Extended Closure

Pardon me for not remembering the exact quote from 20+ years ago. 🙄

Out of all the incidents, you were able to find the word “inconclusive” in one and tried to make that your “gotcha” moment.

inconclusive or not, the incident resulted in changes in the seat belt positioning on the drop towers, but in light of that one being inconclusive, we can point to the Hopi Hari incident, which killed a young girl and was said to be potential restraint failure, and if you dig deeper, you will find that the restraint was not capable of locking and was supposed to have been closed off, but it wasn’t, so she sat there. You can blame the park for not marking it closed, but who is to blame for the mechanical failure?

If that isn’t good enough, let’s go back to 1984 where The Edge, a first-generation drop tower, failed on the way up and the car dropped back down the shaft due to the absence of properly functioning or appropriately sized anti-rollbacks.

None of this even includes their complete failures that were installed all over the world over the last 25 years.

Holiday World and Cedar Point love their water rides! Oh wait...

What kind of mental gymnastics do you have to do to reach the conclusion about Sandor's context? "Acceptable number?" Pretty sure there's only one answer to that. Ask the girl who lost her feet on the old Kentucky Kingdom ride how conclusive her lost limbs are.

Sandor is a dick. Every park manager that has had to deal with him will say the same (if off the record). I'm one of the people he threatened to sue. I told him to **** off, stop bothering me, and clued him in that libel only applies if what people say is untrue and they know it.

XS NightClub:

because people aren't subjected to the insane belittling and childish know it all arguments that happen on here regularly.

You obviously don't read the YouTube comments. 😆 Also, there's a difference between "know it all" and evidence based opinion. People being challenged on the Internet for opinions based on nothing didn't start here, and it won't end here.

They pulled the reference to TT2 off of the fast lane plus daily(single use) and all season pass add on (unlimited). Certainly hope I am wrong, but that may suggest it is not opening any time in the immediate future.

CPfan1976:

I'm hearing a Monday June 3rd re-opening from the Auntie Anne's pretzel stand girl.

She's such a sweetheart.

Well, I blame Intamin for the current downtime of TT2.

They obviously failed to provide sufficient lateral support to the track, which is causing excessive shimmy and/or excessive wear and tear on the wheel assemblies of these poor, brilliantly designed trains, which obviously did not consider Intamin's secret, substandard, outright dangerous track design.

Intamin's a murderous bunch. Everyone knows that. And that's why they remain one of the most popular ride manufacturers in the industry and probably the second-most-respected go-to manufacturer for big roller coasters, next to B&M.

(Waiting for Sandor's threatened libel lawsuit in .... 3...2... 1..)

e x i t english:

Pardon me for not remembering the exact quote from 20+ years ago. 🙄

Out of all the incidents, you were able to find the word “inconclusive” in one and tried to make that your “gotcha” moment.

Its not a gotcha to point out that their are holes in your argument. Turns out half of your examples have NOTHING to do with the manufacture and have everything to do with the park. Lets look at Xcelerator.

"On September 16, 2009, a cable snapped during the launch of the ride, sending metal debris flying and seriously lacerating the leg of a 12-year-old boy.[17][18] Another adult male rider complained of neck and back pain.[17] A state investigation determined that the accident could have been avoided with more frequent inspections.[10][11] The park only inspected the ride every six months, even though Intamin had recommended an inspection every month; Knott's Berry Farm was nearly three weeks behind on their regular six-month inspection."

Somehow the state and Knotts were confused if the cable needed to be inspected every month or every six months even with Intamin saying it need to be inspected every month.

Point being, your list of Intamin sins isnt well researched.

So, Intamin wasn’t clear enough that the cable needs to be inspected more often, and that isn’t their fault? How about a better design that doesn’t allow the cable to hurt people when it frays or breaks? Remember those free facial piercings that Dragster gave out in its early years?

Your claim of them having “NOTHING” to do with “half of the claims” is quite a serious reach. I sincerely hope you didn’t hurt yourself.

I can’t understand the ball washing when it’s very clear that they were very sloppy with their products for quite some time.

As for their popularity? It’s not hard to sell a bunch of rides when you’re the lowest bidder. Even better when you’re the lowest bidder and you’re willing to take big risks with your designs - but at what cost?

There’s a big lesson in getting what you paid for.

Obviously, they have improved with their latest designs and technology. Their newer rides look even better than what they were putting out, but their run through about 2012 was a hot mess.

Out of curiosity, has anybody ever actually properly crunched the numbers to see, say, incidents by coaster manufacturer? Incidents resulting in death or injury would be the easiest, but something like incidents resulting in closure >3 months, 6 months, or a year could also be interesting, although would probably be far more of a pain to pull the data.

