Dragster in 2006

For the fun of it, they should put half of the trains on backwards, so that you are launched backwards and come down the drop backwards. That would be trippy! It's probably too violent though. Just a thought!

Have you ever ridden Dragster? Have you ever held your hands up during the launch?

Well you really wanna go at this? Alright then. It really doesn't take that much intelligence to realize what i said. Its a fun ride, it's complex, it also is hyped up as the former and second tallest/fastest/whatnot. So we have that to be proud of, and until something is introduced that can fully outshine dragster, or at least show it up in a big way, then you have nothing to complain about. You've ridden it i take it? So why moan and groan?

djDaemon said:
Have you ever ridden Dragster? Have you ever held your hands up during the launch?

I did before i realize it's against Ohio State Law. And before i worked there. And before i realized it's more fun to hold on.

TTD2005, I think dj was asking why you said it was a big piece of crap until something bigger and better is built?…That is actually what he asked.

But do you really have to ask why someone might moan about it? That wouldn’t take much intelligence to figure out.

I'm not moaning & groaning because I'm grumpy, angry or otherwise unimpressed with the ride. This conversation was basically discussing how Intamin should be given "props" for doing such a wonderful thing, blah blah blah... I was simply pointing out that Intamin did not do a good job. Intamin saw an opportunity to make a boat-load of cash and capitalized. What Intamin should have done is tell CP that for $25 million, there were gonna be problems.

Now, don't get me wrong. I do enjoy riding TTD. But that does not mean that I'm not allowed to critique it, or its creators. My comments are examining the design/engineering philosophy and process surrounding the ride's creation - not the ride experience.

Big difference.
*** Edited 3/17/2006 4:00:31 PM UTC by djDaemon***

Ahh well then in that case i'm sorry. I'm just so used to people who envoke trouble because they like to start drama. I apologize. Of course, i admit it Dragster has troubles but exactly what i said and everyone else says, be proud of CPs reputation and that we have these crazy scream machines in most of our backyards. Some people only dream of going to CP, sad but true. And minus the test rides, i've gotten on it a good 15 times in my like.. 5 visits as a guest in the past years. I dont seem to have trouble getting on it. Again, i suck, and i'm sorry DJ. forgive me PLEASE?! i just dont like my baby gettin bashed.

No apology necessary.

We are all proud of CP's reputation. That's why we're here! :)

:) thanks.

TTD2005 said:
i just dont like my baby gettin bashed.

That makes two. :)

I see where you’re going dj, and yes I'll admit that Intamin didn't really think it through. But don't forget that Intamins hydraulic launch was the only launch system at that time that was capable of getting a train to go 120mph in 4 seconds with the space that was given. I don’t know why CP didn’t consider air launch as a possibility.
Cedar Point just picked it as the best means and Intamin figured (2002)"Hmm we are having success with Xcelerators system.....all we need to do is make it bigger and maybe it'll work as well as Xcelerator is." So maybe they we're too preoccupied with how well Xcelerator was running that they didn’t factor in how much more of an affect Dragster would have on the parts.

But then again who knows......I'm just giving my 2 cents.

*** Edited 3/17/2006 5:47:44 PM UTC by TTD 120mph***

TTD 120mph

I think that there is almost no correlation between the two ridesother than the kind of ride it is. Dragster is so much larger on scale and therefore, in my opinion is way more complex because of that. I think that certain problems will arise with Dragster that will not with Xcelerator. Now i have never ridden Xcelerator but i have ridden Storm Runner. i don't think that SR and Dragster are the same ride by any means.

But don't forget that Intamins hydraulic launch was the only launch system at that time that was capable of getting a train to go 120mph in 4 seconds with the space that was given.

There is probably the reason no one else had created such a system. Perhaps because it couldn't be done at a reasonable cost & level of reliability?

I don’t know why CP didn’t consider air launch as a possibility.

Probably because CP doesn't design the rides. They look at what is available in the industry, and Intamin had this available. The problem started when Intamin said they could do it for $25 million.

So maybe they we're too preoccupied with how well Xcelerator was running that they didn’t factor in how much more of an affect Dragster would have on the parts.

Or maybe they knew how much it would cost to create a reliable launch for a ride of this size, and opted to design an unreliable one for a price CP could afford. Personally, for Intamin's sake, I'd hope this is the reason, because I'd rather be a lying businessperson as opposed to an idiotic engineer.

:)

DjDaemon

You would think from Intamin's stand point, you would think that they would not want to risk their reputation in the industry by building something with a lot of quirks and bugs. Why rush to get it out there if there are going to be larger scale problems.

