Mean Streak - better?

Yeah, I can see your point. I just don't think Mean Streak is in the same class of roughness; though I guess my opinion is in the minority. I find the very front seat smooth more often than not (because everyone likes to pick apart everything on these forums...smooth in regard to wooden coasters, not steel), and it's a great view.

But here's what I will admit with all that being said about Mean Streak. It is not in the same state as when it opened, and it pales in comparison to wooden coasters like the Beast. So, do I have a problem with it being replaced eventually? No, not if another beautiful wooden coaster replaces it with better track technology, a more thrilling layout, and lower maintenance.

Front seat of Mean Streak isn't bad as far as lateral shaking and what not, but the whole train still vibrates horribly bad. Every time I ever rode it, front seat or not, I got off feeling like I had been sitting on a riding lawnmower all day (which isn't a good thing). My lower back would just tingle and ache, I just didn't enjoy the feeling.

Gravity Group and GCI have gotten the whole woodie rough/smooth balance worked out perfectly. Their woodies have enough roughness to feel like a woodie, yet they are smooth enough to make sure you're still comfortable riding the ride. And Millennium Flyer trains are like couches on wheels.

RaceRinger said:
I can handle rough. I can't handle rough and boring.....Georgia Cyclone are all examples of rough and boring woodies that I would never consider riding again....

I actually liked Georgia Cyclone. Riding in the back with those buzz bars gave some nice, albeit violent, airtime... I much prefered it over the Great American Scream Machine.

Josh M. said:
I actually liked Georgia Cyclone. Riding in the back with those buzz bars gave some nice, albeit violent, airtime... I much prefered it over the Great American Scream Machine.

Just throwing in my two cents... I totally agree, neither is great but GASM is by far worse. From everything I've read about Mean Streak, it's similar... think I will skip it during my trip to CP. I don't tend to like wooden coasters that much anyway, they all seem rough, but I will at least give the others at CP a try.

Beast at KI has no airtime and people still think its great. It is sure not smooth either.

I rode Mean Streak this past Sunday and I can tell you it was a tad smoother. It was definitely faster. Much could have been contributed to the lack of trim brakes on the first drop. I hope they keep it that way.

Trims were back on Tuesday :(

I still think it is a good ride. However I love wooden coasters and have the Beast and SoB in my top 10. Although they are the only 2 wooden coasters to crack it.

Ryan

Josh M. said:

RaceRinger said:
I can handle rough. I can't handle rough and boring.....Georgia Cyclone are all examples of rough and boring woodies that I would never consider riding again....

I actually liked Georgia Cyclone. Riding in the back with those buzz bars gave some nice, albeit violent, airtime... I much prefered it over the Great American Scream Machine.

I rode in the back of Cyclone for my first ride of the day when I went last month, and I nearly had to call it a day. My back felt awful. I rode in the front of Great American Scream Machine and I thought it was a blast. But hey, that's why everyone has their own opinion. :)

It is really just sad because Mean Steak has a huge potential. It could be everything a woodie needs to be. Rough is good, shuffling is not, how much effort could it really be to have a company come in and retrack the entire structure? I would love to see this. After riding on el toro and seeing the pure speed of the entire ride, could intamin not come in and do a retrack?

Why waste the money to re-track a crappy layout when you could invest that money in a brand new coaster that's actually engineered correctly?

When i ride Mean Streak, i always sit in the fron car of any seat. To me, it feels a little less rough.

Kevinj said:
Why waste the money to re-track a crappy layout when you could invest that money in a brand new coaster that's actually engineered correctly?

Who ever said Mean Streak is not engineered correctly? Last I checked the structure was still standing and the train was still able to make the circuit. Not only that but no one has ever been seriously injured on the ride as far as I can remember.

Now a ride that was not engineered correctly was Son of Beast.

Ryan

CedarPoint? said:
It is really just sad because Mean Steak has a huge potential.

I disagree. The entire profile of the ride is boring. No track will change that.

Who ever said Mean Streak is not engineered correctly?

Trim brakes on the first drop say that every time you ride it.

^ No, the trim brakes on the first drop say they don't want to have to pay to replace the track and structure all the time. I mean wood is not steel, no matter what it will need to be replaced eventually.

