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Who is boot licking here? All I see are people pushing back on this narrative that Intamin is somehow this bloodthirsty company that will happily kill you and your children even if you don't step foot in an amusement park.

Jeff:

veritas55:

Well, how about

None of those started reliably, many have had accidents. And it wouldn't matter if they were perfect. Shoot The Rapids nearly drowned people, and it's gone. Wicked Twister is gone and had to be modified. Maverick and Intimidator had to be modified. Dragster has always been a disaster. Millennium Force couldn't run three trains to start and shredded wheels for the first year. Injuries on Xcelerator and Dragster. Death on Perilous Plunge. That's just Cedar Fair.

Also, Sandor is a dick.

Really? None started reliably? How was Hyperion "unreliable, for example?" That's a lazy, ridiculous statement. And I think you know it: and therefore switch to the "and it wouldn't matter if they were perfect" because [insert parade of horribles]. But that doesn't rebut your incorrect statement of Velocicoaster being the only reliable coaster Intamin has ever built ....

It wasn't -- and it isn't.

veritas55:

No, there is some "denying" their rides are associated with disproportionate amount of death.

You can't be serious. That's a special kind of cognitive dissonance.

I don't think you understand what "cognitive dissonance" means (because you misapply it here).

In any event, you also don't appear to understand base rates or statistics -- or at least don't want to engage in a meaningful discussion on them. But the point remains: other than Shoot the Rapids, no one has pointed to a design or engineering flaw in Intamin's rides that has led to a serious injury of death. (But there is one more no one has mentioned: The Edge - first generation free fall at SFGam. That accident was an intamin design flaw.)

eChameleon:

Who is boot licking here? All I see are people pushing back on this narrative that Intamin is somehow this bloodthirsty company that will happily kill you and your children even if you don't step foot in an amusement park

Exactly. Lol.

And the morons at Universal, Disney and a wide range of well-established, well-run European and Asian theme parks keep hiring them, over and over. Obviously, they are unaware of Intamin violating the most fundamental ride safety designs, willfully (even gleefully) designing ride vehicles to eject people from rides, and otherwise being a company delivering nothing more than unreliable and patently dangerous products. Or..... are those park owners in on it too?

djDaemon:

veritas55:

First of all, which deaths have actually been ascribed to Intamin's design failures versus park operations?

How many B&M's have had fatalities in the same parks as the fatal Intamin rides? I mean, if the issue is park operations, as you suggest, it stands to reason that those same parks would have fatalities on non-Intamin rides, right?

Well, no.... it doesn't stand to reason. To compare the percentage/ base rate of fatalities you need to standardize the number of injuries per ride. Here, you aren't comparing anywhere near the same numbers of rides and therefore you can't get a statistically valid base rate. B&M only builds coasters. That is a limited, finite number of rides. Intamin not only builds coasters - it builds a ton of other rides, drop towers, rafts, flumes, coasters, etc. And yet you are making a simplistic comparison between the number of injuries of B&M coasters and the number of injuries on Intamin "rides."

You don't think when you total up the number of Intamin coasters, towers, flume rides, raft rides that they are a significant greater number than B&M operating rides? Statistically speaking, you should expect more injuries on Intamin rides than B&M coasters. You have to normalize the data to know if they are indeed significantly disproportional (and they may well be - but simply tallying number of injuries without consideration of the number of rides is not a sensible way to do that).

A less coarse (but still not exactly correct methodology) is to limit injuries to Intamin coasters alone vs. B&M. I know of two Intamin deaths on coasters (the two Supermans: a double amputee who should have never been riding, and a disabled child that also had bad body proportions). Are there others in the US? I'm very hard pressed to say that reflects a significant disparity in "safety" given the nature of those accidents, but I guess you could say that Intamin restraints and train design are comparatively less safe that B&M, because (to my knowledge) no one rider has been ejected from a B&M coaster (but many more people have been killed getting hit by the feet of passengers on inverted coasters, so I could say B&M is a terrible designer for guest or park workers who wander under their inverted coasters).

But to be fair, you would need to add up the total number of coasters, divide by deaths/injuries (whatever your criteria) and then establish the respective rates.

As I said earlier (and which Jeff disregarded), statistically speaking, RMC is a much more dangerous manufacturer than Intamin. Their one fatality (New Texas Giant) is a huge percentage of their rides vs. the two Intamin coaster fatalities.

This isn't my "opinion": this is math.

veritas55:

In any event, you also don't appear to understand base rates or statistics -- or at least don't want to engage in a meaningful discussion on them.

Ha! You keep bringing up anecdotes about how ride X was perfect so my allegation of a trend is totally illegitimate. Several people have done the math for you. Intamin, relative to B&M, Vekoma, Mack, and probably Arrow Dynamics, have a significant better track record in deaths and injuries.

And that doesn't even matter if we're here to debate whether or not Cedar Fair is interested in doing business with them. The record is pretty clear on that one.

