If you can't tell by now...

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Mysjivus1 said:
And do you honestly think CP would do all this work (i.e. removing 2 flat rides, draining and filling in part of the lagoon, changing part of the midway) just for a 400+ ft. tophat?.

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Absolutely.

Are we talking about Superman the Escape or Superman the Ride? I am getting confused.

I personally think that CP will not dissapoint us, they never have before. They weren't voted the best park in the world 5 times without a reason. This ride will go far beyond what we can predict. I don't think that there is any reason th write this coaster off yet. It is way too early. And I definately don't think that this will be a L-TH-B. This will be the one to knock Milennium out of the #1 spot. TRUST ME!

I've been watching the forums for a while, but this is my first post :)

Anyway, there's plenty of room to build a huge new coaster. If they put it 20 or 30 feet off of the ground, they have almost a whole penninsula! I'm sure they wouldn't start tearing up important sidewalks when the park is still open. The corkscrew did it, with supports in the middle of a sidewalk, why couldn't the new one? Or perhaps have it "interact" with millenium force by going over or under or through the twists on the island? Or perhaps on (or over) part of the parking lot. There are infinite possibilities. Just because they have only cleared a little area so far doesn't mean they won't do the ugly disruptive work once the park closes. And judging by the camera. the parking lot was pretty full last weekend. It wouldn't make sense to fill it completely with parts yet.

Give it time, they seem to have done a good job in the past. We have no reason to doubt that it will be cool. It's not like them to put in a bad coaster. Although even if it does turn out to be a 400' tophat with breaks, it will still be quite a ride.

[Edited to fix an unclear sentence]

--James
*** This post was edited by jdoty 9/30/2002 6:04:45 PM ***

CP already has 2 coasters that are over 1 mile long and a 3rd that's every bit of a mile. How could we even think about being pissed if they only go 2 or 3000 feet?

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I was super before Superstew was cool!

Folks, Jeff just gave us a pretty good hint. Based on all the "available" info and his hints we are very likely looking at launch, tophat, brakes. We will just have to wait and see but everything points to that at this point IMO.

If it's really going to be a single-element coaster as everyone fears, isn't it possible that it might take more than one lap, so that you go over the tophat two or three times, perhaps faster each time?

No, it's not possible. Some of the reasons: that might work with LIMs, but with this launch system it will not. It would also kill capacity, and the train can only go a certain speed (or within a small range) up to the top hat to ensure that it makes it over and without too many negative g's.

It's almost a given now that the "disappointment" will be the short ride time/length. I'm still hoping for at least maybe a floater hill, bunny hop, or overbank after the pullout and before the station.

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"Meh."
Wicked twists: 9
Danger: Hgih Voltage!
*** This post was edited by Majin Heero 9/30/2002 6:40:53 PM ***

I guess I don't understand why it wouldn't be. Like I said, I'm new to the forums so maybe I missed something. Why wouldn't it be possible to wait until the park closes to really start major construction and receive more shipments?

Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that there's no way to know for sure. There are too many variables. But who cares? Would you rather they not build anything? Even if it's an exact clone of Xcellerator, that would be good too.

--James (I rather enjoy WT, btw, regardless of the short ride. No disappointments there for me.)
*** This post was edited by jdoty 9/30/2002 6:45:17 PM ***

I agree completely, James, and I would love to see that happen, but Jeff has pretty much hinted that people (especially "enthusiassts") will be complaining about one thing, and that is looking like the ride time.

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"Meh."
Wicked twists: 9
Danger: Hgih Voltage!

My bad, when you wrote "No, it's not possible" I thought you were referring to my previous post. Sorry about that. :) I understand what you were talking about now.

--James
*** This post was edited by jdoty 9/30/2002 6:54:45 PM ***

But if a good station design and the right amount of trains coupled with the short ride time means enormous capacity, I won't mind. The only thing that would really chap my ass about a 30-second ride would be a two-hour wait. As long as the wait is small enough, the shortness doesn't bother me.

