Is it possible....

for MF to carry the 1600 passengers an hour like it was designed. Does it have anything to do with the lift speed. If it is, CP doesn't have their priorities straight, they'd rather get people through the circuit faster and have them ooh and ahh at the lift speed rather than increase capacity (possibly avoid TTR altogether) It might be something else that needs fixed. Then again maybe there just isn't a way and Intamin was off by 400 people an hour. (yeah right!)

Something that's curious...they claim 1600 per hour (which is wishful thinking best case scenario, but ignore that for the moment). Let's do the math:

1600 riders per hour / 36 riders per train = 45 (44.444...) trains per hour
60 minutes per hour / 45 trains per hour = 1 minute 20 seconds per train

The ride itself is just over 1:30, and you can only have one train on the track at a time. It doesn't quite add up.

If you recalc with 1200 per hour, you end up with about 1 minute 46 seconds per train, which is much closer to reality.

Maybe my math is flawed, but I don't think so.

You might have noticed the lift kicks it in high gear as soon as the final brakes are clear. You don't want to slow down the lift, you want to make it faster! To say, "They'd rather get people through the circuit faster and have them ooh and ahh at the lift speed rather than increase capacity" is contradictory. You don't increase capacity by adding to the ride time, that's for sure!

When the crew and guests are "on," I've calculated 1,300 people per hour, and that's not bad. It's no Magnum or Raptor capacity, but 1,600 was a pipe dream!

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Jeff
Webmaster/Guide to The Point
Millennium Force laps: 35

What makes MF so different from either of these other two-Magnum has the same train capacity, shorter track and is able to have 2 trains on the circuit at once and has that 1600 PPH. Why can't MF???

Because MF doesn't have 2 trains on the circuit at once...

Timing is a big big problem. Consider Magnum for a moment...and remember The Rule (no more than one train may occupy any block at a time).
It takes a full minute to get from the station to the top of Magnum's lift, another 70 seconds to get from the lift to the safety brake, another 20 seconds to get from the safety brake to the transfer table, and another 20-30 seconds to park in the station. Then another 20 seconds or so of dwell time. If you think about it, you can see how this works...ten seconds after the lift is clear, the next train can leave the station and still not reach the top of the lift until the train ahead clears the safety brake.

Millennium Force, on the other hand, gets from the station to the top of the lift in 30 seconds, then completes the rest of the circuit in another 90 seconds. This means that there has to be a delay of at least 60 seconds from the time one train clears the lift before the next one can be dispatched so that the course will be clear by the time that next train reaches the top of the lift. Hmmm...I need to model this and see if a slower lift would actually improve things any...the more I think about it, the more I think it doesn't make much difference...

--Dave Althoff, Jr. (results of the modelling tomorrow)
*** This post was edited by RideMan on 7/18/2000. ***

lookin forward to it :)

Well, unless I am missing something important, it seems that slowing the lift would indeed allow the train to go earlier in the cycle, but the improvement in the time between release-from-lift and dispatch from station is exactly counterbalanced by the increase in total ride time. It looks like any move to shorten the dispatch interval is going to have to happen at the other end of the ride...by allowing the train to enter the unloading station *much* more rapidly. Perhaps in combination with the slower lift in order to maintain the longer dwell time needed to get the trains loaded.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.
*** This post was edited by RideMan on 7/19/2000. ***

i think they would need a second set of brakes before the only ones, but thats a big part of what i like, non stop to the finish, and besides the fact that its just impossible to add them with the layout finishing the way it does,well, from the way i see it atleast.

Magnum has a much higher capacity because there is more rides per train. They both have three trains with eight cars but Magnum has six passengers per car whereas Millennium has four.

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Dispatch Master, This is Transport one! I'm losing control, I'm losing control!

regardless how many cars the trains have, they both carry 36 passengers through a circuit at once.

Yes, MFistheBEST is right.

Magnum is as follows:

6 cars x 6 seats = 36 passengers

Millennium Force is as follows:

9 cars x 4 seats = 36 passengers.

Same amount of passengers, but Magnum's station was set upcompactly to accomadate 6 sets of 3 rowed cars, while MF had all the room in the world to accomadate the 9 sets of 2 rowed cars.



*** This post was edited by CP_bound on 7/19/2000. ***

The thing about it is, the brake configuration on Millennium Force is functionally identical to the setup on Magnum. There's a safety brake at the end of the ride, an unload brake, and a load brake, plus the lift. That's four blocks, which is exactly what Magnum has...a safety brake coming out of the last tunnel, a brake at the transfer table, a brake in the station, and a lift. But Millennium Force is a shorter ride than Magnum (2:00 vs. 2:50) and the time required to negotiate the blocks on Magnum is not as well defined.

On Magnum, it takes about 60 seconds to get from the station to the top of the lift. It takes another 70 seconds to get from the top of the lift to the safety brake after the last tunnel. From there, another 10 seconds or so to get to the transfer table, where you typically have to wait about 20 seconds. Then it takes another 10 seconds or so to get into the station for unload. This weekend I'llk try to get more precise timing data. Anyway, what this means for Magnum is that from the time the first train is dispatched...

