Dispatch Intervals

I was wondering what are the dispatch intervals for the major rides at CP. For example, Mantis, Millenium Force, Gemini, Snake River Falls, etc...

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Adventuredome Ride Op
MGM Grand Adventures Ride Op
Future CP Ride Op

Well, Magnum's interval is 1:15, and I know it isn't a 'major' ride, but WildCat has what I think is the fastest interval with :24...
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*2000 - Cedar Downs crew, WildCat crew/acting TL
*2001 - Cedar Downs assistant team leader

MF is close to about 2:20-2:30 if I remember what I timed last year. The main reason it's so long is once you drop, you can't stop till the break run outside the unload station.

Last season they usually sent up the next train as the train enterered the retractable brake block. Sending one train up/ unload to load/ and incoming to unload.

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MF 2000 - 269 laps

MF 2001 - ???????

Snake River is 41 seconds. I "think" Gemini is 24 seconds, but I'm not positive.

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Corey
Snake River Crew '00

0:24 for Gemini? You're nuts! That would be 9,000 PPH, and while Gemini moves a lot of people, it doesn't move *that* many.

Although 0:24 does sound about right for what mass transit people refer to as "dwell time"...that is, the time from train arrival to train departure. The interval is the time between departures, and on most of the coasters at Cedar Point it's right around 1:15. Disaster Transport and Wildcat are the most consistent, with Disaster Transport right at 0:30 (1,200 PPH).

Millennium Force can be dispatched approximately as the train ahead goes over the speed bump at the end of the ride, but the other two trains have to both be beyond the holding brake before it gets to the top of the lift or the lift will shut down. That forces an interval of almost two minutes. To reduce that interval, the train would have to move faster through the brakes so that the third train can get clear sooner. I toyed with the idea of slowing the lift last season, but when I did some figuring I concluded that any benefit to slowing the lift in terms of equalizing the block length would be eaten up by the longer ride time.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Those are pretty good lengths of time. The reason I asked is because at the Adventuredome we have a two train interval of 20 seconds on the Canyon Blaster and a 30 second 3 boat interval on Rim Runner both Arrow made. At MGM our water rides used turntables giving us 20 seconds to unload and load guests. The Lightning Bolt had a two train interval of 30 seconds.

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Adventuredome Ride Op
MGM Grand Adventures Ride Op
Future CP Ride op?

Raptor has a Dispatch Interval of 0:45.
Capacity Per Hour of 1,858


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John

Magnum Crew 1999
Raptor Crew 2000
Mantis Crew 2001

Just to clear up Corey's post:
Interval on Gemini with 6 trains is 1:05. The load and unload time is 24 seconds. This makes the optimum capacity 3322 riders per hour.
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Gemini ATL 2000
9 positions in 4 1/2 hours and still keepin' both sides happy!

Dave: Based on your theory that you can dispatch a train at the speed bump (which I agree), that makes 1:05 from the point of no return (I'm assuming this would be the start of the catwalk at the top of the lift) to the hop. Mind you, that time is with an empty cold train (as seen in the original POV).

That's about 55 trains per hour, or 1,980 PPH. That would be impressive.

However, I've never seen them dispatch a train until the previous one hit the brakes. Any ideas?

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Jeff
Webmaster/Guide to The Point
Millennium Force laps: 50

John, I'm sure you know better than I do if you've actually worked the ride, but wouldn't a dispatch interval of 0:45 lead to a capacity of around 2560? Since 0:45 is .75 of a minute that would be 60 / .75 = 80 trains per hour. Multiply that by 32 and that's where I got my number of 2560. For a capacity of 1858, you'd have to dispatch 58 trains per hour or a train about every 1:02. The capacity number seems reasonable (with the 1:02 dispatch), but the interval seems too low.

Also, I think they can do better than they were doing last year with MF. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't really up to the speed that CP usually moves the lines. 1980 might be pushing it, but maybe they could get a number closer to 1500-1600 and that would help out quite a bit.

Finally, I noticed that Raptor beat out Magnum last year for number of riders. Is this just because Raptor tends to have some people still in line when the park closes or is it an issue of crews? Because if it was the later, I guess we'll have to see what we can do about that this summer! :)

-Matt
Ride-op:
'01 Magnum XL-200

*** This post was edited by MDOmnis on 3/29/2001. ***

I don't know Magnum/Raptor explicitly, but there are many factors that lead to total # of riders. Downtime (mechanical or weather-related), setups, vomit, how full each train is (depending on how riders seat themselves), etc. Of course crews/overall ride capacity are the biggest factors, but others are important too! :)

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PO!NT OF VIEW - A Different Look at Roller Coasters
http://www.crosswinds.net/~justmayntz/thrills/

MDOmnis- Truthfully i forgot what the dispatch interval is. What i wrote up there in my last post was taken right out of a manual.

Here is what it says:

Number of trains: 3
Dispatch Interval: 0:45
Load and Unload time: 0:34
Ready and Idle Time: 0:34
Trip Time: 2:32
Cycle Time: 3:06
Seats per Car: 4
Number Of Cars: 8
Capacity per trip: 32
Trips per Hour: 19.35
Capacity Per Hour: 1,858

Thats what it says.

