Maverick ... What the heck was CP and IntaRide thinking?

Capacity can no longer be as high as it was in 2007 due to an operational change in the ride. Back then, you could dispatch the second train to the lift as soon as the first train had cleared it, even though that would result in a rollback. Reason it was changed is that you could, essentially, have two trains in the tunnel if you sent the first one at the "correct" time (to have them cross at the bottom of the first drop) but the train launching from the tunnel rolled back.

I know the programming was changed, but not entirely sure what to. My educated guess is that the first train must now clear the top of the hill after the tunnel so there is no rollback before the second train is sent. That would also apply to dispatches, as well.

The crew did a great job this year, that coming from someone who's worked the ride before. I've heard nothing but good stories about their enthusiasm and efficiency. To crew members reading this, great job!

No, the 2nd train can be sent as soon as the 1st clears the pre-launch block in the tunnel - both trains are launched at the same time, basically.

I don't recall them ever moving the 2nd train to the first hill prior to the 1st train clearing the block, but you worked it, so, I'm clearly wrong. :)

The waaaambulance is on the way...

I think Maverick's dispatch times and capacity are really good. They dispatch two at a time, so the 2nd train has to wait for the first to clear the block in the tunnel to be dispatched. So you can basically see how soon a train can be dispatched by looking at the position of the first train out of the tunnel when the 2nd one goes. And quite often, I see the first train of the next set of 2 going up the hill pretty close to that time.. which basically tells me they're often dispatching about as fast as they can be.

I thought something had changed. Thanks for clearing that up, Jon.

1) I am not trolling. How am I trolling? I am not causing disorder and flaming, this is what is known as a discussion or argument. If anything, you're trolling by labeling innocent members as trolls.

2) Jeff: "Hang out with the community?" Sorry, but I don't recall reading anywhere that I must "hang out" with a community in order to start a thread. And by "people", it's safe to say you're talking about your self only, as no one else has presented such a silly statement.

And no, I'm not wrong, but I'm not right. The same applies to you. This is a debate based on facts, not a right-or-wrong multiple choice question.

3) Prawo: Actually, that is not the issue. I mean, a savings of a few seconds could actually change the RPH rate somewhat. The issue is the stacking on the blocks just before the station where we have at least one pair sitting for a while, while the second pair are just arriving onto the break run. In turn, trains must be dispatched at a more efficient rate. What's the best way to reduce dispatch rates? Having a load/unload station is definitely one method.

4) RideWarrior: Of COURSE I have ridden Maverick. And yea, if you read the thread and posts, you will see that I know and acknowledge the fact that Maverick has dual-load stations. Not once have I ever said the crew has not been doing their job well. The real issue lies with the design of the ride in that their should be faster dispatch protocols (since they take way longer to check restraints and dispatch then on MF, which if you notice when they check restraints, the use the same method that they do on MF), and they should have a load and unload station (still retaining the dual-station method).

And yea, thanks for explaining to me that it's a popular and great ride which explains the wait times. However, I'm not solely concerned with wait times, I'm concerned with RPH (wait times are irrelevant unless we consider RPH too). If Maverick's RPH was improved slightly, wait times would (obviously) be decreased to that of MF.

5) dammie: Are you serious? What else are you going to do as an enthusiast who is sitting in line for a while? Count the fish in the pond? As already pointed out, calculating RPH is really easy assuming you have a basic knowledge of Pre-Algebra. Just record the time it takes one train to make a complete circuit from it's starting to ending location, and then divide that into 60. That gives you trains per hour. Then multiply that by the capacity of the train, 12 people, and then by the amount of trains running, usually 6. So if one train takes 3 minutes to make a complete circuit, then it's RPH is (60/3) * 12 * 6 = 1440 RPH (note these are completely factual numbers I used to provide the example).

And it looks like you were already corrected, but IntaRide is the company that was responsible for the production and design of the ride. IntaRide is Intamin's North America division that was established in the past few years to make bringing Intamin's successful designs to North America much more cost effective and easier for all parties. Great argument regarding capacity, "because the line is always moving". All lines are always moving (under normal operating circumstances).

I think many people are ignoring my facts in suggestions and are putting the wrong words in my mouth. To repeat what I said above, and to summarize my points because many probably won't read complete posts (once again...), I am NOT blaming the Maverick Team. This is more or less a design inadequacy.

dwalls, its one of the fastest lines in the park. Its no more complicated than that.

