Gatekeeper is getting very rough

Diamondback has always had a rattle since opening. I remember it quite vividly during media day, most noticeable after the turnaround before that hill following. It may have gotten worse (I have not rode since last year sometime), but from what I remember it felt the same to me.

The first time I rode it was about a week after it first opened. It was the smoothest and quietest ride I've ever ridden. I rode on both sides and on the out side both times. It was very smooth. 2 days ago, I rode it again and the roughness was very noticeable. It gave me a huge head ache. I rode on the outside this time too. The vibrations were strongest at the bottom of hills.

I don't think it has anything to do with whether one sits on the outside or inside. I believe it has to do with the wheels. I saw a video on Cedar Points channel about Gatekeeper during testing and they said they tested with soft wheels and hard wheels. Maybe they had complaints that the ride was too smooth and slow and replaced the wheels with hard ones?

Also, the ride sounds a lot louder than when the first time I rode it.

I have not had one rough ride...

cpfourlife1 said:
I have not had one rough ride...

Well then I must have been imagining the splitting headache I got after the first ride, which only got worse after the second ride.

Whatever the cause may be, I hope they figure out how to make this great ride more re-ridable

Oy, I concur 110% with the roughness observations. First rode Gatekeeper Memorial Day weekend, many times, many different seats, and it could not have been any smoother - loved it. Then, returned the weekend of July 12th, and it was a whole different story. I sat 3rd row, left side, outside, and had to clench my teeth throughout most of the ride, the duration of which was torture. We pulled in the station, and I told my husband who was next to me that it felt like someone just violently scrambled an egg in my skull. He on the other hand, said that was the best ride he'd had on Gatekeeper so far. Go figure.

Our teenager rode on the next train after us, and unfortunately, came off the exit ramp gripping his head in his hands, telling us he was done for the day and likened feeling to a jackhammer. He rode right side, outside near the back.

To add insult to injury, we had Fastpass Pluses that went to waste for most of the day. My son and I rode nothing else, and sadly, I won't be hopping on GK again until I feel confident this nasty vibration is addressed - not worth chancing another ruined day at my favorite place on earth :(

Jackster said:
The vibrations were strongest at the bottom of hills.

Ditto that!!

I really hope that everyone is also sharing this info with the ride operators when the ride is over. The more feedback they get the better. If they keep hearing about the vibrations it's much more likely that they will look into it and try to resolve the problem. Safety is a responsibility shared by everyone.. so speak your mind..

I rode Gatekeeper only once during opening week and it was very smooth. I will be back for another try in August.

I'll be at the park tomorrow, so hopefully I'll get lucky and won't have a rough ride. But I doubt it, since the last time I went it was rough, especially at the bottoms of hills and elements as others have mentioned.

I rode GK for the first time this past Tuesday night. My first ride was on the left side in row 4 or 5 in an inside seat. This cycle was decent with very tiny but slight vibrations at the bottom of the large elements. I found the ride to be somewhat boring after the keyhole element and generally forceless like most new B&M rides are these days. I took a second ride on the right side in the last back row in an outside seat and i can only describe this cycle as painful. It was nice that the ride showed some more intense forces in this location but this was greatly overshadowed by the head splitting vibration. This was present through the entire ride, even in the finale helix. I also noticed that a large amount of noise seems to come from the fiberglass bits mounted to the center of the train, which was kind of annoying. The appearance of the ride is quite awesome and changes the park drastically though. I hope this vibration issue can be resolved in the future as this ride would be much better. Since this issue wasn’t present in the begining of the year i would imagine it is wheel related or spring and dampener related although I don't know if B&M trains have that setup similar to what MF has. I know generally MF gets slight vibrations at times throughout the year, generally worse towards the end of the season.

I rode it yesterday and it was amazing!! We rode it front seat on the right, and I rode on the inside. I have nothing to compare it to, because it was my first ride on it, but it was super smooth. If the line wasn't 45 minutes long, I would've rode it again. It's definitely one of my new faves.

