Cedar Point Announces New Water Ride for 2010 Season

John, I do not. I just always hear, or read, that the primary reason for cedar Point having gone to Intamin recently is price. I suppose I have no true idea whether or not this is true...

B&M has a great reliability / safety record because their designs are largely the same year after year. Rather than push the envelope, they modify what has worked for decades. I mean, how much can really go wrong with chain lifts and gravity?

How many B&M coasters have launch elements and break the 300-400 ft barriers? How many B&M coasters go 120+ mph? When you push roller coasters to these extremes, the technology required is significantly more complex. With more technology and more complexity comes more problems. Granted, the amount of problems are still extremely low? Think about how many millions of rides are given each year.

Scale TTD down to 150-200 feet with a 60 degree tower, make the trains 4 across, add chain lifts, and rely on gravity, and I can almost guarantee there would be far fewer problems. But how fun would that be?

@FFEJ: That's great, except when you consider if Cedar Point could do it over again, TTD would never have been built because of its problems.

JuggaLotus said:
Most of the pricetags I've seen for B&M are consistently a bit cheaper than most of the pricetags I've seen for Intamin.

Yeah, but if you clip the coupons from the paper Intamin coasters are cheaper :)

Ffej said:
B&M has a great reliability / safety record because their designs are largely the same year after year. Rather than push the envelope, they modify what has worked for decades. I mean, how much can really go wrong with chain lifts and gravity?

How many B&M coasters have launch elements and break the 300-400 ft barriers? How many B&M coasters go 120+ mph? When you push roller coasters to these extremes, the technology required is significantly more complex. With more technology and more complexity comes more problems. Granted, the amount of problems are still extremely low? Think about how many millions of rides are given each year.

How much can go wrong with a chain lift and gravity???? Look at the ride of steel coasters, drop towers, shoot the rapids,ect...

They have all had issues. It's not only the rides that use cables/ launch.

B&M may not use lsm or cable lifts, but they are a hell of a lot more reliable than intamin is. Do you think the average park guest gives a damn weather or not a ride was built by intiman or B&M? No...as long as they are safe and they can enjoy the ride.

Your thinking like an enthusiasts.

If I were a park owner, I would assume that they would want a reliable, fun, low maintanance, but most importantly SAFE coaster or ride.

B&M has come out with some great designs. There is the dive coaster, stadium seating, floorless, inverted, better flying coaster, they are working on a 4d coaster, and many more. What other/ new type of coaster is there left to design? Same with elements and inversions?

Sheesh , don't get your feathers all in a ruffle guys....save it for the runway.

Seems like a lot of energy here on speculation. When I read the article, it sure sounded like Intamin gave a correct specification to a 3rd party manufacturer and that manufacturer messed up.

Meanwhile the ride seems to have been designed with such tight tolerances that a slightly longer boat wouldn't work with the existing slopes (probably because of the ride's footprint and trying to get up and down from 85' as efficiently as possible).

Other manufacturers may have passed on the idea of putting a flume in that location. Where is Arrow today?

In a few weeks, we will all see that there is plenty of room for boats to travel under the support (remember how that came into question!?), even with passengers who meet the height requirement of 75 inches.

I can't wait for the new Intamin hand-dryers, mist fans, vending machines, and whatever else. ;)

Sorry, the Intamin hand dryers are not quite ready, but souvenir towels will be available for purchase....

Millennium I think was the first one to use stadium seating as B&M did not come up with that design. Also B&M has the philosophy if it ain't broke don't fix it with their latest coaster designs. Intamin has had the track record of always thinking outside the box in designing and coming up with new ideas.

The only B&M coaster I can think of that uses new technology is Incredible Hulk at Universal Studios as it uses the tire launch system. That took some prying from Universal's part to have B&M do that.

One thing after wading through the past posts about this delay is TTD was not delayed at the start of the season. It was running on opening day as I do remember being there waiting in the crazy 5 hour lines to ride it. Yes they were running it with one less car per train and it had a tremendous amount of down time that day. It seemed like for every 15 minutes of running it had the same of down time. Plus considering Media Day was delayed because of lightning striking it the night before. Then we had the month or so when it was down with the wide amount of issues.

El Toro at Six Flags GA had it's share of issues so even their wooden coasters have had hiccups.

Arrows first suspended coaster Bat at King's Island lasted one year with the overly swinging of the trains.

Look at Mantis at CP with addition of the annoying trim brake on the first drop. Also with B&M one thing that annoys me is the massive use of trim brakes going over the hills seems to ruin the ride on a of their coasters.

