Cedar Point Announces New Water Ride for 2010 Season

crazy horse said:

The big differance is that in the hundreds of arrows or B&M's built, you are naming a handfull of rides.

Which is the same thing people are doing on here. I keep hearing TTD/Kingda Ka, Millennium Force, Maverick. Everyone keeps harping on the more recent Intamin coasters that broke down a lot (most of which were "first of its kind).

Name me 10 Intamins built before 2000 that had the same kind of downtime or were as unreliable as the more recent coasters people have mentioned in this thread. Intamin has tons of coasters out there that are just fine, just as you said with Arrow and B&M. I am not saying Intamin coasters are perfect and have near zero downtime, my point is that every coaster they make or have made is not a downtime machine as everyone on here makes them out to be. Especially those that are not "first of their kind" or complex. Doesn't really matter though, this adds nothing to the topic.

It'd sure be great if everyone had that kind of outlook on this. :)

Yeah I don't know why everyone cracks on Intamin so much. What about the company that built Son of Beast? That coaster is still SBNO.

99er said:

crazy horse said:

The big differance is that in the hundreds of arrows or B&M's built, you are naming a handfull of rides.

Which is the same thing people are doing on here. I keep hearing TTD/Kingda Ka, Millennium Force, Maverick. Everyone keeps harping on the more recent Intamin coasters that broke down a lot (most of which were "first of its kind).

Name me 10 Intamins built before 2000 that had the same kind of downtime or were as unreliable as the more recent coasters people have mentioned in this thread. Intamin has tons of coasters out there that are just fine, just as you said with Arrow and B&M. I am not saying Intamin coasters are perfect and have near zero downtime, my point is that every coaster they make or have made is not a downtime machine as everyone on here makes them out to be. Especially those that are not "first of their kind" or complex. Doesn't really matter though, this adds nothing to the topic.

They have built a lot of rides, but before the year 2000 they were more into wooden coasters and water attractions. They did build a few steel coasters before 2000. Some of those include the superman coasters(several problems there), disaster transport, a few stand up coasters, the superman at magic mountain(tons of problems), revolution,and a bunch of observation and drop towers.

They do know how to build wooden coasters, I will give em that.

Here is a list of the coasters they have built. Not many before 2000.

Look about 1/2 way down.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intamin

If you look at most of the rides built after 2000, most have had major issues.

Now look at the list for B&M.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolliger_&_Mabillard

Can you tell me how many have had any major issues like intimin has? Look at any year before 2000 or after. You just ain't gonna find one.

Even arrow has a(much) better track record than intimin. Here are some of the record breakers arrow had built.

I think it's safe to say we get what you're trying to prove to us. However, I still think youre putting too much emphasis on Intamins incidents. And might I add to try something a little more reliable than Wikipedia to prove points since it's.....well wikipedia and there's there's a disclaimer in the safety incident section that says "This section needs additional citations for verification.;)

So of those 8 incidents listed (of which we know to be pretty much legit, 3 being coasters) 4 of them clearly indicate that it was the fault of the rider and or ride host relating to the riders size. Sure, more precautions could have been made but I'd HARDLY say that the ride killed them (directly) or it was Intamins fault if they were too large for the restraints in the first place. And as you can see, we have the solutions to those incidents..... i.e the OTSR's.

Other cases like the recent incident with Xcelerator did kinda have Intamin to blame due to certain criteria for cable maintenance not being handed out. And Dragsters incidents were more or less related to the grade of the cable as apposed to flaws in maintenance (which has been amazing the past few years) or design. But those are 2 separate incidents that happened at large spans during both of the coasters life time and didn't result in any serious injury. Sure it gets a lot of hype but these things always make big news when the media gets wind of them....which is when thing usually get blown out of proportion anyway.

However, other cases that DO suggest design flaws would be Mavericks heartline and Kingda Ka's incident which was related to design flaws in the launch track. Ka's would have been bad had their been riders, but Mavericks was more maintenance related than rider safety (even though it still would have been a rough section).

