NEW Policy with MF seatbelts?

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Boatman said:
Also, could someone explain what they mean about how the belts on MF are "routed" as opposed to how they were routed in the past.

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There are steel bars on the outside lower portion of the seats that come up from the bottom of the seat and attach to the other steel bars on the seatback. I don't know if that makes any sense to you. There is air space between these bars and the seats. In the past on MF (mostly years prior to last year) and all last year on TTD the belts and buckles on each side were routed to the seat under this bar, basically taking the shortest path from where they are anchored into the train and your body. Well now they are on both routed outside of these bars essentially shortening and already short belt 1-2 inches per side. Routing the seatbelts in this fashion gains nothing on the scheme of restraints. The idea is to tie you down to the train and the back of the seat. I think routing under these steel bars does a better job, because if you have a loose seatbelt for any reason by the forces and vibration of the ride, the belt could conceivably work its way down this bar making the belt more loose as it did so - essentially the belt could eventually defeat itself as a restraint by being routed outside these steel bars. Is that a stretch? Maybe, but certainly less far fetched than requiring 1 inch slack in the belts to keep you in your seat. You'd think with safety in mind they would be examining all avenues.
*** Edited 5/14/2004 4:21:50 PM UTC by cyberdman***

Does anyone know how long the seatbelts are on MF and/or TTD?

You know with all this talk about sear belts not fitting I am wondering if I should bother coming to CP. If that's the case with alot of other people cp will loose alot of money. They will be loosing about $3,000 in my case because I stay at the breakers and spend alot of money in there resturants getting FAT!!!!

Dr. Worm I thought your email to the park was right on. MFJedi2, I would love to hear Mr. Kinzel's response to your snail mail. I think it's a shame that Cedar Point's past safety record(especially on MF) doesn't really amount to anything in regards to these decisions. It really does upset me to hear about people being turned away from Millennium Force, especially repeat visitors who haven't had a problem boarding in the past. That is just wrong.

This new policy is silly, but at least we see that CP is taking an extra step on safty. This act alone makes feel even more safer even though I would the last one to have a problem with not enough slack with the seatbelts.

I don't understand how 1 inch of slack is any more safe than 1/2 inch of slack or no slack at all for that matter. Seat Belts are there for secondary safety. They should hold you no matter if there is 3 inches of slack or no slack at all. If the belt is locked, then it will hold you. It is designed to hold you if the lap bar fails, which isn't very likely.

I'm not extremely huge or anything, I just have large upper legs that tend to make the belts tight. If the lapbar secures you correctly and the belt locks, I don't see how they can turn you away. IF they want to limit the size of their guests, then make the seat belts smaller, don't come up with this 1 inch crap.

The seatbelts are short enough already, Now they've routed them different, cutting off more size and make you have 1 inch of slack? That is some mega bs.

I dont want to get anyone in trouble or anything but I have a very good friend that works on MF. I just got back from visiting this person for 4 days at CP. They said that if they are in the back were people cant see them than they let them ride without the slack or full slack, but if the people can see them or their supervisor is there (which they said they are a lot right now) they make sure the slack is there to the full inch.

They also said that some people on the crew were letting the people ride without the slack then the guests would come back to ride again, get turned away and get upset.

My point is that there is no consistancy in this rule and there needs to be or alot of people are going to be angry. If you need the belts 1 inch shorter then shorten the belts 1 inch.

Personally I think the belts are too short and could still be safe if they were longer. If the bars are the problem then why not try a redesign that could SAFELY allow riders of all sizes to ride? I'm sure that would be very good for CP's rep after the bad press it has gotten lately. *** Edited 5/15/2004 5:11:57 PM UTC by cedarpointchic***

not like my two cents matter a lot, but what CP Should do is:

have a attendent CONSTANTLY at the test seat that can correctly judge if the person will have any problems after waiting in a hour/two hour long line to be turned down.

I personally don't agree with the new policy, and i'm quite worried that my friend won't be able to ride, which would be a huge blast to him and his ego.

But until they change the slack thing they should have someone positioned whose sole job is to make sure the rider in question will fit properly by their standereds. If that person clears the test seat, they face no chance of problems up top, easy solution.

Sure, people that get turned down will still be angry, with every right to be so, perhaps then CP will alter the decision made regarding this.

cedarpointchic I agree with you, consistency is really important here. I feel bad for the people who are working in the station and trying to let some people ride. They are in a catch 22 situation and risk getting in trouble when guests complain that they already rode it that day and now why are they getting turned away.
I also agree with you that the belts could be longer. Everyone knows that The Force is not an airtime(at least what you could call violent airtime)machine. I'm not bragging nor do I feel proud for admitting this, but a few years back I had some incredibly "loose" rides on MF, and except for some floater air I was "glued" to my seat for the duration of the ride, including the first drop. If anything would have happened to me that would have been my fault and I would never try anything like that again on any coaster, period.
I think that any individual coaster's safety record should speak for itself. The restraints and seats on SROS,MF and Dragster are differently designed but that doesn't seem to be taken into consideration here.