Ok first off please learn how to friggin quote people in forums. It is not that hard. 2nd I love Intamin rides. They do push for new technology and bigger and better things, but please do not use that for an excuse for STR. Making boats to fit the ride you designed should be pretty simple compared to launching a 20 ton train 120 mph. A boat ride is not pushing the envelope.

crazy horse said:

How much can go wrong with a chain lift and gravity???? Look at the ride of steel coasters, drop towers, shoot the rapids,ect...

They have all had issues. It's not only the rides that use cables/ launch.

B&M may not use lsm or cable lifts, but they are a hell of a lot more reliable than intamin is. Do you think the average park guest gives a damn weather or not a ride was built by intiman or B&M? No...as long as they are safe and they can enjoy the ride.

Your thinking like an enthusiasts.

If I were a park owner, I would assume that they would want a reliable, fun, low maintanance, but most importantly SAFE coaster or ride.

B&M has come out with some great designs. There is the dive coaster, stadium seating, floorless, inverted, better flying coaster, they are working on a 4d coaster, and many more. What other/ new type of coaster is there left to design? Same with elements and inversions?

I think what alot of us are getting at here is this... I'd have to say the anti-Intamin hype truly started with TTD. Didn't see any widespread complaints before that...

Considering that B&M would have a huge advantage now if they created a 420 ft, 120 mph rolleroaster, that'd not be a fair comparison. So, show me a B&M roller coaster...150mph+ and 500ft+ within the next couple years, and show me it operating as reliable as their other roller coasters from the very first day. Then, I will agree with you that B&M is more reliable than Intamin.

Until that happens, it's like saying a Honda Accord is more reliable than a Lamborghini Gallardo. While true, it's not a fair comparison.

Anyway, StR was a freak accident to do with the contractor making the boats, not an Intamin design flaw -- and it will not affect the ride's reliability. If StR is down for mechanical problems extensively over its life, I may change my opinion about Intamin's reliability. However, I have confidence that won't be the case.

I don't think it's as simple as Intamin giving the contractor correct specs, and the contractor delivering with incorrect specs. My reason for saying this is that Cedar Point has had the boats since at least December 7 (according to a PointCast). It seems like someone should have noticed the discrepancy before now.

I'll be curious to see the capacity of the ride if only 4 boat are retrofitted (at least initially). The 10 people per boat, and 1200 PPH numbers imply a dispatch interval of 30 seconds. With 10 boats and a 3 minute ride, it seems like there will be a fair amount of stacking. Therefore, I don't think the capacity would drop all the way to 40%.

KHTOExtreme said:
The only B&M coaster I can think of that uses new technology is Incredible Hulk at Universal Studios as it uses the tire launch system. That took some prying from Universal's part to have B&M do that.

Although you are right in that the Hulk is a B&M coaster and the fact that it has a launch, it was not B&M's design. In fact B&M specifically said that it should not be done and that if Universal wanted to do it, they would have to go through a third party and that anything that would go wrong would not be B&M's fault.

So they still haven't done anything innovative as far as launches are concerned.

tcgolfer said:

Although you are right in that the Hulk is a B&M coaster and the fact that it has a launch, it was not B&M's design. In fact B&M specifically said that it should not be done and that if Universal wanted to do it, they would have to go through a third party and that anything that would go wrong would not be B&M's fault.

So they still haven't done anything innovative as far as launches are concerned.

Thank you for dusting off the cobwebs in my mind. Now I do remember reading about that agreement.

^ No big deal. The only reason why I remember is that someone had to correct me once. I hate being corrected so I just decided to remember from then on. Plus it's an interesting piece of information really.

I have to wonder if any higher ups at Intamin or B&M ever read these threads. And, if they do, how good of a laugh are they getting from them? haha

I doubt that intamin would find this amusing at all.

while I doubt they're laughing about the STR situation, I bet theyd laugh at the thread. There are enough people defending them (myself included) that they would see the whole enthusiast community isn't against them.

Or laugh that there are teenagers and young adults that have never touch a engineering book in there life, telling them all these so called simple mistakes that every engineer should know/ prevent.

No matter how many times a ride has been copied or used the same type of technology as previous rides each ride is unique and will come with problems. hell they still cant stop boomerangs and inverted boomerangs from vallying all the time

Even B&M's have there problems for example isn't Mantis suppose to run 3 trains, or why does B&M trim everything. According to some of you (this is based off of what you have said about Intamins rides) they should have designed the ride where they wouldn't have to add these types of things if they designed it right.

Or to bring another real world example in Toyota's recent gas peddle sticking problem. how was a designer going to know that the gas peddle was going to stick to the floor mat when designing the car. Guess what they found a solution and fixed it. just like they are doing with STR just be glad they found this during testing and not with you actually ridding it unlike like Toyota which ended up costing lives and lots of damage and lawsuits.