Corkscrew and Iron Dragon trains

For the seatbelts on Corkscrew...it serves several purposes. One it adds redundancy in a devils advocate scenario. If the pedal were to be down, and the prox doesn't pick it up, and it goes through the track without even us noticing or anything, you would be safe while riding. Secondly for larger guests, it helps us gauge if they are too large for the ride or not. If there wasn't a belt they could get one ratchet down on the OTSR and they would be a-ok...Wheras now they have to get it down far enough to buckle the belt....Also as someone mentioned...Arrow OTSR are easy to get out of...That's a big deal to me as well as there are times you'll see a kid stick his hand out and under and wave & stuff...You aren't exactly perfectly contained..But you have to basically be trying to get out for there to be problems, and we'd pick you out before that would happen anyways

TheDevarious said:Corkscrew will not be getting the white train back. It was completely impossible to hit interval with three trains and you would constantly stack in the brake run. With two trains we can still hit interval quite effectively and actually move more riders in less time than failing with three train interval. For Iron dragon, I'm not sure...The only thing I can say is they may have the same interval issue as they have a super short interval between dispatches...But I won't say anything because I just don't know

In 07 3 train interval was really hard. The whole crew must be in sync and talk to eachother. That didnt happen in 07...when I ran the ride in 08 it was awesome we hit interval constantly until Coastermania when we had to go down to 2 trains for acouple weeks. Interval can happen with 3 train operation with seatbelts, unfortunately I heard in 09 they changed acouple things computer wise. Ask Steve Voorhees how the 2008 crew was or Bill Spehn they witnessed 3 train interval without no train stopping.

I am a little surprised the park never implemented an automatic restraint lock/unlock on Corkscrew & Cedar Creek Mine Ride. It seems like it takes the ride hosts pretty long to open/close the restraints with the pedal. That would probably eliminate any stacking on either of the rides when running 2 trains.

Oh for us it's not lengthy...I can actually unlock a whole train in right about 4 seconds easily..Locking it isn't a big deal. I usually pop my three pedals, go back, unlock the bin, or close gates depending on my position. Go back, lock the pedals and check my six seats and watch my three cars...If we had automatic restraints it really wouldn't do too much to be honest considering the belt (many people think we don't have them, or can't find them, ect.). If we had an automatic loose article vacuum thing on platform and a way to get everyone in their seats and secured in a few seconds that's what the ride really needs but that'll never happen haha. The biggest hinderance really is the ride. It's over so quick that we really send one as soon as the other train hits the transfer table really. If we had a long ride like Millennium for instance they can send a train out as soon as the one passes the station but they're most likely already done doing their checks well before that time...

Mine ride needs automatic restraints I would say...Their pedal unlocks the lapbar and they have to hold it there until the bar is all the way up, or all the way down. Wheras ours unlocks or locks the ratcheting mechanism so we don't have to hold our pedals. I doubt they will ever do this and I truly hope they don't...Having control over the restraints is nice because when you need to unlock someone you only have to do one car worth of people not the whole train & whatnot. Plus it's different than every other coaster in the park and that's something nice to not be like everyone else

Pity you don't get to do what they used to do with the Corkscrew at Geauga Lake (and I saw them do it with Double Loop as well, but not as regularly)--

The operator would stand at the uptrack end of the station and would kick the pedals on the train as it entered. Very dangerous for the operator 'cause if you miss it could probably get messy. But I never once saw anybody miss.

At least you still get to do the Arrow Dance (step-two-three-KICK! step-two-three-KICK! step-two-three-KICK! step-two-three-KICK! step-two-three-KICK! step-two-three-KICK! turn around and KICK!-two-three-four KICK!-two-three-four KICK!-two-three-four KICK!-two-three-four KICK!-two-three-four KICK! turn around again and hold.)!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Yeah we have to stay on the dots or behind the red line. Safety is key...I wish we could but I think it's because if you miss one, and two to make sure people don't unbuckle and get out right then, and three, make sure noone grabs us or whatever...Who knows...But yeh...Popping pedals is loads of fun...I love when I get a chance to unlock a full train. Especially when spieling and working dispatch...Epic win

I wonder if they had problems with some of the cars of each train on Iron Dragon. On opening weekend I noticed the cars on each train were in a random order, first was car 1-1, then next was like 2-4, and so on. It was very strange to see this. I noticed this past weekend the trains were renumbered with the white lettering, but you can see the old car numbers behind the white if you look closley. Also, if you sit in the front of any car and look very close to the seat in front of you, you can see the train number and car number such as 1-6. It is really hard to see, as they are engraved into the train, but they are not in the correct order at all.

^ Sounds to me like the third train was cannibalized for parts and they ended up putting cars and parts from the three trains together to make just two. I hope I'm wrong, but if this is the case, I think we've seen the end of three-train op on Iron Dragon.

There's a park in Virginia that recently had some Arrow suspended coaster trains that no longer had a ride, but I suspect those have long since been sold or scrapped.

