Retractable Seat Belts

Innocent question here, do these rides have some sort of device on them that detect when a seatbelt has been unbuckled and that's why the trains stop?

No - the op in controls watches the train most of the way up the hill. You'd be surprised how far up you can see, and you can usually tell when people are doing something they shouldn't be.

Touchdown said:
You would most defiantly be thrown from the car. Claiming otherwise is stupid, especially when two people have been killed when their restraints failed on Intamin hypers.

That's not stupid at all, and you're assuming too much. The hills over the lagoon in particular are parabolic curves that some would consider over-engineered. You float, but would not be ejected. You would not be ejected on the drop either since gravity pulls all things to the ground at the same rate. Word has it that the on-site Intamin engineer opening year was riding it sans any restraint.

One way to find out, put a crash test dummy in the car without restraint and see what happens.

Or you could just take my word for it. I'm not suggesting you could ride it restraint free with your arms folded, but it sure wouldn't eject you.

A test dummy wouldn't do you any good, because a human can brace themselves with their arms and legs inside the car. It wouldn't be the most comfortable experience, but you most certainly would not fall out at any point.

And Jeff is right about the "airtime" hills heading to and from the island. Sure, if you sit in the middle of the train you get a little floatage, but it's not major ejector air like, say, the bunny hills on Maverick. Here's a good project. Look at side-profile pictures of the hills on MF, and then look at side-profile pictures of the hills on Apollo's Chariot (20-plus seconds of airtime), and you'll understand why it gets more than MF. MF's hills are gradual arcs, whereas AC's hills spike at the top, creating much more intense upward momentum, and lots of airtime.

Touchdown said:
I dont know what you all are talking about. MF has some serious airtime on the drop, the two island hills over the river and the speed bump by the station. You would most defiantly be thrown from the car. Claiming otherwise is stupid, especially when two people have been killed when their restraints failed on Intamin hypers.

Your body never leaves the seat. Like Jeff said, your body is going to be falling at the same speed as the train so you won't fall down. I've held coins in my hand on Demon Drop and you can watch it float above your hand for a second or two and then catch it again. It doesn't go flying off into nowhere.

So why do they have upstop wheels at all on MF? I mean if the car never experiences any zero g, why do you need the wheels on the bottom of the track?

Not to mention, why can you see wear lines on the top of most of those hills from when those wheels carry a bulk of the car's weight?

If there were no upstop wheels, the car would more than likely fall off the track when you are in the overbanked curves.

No it wouldn't. The overbanks hold the train in, it keeps the force of the train moving through the drive wheels. The track "overbanks" so that it continues to "push" the train in the direction it needs to go.

On the airtime hills however, the track curves back downward while the trains momentum tries to keep going up, which is why the up-stop wheels are needed. The track has to "pull" the train in the direction it needs to go.

Generally, at the bottom of a hill, the track is "pushing" the train back to a horizontal plane. At the crest of a hill, the track is "pulling" the train downwards. If the track has to pull the train, the train, via restraints, has to pull you.

I don't doubt there was an Intamin engineer riding without restraints, but I'm pretty sure he was holding onto something when he needed to. He wasn't just going hands up the whole way.

No, that's not true either. However, if a wheel jammed or for whatever reason the train stopped moving, then yes, it'd slide right off in an overbank.

Wow! I was right on something and i never even took Algebra.

I wouldn't say right. You said "more than likely" however it would take a fairly unlikely set of circumstances in order for the train to fall off.

The other thing is that where you get airtime on the ride, that means that the ride's ballistic profile is running above the actual profile. If you were not secured to the train, in other words, you would float above it. The distance between the track profile and the ballistic profile is somewhat slight, but it's there. It's more extreme over on Magnum, where I have watched various objects left rolling around in the footwell bounce up and down a distance of around 8".

Now, if you're sitting unrestrained in a coaster seat and you rise up...say...three inches above the seat as a result of airtime, this isn't going to be a huge problem, even on a ride like Millennium Force. As long as you don't come up above the back and sides of the seat, when the downward force gets above 0G, you'll drop right back down into the seat.

For the coaster, the situation is a little more serious, and this is why the train has up-stops. For starters, if the train did not have up-stops, you would not experience any air-time, because the train would rise up 3" instead of you. Second, because the train is running on a 4" diameter piece of steel pipe, if the train came up about 3" it would be high enough for the guide wheels to clear both rails, allowing for the possibility of a complete train derailment. This would, of course, be a Very Bad Thing™. The tolerances between the train and the track are really a lot tighter than the tolerances between your butt and the ride seat.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Edit: Is that better, JL? :)

Good explanation Dave, thanks for the explanation.

(You forgot your (tm) on "Very Bad Thing".)

Have you people never done that thing where you swing a bucket of water over your head and the water stays in?

Yes, I have. And the water (train) stays in because the bottom of the bucket (track) is in the direction of the force of the water. i.e. the water is trying to continue going up, and the bucket bottom is there to stop it, thus keeping it in the bucket.

Now, hold that bucket right-side up, and throw it in an arc. You'll see that there is nothing to hold the water in when the bucket bends back down. That's where a lid (upstop wheels) would help. As the bucket begins to curve back downward, the lid forces the water to follow it, the same way upstop wheels do for a coaster train.

That would be really impressive if you could throw a bucket perfectly upright and perfectly in an arc. I'm going to go try, I'll keep you guys updated!

I'm surprised Gemini and Magnum didn't get retractable belts.

I bet they do next year.