Top Thrill 2 Announced
My guess is the ride computer will be constantly adjusting. The first two launches where precision is less important will provide feedback so that the right amount of force is applied to the third launch so that it makes it over the top not too fast but also not rolling back. So my guess is rollbacks when it's supposed to go over the top will be very few. While everyone will get a rollback, almost no one will get an unexpected rollback.
Not sure if this was mentioned anywhere but did Cedar Point release the cost expenditure on this project? It’s gotta be well over 25 million 🤷♂️
SRE123:
Not sure if this was mentioned anywhere but did Cedar Point release the cost expenditure on this project? It’s gotta be well over 25 million 🤷♂️
Honestly, Im kind of surprised this project has a large price tag. Im not arguing it wont, because everyone believes it will, but its surprising. To me, if you look at a project like.. say Orion at Kings Island.
Its a massive 5300 ft long 300ft tall coaster. Massive construction, massive footprint, everything from scratch, and it was 30 million.
Here we have a coaster that is a bit over half the length, that is already 81% built. All thats being done is adding a single spike, LSMs and a bew station and que.
To me, I would love to see a cost comparison of how much it would have been to build completely from scratch with no existing track or infrastructure, vs. how much it is costing them to do these additions
Don't sell the cost of re-painting the entire thing short either. Gotta imagine that alone is a 7 figure expenditure.
Steel ain't cheap, especially in recent years, and the existing structure is comprised of an awful lot of steel. If it made economic sense to ship existing track to Europe and back for modification rather than fabricating new pieces, that should give an idea as to what kind of cost savings they're enjoying by repurposing the ride rather than building new.
Brandon
Steel aint cheap, but what about Iron that is much more cost effective when it comes to strength per weight. If they had to build Steel Vengeance today in Joe Biden's America it would be Iron Vengeance instead, or nothing at all ;)
Sit tight fellas ;)
Based on the prevailing internet opinions of Zamperla , I wouldn't be surprised if they gave it to CP as a gift just to get their foot in the door.
/s
I'm sure this wasn't cheap at all..... it's foundations, with 420 foot tall spike with a massive support structure behind it, en entire lsm and control system, redoing the station, adding to track parts, new queue, paint, three new trains.....
I'm not saying it's Orion expensive ($30M) -- I don't think it would be close to that but $15M easy (just wild guess), even with a likely significant Zamperla discount
And it will be a solid ROI. smart to use a preexisting structure that may even be cost prohibitive today
Plague on Wheels:
it would be Iron Vengeance
Then we could have called it IVe (ivy). I like the sound of that better than SteVe.
El toro Ryan did a decent job of estimating the likely theoretical capacity of this ride being around 1,000 riders per hour. Similar to my guess in the nosebleed post above:
Downtime aside, were they actually able to launch trains every ~60s with consistently? I was under the impression that it took longer to reset the launch mechanism, but as usual I could be wrong.
Brandon
Not positive on consistency but this one was almost exactly a minute between launches.
djDaemon:
Downtime aside, were they actually able to launch trains every ~60s with consistently? I was under the impression that it took longer to reset the launch mechanism, but as usual I could be wrong.
I can't tell you I was a CP regular (likely once a year), but in my experience there it was rare to get a 60 second interval consistently.....
BleauxJays:
Not positive on consistency but this one was almost exactly a minute between launches.
It's true you could get 1 minute between two trains already lined up at the launch. The issue is there would be a significant break after the second launched to get the next two lined up to launch. It wouldn't typically (in my experience) be just another minute to get the next train to roll out to launch from the station and launch. (In other words, that minute dispatch sequence you see in the video would require a constant line up of trains right there in the prelaunch position ready to roll into launch position...)
About the cost, if they paid $15 mil for this coaster that would've cost $35 mil to build from scratch (hypothetical illustrative numbers), then it made all the sense in the world to do what they did. Which was my point way back when when folks were citing ROI to poo-poo the idea.
veritas55:
It's true you could get 1 minute between two trains already lined up at the launch. The issue is there would be a significant break after the second launched to get the next two lined up to launch.
I mean we were ready to send the next two trains once the second train launched all the time when I worked there in 2009. In addition, we actively paired up single riders as they were coming through the gates. But I didn’t see operations like that for the last decade of Dragster’s existence.
CP Alum ‘06-‘10
Although there has been a lot of teeth gnashing over whether Zamperla is up to such a big job, I actually don't have major concerns about the actually engineering of the track/ ride systems etc. The LSM technology is pretty advanced and established and the actual launch speeds and time frames are completely in the wheelhouse of this technology. The only tricky thing ( I imagine) is the need to have a fairly sophisticated sensor system to maintain the correct train speed through these passes at 100mph or more -- that's unusual, but I imagine Zamperla have farmed all that out in any event.
The track engineeering component is super easy and would be hard to mess up: it's all straight line track. They haven't even been required to CAD a single complicated curve on it (other than the standard pull out to the spike). So I'd be hard pressed how you could mess that up with even basic engineering. The support structure is also fairly standard.
To me, I'm surprised the "concerns" (of those with concerns) hasn't been the train itself, which, to me, is the greatest unknown. How will it ride and perform? The upside to the train (one-piece, no weld aluminum that is significantly lighter) could also potentially be a risk of serious rattle at these enormous speeds. I also wonder if the higher center of gravity will affect the ride experience on downside tophat spiral. I'm sure they have modeled this to death and that part will be fine. What's harder to model is the train/ ride experience on the ride at 120 mph with a lighter train of this build -- you can't actually pilot this train on track at those speeds.
To be clear, I think the trains will be awesome. My only point is I'm slightly surprised the potential concerns haven't focused on that aspect more than on the ride engineering itself.
CPVet:
veritas55:
It's true you could get 1 minute between two trains already lined up at the launch. The issue is there would be a significant break after the second launched to get the next two lined up to launch.
I mean we were ready to send the next two trains once the second train launched all the time when I worked there in 2009. In addition, we actively paired up single riders as they were coming through the gates. But I didn’t see operations like that for the last decade of Dragster’s existence.
In those 2009 days, were you able to dispatch the train station and get it launched within 60 seconds after the prior train launched? That's impressive!
Closed topic.