So from what I have been reading, it kind of depends on how the ops are feeling that day on MF? And is it just the seatbelts on MF and not on TTD that they are looking for this 1 inch seatbelt slack on?

I have a 36" waist- nowhere near out of the norm, really. There's no way I get 1" of slack in the belt. Ever.

I've been unsafe riding MF since 2000!? How DARE they let me ride for four seasons when I could have flown out of the seat at any moment!

I'm calling my lawyer.

[note: sarcasm, if you couldn't tell]

Ok, this may sound like a crazy idea but I am far from a normal person.

Maybe the people who are right on the borderline of fitting and need an extra inch or so and want to ride should get a girdle? Dont those take a few inches off your waistline? Of course, it might feel rough riding with one of those and I dont know how comfortable it would be wearing one all day, but they could carry it with them and then "change" into it before riding, right? I know they make them for both men and women.

Just trying to throw out a possible work around for people until Cedar Point comes to their senses about this "slack rule"

This link might add some understansing as to why theyare being ultra safety conscious.

www"]http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:DEgbnvgWnCYJ:www.state.ma.us/dps/Six_Flags_Superman.pdf+%22Location+where+victim+struck+the+%236+support+column%22&hl=en

I agree with the slack rule is pointless due to too much varience between the ride ops. I didn't ride MF tonight at the park, but each time I've rode this year I've gotten a different response from the op. One guy tugged hard on mine to produce slack, one guy asked me to pull mine in as far as I could, and a third guy simply looked at it and said "eh, good enough" when I didn't have any slack in the belt. The biggest point is that Millennium has not been unsafe the previous 4 years it has operated, so why change things now? CP's crews are some of the best trained in the industry, while at the same time Six Flags doesn't seem to have that same reputation. If someone was truely too large for the bar to fit properly, I highly doubt any CP ride op would allow them to ride. The one thing I did find interesting in the report was the difference in belt length from seat to seat. I would definately think every seat would need to be the same, unless they're going to do like B&M and design special "big boy" seats in a certain section of the train.

If I get turned away on monday, lets just say that they will be tired of me calling/emailing/mailing them. This new policy is crap, it doesn't make sense. If the Lap bar can be positioned correctly and the buckle locks, then it shouldn't matter how much slack.

Now i understand why the line seemed to take forever.

I also now know why on every train that i saw being loaded(MILLIE), at least one sometimes two people where being lead off the ride.

Ok, some of the people where pretty big, but others I could not believe where being turned away. As i see it, these same people where allowed on last year.

I agree with what someone earlier brought up, about refunds. If I went to CP last year and rode all the rides, then i go this year and can't ride them. Im pissed.

Like my wife said though while we where watching two people get kicked off Blue Streak for being too big, "that is all the reason in the world to lose wieght, if you can't ride rollercoasters", still from seeing it, i think it is going to far.

I just hope i don't gain a pound or two before my next trip to the point, or i may have just rode my last coaster ever.

I find this ongoing discussion most interesting. Just last Sunday, I raised some of these issues on another thread. But I was berated by the Point fan know-it-alls as ignorant at best (for insisting whether the seat belts had been changed in some way) or just plain fat for not fitting. Turns out that neither is the case.

Guess it wasn't my imagination after all since apparently, there are plenty of other people in the same boat. Or shall I say, not fitting in the reconfigured boat, so to speak.

Regardless, it's a heartbreaking situation for any season passholder who's been able to ride at will in past years and now faces a long season of deprivation, either from the best coasters or from food and good drink in an effort to squeeze into them. Hitting the coasters a couple times a week has been my favorite diversion over the past few summers. Now I'm SOL.

Would we even be having this discussion if some people in Massachusetts had done their jobs properly?

Oh well, back to the ab workout. *** Edited 5/15/2004 10:35:43 AM UTC by meanspirit(not really)***

I'm totally devastated over this. I look foreword to going to cp every year and now I don't think that I should bother. I just about made it on MF last year and if they re configured the belts I know that I wont fit. All I know is that cp is going to loose alot of money from all of this.

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meanspirit(not really) said:
Guess it wasn't my imagination after all

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Let's be clear. You didn't say that ride ops gave you a hard time about 1" of slack. You said that the seatbelts were shorter. There's a huge difference. The belts are not shorter, there is just a new policy regarding the amount of slack. Had you said there was a new policy instead of insisting that the lengths of belts had been intentionally shortened, you would not have been challenged.

You also said (apparently with a straight face) that we were part of an amusement park conspiracy against overweight people.

If you feel vindicated, that's great. We're still dealing with a policy change and there is still no conspiracy.