Now all I can say is WOW!
djDaemon is right. In fact he is so right he wins the grand prize a shinny new CAR!!!!
No there is no sarcasm there im being honest.

Maverick dose in fact have the quickest line in the park. It is ALWAYS moving, your not standing still for more then a few seconds before the line moves another 100ft.

Really why are we even having this discussion? As long as i can ride it twice in a visit im a happy platinum pass holder!

I actually am going to take part of dwalls side. If you look clearly at the RPH, maverick is a weaker link.

Gemini: 2400 riders
Iron Dragon: 2000
Magnum-XL-2000
Mantis: 1800
Raptor: 1800
Corkscrew: 1800
Disaster Transport: 1800 (i really think it is lower)
Mean Streak: 1600
Cedar Creek Mine Ride: 1600 with 2 trains 2400 with 3
Millennium Force: 1600
Top Thrill Dragster: 1500
Blue Streak: 1300
Wicked Twister 1210
Maverick: 1200
Wildcat: 900

Oh, look! Maverick is one of the best capacity rides in the park is it? Even Cedar Point agrees that it is pretty bad capacity. 12/14 on best capacity @ CP. Also it is a pretty slow line. Magnum & Gemini are far the best capacity moving rides in the park.

...Although Gemini probably has fallen far down that list. When Gemini was running 6 trains, it COULD NOT stack, as stacking trains would cause a very messy cascade, sometimes requiring trains to be pushed from the high block brake. They could easily run the ride at 3,400-3,600 PPH back then, and I never saw it go down for a missed interval. Today, with four trains you would expect 2,400 PPH, but for some reason the crews on that ride are incapable of running the ride without stacking. Part of it is the boneheaded design of the exit gates, and part of it is the gate interference on the load side, and for a while a lot of it was the procedure that involved checking each lap bar and seat belt *twice*, although I think they have stopped doing that finally.

If they were able to run six trains without stacking before, why is it that with four trains they routinely stack, meaning a dispatch interval IN EXCESS of the 2:42 ride time?

If you are calculating ride capacity, you can do some precomputation that will help. There are 3,600 seconds per hour, so for the most accurate number, you want (3600/interval[seconds]) * load[people]). I used to do it all the time; the only reason I don't still is that I usually don't have any good way to take down the notes.

Most of the rides at Cedar Point that are not built by Intamin have pretty good capacity, typically 1,440 or higher. The Intamin rides generally do the worst, and the Arrow and B&M rides do the best, with Magnum beating out Raptor only because its train holds four more people per load (they both have a 75-second interval).

At Kings Island you can see some really awful capacity numbers on every coaster in the park except Diamondback, with Diamondback, Adventure Express and Vortex the capacity leaders in that park. Most of their capacity problems are designed right into their operations.

Maverick, most of the time, is about as efficient as it can possibly be. It's just that Intamin doesn't seem to have figured out how to predict how long it takes for a ride to traverse the blocks on a ride, nor do they understand loading time. Most of the time the crew is able to load the train faster than the ride can be ready for dispatch, which is usually because the train is running too fast to keep from over-running the next block.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

^Thanks. I think your number is more realistic than CP's.
If you think about it, Intamin never puts a mid course block in. If Millennium had a Mid course block, I think the ride could have a better capacity number.

Any Intamin Ride has a better capacity than Fahrenheit. Really bad capacity.

Dwalls... so what your complaining about is the fact that you have to sit and wait for trains to load before you can unload? I'm not to sure about you, but while im sitting there waiting I think about how incredible of a ride that was. Never mind the fact that Im still regaining my composer. As long as im in that seat im happy. No need for being picky here.

^So, you prefer the 'Bach' seat, then?...

coolkid2345 said:
I actually am going to take part of dwalls side. If you look clearly at the RPH, maverick is a weaker link.

Gemini: 2400 riders
Iron Dragon: 2000
Magnum-XL-2000
Mantis: 1800
Raptor: 1800
Corkscrew: 1800
Disaster Transport: 1800 (i really think it is lower)
Mean Streak: 1600
Cedar Creek Mine Ride: 1600 with 2 trains 2400 with 3
Millennium Force: 1600
Top Thrill Dragster: 1500
Blue Streak: 1300
Wicked Twister 1210
Maverick: 1200
Wildcat: 900

Oh, look! Maverick is one of the best capacity rides in the park is it? Even Cedar Point agrees that it is pretty bad capacity. 12/14 on best capacity @ CP. Also it is a pretty slow line. Magnum & Gemini are far the best capacity moving rides in the park.