Just had a new thought on the set-up for the ride. Although I can't see it happening personally, maybe someone else might.

Since most everybody is expecting it to have a pretty short ride time, it would be extremely hard to empty and fill the trains fast enough to meet the fastest interval the ride could handle. So, have two load/unload stations that alternate sending out a train. Side 1 loads a train while the train from side 2 is leaving, and by the time that train from side 2 has launched the one from side 1 is ready to go. After leaving the station they pull up to the launch area and are launched through the tophat, probably a bunny hill, banked turn, then the breaks, and then sent back into their respective side of the stations. White track on one side of the station, red on the other. And red track for the rest of the ride.

As for the launch, tophat, breaks theory, I think there has to be at least one element after the top hat, notably a banked turn. The trains must get turned back around again to get back into the station facing the right way, and I dont think they would break them and then have them go through a turn at breaked speads to get back. And at 110+ miles an hour, as some like to suggest, thats still a pretty large amount of track you can cover in a minute, especially with the ride being launched.

Shawn...

You guys are already starting to believe the ride is going to be up and back? It may be but take into consideration, the 2002 season is not over yet. Starting early with the take-off area will give more time to perfect the ride near the beginning of next year's season.

Remember at the beginning of MF's first season? They were still figuring out how to put on 3 trains.

Ok, I just have one thing to say that will prove all these Up, Down, Brakes theories wrong. Look at any of the pictures with the grey supports and you will see that none of this a large enough or thick enough to hold up a train coming down that hill at the kind of speeds were talking about

I mean, those things are tiny compared to the supports on the giant tower. I dont know if you think so too, but its gotta be true! Those supports arent strong enough to support a 5+ton train coming down at that angle at 80+ MPH

There is just no way!

5 ton at 80+ mph? If there are 5 car trains, it would be closer to 16 tons(comparable to MF's trains), and it would be closer to 100 mph.

Needless to say, I agree with you that the supports look like they couldn't take the force from the train, but whenever that train does hit that area, it will be going that speed (80+) no matter what, just by the sheer speed this thing will hit to begin with, how small the layout will be, even if it isn't L-TH-B, and how little speed the Intamin trains lose through their courses.

Does it look like MF's or Xcelerator's supports could take the deceleration of it's huge trains?

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June 28th: LocoBazooka Tour (Sevendust headlining)
July 11th: Korn, Puddle of Mudd, and Deadsy

The difference is the direction in which the force is exerted on the supports on the other rides. For Xcelerator, the ride comes in at about a 30 degree angle, but, if this is for the brakes right after the drop, the angle would be more that 45 degrees and therefore exert too much force for those tiny supports!

Its all about the physics. The supports must be able to support the force that the train will exert. It is natural that if the train comes in at a steeper angle, there will be a larger vertical aspect of the vector that the train will have. Therefore, those supports will have to be bigger. Not only do the supports have to be strong enough to support the trains vertically, but with the extreme deceleration that would be occuring at that point, the supports would also need to support the track and train horizontally. I suppose it could work, but it doesn't seem logical.

Although, I did notice that there is a spot on the very bottom of the main supports for what seems to be another support for the pull out. That could lessen the stress on the smaller grey supports, but doesn't seem like it would do enough!

There are a lot of those gray supports. That makes me think it will do more after the tophat, mainly because there are some taller ones also. Plus if it was going to do anything around that midway, they couldn't do much construction until after the park closes.

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Steve Sergent
MF count: 203

Does anyone else notice that Xcelerators tophat supports appear to be much wider than the supports for CP's version appear to be? Unless that 1 tower at CP is as wide as Xcelerators it would seem to be a bit hard to make a 400 foot tophat that is that narrow,the turn at the top would be rather harsh wouldn't it?

With the box track and the fact that it looks like those supports are extremely close together, there should be no problem with them supporting the forces.

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Hoping to work at The Point in '03 so I too can get drunk and pee on VertiGo