TTD Closed Again??

Erik: Get a hobby! Your act grows tiresome and we're tired of seeing it. We've deemed the same repeat nonsense as not interesting anymore. Move along and find something else to do!

Maybe he doesn't have a TV and his only means of entertainment is staring at the web cams all day.

I didn't create another post about it. If you want, close this post, I don't care. I hardly even look at it anymore. *** Edited 7/8/2004 5:14:38 PM UTC by Erikjc***

Hardly look at it anymore? Is that why you have posted twice already today in less than 40 minutes in this topic?

No need to get mad, but c'mon man! There are better things to do than stare at the cams all day and giving us a play-by play!

I'm not the one doing that! And the only reason I've posted on here is because the other one was closed. I rarely even click CP Place, I just go by the recent posts on the homepage. Come on, this argument's getting ridiculous. And Walt, distance has everything to do with it. It doesn't matter to you as much if it's down because you can go any old time. For some it could put a damper on their one and only weekend at Cedar Point.

I'm not picking sides but Erik is sorta right. I was at the point the 20th and the 21st. 20th TTD didn't run at all, (i was pissed off). 21st it was only open like 5 hours but fortunally i was able to ride it. I drove 11 hours to get to the point, and believe me, i wouldn't leave the area until i could ride it. so that would of changed all of my plans. that would of "put a damper on my one and only weekend at Cedar Point."

I was there on Tuesday from 5-11 and again on Wednesday all day from 9-11. Here's what I noticed.

Apparently from what I had heard was it was open in the morning, but broke down early. It re-opened in between 5 and 6. So my friend and I got in line. It was running great. Yes we get on the first train in the loading platforum ready to go. The second train from the two before us is ready to launch. The tree lights up, they're off but they didn't get very far; 100 feet if that. They rolled them back to launch again. Same thing happened. This time they got us out of the train, put us back in line and roller the trains back so the other could get in the station so they could get off. So we're waiting because we're next in line and we don't want to leave. Until a man starts yelling and screaming at a ride op who was just checking restraints how he waited four hours to ride and when he gets close it break down. He was swearing and calling her names so about 5 cops show up and talk to him for about half an hour. They leave and they decide "we're sorry, but Top Thrill Dragster will not be reopening tonight." While exiting they gave us an exit pass for any ride good for that day, and one for TTD which is good for the year. We're not worried, we'll ride tomorrow (Wednesday.)

Ok so it's Wednesday, we walk past TTD after riding Millenium Force first thing in the morning. Trains are on the transfer. We went and rode many many other rides until 5 when we noticed while on Iron Dragon the trains were on the track. We got there and said they were testing at 6 and were expected to open. The line was all the way back to Power Tower's exit and sure enough right at six the launched the train and it made it over the hill. Ten minutes later they launched the next train, it rolled back. They launched again and it made it. Ok it's doing just fine. They did not launch another train the rest of the night.

Now here's my problem with CP. The whole time they were saying there was a chance of opening and they repeated this every ten minutes to keep the people in line there. It's fine to say that for a couple hours as there is still a chance, but they were saying it still at 10:30 and they still had people waiting. I'm sorry, but if it's not open by 9 and hasn't been all day surely it's not going to. We left line around 7 to go ride other rides checking TTD as we passed and wasn't worried about a line since we had the exit passes. They had the crane in there, and it was leaving right when they launched the first train, and the mechanics, except one all went with it. He stayed on the station until they launched the second one and he then left too. So now no ones really there working it and about every 5 minutes you see the rollback fins go down, but they're not launching anything.

Why would CP tell people for 7 hours that there is a chance of opening when there isn't, especially when nothing appeared to be wrong after they launched the trains with success.

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Tanner_J said:

We got there and said they were testing at 6 and were expected to open.

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Were they just giving you an estimate, or were they really not planning to test until 6? It might just be my imagination, but whenever TTD reopens after a breakdown, it always seems to be on the hour or half-hour. If they're still working on it that's one thing, but if they're ready to test, but they wait for 6? That doesn't make sense.

