Millenium Force Fiberglass Trains

As you may have noted, MF was only running 2 trains opening day with the yellow train not even on the transfer track. Apparently, the train bodies have been replaced with fiberglass, rather than the thin metal it used to be. It still rattles, but not quite as loudly. I'm a bit worried that the reduction in train weight will reduce the ride's momentum and thus slow it down. I doubt it's a huge difference though.

Only thing I noticed that is different on MF is there is a loud squeal on the last turn before the brake run. Everything else seemed just fine to me.

Train bodies still looked/felt like metal to me. What makes you think they were changed to fiberglass?

Millie was only running one train today @ about 400p. The ride host told me the other train is down for mechanical. She was probably unaware that there are three trains.

That's funny.
GigaG, where did you hear this news of new train bodies? Not that I should necessarily be aware anyway, but I've heard no mention of this.

I know! Maybe they're making a green one.

I was taking to the ride operator today, he said at the time, which was about 2:30 today. That one train was running, one was down for mechanical difficulities, and the yellow train was taken apart behind Corkscrew, not put back together yet. (Not sure if 100% accurate, but what I was told) 😊

That would explain why the yellow train has been absent thus far. What color train was running today, was it the blue one?

New trains sound worrying. How else is the ride affected besides the squeaking?

I, too, noticed the missing yellow train and the squeaking on the last turn. The ride seems to be the same as before, but i definitely didn't notice any difference in the cars if they were in fact fiberglass instead. Do we have a source on this?

I couldn't tell any difference at all, I did not look closely at the train body panels but they looked the exact same to me, ride itself was excellent as always.

I heard from a few people today they were fiberglass but I didn't look close enough to notice or really care. I popped in row 2 and rode the ride, happy me.

Mikeybo2004 said:
Millie was only running one train today @ about 400p. The ride host told me the other train is down for mechanical. She was probably unaware that there are three trains.

Or she doesn't have the authority to tell anybody what the issue is with the trains.

Seemed just as fast and fun as ever on Saturday. We sat in row 17 (front of the last car) and I do recall thinking that the body seemed pretty nice for a 15 year old ride. I just figured that maybe it had been "detailed" over the winter and cleaned up for the season. Even the lap bars and seats seemed to be in really good shape.

Ben.gifford1 said:

I, too, noticed the missing yellow train and the squeaking on the last turn.

I remember noticing a squeaking in the last overbanked turn during media day and opening day last season, but I had just thought it was from the wheels still being new

Millennium Force did in fact get new fiberglass bodies. The chassis is still the same. Red and blue train are done and obviously on the track, but yellow train is still getting the new bodies installed. The speed of the ride is exactly the same as if the metal bodies were installed on the ride. They weight difference being that of around 2 less riders per full train.

I wonder what happened over the winter to cause them to change bodies at the last minute.

JUnderhill said:

Only thing I noticed that is different on MF is there is a loud squeal on the last turn before the brake run. Everything else seemed just fine to me.

I swear the last "squeaky" arc is being hit at a faster speed.

Why are you assuming that changing the bodies was a last minute decision? Seems to me something like that would have to be planned for, not done at the last minute. What I'm kind of curious about is if the bodies are supplied by Intamin or if they were designed and built by another vendor?

I think the assumption is based on them not being done before opening day. I cannot speak to whether it was last minute or not, but not having your arguably signature coaster ready to go at full strength seems bad, especially when that coaster was down to one operational train on Sunday.

The bodies have definitely changed. No more sheet metal, but more of a plastic or fiberglass material. They appear to be the same material as Dragster's trains, which I believe have been that way all along.

I was also wondering if the new bodies came from Intamin or somewhere else. Maybe they didn't get the third train's bodies in time which is disappointing since MF has horrible capacity with only two trains and it's arguably still the ride that people all want to ride. Hopefully it won't be long.

As far as the ride experience, I noticed less rattling and the speed/feel of the ride seemed about the same as always to me. I doubt the body itself impacts the weight all that much because there is so much weight in the chassis/wheels of those rides.