Ryan

So you're saying that from your perspective, Mean Streak was engineered to eventually have trim brakes installed? On the first drop, nonetheless?

Of course there is an expectation of having to do maintenence, track replacement, etc. with a wooden coaster, but Mean Streak was structurally flawed from day one, and was ripping the trains, and the track, apart. The design flaws are what led to the boring mess that sits there today, not just an attempt by CP to save some money.

It's not the only coaster Summers got an "F" on.

I understand what you are saying. But sometimes I think it would be hard to take into account all the different variables. I know that they should probably have been able to account for all the problems and probably should have added some more supports etc. However building a ride on paper and in a simulation is much different than it being constructed. My guess is Mean Streak looked great on both accounts and then has failed to live up to it.

I agree on your last line though. There is something about Summers coasters that I'm not a big fan of. Yet however I do like Mean Streak.

Ryan

Mean Streak has trim brakes on the first drop because of an unhappy combination of circumstances that Cedar Point has not made any obvious effort to fix.

Mean Streak opened on May 11, 1991, and its designer, Curt Summers, died exactly one year later. Upon Summers' death, his company was dissolved, and there was a bit of a delay before Custom Coasters arose from the remains of Summers' company and the Dinn Corp. Furthermore, upon inception, Custom Coasters expressed its lack of interest in large scale wood coasters. For that reason, there was really only one person Cedar Point could turn to in order to address the rideability concerns on its giant wood coaster: John Pierce, the man who built the only wood coaster taller than Mean Streak.

I don't know where Mr. Pierce learned his craft, or what his ideas are about how a wood coaster should operate. We do know that his design for the Rattler was screwed up from the beginning because of Fiesta Texas' desire to be taller than Mean Streak, which resulted in a ride which was not engineered to manage its full drop correctly. Pierce ultimately corrected the Rattler by raising the bottom of the first drop to the point where even though it is still 20 feet taller than Mean Streak, its drop is not nearly as long. Now, on the Rattler, that solved the problem of having too small of a radius on the first drop pull-out, but it left the ride with enough energy to actually finish the course; in fact it may have made part of the ride slightly faster as a result.

What I don't understand is why this became Pierce's preferred method for 'fixing' every wood coaster he ever came into contact with. He raised the bottom of the first drop on the Wild Thing at Adventure World, and I'm pretty sure he did the same thing with the Frontier City Wildcat. So it should come as no surprise that part of Pierce's prescription for fixing Mean Streak involved raising the bottom of the first drop. Cedar Point, however, didn't like that idea, and instead opted to hold the ride back with the trim brakes on the first drop. Either way, that means the ride no longer has enough energy to make it to the tops of the second and third hills, so both hills were cut down.

At a CoasterMania Q&A, Cedar Point's director of maintenance at the time tried to explain why Mean Streak was so rough especially on the second and third hills, and tried to explain it as a track gauge problem. This suggests to me that neither he, nor anybody else who has worked on the ride, seems to understand the problem with the signature "Summers/Dinn Curve", the high-banked curves that made up Mean Streak's second and third hill peaks. Heck, I didn't understand it myself until I got beaten up by Son of Beast a few times and really watched what was happening. The basic problem is that the hill is so high and banked so steeply that when the train gets to the apex of the curve, it isn't moving fast enough (=too high) to stay stuck to the outside rail, so gravity pulls the train to the inside (=too steep) and the train oscillates back and forth.

In all the tweaking, the hills have been chopped down and the banking largely eliminated, and that's fixed much of the banging around. The trouble is, with the shorter hills, that messes up the speed requirements for the now-underbanked curves, so they have to slow the train down. In other words, they've made a huge mess of it. What is really needed is for someone who truly understands the behavior of high-speed wood coasters to re-engineer the first part of the ride based on the size of the first drop so that it can be relieved of its brakes. Trouble is, that would not be cheap, and the ride is now dialed in to where the park can handle the maintenance and most of their customers will ride it once and not complain too much, so I don't expect it ever to be fixed right. There just isn't any ROI to do that.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Nice summary Rideman! Thanks!

Very nice explanation RideMan! Makes a lot of since now. I just hope they give Cedar Point a nice new Woodie soon. Mean Streak just don't Cut it.