There's still a lot of incidents that can be described as "trial and error" since the technology was still new or "too ahead of the times" (which can be the case for SOB). What you have to do, despite what you say or think, is trust the manufacturers and parks to know what they're doing and that they're going to build a ride with safety as their 1st and most important issue. This is why Maverick, Dragster, STR and many coasters that don't open on time have these delays. They see a problem that can possibly heighten the risk and seek to find a solution.

http://sanduskyregister.com/articles/2010/05/11/front/doc4be82bf01b51e937174743.txt

I guess Intamin has trouble making sure their contractors are making their boats within spec.

This seems so preventable ... how could this an issue like this even make it to a week before the park opens. Someone, somewhere doesn't know how to do the right calculations and make sure a boat can make it over the top of a lift hill.

This is just a stupid mistake.

This is stupid?

Try finding out as you're wiring an aircraft that the person who converted from Imperial to Metric screwed up and you are a few meters short. Yeah, that ruined the days of a few shareholders. This, not so much.

Oops....

My bad just doesn't cover this one.

^^What?

I was just saying that making the boats to large for the ride is a stupid mistake that should have been caught earlier or never happened in the first place. "Aircrafts" having nothing to do with boats being to large.

And I'm pointing out that in the scheme of engineering blunders, this isn't really near the top.

I would love to see some of these people on here design something. And actually have it work the first time especially if you have never designed something in the first place (shop class doesn't count). If you have then go ahead rip on Intamin. You guys make it sound like Designing a ride is a walk in the park. Mistakes are made get over it. its better to find a mistake now instead of latter down the road with people actually ridding.

And the ones mad at cp over opening a ride late this is the 3rd time i can recall that a ride has opened late in its 140 seasons Gemini, Maverick, and now STR.

Why do you people still go if you despise almost every single action the park takes? oh yea cause you enjoy it or at least i hope you do. why else would you buy a season pass or go at least once a year.

Coasterkyle said:
I would love to see some of these people on here design something. And actually have it work the first time especially if you have never designed something in the first place (shop class doesn't count). If you have then go ahead rip on Intamin. You guys make it sound like Designing a ride is a walk in the park. Mistakes are made get over it. its better to find a mistake now instead of latter down the road with people actually ridding.

And the ones mad at cp over opening a ride late this is the 3rd time i can recall that a ride has opened late in its 140 seasons Gemini, Maverick, and now STR.

1. To get to the point of designing rollercoasters, one would think that they have some experiance doing so or something along the lines of coasters. It's not like they just hire anyone off the street to design coasters.

2.These are basic screw ups that should have been cought a long time ago on the drawing board...examples(heartline roll, boats too long, not enough supports).

3. Mistakes are made...you are right about that. But, these are things that any enginear should catch early in the design process.

4. With intimin, mistakes HAVE been made years down the road with riders on the ride. Just look at xlerater and superman drop tower or even the cable on dragster and kingda ka.

5.Like I posted above, B&M, and gci, and other coaster companies that have been around for years, do not have a bad record like intimin does.

^ Well said coaster kyle. I was going to say something like that today. My thought would have more of a question. How long would the line have been anyway had it opened on time? Personally this is my opinion here. I don't think the line would have been that long since this is May. Not too many people ride water rides in the month of May. So I agree with you Kyle, I'd rather them find the source of the problem now then rush the opening of Shoot the Rapids and take the risk of having an accident. That would be the last thing Cedar Fair needs now since they are already in debt. :)

In regards to your #4 there Crazy Horse, I don't think anyone is implying incidents haven't occurred with riders present.

I guess someone here has never heard the legendary story of B&M, and how John Wardley asked one of the B&M dudes what would happen if it stalled, and dude said "Our coasters never stall.".

Boom. Now you know.

I don't know what you mean by stall, but Diamondback last year had guests get stuck on the MCBR. Also Raptor rolled back on closing day one year. (That was due to wind though.)

Stall=rollback.

Dragster = Rollbacks.