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John

Magnum Crew 1999
Raptor Crew 2000
Mantis Crew 2001

Jeff, it may have been 1:05 in the POV, however, as many of us know, it went much faster in the middle to the end of summer. Just compare the third hill on the POV to when you last rode it. I'd say that that time may be cut by 5 or even ten seconds.




*** This post was edited by CP_bound on 3/30/2001. ***

So, John...

How can they have a 0:45 interval if the train sits in the station for 1:09? I suspect that what the manual refers to as "dispatch interval" and what many of us refer to as "dispatch interval" are two different things. I'd say that 0:45 referred to the headway...from the time one train is dispatched until the next one stops in the station...but it seems way too long for that.

Somewhere I have some old trip reports with *measured* dispatch intervals. I should see if I can dig those out...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I'm going to add my $.02 here on Millennium Force, and the ongoing(I hope)Raptor/Magnum #'s issue.

Due to the fact that Force's computer is set up so that you cannot move the trains up until the first train has crested the lift, the capacity per hour, probably won't fluctuate one way or another very much compared to last year. This is due to the "block" system that most rides use. In essence, to us that work coasters' it's almost as if Force is "missing" a block that most of us have been accustomed to, working other coasters in the past. Also, to clear up why the train sped up as it neared the crest, it usually does once the train ahead of it has entered into the unloading block which begins at the very end of the platform. The dispatch interval was avery tricky thing to figure out. I believe it took us about three hours of cycling empty trains around to finally figure out a rough dispatch point, which if I remember correctly is just as the train ahead comes out of the last tunnel, and passes beind the control booth.

The Raptor/Magnum battle had raged mostly between the seasons of 98, and 99. In 98, I was the third in charge at Raptor, and my older sister was the Team Leader at Magnum. Both crews were friends with eachother, and some even dated, which probably made for some sore losers at the end of the season. Sometimes even park guests joined in with us by taking notes and signs back and forth between the ride crews. I'm sure that Dan may remember some of this. By the end of the 98 season, Magnum had beaten Raptor by less than 100 riders, due to the fact that Raptor had some down time during the last weekend that the park was open. So, in 99 we came back to Raptor with a score to settle. My sister had moved up to supervisor, and I had moved up to Asssistant Team Leader at Raptor. She was also dating(and has since married) my supervisors brother, so the battle became even more an issue, and more fun for all of us that had anything to do with either ride. I don't know about Magnum, but at Raptor, we went so far as to keep a daily log on how far we had moved ahead of Magnum. You had up days,and down days, but in the end, we had absolutely buried them, beating them by over 40,000 riders!!!! Sorry I rambled on for so long, but I just thought I'd give my input, and tell you that story.....I really hope that they keep it going, because it made for a really fun, hard working day, every day.

very interesting exMFATL!! Enjoyed the story and really liked the MF dispatch rendering.

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http://www.msu.edu/~armbrus9/cp.html
mf laps = 100! No More No Less!!

OK... so I think what I'm hearing you say is that in theory you can dispatch a train any time after the train ahead has cleared the lift, but in order to avoid a setup (i.e., stopped train on the lift), you have to wait until the train ahead has at the very least passed the speed bump. Is that right? In practice, as the casual observer, it appeared that most trains weren't dispatched until the train ahead entered the initial brake run, just clearing the unload in time to let the returning train slowly enter the unload.

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Jeff
Webmaster/Guide to The Point
Millennium Force laps: 50

I don't think I have seen this mentioned yet, but wouldn't dispatch need to be delayed until at least the lift sled returned back to the bottom of the lift? So the idea of dispatching a train as soon as the one ahead of it disengaged the lift would not be possible. Keep in mind also that the lift time is really short, something like 20 seconds, especially when compared to the actual length of the ride, which is in excess of 2 mins. Can they load a 36 passenger train and check the restraints in 20 seconds? Personally, I think the ops do a pretty good job at dispatching trains on MF.

Idora Wildcat

Technically, Jeff, the train can be dispatched as soon as the train ahead clears the lift and the catchwagon reengages with the next train. In practice, doing it that soon *will* set-up the ride. What you need to know is (a) how long it takes to get from dispatch to the top of the lift. I think I clocked that at about 0:30...that is, from the time the track gates swing open until the train lets go of the catchwagon. Then, given that amount of time, you need to back-time from the point where the train *clears* the holding block uptrack of the unload station. Figure out where the train is 0:30 before it clears the holding brake, and you've got your dispatch point.

Trouble is, the cycle time on that ride varies wildly from day to day. And while back-timing is easy to do with videotape, it's kind of difficult to play a roller coaster backwards. :)

As for the Raptor/Magnum thing...Did anybody ever point out that it's hardly a fair fight when Raptor opens almost an hour earlier than Magnum most days? You know...gates open, Raptor opens, then an hour later, Magnum opens with the back of the park...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I remember the Raptor/Magnum thing in '99. Magnum did open up the same time as the gates on Saturday's in '99. I am not sure if they did this past year or not, but there really wasn't a battle between rides this past year.

As for the interval thing, i don't know!!!! (Maybe ExMFATL Can help out on that.Seeing he use to be the ATL there too.)

What do you as enthusiast's consider a dispatch interval? I am sorry if I miss understood the topic.
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John

Magnum Crew 1999
Raptor Crew 2000
Mantis Crew 2001