General Questions

Well the US Navy has had a pretty good system for a long time now. From my understanding it is a very closely guarded secret and the Soviets/Russians were never able to get a system to work and still have to use rocket boosters on their carriers.

Yeah, I count Pipe Scream as a coaster. It looks like one, so why not? I wish it would spin both ways though. Still fun nonetheless.

Sunday pipe Scream broke down and people were stuck on it so I guess that's something it has in common with a roller coaster ;)

I was stuck on it Saturday for a few minutes because the floor wouldn't come up.

That's what happened Sunday but luckily we were in line not on it.

^^I thought that was you on that cycle, but couldn't tell for sure.

Were you working the ride at the time?

Yes, I was.

GL2CP said:

It is interesting how basically the three most popular coasters in the park are intamin, yet intamin has been shunned.

It is true that three of the rides with the longest lines are Intamin (Millennium, Maverick, Dragster). However, two of them, Maverick and Dragster also have a much lower capacity. Last year Magnum and Raptor both gave more rides than Maverick and Dragster, despite Maverick being an early entry ride. Those two rides also seem to have the most maintenance issue requiring downtime.

I think that the quality of the ride experience and the lower cost of the ride was enough to overcome the maintenance issues. However, with Shoot the Rapids, the ride had significant maintenance and reliability issues, did not provide a good ride experience, and didn't try to create any type of ride experience that hadn't been more or less perfected 30+ years before by other companies.