Small trains, Slow line?

Feeling a little dyslexic today John?

Michael Darling,

You're a dork. :-)

If there ever was a ride that you should ride when you first get to the park, it'll be Maverick. If past years are any indicator, Frontier Town will be pretty dead the first couple of hours of the day. Granted, Maverick is going to be changing that somewhat, as Skyhawk has this year. Still, the majority of people who are not enthusiasts, or just people who always go on the newest ride first, will take the park as it comes to them, and wander into Frontier Town later in the day. As with the water rides there in the middle of the summer though, watch out in the late morning and early afternoon! The rides for Maverick will be killer at that point, capacity be darned! I also expect to see a spike in people parking in the Magnum lot this year as well.... ;)

Does anyone think that if they had a chain lift, the capacity would go up? Or would it go down?

WT pulls around 1000pph and I always thought the line moves at a good rate. Maverick's line will just move slow, but it will always move. Unlike rides like maXair where it moves a lot then stops for two minutes.

When Mean Streak opened, people ran to that too, right? WT's line moves WAY faster than I ever expected it to.

Gomez, I agree. I've always thought WT's line moves quite quickly. Having said that, capacity is really just an estimate, as it will vary day to day. It depends so much on the efficiency of the ops, problems that arise with the riders, etc. Deja Vu supposedly gets 1100 people per hour on the ride. I waited 2 hours (only one 5 min breakdown) and there were maybe 400-500 people in line.

I have a feeling the line for this coaster will be quite long. I'm sure it will be extremely popular among families, and the capacity isn't all that great. It really all depends on the popularity though. So yes, I am a little concerned with how the lines will be for Maverick.
*** Edited 9/8/2006 8:07:15 PM UTC by Top Thrill 182***

If your that worried... get to the park EARLY! Make Maverick the first ride of the day. When I go to CP, Millennium Force is my first stop and its usually a 20min wait and the line barly fills the first switchback after the ramp. If you walk through frontier town before 10:30, there is absolutly nobody walking back there (even after my wait for Millie)... Skyhawk is a walk on till 11am. I know because I have ridden it 3 times straight in a row on 3 different days. 2 in August and 1 in June

1200 per hour...not too worried about a long wait.
Sounds like capacity is not an issue. Looks like 3 different blocks. This would mean 2 in load plus 2 in unload then 2 trains on the track separated by blocks. Doesn't sound like 1200 per hour is unrealistic. This will be a capacity monster.

Hopefully the old back of the park to the front of the park trick will work out. ;)

You know what always works out????

Joe Cool. Ahh yes.

I think operationally, hitting over 1000 per hour on this will be a breeze.

36 seconds per train sounds really quick, but I'm thinking they will be loading/unloading 2 at a time and thus that really gives them about 72 seconds for two trains (24 restraints). Figure it's going to take a good ten to twenty seconds for one set of trains to leave and the next two to enter the station, but that still leaves 50-60 seconds to unload/load 24 people. They will most likely have one person working on each side of each train so that is only six restraints for a person to check in say 20-30 seconds and that is a breeze. The restraint design should also be pretty much a breeze to check compared to the lapbar/seatbelt combo on Dragster or MF. Ops should be able to move quickly here like they do on a ride like Raptor (well, not this year since their crew blows) or Wicked Twister.

The question is whether the launch system will be up for sending a train every 36 seconds all day/season long. We know that on Dragster, the final result didn't quite match up with the theoretical design. Hopefully this ride will be better in that regard.

I have a question, for the train underneath the station that's going into the second launch, if there is any kind of problem with loading, ride problem or something like that, is there going to be a set of brakes there. You know just in case.

I believe the video already shows breaks going into the launch.

I don't think 2nd story track will be as open as the video is showing. I'm guessing they will have pans and screens to catch whatever hydrolic fluid might be released, and avoid passengers bellow being injured by falling change.

The cool part, with a lot of trains on the track at any one time, it will give the illusion of a lot of riders. I hate it when one train is running and you sit and watch it each time around. Nothing seems to go slower.

Yea WT's crew gets the train in and out really quickly, unlike the crew on Vertical Velocity at SFGA , I have seen them take 3 minutes to get 1 train out.

If CP unloads/loads 2 trains at once the 36 second point could be close. But if they operate the station like MF then capacity will suffer. Its not a question of 2 trains in the station, but rather what each train will be doing. *** Edited 9/11/2006 12:17:20 AM UTC by SFGA=toilet***

They need to make sure that they can open specific seats. Not the whole train.

They will have way less launch system problems with this compared to Dragster,a lot less moving parts and just overall a much more proven,less fragile system to work with.Yes,there may be some glitches at first,but a lot less than with a hydraulic system.

The only problems they're going to have with the Launch systems is the electric bill.

Having worked in rides for 2 seasons I have learned that it all comes down to the loose article policy. In 2005 when we had the "absolutely no loose articles whatsoever" policy on Raptor we killed on the numbers because we didn't have to wait for people to get rid of all their crap (and oh man is there a lot of crap that people bring on rides). Even then we still had to work hard to hit interval because of all those dang flip flops. Once loose articles came back on the platform all hell broke loose and it was extremely difficult to hit interval unless you worked at light speed: it's hard to speed up guests when there is mayhem at the yellow bins every train.

Due to the inherent crapiness of Intamin capacity the loose article policies are absolutely necessary (in addition to the obvious load/inload stations) on MF and Dragster to keep the capacity reasonable. The biggest problem on those two rides are people who can't fit which is always a slight delay.

If Maverick has no loose articles I think the capacity will be reasonable. With the OTSRs I'm thinking that overweight guests will not be too much of an issue also. I still don't think this ride will even touch Magnum or Raptor capacity wise and there will certainly be downtime with a new ride; however, I see Maverick having better capacity than Dragster but right under Millennium. I'm excited to see the station design and if they will have a crowd position or not, that seems to really affect the flow of the line.

-Craig

It probably depends on how many people are in line. I think it will go pretty fast like the rest of the lines at the point do.