I don't know why some people find Gatekeeper rough? I rode it last July 21st and thought it vibrated a little, but never thought it was rough. I think your going to have that with any ride over time even the new ones.

I was at the park yesterday, and I expected to get a splitting headache after all the reports of how rough it's been. Well, it was the complete opposite of rough. I even sat in the back outer seat and only felt a little vibration at the bottom of hills and elements, but it was barely even noticable. IMO Millennium's rattle is worse than GK.

Gatekeeper remains just about the smoothest roller coaster I've been on, I don't get the roughness comments either.

I've noticed that one train, in particular, is more rough than the others. Though, for the life of me, I can't remember what color it is. I rode it twice last Sunday and one ride was smooth while the other vibrated pretty intensely. During the Travel Channel shoot, I rode in the back row 24 times and the train I was on didn't vibrate as bad. So there seems to be, from my standpoint, a smooth train, a slightly uncomfortable train, and a rough train.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the dynamics of the ride vs the design of the trains or something to do with which trains were tested first. I've heard that, in some cases, the trains that were put on the track first and were cycled the most (through all the tests they do) tend to have a bit more wear and tear on them than the others. Of course, I don't know the extent to how true that is.

Rode this weekend in the back for the first time since opening day. You can tell the wheels have some wear on them and are not perfect, brand new ones, but calling it rough is a BIG stretch. Still really like the first half of the ride.

Also noticed they are opening the platform gates right away now (about the time the restraints release) and it has made things much faster in the station.

Also Adam, as far as train wear, we used to keep a log of the time on each train and if there was ever a time that one was transferred off due to lack of riders (rare and probably never happens on GK this year), we'd take the one off with the highest hours up to that point. I doubt any difference in run time - even if it is something abnormally large like 50-100 hours would make a big difference in feel. Probably the wheels.

I rode it on my trip back in early June and can say I also had two extremly different experiences on this new ride. On one of my first rides, (front row right) it was smooth as glass and very enjoyable. Later in that same evening I rode 3rd row (outer right) with no one seated beside me in the inner seat and the ride vibrated so much or just at the right frequency that I had a good sized headache for the rest of the night.

To me it seemed that on this second evening experience my seat bounced along the track, especially at the bottom of the more intense elements, rather than experiencing a rough or ragged wheel like you occasionally can get on any coaster (e.g. MF towards the back with its lateral vibrations).

With Gatekeeeper I wonder with the wider than normal trains that you can get an unbalanced weight load that can lead to this bouncing?

Yes, roughness is not the correct description in my opinion. For me it is an internal brain "shake" that I can only imagine similar to an aneurism. Yes, I would agree the ride itself is pretty smooth.

I noticed a lot of vibration on the ride for the early season night ERT. Felt like my brain was being rattled and gave me a headache. I rode the ride again last week and it was not as bad. Though I only rode it once and because I was expecting it, maybe the vibration wasn't as bad. I was not expecting the issue during ERT earlier in the year because I didn't have any problems at media day riding it more times. May also be variances in the trains and with different seats/rows on any given train.

I emailed the park about this and they told me they will forward my message to the maintenance dept. He also said they plan to "tune up" the ride and further inspect it to see what the problem is. I hope they work this out, as I don't want to come to hate this coaster b/c it gives me and other people headaches.

I had a similar experience with Gatekeeper's vibrations. My brother and I rode it 5 times on July 25. Front left, front right, back left, back right, and then tried out the "big boy seats" in row 4 to see how much larger they really were. We did no immediate re-rides, and rode other rides throughout the day in between our Gatekeeper rides.

After that 5th ride, I was done. The vibrations had gotten the best of me, and I knew if I didn't stop, I wouldn't be able to make the 2 hour drive back to Metro Detroit.

I woke up in the middle of the night with what is now diagnosed with Vertigo (not the ride, either, lol) and have not been the same since.

I'm really hoping they can get the vibration thing figured out - I really enjoyed the ride, and would love to try it again if they can address this issue.