Jeff:

veritas55:

In any event, you also don't appear to understand base rates or statistics -- or at least don't want to engage in a meaningful discussion on them.

Ha! You keep bringing up anecdotes about how ride X was perfect so my allegation of a trend is totally illegitimate.

Um.... anecdotes? I listed like over 20 rides and mentioned they have built more than 25 in the past five years, and, other than Hagrids, couldn't think of one that was regularly unreliable. I invited you to tell me which of them you knew to be different, to which you summarily said "all of them...." With zero data. Which, of course, is demonstrably wrong.

To be clear, I did not -- and am not -- saying your allegation of a trend of unreliability is "totally illegitimate." Heck, I don't even dispute Intamin coasters are, as a general course, less reliable than B&M, Mack, and Vekoma.

My point is just how extreme your position is -- and it's inconsistent with the data. To say "Velocicoaster is the only Intamin coaster I can think of that hasn't had reliability problems" is extreme

Several people have done the math for you. Intamin, relative to B&M, Vekoma, Mack, and probably Arrow Dynamics, have a significant better track record in deaths and injuries.

Then I wish someone would share that math. I don't doubt Intamin's record is less good than, say, B&M (because I am not aware of any B&M death), but the reasonable debate is it significantly worse than others? You have to consider base rates to make that conclusion. That's really my only point.

And that doesn't even matter if we're here to debate whether or not Cedar Fair is interested in doing business with them. The record is pretty clear on that one.

Agreed.

Although are you pretty sure CF isn't using them at all for the TTD re-do? (that's a legitimate question - I don't know)

Really? I have been following this conversation and it seems like Veritas is the only one that has "done the math" on this. What the heck are we even arguing?

"Intimin has had a horrible track record on injuries and being awful to work with"

"Dang I didn't know that, share examples"

"Well 20 years ago..."

XS NightClub:

When we’ve visited Dispatch times for every Busch gardens Tampa ride is abysmal.

Yeah, I've witnessed that every time there too. And unfortunately it's not limited to BGT. I see the same, if not worse, ops at BGW as well.

If I might bring this back to Cedar Point for a moment...

Did anyone else notice the *massive* maintenance project they did on the lagoon? I'm not sure I am entirely sold on it, but it looks good, and it gives me more hope about the future of a current major attraction in that area.

And yes, I am talking about lagoon maintenance. Not "lagoon maintenance".

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

All this talk about reliability and such with Intamin. When Zamperla does not have any experience period with a ride of this magnitude. I mean we are talking a flagship coaster that when it reopens will still be one of the tallest in the world. And there is people who think a company who has never broke 200’ will get plugged to do this project? I don’t think there is anyone in the world outside of Intamin ( or B&M) has the expertise to pull this off.

This project is going to need a switch track. The only company I know of making really fast switch tracks is Intimin. It COULD be Zamperla, but I am currently doubtful.

Could it be a collaborative project between the two?

e x i t english:

Intamin boot licking is exhausting and I can’t believe people still engage in it.

Right? If a vendor fails me, I stop buying stuff from them. I mean...

Shoot The Rapids nearly drowned people, and it's gone. Wicked Twister is gone and had to be modified. Maverick and Intimidator had to be modified. Dragster has always been a disaster. Millennium Force couldn't run three trains to start and shredded wheels for the first year. Injuries on Xcelerator and Dragster. Death on Perilous Plunge.

Cedar Fair B&M incidents and reliability problems:

...

Math.

If I buy a product from company X, and that product fails, that's not fun. But it's not the end of the world. What's really important is how company X communicates and works with me in correcting the issues with that product, especially with regards to future dealings with company X.

It's easy to point fingers at Dragster simply based on its history. It's almost as easy to point fingers at Maverick, as one of the signature elements (do I need to point it out?) was apparently designed not using the time's available technology (i.e., computers). It's also easy to look at Wicked Twister and the memories of overnight welding. Millennium's wheels predate my time on this site, so I know much less about the ride's history, but I've heard stories.

But what will always be unforgiveable to me is Shoot the Rapids. And I know what you're thinking..."it almost killed people!@#!@" ...and you would be correct in that's pretty ****ty, but it's not even that. Nope. Way before that.

I was one of the (un)lucky people who got picked to be in the commercial shoot for Shoot the Rapids. We had just moved to NE Ohio, and I felt like I won some kind of lottery getting picked to wake up at 4 in the morning to make the 105 minute drive (not that I'm counting) to the park to get a chance to ride this replacement for White Water Landing, which I adored as a kid and beyond. Equally excited because Intamin was involved, because...well...Intamin.

Long story short, after hours of waiting around it was finally our turn and I distinctly remember realizing...about two minutes into the ride....how utterly terrible this ride was. Without question I was riding the most boring, un-thrilling, turd of a water ride I had ever ridden, and here it was the new attraction at the park I love. Embarrassing. An honest thought that crossed my mind during that first 56-minute 1 mph ride was "If only Cedar Point could get rid of this". And then it nearly killed people and the park had its reason to eventually gut it.