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*** Edited 7/8/2004 6:51:29 PM UTC by Erikjc***

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It doesn't matter to you as much if it's down because you can go any old time.

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I haven't even been on it this year. I'll say it again, distance has nothing to do with repeating topics and web cam watching.

Tanner J I was at the park on Wednesday(7-7) and we were in line along the black fence from 6-7:30. I normally wouldn't have bothered waiting like that but I was with a friend who isn't going to get a chance to come back to the park until next year and who hasn't yet had the Dragster experience. The ride hosts were constantly telling us to not waste our time waiting and to please go and enjoy other rides. I thought we might have had a chance when I saw ride hosts on the platform and then the test launches, but luck wasn't on our side.
I have been at CP a few times when they did indeed open Dragster around an hour before closing time. I'm sure if there wasn't any chance at all of it opening, they would have said so.

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Tanner_J said:Why would CP tell people for 7 hours that there is a chance of opening when there isn't, especially when nothing appeared to be wrong after they launched the trains with success.

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Because they expected it to be open. Which brings this topci back around in a circle again. They dont know when it will be open, or what will go wrong today, so how can they let their visitors know when it will be open via a website or a sign at the entrance?

Thank you Michigan Wolverines, but it doesn't seem that fillintheblank is willing to accept CP's faults just yet.

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fillintheblanks said:

So, you think that you know what is really going on and the reason they are having problems? Why are you blaming CP? Blame Intamin. Blame The wind. Blame the rain. Blame the speed. Blame the height. Blame everyone here that posts except you. You are the one that is in denial!

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CP prolly knew what they were getting when they bought TTD. They knew that a coaster of this magnitude would be very complicated and hard to run. They knew about the problems that the weather would cause. But you know what, they bought it anyway.

I don't pay Intamin to enter their park and ride their coasters. I pay CP. Thus, CP has a responsibility to effectively run their E-ticket attraction. I live over 8 hours away from CP and they do sometimes have ads for their park out here. In those ads the one ride that is always there is TTD. Funnily enough, the ride that they advertise the most is the one with the most problems. To blame the problem on Intamin is somewhat of a logical thing to do, but last time I checked my entry fee didn't go to Intamin. CP pays Intamin to make the coaster work, not me. I pay CP to make the coaster work. So they need to do just that, make the darn coaster work. No more lenghty breakdowns, weather related problems they can't stop, but they did know about these before they bought it. I want them to fix the mechanical problems so that whenever the weather is fine the coaster can run properly. You can blame Intamin, the weather, the size of the coaster and me all you want. But when it comes down to it, we all pay CP to ride their coaster in their park, so they should make it work properly. *** Edited 7/8/2004 9:38:41 PM UTC by perculata***

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we all pay CP to ride their coaster in their park, so they should make it work properly.

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Nice point, but not convincing. They are trying their hardest. You really think the downtime is due to them not giving a crap? Do you think that they want this bad publicity?

When you are in your car and it breaks down, are you going to blame yourself buying it?

I pay to get in the gates, just like you pal.

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Erikjc said:
Were they just giving you an estimate, or were they really not planning to test until 6? It might just be my imagination, but whenever TTD reopens after a breakdown, it always seems to be on the hour or half-hour. If they're still working on it that's one thing, but if they're ready to test, but they wait for 6? That doesn't make sense.

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*** Edited 7/8/2004 6:51:29 PM UTC by Erikjc***

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They actually said they were testing at 6, and they did. It wasn't that big of a deal really, even though I wanted to ride it. I did get a ride on Millenium Force from it when we were on TTD Tuesday and it broke down. It was fun bypassing a 1.5 hour line and getting right on.

Crowds weren't bad either, it would have just been nice to get on TTD as we had done everything we had wanted to and pretty much everything except for the smaller coasters such as Blue Streak, Cedar Creek Mine Ride and Wildcat.

A simple solution:

Have Cedar Point install a Plexiglass garage door where the engine is kept and let people watch it. They will then understand why it is down so much.

It is interesting to hear the CP fans defend CP over and over again. It is also interesting to hear people who are angry about the ride being down during their visit. I can see both sides.

