Steel Vengeance

My favorite seat on Millennium Force is front row of the back car. For some reason, I find the airtime on the island hills to be the best in that seat.

^^In the Amusement Today polls, its quite rare for a ride to reach #1 in its first season. I find that it typically takes a year or two before it will make #1.

Because Millennium Force is AWESOME! Still my favorite ride at Cedar Point 18 years after its opening. Though I do thing Steel Vengeance has unseated Maverick for 2nd place!

I hope all the Magnum haters will see that Magnum, 29 years after opening, still ranks at number 14, two ahead of Dragster at number 16. Even if Golden Tickets are nothing more than a popularity contest, it is nice to see that Magnum is still a very popular and well thought of ride.

The GTAs aren’t even the biggest piece of evidence that Magnum is still a popular ride. The GTAs are subjective.

Ridership numbers can tell us more. While they don’t tell us everything thanks to capacity differences, if Magnum was truly widely hated it wouldn’t be top 5 ridership even with its good capacity.

Does anyone know how fast wind speeds can reach until they shut down SV? Suppose to be windy tonight.

It's dependent on wind speed, direction, and the manufacturer's recommendations.

Yes ^ so what is the max wind speed it can be run in?

Somewhere between calm and hurricane force.

It's actually depending on the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, and whether that swallow is an African, or a European swallow.

Well one day I went and there was no wind and it was running. Another time I went and there was no wind and it wasn't running. Then there was the time I went and it was really windy and it was running, but then later it wasn't.

Hope this helps!

I don't know if I've seen SV down for wind. A friend of mine says it was down for wind OSU day, although I wasn't there and to be honest I forgot about that. Was it down for weather that day, and if so how fast was the wind? That could give us a ballpark estimate of SV's wind limits.

For most chain-lift roller coasters, the wind range in which they can't operate is 25 mph or higher. Some coasters with hangtime elements or elements that could potentially valley the train will have a range of 15-20 mph or higher, but luckily SV is not one of those rides.

So, with 3 trains running, it appears that they are dispatching every 115 seconds which is about 750 passengers or 31 trains per hour. I wonder if they will ever come close to dispatching 19 more trains per hour to get the 1,200/hour.

The sad thing is, if FL is longer than the stairs, MAYBE 375 people/hr move through the regular line. That's about the same rate as when 1 train was getting 360/hour.

^Yeah, there’s a noticeable slowdown in standby line when the FL+ guests arrive. The last set of switchbacks, half the narrow set, and one or two in the the first set were filled when I got in line today halfway through EE.

We got through most of the switchbacks in 30-45 minutes. Then the rest of the line, which was 1-2 switchbacks plus the “tunnel”, which should be shorter in physical length, took 45-60min once FL+ started. It definitely slowed down. All the while, FL+ wasn’t exactly jam packed either, it was about to the base of the stairs from what I saw.

As for when more trains per hour will be dispatched, it’ll be when they get that MCBR functioning as a block. I doubt they’ll hit 1200 consistently (the stated capacity is sometimes very optimistic) but it’ll definitely be better than the current setup. The current setup ususally has the ride ops waiting for interval, so even working at the same pace they do now they’d see an improvement with the MCBR.

Other than the setbacks that SV had earlier on in the season, I’m curious to know what the downtime was like ever since they went from 1 train to 2 train operation in terms of new ride bugs being worked out. Same goes for 2 train to 3 train operation.

Other than the braking issues, have there been anything else extensive? Are they worried about the amount of swaying and track flexing throughout the course like noted midway through the season? Just curious.

It seems to be running pretty well since they've gone to three trains from my experience - at least reliability wise. They'd still be capable of dispatching about 20 seconds sooner if the MCBR was functioning.

I'm not sure how concerned they are about the swaying. I'd bet it's something they keep an eye on and there are probably some points that need frequent inspection. My last couple visits, I haven't seen RMC or CP maintenance personnel constantly at the ride like I had earlier in the season.

GigaG said:

^Yeah, there’s a noticeable slowdown in standby line when the FL+ guests arrive.

...

It definitely slowed down. All the while, FL+ wasn’t exactly jam packed either, it was about to the base of the stairs from what I saw.

That's probably because the FL line gets pretty long at the end of Early Entry, stretching back to SV's station in my experience. I would imagine they mix in more FL riders per cycle until that line dwindles a bit.

So, routine testing in the morning for Steel Vengeance isn't even allowed to start until it reaches at least 40 degrees out. Yesterday, they started testing at 11, so, I paid the $2 for my locker and got in line...after an hour of testing with at least 12 dummies in the 3 trains, they dropped down to 8 of them then started testing some more...I gave up at that point. Does anyone know how long testing usually takes and is there a different procedure if the temps are very cold? It seemed like they were running test dummies for over 2 hours, yesterday.

Probably it was not so much testing as it was warming up the ride. My guess is that the train has to make it to through the course under a certain time to be deemed ready to open.