But that brings me back to the beginning. If your new toy doesn't work, that's one thing. If your new toy doesn't work and your treat the person who bought it like ****, then you're Sandor.

If you are part of the Intamin team that had had anything to do with Shoot the Rapids there is nothing you can say that will ever allow me to forgive you for creating such a ridiculously terrible attraction. It is maybe even worse than late-stage Disaster Transport, which is about as gross as it gets.

The waterfalls looked nice, though. So if you were part of that team, you're OK in my book.

Is Sandor still with Intamin? If so, I wonder how many people with CF who worked directly with him are even still around. It’s been 13 years.

I have to wonder what happened to everything Karl Bacon knew about hydraulic flow as it pertains to flume rides. Because I don’t think any manufacturer is currently building flumes that manage flow nearly as well as Arrow’s rides did. Even the Kings Island flume, which was originally an Arrow flume, Hopkins somehow managed to screw it up.

With Shoot the Rapids II, I think I understand what they were trying to do. They minimized the amount of head needed to load the flumes by minimizing the amount of drop in each of the two flumes, I suspect hoping that the momentum of the boat coming down the drop would keep the boat moving instead of relying on the water flow. They cut the necessary pump volume, but it didn’t work. Never mind they had already proven with Pilgrims Plunge that momentum would not carry the boats through the course, and that the boat would produce a lackluster splash. They knew it wouldn’t work, and built Shoot The Rapids with that terrible design anyway. It’s almost like they forgot everything anybody ever learned about building flume rides.

—Dave Althoff, Jr.

Jeff:

Cedar Fair B&M incidents and reliability problems:

...

Math.

This is factually not math.

veritas55:

You don't think when you total up the number of Intamin coasters, towers, flume rides, raft rides that they are a significant greater number than B&M operating rides? Statistically speaking, you should expect more injuries on Intamin rides than B&M coasters. You have to normalize the data to know if they are indeed significantly disproportional (and they may well be - but simply tallying number of injuries without consideration of the number of rides is not a sensible way to do that).

A less coarse (but still not exactly correct methodology) is to limit injuries to Intamin coasters alone vs. B&M. I know of two Intamin deaths on coasters (the two Supermans: a double amputee who should have never been riding, and a disabled child that also had bad body proportions). Are there others in the US? I'm very hard pressed to say that reflects a significant disparity in "safety" given the nature of those accidents, but I guess you could say that Intamin restraints and train design are comparatively less safe that B&M, because (to my knowledge) no one rider has been ejected from a B&M coaster (but many more people have been killed getting hit by the feet of passengers on inverted coasters, so I could say B&M is a terrible designer for guest or park workers who wander under their inverted coasters).

But to be fair, you would need to add up the total number of coasters, divide by deaths/injuries (whatever your criteria) and then establish the respective rates.

This is Math. Veritas is correct. To see if Intimin has a higher representation in amusement parks fatalities and injuries you would have to look at all of the attractions built around the world (not just CP) and then compare whether it was user error, manufacturer error, etc.

Kevinj:

If I buy a product from company X, and that product fails, that's not fun. But it's not the end of the world. What's really important is how company X communicates and works with me in correcting the issues with that product, especially with regards to future dealings with company X.

Sure, but if X Company begins to produce WAY better products over a 20-period history then you reevaluate.

I don't care if company x starts producing a better product. It's irrelevant if company x personnel treat their customers poorly. That applies with any kind of product being sold.

eChameleon:

All I see are people pushing back on this narrative that Intamin is somehow this bloodthirsty company...

That's a strawman. Pro-Intamin folks in this thread have been suggesting Intamin is the only company that makes sense for this project because they're a "world class" company, a narrative that has been pushed back on by pointing out not only Intamin's myriad of technical shortcomings and the fatalities associated with their rides, but also Intamin's poor reputation as a company to work with.

I mentioned this before, but it apparently bears repeating - enthusiasts are not great at understanding the difference between a ride and a product. Intamin makes great rides, but less great products, and that's been especially true for Cedar Fair. And as Kevin points out, and this is true in the professional world everywhere I've been, more important than the technical shortcomings of a delivered product is how those shortcomings are addressed. And Intamin has a poor track record in that arena, especially with Cedar Fair. That, more than any perceived technical capabilities, should always be front and center when considering whether or not Intamin makes sense as a likely vendor for this "reimagining".

Does that mean there's no possibility that Intamin is involved in TTD2.0? Of course not. But if someone is suggesting that Intamin "must" be involved they should have a more grounded basis than that Intamin is "world class" or whatever.

“World class” is obviously a subjective thing, but I don’t know what world anyone is living in where Intamin is not a world class coaster manufacturer. Yes, they have had plenty of issues, ranging from unreliable coasters to deaths. No one is discounting that. Sandor has said things in public that maybe he shouldn’t, and may be a huge pain to work with. Sure.

When’s the last time an Intamin coaster wasn’t ranked as one of the best in the world? 1999 maybe?