This is just like Microsoft and the Xbox 360.

You answered your own question.

Does Microsoft still sell 360's?

From reading the last 1 and a half pages after my post all I got out of it was this:

- TTD is a great ride with a small group of diehard fans.

- TTD is unreliable.

- Intamin sucks.

- There are some people who would die before saying TTD was good decision and a great ride.

I remember this talk somewhere. Oh wait, this happens what... every month. For every TTD fan there's at least two people who come back at them for that. I've learned to hold back a little, but I just wanted to point this out.

420TTD said:
TTD 120mph

I think that there is almost no correlation between the two ridesother than the kind of ride it is. Dragster is so much larger on scale and therefore, in my opinion is way more complex because of that. I think that certain problems will arise with Dragster that will not with Xcelerator.

Im not comparing the Dragster to Xcelerator, Im comparing their hydraulic engines. I was pointing out that Intamin figured that Xcelerators hydraulics were working so good that making a more complex version thats still the same design will work just as fine....which is what they made the mistake of doing.

djDaemon said:
Probably because CP doesn't design the rides. They look at what is available in the industry, and Intamin had this available. The problem started when Intamin said they could do it for $25 million.

I know that, I was just thinking why didn't CP take note of the air launch coasters......unless they did.

Do you think that the air launch system can handle dragster's demands. Can it get up 120? Less rollbacks?

Yes it can. But how much will it cost to build such a system that is up to 95-96% uptime?

Well I think they would have been able to use up less space for a launch if it was air. Dodonpa launches from 0-107mph in less than 2 seconds!!!! But it's really short (170ft) for its high speed. *** Edited 3/17/2006 9:42:30 PM UTC by TTD 120mph***

djDaemon said:
Right, like being poorly engineered. The fact that the ship hit an iceberg is human error. The fact that so many people died as a result is engineering error - if they had only included enough lifeboats... This Titanic comparison is just a very poor example.

The design did in fact include 36 lifeboats. More than enough to save every single person on the ship. It wasn't the engineering department that determined it an unnecessary expense. It was the management of the White Star Line who decided that they didn't want so many boats on their first class deck. The result was 20 boats. Even with the lack of lifeboats, they didn't have enough time to fill them all. Big human error and training problems surfaced during the launching of the boats. More of the crew should have been trained for such events. One of the boats almost sank in the process and the other floated off upside down. About 700 people that could have been saved weren't. Doubling the number of people saved is nothing to sneeze at.

The other mistakes that I mentioned span off of running full steam at night with no wind or moonlight after receiving ice warnings. They include losing the binoculars for the night watch, the California ice warnings that would have indicated the ice field right in front of Titanic was never delivered the sailors, the California did not have radiomen on duty at the time therefore despite being 10 miles away did not respond to the sinking, and order to the engine room "full astern" resulted in less water flow past the rudder and smaller path curvature.

In nearly all cases the iceberg would have been seen at least a half mile away. Titanic was within a few hundred yards of the iceberg before it was seen. If one of the number of human errors before the collision were avoided, then we probably wouldn't remember Titanic. If the slice was just 50' shorter, boiler room 6 would have not flooded and the ship would have stayed afloat. It really wouldn't have taken much to prevent the sinking. The engineers were practically overbuilding the ship for the era.

I find it a great example of "safety" in the era when roller coasters regularly snapped necks and when ships sank everyone on board died.

djDaemon said:

1. Purely a cost-savings issue undercutting the correct design intentions of the ride. It's understandable that CP doesn't want to fork over a quarter-billion dollars for a robustly-engineered ride. It's not understandable that Intamin would say they can build a ride that will work for $25 million, when they know it won't work.
2. Just crappy engineering on Intamin's part. Perhaps those crazy guys just lost all their calculators. Or maybe they're idiots. Either way, its incompetence - plain and simple. As John pointed out, its not terribly difficult to design components and spec out parts so that they actually work.

I've met several engineers that designed Top Thrill Dragster. They certainly are not below average. Top Thrill Dragster's parts were designed properly and Xcelerator's operation was their proof.

