Maverick

I agree that I want the rides to be safe! I would even second guess myself if I were to go on it after it's been closed all day.. I was just wondering if anyone knew what the deal is because I've never been able to ride it yet hear awesome things about it.. Maybe next year!

XS NightClub said:

some stuff....

There's still no excuse for such an exorbitant amount of downtime. I've ridden Maverick twice this year, because it's usually down every time I'm back there this year - and it's my favorite ride in the park.

It's upsetting, for sure - but maybe Intamin should have put a little less "over-engineering" into their rides. It's un-necessarily "safe" - and that makes it unreliable. Unreliable = bad.

I don't care who you are, if you made a huge investment - for example, let's say you bought a car. That car is awesome, drives itself, it's super fast and you love everything about it. Except, it only runs 2/3 of the time and the rest of the time it leaves you stranded and scrambling to find a reason that it stopped. Would you be happy? Yeah, don't think so. Now, if you discover that the reason it stops running is because there are sensors everywhere that detect that you have to be sitting exactly correct, windows must be down exactly 2 inches, and all seat belts must be fastened, un-fastened, then re-fastened again in a counter-clockwise manner with exactly 3.67 seconds in between clicks - or the whole thing comes grinding to a halt and throws an error code - you're going to be furious, and you're going to wonder why the hell anyone would buy such a thing. But, hey - you're stuck with it.

e x i t english said:

I don't care who you are, if you made a huge investment - for example, let's say you bought a car. That car is awesome, drives itself, it's super fast and you love everything about it. Except, it only runs 2/3 of the time and the rest of the time it leaves you stranded and scrambling to find a reason that it stopped. Would you be happy? Yeah, don't think so. Now, if you discover that the reason it stops running is because there are sensors everywhere that detect that you have to be sitting exactly correct, windows must be down exactly 2 inches, and all seat belts must be fastened, un-fastened, then re-fastened again in a counter-clockwise manner with exactly 3.67 seconds in between clicks - or the whole thing comes grinding to a halt and throws an error code - you're going to be furious, and you're going to wonder why the hell anyone would buy such a thing. But, hey - you're stuck with it.

You just summarized every exotic car ever made, yet people still buy them...

Some more Stuff...

Given the similarities to The Smiler, with having multiple trains on the tracks at one time, blocking, etc..

Maybe, just maybe, the parks and all the manufacturers of similarly designed rides are operating with an overabundance of caution, given the incident with The Smiler.

Yes, it is disappointing when it is not running. No, the car analogy is not even relevant.

The fact is the ride is 'over-engineered' because of the designed operation and multiple blocks/ launches which require extra precautions for safe operations.

As far as the current issues, I'm not sure. I will say it was disappointing on Sunday to have Dragster, Wicked Twister, Maverick and Magnum all down with mechanical issues throughout the day. Dragster was down multiple times for extended periods of time. Millennium Force was running 2 trains as well.

Disappointing in that I don't visit the park much anymore, and I spent a good portion of my day fighting ride closures.

Speaking of MF's two trains on Sunday, we were in line when they transferred yellow off after it was super noisey on the way up the lift. Like, really, really loud and clackey. Anybody know what the deal could've been with that?

I always seem to cross my fingers when jumping into the queue haha. Although I usually only ride the Maverick once per visit. It's my 2nd ride of the day after coming off Magnum in the back entrance. It's never broken down for me.

bholcomb, How was the crowd/lines Sunday if you don't mind me asking? Think I should be able to walk on most things with fast lane? (I'm using my free one for renewing my platinum pass)

Thabto said:

I heard there were electrical issues and they couldn't get 1.21 jiggawatts of electricity to power the flux capacitor.

If they would run it at 88mph there would be no problem--except on May 4th, when there would be sci-fi franchise collision

accio_airtime said:
Speaking of MF's two trains on Sunday, we were in line when they transferred yellow off after it was super noisey on the way up the lift. Like, really, really loud and clackey, Anybody know what the deal could've been with that?

My guess would be an issue with one of the anti-rollbacks.

