Extended Closure

JUnderhill:

Move along to yesterday when it was reported all over social media that Top Thrill is testing. Now they are testing again today with people in the park. Well, that essentially eliminated any possibility of a major issue or potential failure of any component. Based upon the new information he now says it could open this weekend but maybe longer. Take it with a grain of salt

Everything I’ve seen from Twitter and Reddit is that people at the park are NOT seeing testing today.

Video of employee working on train

https://x.com/mlondon83/status/1791178304378093925?s=61&t=QHldLbelq1JdPhn3NHJAOg

I’m not at the park today and unfortunately won’t be until Saturday. Take it with a grain of salt but I was told 2 trains were running for a bit this morning.

Interesting. In my conversation with a few people two Sundays ago, I was offered the opinion that the black train was giving the smoothest ride, and the silver train was giving the roughest ride. If they are testing out a solution, or even investigating the problem, it makes sense that they would cycle the best and worst train to attempt to find the differences between them.

(cred: 2 visits, 0 rides, 0 inside info, 0 credible sources.)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

2020TpForSale:

I believe any testing we are currently seeing is to fully understand the issue at large.

Explain how anyone can tell the difference between that and testing to validate a fix, please.

^for an unproven new train design (lightning) that took years to engineer and build, and for them to open the ride thinking they had their ducks in a row — I’d be concerned if they came up with a fix, engineered it, done the repair, and tested it in 5 days. They have nothing in their back pocket to say “oh this repair worked on that ride, let’s try that.”

But that’s just me. I’ve come to understand I have the unpopular opinion around here. I also know have I great deal of learning to do.

So I guess no testing sightings tonight? Bummer

I can’t see them testing during park hours anymore like they used to. (TTD early years, Maverick with the Heartline Roll.) Every person in the park would come running like the old days to only find it never even had a chance of opening. I could easily be wrong on this.

2020TpForSale:

I’ve come to understand I have the unpopular opinion around here.

Popularity has nothing to do with it. You can feel whatever you want, but a feeling can't tell you why they were testing absent any evidence one way or another.

I don’t think your opinion is stupid at all 2020TP

I know if it opened this weekend I’d be nervous to ride it for the exact things you mentioned. I think alot of us are really just hoping the insiders got this one wrong and the issue was ALOT more minor than we thought.

One day at a time..

2020TpForSale:

I’d be concerned if they came up with a fix, engineered it, done the repair, and tested it in 5 days. They have nothing in their back pocket to say “oh this repair worked on that ride, let’s try that.”

That's a pretty broad statement when you don't know what the fix is. There is a big difference between something small (such as swapping wheels because of high wear) to re-engineering and replacing wheel bogies because of a massive component failure. The fact that we don't know the reason for the closure makes these statements pretty useless.

Modifications and fixes are validated. If it's large enough, it will be recertified. If it opens to the public, it has been verified by all necessary parties that it is safe for operation.

Let's also keep in mind that Zamperla is not new to the industry by any means. They have been in business for nearly 60 years and are not just a small group of hobbyists cobbling together some new designs in their garage.

Y'all know I can see deleted and edited posts, right? Maybe think carefully before you post something.

Uh oh... Now you have me trying to remember the times I was posting some BS before I had second thoughts. Or how many times I posted something then re-read it and thought wow, that sounds stupid - better change it before any sees it.

Fishels:

"I know if it opened this weekend I’d be nervous to ride it for the exact things you mentioned. I think alot of us are really just hoping the insiders got this one wrong and the issue was ALOT more minor than we thought."

I'm sticking with my sources for the approximate Memorial Day weekend re-opening. Lemon Chill Guy and Auntie Anne's pretzel girl said it was just the "shimmy" being looked at. :)

They may want to check for shuffling while they're at it......

Sit tight fellas 😉

CoasterLine:

Modifications and fixes are validated. If it's large enough, it will be recertified. If it opens to the public, it has been verified by all necessary parties that it is safe for operation.

I'm going to pedantically argue this point.

NO inspector, Designer/Engineer, Manufacturer, or Owner/Operator will EVER certify that ANY ride is "safe". The lawyers have seen to that.

The Designer/Engineer will assert that the design meets or exceeds the applicable design and performance standards and design requirements. The manufacturer will certify that the ride, as built, complies with the design specifications. The Owner/Operator will promise that the ride in its then-current condition meets or exceeds the manufacturer's specifications and operating requirements. And the inspector will confirm that the Owner/Operator isn't lying about it. Of course this is all predicated on each party conducting its own level of risk analysis on the elements of the system over which he has some control, and confirming that the system in question affords an acceptable risk*.