Your list is very deceptive, as those are the listed manufacturer's theoretical capacity. I can say from personal experience that Blue Streak has no prayer in heaven of hitting 1300rph. In 2007 the highest we could manage was around 750-775, and believe me, we busted our butts to get those numbers. With the addition of retractable seatbelts last season, the crew was able to get in the 800s, and I think they may have broken 900 a few times (or more), but I don't remember hearing them break 1,000. I think TTD usually runs around 1,100 (just a slightly informed number guess, because I never checked too often) for comparison with another Intamin ride. Millennium Force has a naturally higher capacity because it has three 36 person trains (108 vs. 72 total train capacity), and if you assume 20 dispatches/hr. (one every 3 minutes) with 36 vs. 24 (one MF train to two Maverick trains since technically two Maverick trains are dispatched at once) you have 720 vs. 480. So Millennium by default has a 240rph leg up per hour per train just running the numbers without any real world assumptions.*

*Dave (or someone else), if I did the math wrong please feel free to correct me, as I'm tired and about to hit the hotel bed and mistakes would not surprise me.

NOTE: Updated with correct MF seat numbers.

^Well no crap Millennium has a higher capacity. I don't really know why you brought that up. By the way Millennium has 36 passenger trains. Not only should you check your math, you might want to check your facts.

Does anyone know how long TTD trains waits to be launched.-thanks coolkid :)

dwalls90 said:
"Hang out with the community?" Sorry, but I don't recall reading anywhere that I must "hang out" with a community in order to start a thread.

I wasn't making a request. I've been doing this for 11 years, and nothing is more annoying than the online equivalent of showing up at a party and trying to be the life of it when no one knows who you are. It's common sense, dude. Respect the community (and its leaders) if you want it to respect you.

I always thought the second train dispatched automatically, that once they left the station, the computer took over. That would make the most sense to me. And besides, the near miss still happens this year.

Honestly man idk what to tell you, you came in here trashing some people's favorite ride at Cedar Point and then don't really like that we are sticking up for it.

Also Id rather they not have an unload station before the current station, 1 it would look ugly with a long wooden building in the air and 2 its nice sitting in the train. For someone that is my size or near it those harness' are really comfortable to be sitting there for extended periods of time, trust me I know I have sat in one for 30-40 min.

The other big thing is as a coaster enthusiast I never quite get why we bash coasters, and then say well they are good. For example Intimidator 305 is getting the crap bashed out of it, along with Shoot the Rapids, and yet they are not even built yet! No one has ridden these rides and yet they are saying it is a bad ride. Come on guys grow up there are better things to do then bash a ride. Enjoy them for what they are! If you can't enjoy the thrills you get on them without having to pass judgement on how the capacity was engineered and how intamin screwed up on it then you have some problems. Heck I am an engineering student and i could stare at a roller coaster and thing how amazing it is that something that heavy can be braced by so few supports and still be standing tall.

I know you are newer to this forum but you might wanna watch yourself. There may be no hang around and lay low rule, but its not just a suggestion, its a must. You really should learn who some of the people that you are talking to, some of us come from different perspectives that you may not notice if you just post random threads.

Jeff: Sending the second train to the lift requires another enable from the control host. Back in the day, we would dispatch it to the lift as it rolled through the second horseshoe roll, that way you would have the near-miss on every train (as long as interval is being hit). As far as the near-miss still happening, you'll notice that it rarely happens on the second train because of the change in programming.

Now, as far as inefficient, try operating Maverick with only four trains, or (in rain), three. Talk about a long interval.

That's interesting. I don't understand what change in programming would cause that to happen though. As shown in that picture, it can and does happen (photo is from September this year).

Sounds like he's saying they used to dispatch it prior to train 1 hitting the blocks, which meant hitting the near miss almost every time. Now that the 2nd train isn't dispatched quite as early, there's less room for error, so fewer near misses.

The lift could have been made slower but slightly taller so that the trains could be in motion more often. It's somewhat unfortunate that near misses never happen, trains were peaking on the lift while the second train was just on the trim brake when I was there.