I'd be kind of curious to see who would be objectively the worst in that regards, though you'd also have to adjust for quantity of rides and time extant as a manufacturer, otherwise Arrow would probably be at or close to the top no matter what. You'd also have to find some way to distinguish incidents that were the result of rider or operator error vs incidents that were ostensibly design-related or otherwise the manufacturer's fault.

I’ll probably take heat for this and that’s okay, but wasn’t the point of TT2 to get it right this time?

Why shouldn’t we be upset that 8 days into the season, Cedar Point shuts it down indefinitely?

There was obviously either a completely unforeseen issue or an issue that was known to exist but was thought to be manageable and turned out not to be. Either way these things happen and if you live life expecting that not everything goes the way you plan it to then you be much happier. Am I disappointed? You betcha I am as I had already rode TT2 about a dozen times and I think it is a great ride! Am I upset about it? Absolutely not as I can guarantee 100% that this is the last thing either Zamperla or Cedar Point / Cedar Fair wanted to have to do.

Contrary to what you have posted I believe that by shutting down the ride a mere 8 days into the season both Zamperla and Cedar Fair are indeed "get(ting) it right this time"

Better safe than sorry. One day we will all sit around our computer screens and laugh about this little closure.

JUnderhill:

There was obviously either a completely unforeseen issue or an issue that was known to exist but was thought to be manageable and turned out not to be.

This is what I keep coming back to.

In the engineering world, FMEA is standard practice. All potential Failure Modes are to be carefully considered, and, most importantly, their Effects are to be Analyzed, with the goal of identifying mitigation actions. If, and still a massive "if" at this point, a failure results in downtime stretching into July, that indicates a failure of that relatively basic process.

GL2CP:
One day we will all sit around our computer screens and laugh about this little closure.

Why wait?

JUnderhill:

shutting down the ride a mere 8 days into the season...

As much as it hurts, it's good to remember it's still only May.

If the rumors are true (grain of salt) and my family doesn't get to ride TT2 until July(ish), that's no fun.

BUT

Some perspective, as I still wonder how many people really remember the pain of Top Thrill Dragster.

It took my wife and I two seasons to ride TTD for the first time. We lived in Columbus and had season passes and came and went a lot, but it was either not open at all or we would get in line and endure as much of a shut-down as we could until leaving the line.

When we finally got on the damn thing towards the end of season two we had gotten in line around 7:00....park open until 10. It shut down but we decided to just wait. And wait. Enough people left so it was just like 13 of us in the station and around 9:45 they opened her up. That was a glorious moment that only took nearly 750 days to experience.

e x i t english:

As for their popularity? It’s not hard to sell a bunch of rides when you’re the lowest bidder. Even better when you’re the lowest bidder and you’re willing to take big risks with your designs - but at what cost?

What? On what basis do you think Intamin is the lowest bidder? You think Intamin designs are cheaper than Gerstlauer? Maurer? Zamperla? Premier? S&S ? RMC? Vekoma? Zierer?

what in the world could you be talking about?

Intamin, Mack and B&M are all top tiered priced manufacturers.

Kevinj:
If the rumors are true (grain of salt) and my family doesn't get to ride TT2 until July(ish), that's no fun.

As much as this sucks (and it does) they need to get this right and I'm sure they will. The perspective here is that it was caught before something bad happened and there's no doubt Zamperla will be under a LOT of scrutiny from the park to get it right. Despite the hate they're getting, I'm still rooting for Zamperla and am still proud of what they managed to do. They took a huge gamble with these new trains and are experiencing the trials and tribulations of going with a prototype product on such a massive scale.

^but that’s just it. They had nearly 3 years to get it right.

Late to the party again, as usual. You know, life doing what life does...

First my credentials on the subject--

2 park visits so far, 0 rides on TT2, and no good close up look at the wheel assemblies.

Jeff suggested--

I assume that if the lateral movement was enough to cause alignment issues, the solution is stiffer springs and blocks in the guide wheel assemblies. I imagine that trying to accurately simulate wear on those would be difficult in a range of temperatures and the most minor of variations in track over thousands of feet of track.

I understand that's part of the reason for using sprung wheel sets in the first place, to try and get that alignment right. In fact, it was DA20Pilot who remarked--

I'm not a mechanical engineer, but from a layman's perspective, my eyebrows were raised a bit from the beginning when I heard the side wheels were spring loaded instead of fixed in position. (Not to say that i expected this situation though!). It seems to me that it would be difficult to have enough spring force to keep the train in optimal centered position at those speeds and forces.