Most likely, but the issue would be the device that keeps the dog up when the train is in forward motion. The anti-rollbacks would have still worked if needed to hold the train.

XS NightClub said:
Maybe, just maybe, the parks and all the manufacturers of similarly designed rides are operating with an overabundance of caution, given the incident with The Smiler.

Not likely. The Smiler accident was caused when workers manually overrode the automatic controls and moved the train into an occupied block. The automatic controls worked just fine.

XS NightClub said:

No, the car analogy is not even relevant.

The fact is the ride is 'over-engineered' because of the designed operation and multiple blocks/ launches which require extra precautions for safe operations.

No. You're wrong. Intamin is notorious for over-engineering rides to the point that a fly landing on a sensor will trigger the ride to shut down, requiring a visit from Sandor himself to be able to restart it. (exaggeration, but not too much so).

Do you know how many sensors are on Dragster alone?

Look, I get it - they make some of my favorite rides. That doesn't change the fact that they are unreliable, prone to problems, and from what I've heard the company is ridiculously hard to work with.

That said, my buddy had an interesting point. When Chiller at Great Adventure switched from OTSR to lap bars, the ride had all kind of problems because the weight of the trains was different, so timing was off and sensors were seeing things just slightly differently and whatnot. Maybe the restraint change is the issue here?

e x i t english said:

No. You're wrong. Intamin is notorious for over-engineering rides to the point that a fly landing on a sensor will trigger the ride to shut down, requiring a visit from Sandor himself to be able to restart it. (exaggeration, but not too much so).

But, what are those sensors for? Dealing with the position of the train on the track? That would be directly related to what NightClub said.

Sure, but they don't need nearly as many as they have, and in places that they have them.

Yes, complexity is bad. It gets in the way. I remember one of the guys who runs maintenance at Dollywood was talking to a group about the anti-rollbacks on Mystery Mine, with the device that pulls them up as the train moves forward. He says, yeah, cool, they generally don't wear out, but at the cost of having more parts, more complexity and one more thing that fails periodically. By comparison, the B&M at the park puts a $10 piece of nylon on the rollbacks that they have to change every once in awhile.

Simplicity in engineering is important. If mechanical engineers are anything like software engineers (which I hesitate to call engineering, and I do it for a living), then they often desire to be clever instead of simple. That's rarely a win.

Ive been lucky I guess. Never have seen Maverick down much when we were visiting. We usually go four times a year. This year in June, Aug, and twice in October and it was up every time. It was actually one of the few coasters running on the dreaded first weekend of October this year. However, I did notice something different that weekend. When we got to the launch tunnel it pretty much came to a stop before it launched. Then it seemed to launch much faster than I remembered. It usually would just slow down and not come to a stop so Im not sure what was going on there, but it was still fun!

Jeff said:

Simplicity in engineering is important. If mechanical engineers are anything like software engineers (which I hesitate to call engineering, and I do it for a living), then they often desire to be clever instead of simple. That's rarely a win.

Depends on what is being done and who is doing it. I don't know too many engineers that actually like doing extra work. I know my rocket design team always likes making everything simple and fail proof as possible. I'd blame it on someone in management that doesn't really have a clue what's going on, but insists it is done some way other than the simplest over the engineers actually doing all the work.

deeturnerjr72 said:
Ive been lucky I guess. Never have seen Maverick down much when we were visiting. We usually go four times a year. This year in June, Aug, and twice in October and it was up every time. It was actually one of the few coasters running on the dreaded first weekend of October this year. However, I did notice something different that weekend. When we got to the launch tunnel it pretty much came to a stop before it launched. Then it seemed to launch much faster than I remembered. It usually would just slow down and not come to a stop so Im not sure what was going on there, but it was still fun!

The nearly stopping is how the ride was originally designed to run. The park has experimented with it on and off. I think it really depends on the operating crew weather it's on or off, as they're actually extra trim brakes that retract on command.

The ride will stop in the tunnel depending on how quickly we can dispatch trains. It will stop in the tunnel if the train has not cleared the set of breaks before the turn behind the station. We do not have control over the trims in the tunnel.