Opening Day update for everyone!

I didn't hear the MF station music all day.

That made me really sad =[

Now are we talking about all auto-spiels, or just the ones that have been recently added? Do MF, WT, and TTD still have their music and recorded spiel?

Don't you love the detail they give. Five people have said the speils are gone and then said they're not. Were you guys even there?

(I'm coping my post from a different thread, but I think it belongs here more.)

Well, I guess they didn't do quite enough testing. As I was a part of the Skyhawk first ride, I was at the par at 7:30am and ended up closing the park and leaving around 10:30.

During my day at the park directly experienced downtime of the following rides:

Skyhawk, Millennium Force, maXair, Top Thrill Dragster.

Skyhawk and MF were minimal, but maXair was down nearly all day. It seemed to be having trouble stopping the ride cycle. We got in line for Top Thrill Dragster at 7:20pm. The sign read 1.5 Hours which based on the lenght of the line seemed about right. However, the ride went down for technical reasons at least a half a dozen times. We finally got on the ride at about 10:20. That is the longes I've waited for TTD since opening day 2003.

We also indirectly witnessed downtime on the following rides:

Mantis, Iron Dragon

Mantis seemed to be down on and off all day while we only saw ID stuck on the second lift hill for a few minutes.

So whats the official word on the spiels? Someone said ID and Corkscrew still have the automatic one, but what about MF, WT, and TTD, as well as MaXair and such?

Josh M. said:
Now are we talking about all auto-spiels, or just the ones that have been recently added? Do MF, WT, and TTD still have their music and recorded spiel?

Dragster, Millennium, Magnum, Gemini, and Meanstreak were the only coasters that I got on, and none of them had recordings, apparently i was wrong to say that ALL of them lost their recordings, but i figured if 5 of them did the rest would've followed.

There was no "baby im ready to go!" in dragsters station, and no cool techno song in millenniums station.

*Edit* I forgot to put that while I was in the station for Dragster, they actually went down for 10-15 minutes due to "the microphone not working" :/

Skyhawk does not have a recording, the ride-ops say it.

Hope that clears it up more. *** Edited 5/7/2006 1:30:01 PM UTC by Gerg***

Well, if only 2 rides (that have been mentioned) have it, maybe it'll be phased out. ID and Corkscrew were probably low priority if they are completely removing it.

Iron Dragon got a new automatic spiel, and it's the worst thing ever. It has two people on it now instead of one and it's very kid-ish. I hate it. I don't think I heard an announcement when we were on Millenium, but I could be wrong.

Yesterday was one of the worst, if not the worst Opening Day I've seen for the park; mostly in terms of park operations. Stuff was down left and right all day long.

Were any of the downtimes due to the temperature? I know once I went early in the season and they had those giant heaters under MFs station brakes because it was too cold for them to grip the fins (about 48-52º that morning). Don't know about brakes on other rides, but if it's a friction thing...

Boo-hoo, can't get to CP yet. Must win lottery...

Jason Hammond said:
We got in line for Top Thrill Dragster at 7:20pm. The sign read 1.5 Hours which based on the lenght of the line seemed about right. However, the ride went down for technical reasons at least a half a dozen times. We finally got on the ride at about 10:20. That is the longes I've waited for TTD since opening day 2003.

Sounds like business as usual, Dragster style! ;)

What they were doing with the spiel in Wicked Twister's station was a little bit different. It was a live spiel instead of the recording, but they still had the Crystal Method music playing over the speakers while loading (however, it was not quite loud enough to hear it well). While I like that they now have live spiels on most rides, I hope they bring back the recordings for MF, WT, and TTD. Those stations just don't seem quite right without the music.
*** Edited 5/7/2006 3:29:38 PM UTC by Coasterfan***

I'll admit the music was cool, but live spiels add more personality to the atmosphere of the ride.

peacetrain said:
Were any of the downtimes due to the temperature? I know once I went early in the season and they had those giant heaters under MFs station brakes because it was too cold for them to grip the fins (about 48-52º that morning). Don't know about brakes on other rides, but if it's a friction thing...

Thunder Canyon and Snake River Falls opened a little bit later than their normal 11am opening, but that was it.

Gomez said:
I'm keeping track of TTD's days without a full day of no operation in my signature.

As am I. But it's a log.
All in all I'd say Dragster ran great yesturday. A little downtime here and there but nothing to start bashing it over. Trains were switched during the day and that took up most of the time. It appeared that every time I'd not see it run for like 5 minutes, it would all of a sudden launch and make it over the hill. I think the weather might account for something.....but maybe not. It was a cold day after all.

I really think it's off to a great start.

Although I do like the idea of live spieling on Magnum, and other coasters, the idea of losing the MF music makes me kind of sad. But oh well, I was also sad when the intelligent lighting in the station went away also.

Meh, Dragster did ok for its first day. It had been down for mechanical reasons a few times of the day, but we did get a ride in. We got in the line around 9:00, and it wasn't much of a wait, maybe 45 mins tops. It broke down while we were waiting in line, and it was down for a bit, but more and more people left until pretty much the line was only full to the ramp. They switched to manual a lot of times and reset a lot of the blocks it seemed quite a bit.

They would launch a few trains, go down for a moment, launch a few more, more downtime. But all and all I think there was only one roll back in the evening hours. Our train launched just fine, but we were stuck out on the block right before unload for about 15 mins before they moved us and we could get off.

It was overall a good day for Dragster, but it could have done better.

Plus there is no way in hell that I am waiting in line yet again for a season pass. Last year we got there about an hour before the park opened, and the lines were minimal. This year, we waited 2 and a half hours just to get our picture taken and get our passes. I am renewing my pass for next year by mail.

Here is what i got.

The Ride op at MF said that most rides will be returnung to the live spiel. The reason there was no Electronic Music in the MF station is because the auto spiel and the music we recorded together and they did not have time to re-record the music by itself but it will be back.

As for Ten Ton Disaster The majority of the down time was due to a set of proxys that kept "frying" in between Unload 1 & 2. TTD120mph I would have to say that TTD ran for $#!^. It was down for a couple 1 - 2 hour spans. I waited in line at park close for 2 hours and i was at the bottom of the ramp when i walked into line after they reopened it after a previous lengthy down time. But all in all i did get to ride on the 1st to last train of the night ( the last train was two teenagers and some employees). What was funny was the fact that the ride op in the control both had to restart everything about every 5 - 10 launches, twice he accidently launched the train on the launch pad without warning them. All of the sudden Whoooosh, there goes the train and you could see his eyes get as big as watermelons in the control room, and utter some expletives, it was great.

Bad sensors are fine, as long as those cables stay tight and there are no loud bangs or oil sqirting from the hydraulic building. :)

Oh yeah, it sounds like TTD had a great opening day. I think it's a bit too early for an I told you so, but this has the makings of another high quality season for a very *high quality* ride.

Do I sense *sarcasm*?? Nah... of course not.