But from a business standpoint, I would hope that there was a "liquidated damages" clause in the contract between CP and Intamin. This type of clause states that if a product does not function as contracted, does not meet a specified performance level or meet the contracted reliability, the manufacturer pays the purchaser. In my line of work (industrial gas turbines) it is typically a daily charge.

If CP has this type of clause in their contract, they may very well be making money on the down time. Not that Intamin isn't trying, but they are not fulfilling their contract. This means CP is cashing in on the visitors as well as on a problem ride.

On the other hand, if CP did not include this in the contract, they are fools, but they are not loosing anything in attendance (there are other rides you know).

Either way, CP looses nothing.

And to Intamin, bigger/faster/steeper is no excuse for bad engineering. Trust me, been there.

The only problem I have is the fact the keep playing commercials (TV and Radio) using TTD as the focal point. They know it isn't reliable, they need to focus on the rest of the park. *** Edited 7/9/2004 1:09:44 AM UTC by monster***

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fillintheblank said:

Nice point, but not convincing.

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Too bad you missed the point. The point I was trying to make was that they should fix it, I don't care how hard they are working, they need to find a way to make the situation better.

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They are trying their hardest. You really think the downtime is due to them not giving a crap? Do you think that they want this bad publicity?

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I never said they weren't trying. I never said they didn't care about it breaking down, all I said is that they need to get it running better soon. They don't want this bad publicity but until CP fixes this coaster they're going to have a problem. You keep taking what I say and exaggerating it. They are most likely working hard to fix this, the point is that whatever they're doing isn't good enough right now.

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When you are in your car and it breaks down, are you going to blame yourself buying it?

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If my car did break down in my first year of ownership I would blame myself. I would not have bought such a crapy car. I would've done my research as to the reliability of the car and purchased one that would work well for me. CP knew what they were buying before hand so they should have been better prepared for what was going to happen. Similar situations occurred with MF when it first opened. This coaster is over 100 ft taller, they should've have been more prepared for the problems that they were likely to encounter.

Monster, that was an EXCELLENT post, with many interesting points. I am so tired of reading all the whiney posts (I want to send them all some cheese).

Anyway, since I sell cutting edge food equipment, I have been there too, and from my point of view, this is typical work from engineers. They do not leave their office cube and have NO CLUE about the real world. In my line of work machines break (they all do), and there are two ways to fix the problem (easy and time effecient, or difficult and time consuming) - difficult and time consuming always seems to win (go figure). IMO engineers are only slightly above lawyers.

I live in Boston, so I completely understand the frustration of going to CP and having the signature ride down (it does suck). CP is doing their best, they have a history of going out of their way to better serve their guests - compare SF handling of X to CP with TTD - similar situations.

CP knew they were taking a risk (thats it). When you supersize anything, new issues arrise. Xcelerator and SR appear to be running MUCH better than TTD (especially this past week). This is not a new situation for CP, MF certainly had issues its first year, AND Magnum had major issues its first 3 years (chain, wind, trim brakes, 3rd hill reprofile).

The ride is built, it is what it is, and you cant change those facts. The problems will get resolved eventually (this year, next year, maybe not till the year after - who knows). Pointing fingures is unproductive (though venting feels great after a disapointing visit to CP with TTD closed).

Tom *** Edited 7/9/2004 2:26:45 AM UTC by Tom***

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Erikjc said:
For some it could put a damper on their one and only weekend at Cedar Point.

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And Dragster is only one of how many coasters at Cedar Point? Why do people deem a trip to Cedar Point a disaster if Dragster doesn't run? What, did Cedar Point suck before Dragster existed?

I agree, Jordan Isenberg. I live 5 hours away from CP, and I can only make 1 trip per year at the most. I was lucky enough to get 2 rides on Dragster this year. If it had been closed, yes i would have been mad for a while, but I would simply have walked over to Millennium Force, had an excellent ride, and gone on with my day. The point is that CP has so many coasters that are bigger and better than many other coasters that it is allright if one is closed.