(these figures are approximate)
Dispatch 1: 00:00
1 clears lift: 01:00
Dispatch 2: 01:15 = Interval...1,728 PPH
1 clears safety: 02:10
2 clears lift: 02:15
Dispatch 3: 02:30 = Interval...1,728 PPH
1 clears xfer: 02:45
2 clears safety: 03:25
3 clears lift: 03:30
Dispatch 1: 03:45 = Dwell = 55 seconds
2 clears xfer: 04:00
3 clears safety: 04:40
1 clears lift: 04:45
Dispatch 2: 05:00
3 clears xfer: 05:15
1 clears safety: 05:55
2 clears lift: 06:00
Dispatch 3: 06:15
(and the pattern repeats)

For Millennium Force, I'm guessing that the pattern was supposed to be similar. Substitute "unload" for "xfer", and increase the dwell time on the unload brake but correspondingly reduce the load station dwell time. Trouble is, Millennium Force has a longer ride and a shorter lift, and an unreasonably long time is required to clear the safety brake. I don't have the ride time from the safety brake to the station, but I think it is longer than the 30 seconds required to get from the station to the top of the lift...and the total ride time is darned close to 2:00, meaning it's 30 seconds to the top of the lift, then 90 seconds to get back to the unload station. The pattern is something like...

00:00 Dispatch 1
00:15 Park 2 for load
00:15 Park 3 for unload
00:30 1 clears lift
01:30 Dispatch 2
01:45 Park 3 for load
01:58 1 clears safety
02:00 2 clears lift
02:15 Park 1 for unload
03:00 Dispatch 3
03:15 Park 1 for load
03:28 2 clears safety
03:30 3 clears lift
03:45 Park 2 for unload
04:30 Dispatch 1
04:45 Park 2 for load
04:58 3 clears safety
05:00 1 clears lift
05:15 Park 3 for unload
06:00 Dispatch 2
06:15 Park 3 for load
06:28 1 clears safety
06:30 2 clears lift
06:45 Park 3 for load
06:45 Park 1 for unload
07:30 Dispatch 3
(and so on)

The time spent in each section of the ride just isn't balanced as well as we see on Magnum. Slowing the lift would make it more like Magnum in the sense of having one train on the lift and one on the course (ever notice how Magnum's lift is typically not quiet for more than about fifteen seconds at a time during normal operation?) but the real limiting factor that sticks the ride with a 90-second dispatch interval is the time required for the train to completely clear the safety brake. The only way to reduce the interval, then, is to reduce the time required to clear that safety brake, and the only way to do that at this point is to bring the train into the unloading station faster.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Anyone care to follow that performance? LOL! :)

Rideman's right, MF has the same brake configuration as Magnum, I never noticed this before, but the unloading station is actually like Magnum's brake that holds you out of the station until the train that is in the station to be dispatched. Anyway, it seems that what counts is the dispatch interval, I do think you sit longer in the MF station to be dispatched than in Magnum where you get dispatched almost as soon as you're strapped in.

The difference comes in the distribution of time in the different blocks. Magnum's lift and circuit blocks are very similar in time, where as the Force has a short lift block and longer circuit block. You can't change the length of the blocks, so you're more or less stuck with the current efficiency.

And that ain't bad... waits aren't as bad as Cedar Point and the media make them out to be.

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Jeff
Webmaster/Guide to The Point
Millennium Force laps: 35

is it possible that after oh, say, 10 years, that the park and the ops will become as familiar with MF as they are with Magnum and that will help increase the PPH AND allow full-time three train operation?

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ride early, ride often!!!

Rideman?? Jeff??

Servo, Jeff summed it up very nicely...

The dispatch interval on Millennium Force is real close to 90 seconds. That's about fifteen seconds longer than Magnum, and there is nothing they can do about it other than to reengineer the final approach to the unloading station so that the train can clear the safety brake faster. The limitation has nothing to do with how fast the crew moves in the station (notice that the train usually sits fully loaded for a few seconds, waiting for the train ahead to reach the dispatch point, 30 seconds before clearing the safety brake).

If the train could clear the safety brake faster, the dispatch point could be earlier. If the ride were shorter, the disptach point could be earlier. But as it now stands, the minimum interval is unusually long, and it is controlled by the length of the ride. So Millennium Force cannot go any faster than about 1,440 pph without some reengineering.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I think they could make it better by making the "solid" brakes after the final turn more powerful, (Add more of them)and make them retractable, then you would add an extra safty block.
In most cases it would not even be needed because the "now" final block would be clear way before the train on the track would be on the island!! and you would only have the current number of brakes applied to slow the train as normal. but if the "now" final block was not clear you could have all the brakes applied to stop the train running on the tracks.
Because of this you always have an extra brake block and you would be able to speed the lift again!! I am sure this would increase pph!!
Yes they would also have to add drive wheels to get the train moving again but thats no big deal.