Top Thrill Dragster 2022 Status

I understand your argument against the laugh react. Sometimes certain people can never be reasoned with, though. Perhaps I should just ignore their ignorance and stupidity. But also, people need to be called out from time to time. Maybe the laugh react isn't the best option. Sometimes all I want to do is laugh at them. They don't always deserve more. I mean, Glorymaker doesn't even understand why I would reference Jeff in the context of such a request. I mean, my dad? Really? I've heard ignorance is bliss, I guess.

Pulling out the napkin, it looks like the curve up to the current tophat is about a 200' radius. The distance from the canopy to the spike footers is around 140' -150'

Frog Hopper King:

Which is why I'm still hoping intimin is involved.

Because their switches are better than Vekoma's?

Expanding on the napkin math - I tried to line up Google Measure as much as possible. It looks like the tophat pull up starts roughly 2 track pieces after the hydraulic building or roughly 170 feet. The front spike footers are roughly 70-80ft feet from the front of the triangle footers. I included an extra dot to simulate it if it was the same pull up as the tophat which roughly comes to about half the station. I'm sure I'm off a bit - feel free to edit the idea (right click on google maps).

THose front spike footers are closer to the station that that though. The front anchor bolts are just a few feet behind the turnaround it looks like.

I used this for reference. I'm probably off by a few.

All of which seems to indicate a spike somewhere in the neighborhood of ~200 feet.

It's also worth considering that ID's proximity may have informed the location of the footers, which could mean that the vertical spike isn't right up against the northernmost foundation of the triangle, and instead could be offset some distance to the north, and the foundation nearer the station works in tandem to support the tower.

I mean, who knows, but that's at least if not more likely than the track going above the station.

Jeff:

Frog Hopper King:

Which is why I'm still hoping intimin is involved.

Because their switches are better than Vekoma's?

Sorry, I may have not made my position clear. I'm probably ignorant of the quick switch tracks on Vekoma. I know of Everest and I think you mentioned the one on Guardians for the duel loading station. I mainly am thinking of the really fast one after the stall on Hagrids.

As for this project, I'm wondering how difficult a quick track is to build and operate and if Zamperla has the personal/experience/expertise to deliver an effective quick switch track ala Hagrids. I know that in TTD 1.0 a min problem was the sensors on the break fins not corporating and causing downtime. My concern is if Zamperla can do it in theory, but in practice, it doesn't work. We know Intimin can do them and pretty effectively. Hopefully I clarified my position.

My eyes may be bad, and I might be wrong, but that new turnaround at the end of the station looks like if the track were to be installed there today, that it would run straight into the existing concrete foundation of the station, specifically where people stand before getting into the train. Does this mean the station itself would in fact be getting re-done? Or is it the camera angle throwing me off?

Yes, the turnaround indicates the station track will be infield of the previous & launch track, so the station will need to be reconfigured. But that station was pretty deep to begin with, so plenty of room for that.

Frog Hopper King:

As for this project, I'm wondering how difficult a quick track is to build and operate and if Zamperla has the personal/experience/expertise to deliver an effective quick switch track ala Hagrids.

I don't imagine much if any switch track hardware Intamin used was proprietary, so if Intamin can make a switch track work, so too can Zamperla.

Track switches are not some kind of exotic technology that's impossible to replicate without the help of someone who designed one before. And this one doesn't even have to move particularly fast.

If the intention of backing up the train is just to get it to a place where it has enough energy, with the forward launch, to reach the required speed, you don't necessarily need a reverse incline at all. The original hydraulic launch required about 550 feet. I think the math we did back in the day suggested that the system on Red Force used 500 feet of track to launch to 367 feet. We extrapolated to get to 420 you'd need low 600 feet of track to go up 420. If Iron Dragon wasn't there, and you could just build out the straight track, you would have about 800 feet of launch track, well over the low 600 guess. So all I'm saying is that the track could conceivably only rise high enough to go over Iron Dragon. And sure, we can see an impressive set of footers, but if they have to handle the entire weight of track and train over Iron Dragon, spread that far apart, those supports would be large regardless of height.

Just throwing that out there. It's a little early to conclude any height in the back. I also wouldn't expect two forward launches, because that becomes over 2,000 feet of track to cover before you can get the next (short) train on the circuit.

So you're thinking it will launch in reverse to start, and then forward, and then over the top-hat? I hadn't thought of it like that. In my mind I've been thinking two forward launches but from a capacity standpoint the former definitely makes sense.

So you are hypothesizing that the train will s Cruve into the launch, stop, Launch backward, and then launch forward. So there really would only be two true launches, one backward to get more ground and then the final launch to get over the top hat.

That very well could be the sequence that TTD 2.0 does.

I guess from what I know of switch tracks, they are somewhat complicated because you need the safety redundancies and you need a lot of different parts to talk to each other quickly and effectively. I always assumed that that was really complex. I also am not a roller coaster designer or imagineer... or am I...

I feel like starting with a backward launch has been the most obvious outcome all along, both because as Jeff points out there's no need for anything more, and because anything more would be a waste of potential capacity.

So it makes sense that the train would leave the station, travel the switch track to launch position, wait for the switch track to return, launch backward, then forward and over the top hat. As soon as it clears the top hat the switch track can move into position to allow the next train to move to launch. Rinse and repeat.

Looking at the square footer behind station, if the curve is going to go under the canopy, the track would be in the order of maybe 40 ft above the front (closest to station) attachment point. I do not see any reason for such a huge column diameter as indicated by the bolt pattern. I see these two attachment points as being much taller diagonal structural members of sizeable diameter (nearly as big a bolt pattern as the three tower pads). I am in camp track above the station. I would even like to see a bit of a double up but that's just wild thinking.

I hear Nintendo makes the best Switches.

djDaemon:

because anything more would be a waste of potential capacity.

I mean. Even with a Forward - Back - Forward launch this rides run time is going to be insanely short. Shoot the sit and rev at the lights sequence on TTD damn near doubled the runtime on some trains. TTD was what 17 seconds. Let’s say a F-B-F triple launch with quick switch track like Pantheon triples that time. We are talking 51 seconds. We are talking about a ride that is 2.5 times less run time than MF. With 4 trains double loading/offloading I think the capacity is going to be insane on this ride.

All revealed shortly https://twitter.com/TonyClarkCP/status/1681398645772505090

Well we will know soon enough. (Also trying to figure out why the 8 appears to have a hidden 3):