New Seats

Yeah. I had trouble with MF and TTD last year and I had no problem on Xcelerator. They didn't have any issues with how much slack I had. When I pulled back the lap bar and they saw green I was good to go.

It's a good, simple tool in my opinion. At the very least if CP was to do anything they could increase the length of the belts and just implement new lap bars with this device attached. I'm sure it wouldn't cost nearly as much as having to retrofit new seats.
*** Edited 3/7/2005 10:52:27 PM UTC by CPMatt***
*** Edited 3/7/2005 10:54:35 PM UTC by CPMatt***

Jeff said:
You heard wrong. The real indicator is a tilt/level device on the lap bar. If it shows red, you can't go.

Is this so that the lap bar is more secure against your legs?

Jeff said:
The real indicator is a tilt/level device on the lap bar. If it shows red, you can't go.

You're talking about the indicator on the test seat at the enterance right?
Dosn't MF have one?

No, and no.

The indicator is in the little silver cylinder welded onto the lapbar right at the bend in this picture.

Notice in that picture that the belt buckle goes underneath the side bar and not around it on the outside like the one on MF. It's like they thought of every way to make the belt as short and impossible to buckle as they could.

In this case the person must be year round skinny...lol.

Just an Xcelerator questions. Are those big black arches on the sides of the seats part of the modifications they made after the government of California forced them on the Intamin rides in Cali?

^Yes.

Before modifications
*** Edited 3/15/2005 3:00:38 AM UTC by Gomez***

Also keep in mind the biggest difference between Xcellerator and MF is that Xcellerator has the bent up-bar on the lap bars. This keeps the T part in your lap, not in your gut, and keeps the up-bar from crushing the boys.... The black arches are part of the mods, to provide more lateral support, and the level indicators are a much better way to guage whether someone can ride or not as opposed to "eyeballing" an inch of slack. I dunno if they would work though with MF's straight up-bars...

Is the bent T-bar unique only to Intamin's rocket coasters or is it becoming standard design? If it's not design specific I think it's time they just swap out the lap bars on MF. They're getting a tad old anyway.
*** Edited 3/16/2005 2:04:51 AM UTC by CPMatt***

Yes, they are.

No, they are not....all the newer hypers have them too...

Perhaps there is hope...

Looking at the winter time photos, did anyone else notice that while the Dragster trains kept their lap bar ends, the bar ends (the pad, not the upright part of the bar) were removed from the Millennium Force trains?

This probably means nothing. But we can speculate all night.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Who might ride Millennium Force more if it had the redesigned lap bars...

The lapbars heads were replaced or remolded for last year. If you were observant as I was last summer, you would have noticed they didn't have the wear and tear as well as the mold. Nice new lapbars. Some seats I've sat in, I've noticed that the side of the lapbar rubs against the J bar on the seat. This tore some of the lapbars since then. Apparently the bars have shifted from being replaced each winter. I don't know why they wouldn't simply shim them back into place.

Heck, I remember the head on the lapbar for the test seat used to be black. Now it's yellow. I was talking to a friend a year or two ago, he said that he rode MF and suddenly noticed his lapbar was black. I wonder what happened there...

One other thing I noticed is it appears that some of the seats were replaced last summer. If you look at the winter photos, some of the seats have war marks where the bar loops behind the seat and some don't.

When I ride MF and TTD back to back, I notice a difference. I feel like the seat is slighly lower on TTD and the lapbar length seems to be shorter too. Overall I feel more secure with TTD's setup than I do on MF. This is mostly because of the seat and lapbar fit and partly due to my head is tilted forward slightly. Overall I feel safer on TTD than MF.

When I ride both rides I strap myself in as much as possibly. Many do that anyway. But TTD's lapbar shapes around your legs that don't let you move your mid section move much. The seats also are shaped to make you feel more comfortable sitting straight up. MF has a similar setup but doesn't do it as well. Basically what has been said in other post, the seats are the same but TTD is improved a little.

The seats on Top Thrill Dragster seem taller as well. Dragsters seats are actually as well deeper than Millennium Force which allows you to strap yourself better.
*** Edited 3/22/2005 7:16:41 AM UTC by Shawn Meyer***

I think their taller due to the headrests.