I think what you fail to realize is how much of Dragster's downtime has been caused by previous damage to the system. The gearboxes should have lasted more than 20 seasons but didn't make it to 3 due to shock loading during other incidents. The cables underwent shock loading and failed too soon. Even the drum has suffered cracking. They are designed well for what they should have seen. They were never intended to see as many estops mid launch as they did nor as many motor failures. When the ride estops, the valves drop causing the motors to quickly stop. This causes a large amount of stress on the components of the launch. None of these problems surfaced during the analysis, even the test setup or Xcelerator. The difference with Top Thrill Dragster is that these problems propagate inflicting damage to the entire system. Cavatation wasn't predicted beforehand either. It was the most serious problem and almost took out TTD permanently. It was fixed after the source of the problem was identified. They weren't able to foresee these problems because of being in uncharted territory. On multiple occasions there were attempts to get the ride up as soon as possible. This ended up causing more damage to the whole system.

Cedar Point has built many rides before and they knew that Top Thrill Dragster was going to have quite a few problems. They would had to of been quite naive to deny that. They weren't expecting nearly as many problems, but neither did Intamin. Intamin did in fact spend over $8 million dollars on TTD for repairs during 2003. They didn't leave the ride to rot as some are lead to believe. Intamin didn't go bankrupt either... Don't forget about Vertigo. Vortex Shedding has been around since smoke stacks. Oops, it fell over.

The use of highly sophisticated computer dynamics modeling using non-linear partial differential equations and extensive component testing would not have been justifiable at the time. The idea is to make a product, not dig yourself in a hole by spending millions of dollars on research. Intamin never acknowledge that their design was a failure. For all practical purposes, it's a successful design. Top Thrill Dragster had several undetectable design bugs that surfaced only after the scale up to a 120 MPH launch was imposed. This was a start of a cascade of events that were interconnected. The most recent were the gearboxes. They have pretty much run out of new things that can break.

djDaemon said:
Sure, Dragster is a complex ride. You know what though? I'll bet that given an unlimited budget, a Dragster-esque ride could be built that would never break down. And, yes, I realize that having an unlimited budget is unrealistic. The point is that when designing something, there is always a compromise between a robust design and cost-savings. It is Intamin's fault, having failed to properly analyze the correct "break-even" point (so to speak) for a ride. CP wanted it, Intamin wanted the money. Done deal.

Given an unlimited budget and the same time frame, Dragster would have still have many break downs. Short of building the ride, you really don't know exactly what is going to happen. The difference between what is calculable and what happens in the real world varies somewhat. Top Thrill Dragster is the example of that. Intamin integrated several new designs for TTD. Some of them work great while others failed miserably. If Intamin wanted the money so bad, why did they take the risk for such a large ride? They make much more money off of small rides then making a huge loss on TTD.

djDaemon said:
I was simply pointing out that Intamin did not do a good job. Intamin saw an opportunity to make a boat-load of cash and capitalized. What Intamin should have done is tell CP that for $25 million, there were gonna be problems.

Of course hindsight is 20/20. You can clearly see what the problems are. When on paper, they aren't nearly as clear. It's hypocritical to blame problems on Intamin with hindsight when you are guaranteed to lack absolute foresight just as much as they did.

Intamin lost money because of this big risk they took and Cedar Point was fully aware that problems were going to occur. Intamin did deliever one hell of a ride. It has had many times more problems than anticipated.

420TTD said:
Do you think that the air launch system can handle dragster's demands. Can it get up 120? Less rollbacks?

JuggaLotus said:
Yes it can. But how much will it cost to build such a system that is up to 95-96% uptime?

Can it be done? Probably. How much will it cost? More than a hydraulic launch for the same reliability. Pneumatic launch systems actually have more problems than hydraulic at higher speeds. This comes with their inability to hold a near constant acceleration during the launch unlike hydraulic launches. This makes high speed launches quite uncomfortable for most.

Hydraulic and pneumatic launches grew up together. Some would have to take a shoe off to count how many hydraulic launches coasters sold while pneumatic launched coasters can be counted on one hand. Even with Top Thrill Dragster and Kingda Ka, I think that Intamin has been more successful with their hydraulic design over S&S with their pneumatic design.

I do appear to be absolutely defensive of Intamin. That is not purely the case as they made many mistakes. That happens for every single project ever made. Two things do annoy me. The first is the irrational assumptions about Intamin and Cedar Point. Intamin isn't the big bad money scrounging company shoving problems down good little Cedar Point's innocent throat. Cedar Point has caused quite a few of the problems on their own doing. What really gets under my skin is the fact that Intamin engineers keep getting torn down for their work. They didn't have a cupcake walk. They had one hell of a challenge yet they to the most part pulled it off. Sandor even mentioned that they were surrealed by the request for Top Thrill Dragster. While most companies walked away with their tails between their legs, Intamin had the balls to attempt this project even with the risks associated.

Quote tag fix: *** Edited 3/18/2006 12:46:53 PM UTC by ForgottenEE***