I remember working the Corkscrew back in '02/'03 with Naomi as the TL. I remember people bragging about how fast they could pop all the pedals.

I swear, when I worked it, I was the only person that did spiels with any enthusiasm.

I wonder if you call someone who gives guided tours of caves a 'spielunker'...?

southpuddle said:
^ Sounds to me like the third train was cannibalized for parts and they ended up putting cars and parts from the three trains together to make just two. I hope I'm wrong, but if this is the case, I think we've seen the end of three-train op on Iron Dragon.

While I think this is the most likely case, Mean Streak's third train was in pieces for much of last season, and it returned to operation this season. Perhaps they didn't overhaul it during the off-season, and are doing it now and it will return next season...?

^
Very true, but I think the difference here is that Mean Streak never really needed the third train... even with two train op all of last year, its line hardly ever got much more than 15 minutes from my experiences riding it. Iron Dragon is still an extremely popular ride - it had the fourth or fifth best ridership in the entire park (fourth if you don't want to count CP&LE). I don't see any other reason a ride this popular would still not be running at maximum capacity this far into the season.

I happen to have the 2010 ridership number sheet here in front of me. Mean Streak ended its 2010 season (early) with almost 630,000 riders, down from about 840,000 in 2009. That's a big drop, but consider that it didn't operate for all of Halloweekends, when it would typically have a full queue on Saturdays, even with three trains. Iron Dragon ended its 2010 season with darn near 1.6 million riders - more than double Mean Streak.

Basically, Mean Streak didn't suffer a loss of all that many riders by not having its third train last season. I'd expect Iron Dragon, on the other hand, to lose at least half a million riders this year if its third train is indeed gone.

If its third train is gone, I think this spells out the beginning of the end of Iron Dragon altogether. Very sad, but many other parks around the world have taken their Arrow Suspended coasters out due to high maintenance costs and difficulty of finding parts, and we all know that CP has no problem at all taking out a ride that gets costly and difficult to maintain...

...yet for some reason Mean Streak keeps going strong!

You make a good point, but let's not forget that the park continues to be more and more unprepared for opening each season. With labor spread out over more attraction, rising costs and surely a dwindling maintenance budget, I wouldn't be surprised if they felt they could just do without for the season to save time and money.

Even so, Mine Ride, Disaster Transport, Corkscrew, Gemini, Mantis and WildCat have all reduced the number of units they either operate with and/or have in working condition (ie: backup) in the last 10 years or so, and they're all still around.

Well hopefully they can keep it going with the two trains for years to come with the parts from the third (if that is indeed what has happened). I'd hate to see it go, even if it is hideous in its current color scheme.

In response to Corkscrew, we all knew the 3 train was bound to leave us soon due to the capacity inefficiencies. Maybe Cedar Point will rotate trains next year and we will once again ride white train. haha

In response to Iron Dragon, I don't think we have to worry about losing Iron Dragon any time soon. It's a great "big kid ride" for kids 46" and taller. The only other "big kid ride" for kids 46" is Disaster Transport, which may be the only reason why that ride is still around. (but that's anther topic). Remember Cedar Point still wants to target the family market. Iron Dragon and Disaster Transport are great family coasters.

We also have to look at this from a maintenance prospective. Cedar Point's off season is only from closing day in October/November till the end of April (the time we start seeing coaster trains appearing on storage tracks.) Every off season all the roller coaster trains and other ride vehicles receive an extensive overhaul. This off season overhaul is not only very time consuming, but also very costly when you figure parts and labor. Over time with new rides and new roller coasters this increases the work load even more. In these economic times, I doubt is Cedar Point is going to hired more maintenance workers to have every single roller coaster train ready for opening day. This especially means Iron Dragon.

Yes, Iron Dragon is a high capacity ride. (up there with CP&LE, MF, and Magnum) but this could also be part of the reason why they are running 2 trains. Back when Iron Dragon ran 3 trains, usually a line wouldn't form until 11:00-11:30ish and at night the line would dwindle down before hot summer lights. Just remember, it costs the same amount of money to cycle a full train as it does to cycle a half empty. 2 Trains also reduces the stress on the gear boxes of the lift motors. Remember the ride is 24 years old. Cedar Point is a business and business are in the business of making money. So running 2 trains is cutting costs.

We could also look at Iron Dragon from an Operational standpoint. The ride is an arrow and it sets-up. Setting-up can cause some operational delay and/or downtime. With running only 2 trains, this eliminates the entire setting-up issue. For some reason people just don't move as fast as they did in 1987. haha

Having only 2 trains is also more efficient on those mostly rainy days. Since Iron Dragon only runs 1 train in light to moderate rain, it is a big hassle for maintenance to transfer off a train, manually wench that train under the station, then transfer off another train. With 2 trains this eliminate the manual wenching which I'm sure makes maintenance really happy.

That's a good point about transferring trains. I had forgotten how the transfer process works on ID.

Hey southpuddle,

What did you guys end up with last year for numbers on Maggie?