In response to your observation, I should mention that the Arrow coasters all have fixed location guide wheels, and it is not possible to fit those wheels to remain tight to the rails because when the train enters or leaves a curve, the track gauge shifts a little to allow clearance for the change in the angle of the wheel carrier. The wheel carrier is a chord that has a certain length to it, and that length, between the contact points of the front and rear guide wheels on the wheel carrier, will determine the amount of 'slop' required to keep the train from binding on the curve. Setting those wheels in a good place, then using a resilient assembly to push them up against the track (not necessarily a spring; B&M and Intamin both use some kind of resilient compound to behave like a spring; not sure what Zamperla does) closes that gap and prevents the train from bouncing around, or at least that's the idea. The train can still move laterally, but that motion is dampened by the spring action, and it eliminates the transients we feel on the Arrow coasters as the guide wheel approaches the curve but doesn't conform to it until the guide wheel contacts the outside rail (inside rail if the wheels straddle the track). Likewise, when there are LSMs involved, alignment on the launch track is critical because the clearance between the magnet and the stator needs to be minimized to maximize efficiency, but still has to be enough to allow the magnets to clear the stators if the train is wiggling.

Frog Hopper 3 asks--

(I wonder too if the problem is aluminum wheels on steel track)

Almost certainly not. I think Magnum actually runs on aluminum wheels. Remember the wheels and track don't touch; there's a plastic tire in there and it's softer than both the track and the wheel.

Now here's what I keep coming back to. Everything I have heard indicates that the ride has a distinctive lateral wiggle as it goes down the launch track. All three trains do it, but to different degrees (remember I haven't ridden yet, so I have no real idea...). I have also heard that this wiggle has been getting worse during the first week of operation. And yet, one of the things we know is that all three trains have been running for months using ballast loads in the form of water dummies...and there did not seem to be a problem. Now, load the train up with a random distributon of patron masses, and something begins to seriously wear enough to mess up the ride quality within a week.

As nearly as I can tell, the only thing that changed was the switch from a constant weight train to a random weight train. If that's causing problems, then maybe the train needs to weigh more so that the passenger load is a smaller percentage of the total train weight. Or maybe it is wearing the road wheels more quickly than expected and causing the height of the train to vary, which would also affect the location of the guide wheels relative to the centerline of the rail. Or maybe the guide wheel pressure just needs to be increased.

For whatever it is, though, I think the ride is going to have to re-open before they can really know if it's fixed. After all it ran just fine until it started carrying live loads.

Remember, I know nothing about what is really going on here. I haven't even ridden the darned thing yet.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

veritas55:

What? On what basis do you think Intamin is the lowest bidder? You think Intamin designs are cheaper

Again - strictly speaking on the late 1990’s to early/mid 2000’s era Intamin rides that I’ve been referencing all along, absolutely.

They may be expensive now, but they certainly were not when trying to become a larger player in the market. It definitely seemed like they were willing to take on absolutely anything that came their way, no matter their level of experience.

B&M, at that time, was the premium manufacturer, but they carried a premium price and they had (and still do have) a more conservative approach to design and dynamics.

Intamin sort of became the “anything goes” group, and they often over-promised and under-delivered. They built extremely over-complicated control systems that were unreliable, leading to delays in opening, major amounts of downtime, and general frustration, but they kept popping up because they still cost less than the others.

It’s so odd to me that people are so defensive over them and that era. The amount of mental gymnastics that have to happen to try and place blame on anything but the obvious is baffling.

Sure, their rides have come a long way, and they haven’t had a major accident as of recent years - that’s great for them now, and I’m happy they’ve turned a corner, but their reliability/uptime is still a concern, and I’m not sure I see that changing, based on their complicated ride systems.

djDaemon:

In the engineering world, FMEA is standard practice. All potential Failure Modes are to be carefully considered, and, most importantly, their Effects are to be Analyzed, with the goal of identifying mitigation actions. If, and still a massive "if" at this point, a failure results in downtime stretching into July, that indicates a failure of that relatively basic process.

I work with engineers everyday so I understand this point of view. That being said this is the point where there can be a disconnect between the engineering world and the real world. I have been involved in the commissioning of large industrial projects, the largest approaching a billion dollars and there are numerous times where real world conditions do not replicate those of the models and labs. This is not a fault with the engineering world, it is simply the manifestation of too many uncontrolled variables in the real world that cannot be properly known let alone assessed and mitigated.

All that being said, most of the time things are close to spot on. When they are not the data gained from the real world conditions can make solving the problem much easier. Most of the knowledge we have today came from the mistakes or oversights of the past, the unknown becomes the known once we see it.

After the fact it is very easy for someone to look back and say "how the heck did they miss that, it was so obvious". Sometimes, there can be merit to that assessment and time will tell if there really was a blunder or obvious mistake / oversight here. But at the end of the day no matter how bad some folks on the internet think they feel that they cannot ride TT2 for a bit - I would bet those who spent a huge portion of the last few years of their lives working on TT2 feel much worse about this closure.