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From what little bit I know (do I really need to trot out my creds again to show how little that is?) it seems the ride developed a rideability issue within its first week of operation. Its very likely that the issue has something to do with the wheel assemblies because, face it, when the train is made out of a single billet of aluminum, there isn't much else to go wrong. I'm inclined to think that if they were finding cracks in critical pieces of the chassis or wheel carriers, or even the wheels themselves, we might have seen some repair work, or at the very least they would not have resumed any kind of testing after the closure began. If the issue is the wheels themselves, that's a bit of an exception because I don't think you can repair those wheels (meaning the aluminum part) because it would affect the balance of the wheel, which would cause even more trouble especially at high speed. Given that the ride appears to be designed (as Dragster was) so that there is a way to shuffle the trains around and access any train for removal from the track WITHOUT launching it, I expect that if there were any clear evidence of a possible breaking or broken part, that vehicle would not be launched under any circumstances. Even with the park closed and a low risk of injury, a catastrophic failure can turn a comparatively minor issue into a very big one in very short order. See the time back in '01 or whenever it was that they broke the hoist rope on Millennium Force during morning testing on Labor Day Weekend.

Everybody is focusing on thoughts that something is cracking. But do we actually have any evidence of that? Some of us have seen photos that suggest that wheel carriers are being or have been removed from the trains, but that by itself proves nothing...only that the wheel carrier is an area of focus. We know that these assemblies were designed for "easy" removal and disassembly so if any component in that wheel carrier assembly is subject to modification or replacement it would make sense to remove the entire assembly to do it "on the bench".

Knowing absolutely nothing except what I have heard from actual riders and inferred from the way the ride has functioned thus far, I have a theory about what might be happening. My theory is that instead of a structural failure of any wheel carrier component, there may be excessive wear on the system that provides preload for the guide wheel assembly, with the result that the system may not be providing sufficient preload to resist the lateral forces on the train as it wobbles down the launch track. It makes sense that such a problem might not have appeared during early testing because the load testing appeared to be conducted with water ballast units which may have been more or less consistently loaded, and more important, were not moved between cycles, so the shift from ballasted testing to operation also represented a change from a consistent load distribution on the train to a random load distribution. Because the Lightning train is, as designed, to be lightweight (though I have no idea how lightweight) it stands to reason that the passenger load makes up a significant fraction of the total train weight, and would have a noticeable impact on the distribution of that load. That in turn could affect the stability of the train, causing it to wobble somewhat during the launch. Estimating this offset would be potentially difficult to do without real world data, and the issue could be as simple as a need to increase the preload on the guide wheel assemblies to overcome this. We also see from the first days of operation that the preload may have initially been sufficient, but within a week may have been reduced through operation. I am unaware of the exact method used for establishing this preload on the guide wheels, but a fairly simple way would be through the use of, for example, a small gas shock, like the one that holds the hood of my car (or the lift gate of an SUV) open, only a bit smaller. Repeated loading of a part like that could reduce the ability of that part to perform its job, and would result in a deterioration of performance over time. I mention that because that's an example of a possible part that could be evaluated, tested, replaced, and put into service without, say, a 90-day polyurethane cure time (yes, I watched that video, too.) And it is the sort of thing that could, depending on the AHJ, be considered a "major modification" to the ride and would require a ride analysis per standards and State requirements. Or if merely a change in specification, only performance testing would be required (in the absence of any impact to hazard mitigation) to validate that the modification corrects the performance issue as expected.

Remember, I don't really know what I am talking about here, so consider me less reliable in this case than ElToro Ryan.

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* Or "reasonable risk". There is some discussion about that in the industry right now.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

^I agree with this. That was what I was commenting on the springs a while back, I was believing that the guide wheels are spring loaded.

And I was there that day when MF cable snapped in '01. Sliced up the track pretty good.

Personally I was surprised at the amount of shaking during preview week. That was after I’d heard about it for a couple of days. But that could also be my brain focusing on what might kill me and less on enjoying the ride.

https://x.com/brandona_ee/s...RLJ_wOWbIQ

looks like the wheels are gone at least on the blue train.

I can’t tell from the photo. But is the entire wheel carrier (including all six wheels and the guards over the road wheels) gone?

—Dave Althoff, Jr.