel so fast.

I'd bet they're working on a fix of some sort, but who knows.

On Wednesday we waited in line for 35 minutes and then right when we got in the station there was a line of 4 boats that lined up at the start of the 2nd lift. Everytime one came around it would bump the one in front. It looked painful for the people who were on it. It took a crowd of workers another 35 minutes to get the ride working again. It gave me a nice nap. Thats about all the ride is good for.

Very interesting... On the webcam I just saw people sitting in the very last row. The middle row was empty however.

lol Interesting... Now they're doing an empty row just to be fashionable...

Seriously, they just need to put StR out of its misery this season. The more people that experience the ride in its current state, the tougher its future is going to be. What if Millenium Force was operating at a max speed of 45 mph its first season (and had multiple chain lifts and trims to get you through the circuit. ;) ) ?

Maybe they can drain it and make it a walk-through haunt... ;) Son of Werewolf Canyon anyone?

^I was actually thinking that. A haunt inside of the ride would be a very bizarre experience.

And very constricting imo. It's not the same size flume as Thunder Canyon here so there's not as much room for walls and not enough room to allow for good scare points.

...But yet they are doing it to Son of Beast this year at Kings Island. If they wanted to bad enough they would. It isn't going to happen though, its not like they planned Shoot the Rapids to not do good. They can't design a haunt for the area in a few weeks. :)

Your mom is to fat to ride TTD. said:
...But yet they are doing it to Son of Beast this year at Kings Island.

Yeah, but the threat of the ride hurting you while you are walking through adds to the scare factor. That wouldn't exist with StR.

Well that and Shoot the Rapids isn't a wooden coaster....;)Oh and it doesn't have a very large queue and station house to make a worth while haunt. At least they're making some use for that wooden monstrosity. :)

JuggaLotus said:
Yeah, but the threat of the ride hurting you while you are walking through adds to the scare factor. That wouldn't exist with StR.

True...with StR, you'd just have the threat of the ride boring you. Well, maybe the scare of "Will this haunt ever end?" after they mistakenly made it over twice as long as originally intended.

Wasn't boring to me when I rode it, twice. I actually wanted to meander around a little longer over on the island.