What are the Magnum XL trains supposed to resemble?

I wish they cared more about efficiency. CP is still amazing compared to some other parks, but there's room for improvement.

Europa Park, the park that beat CP for best in the world, has no fast lane system and extremely good operations. Meanwhile at CP, we have to remove a train from Iron Dragon because people "feel rushed on." Oh, how terrible!

With manual brakes and simple buzz bars, Blue Streak was not intended to set up and it required maintenance to reset like Magnum used to and Iron Dragon still does AFAIK (resulting in the third train removal.) Now I've only seen Blue Streak not set up once, with about 4 people in the train being dispatched (hence the quick dispatch.)

Older rides weren't designed to stack. Magnum was clearly designed with stacking as a veryundesirable thing, given that stacking results in a experience which I've head compared to "a small car accident." CCMR ran 4-5 trains with its former MCBRs, which would mean that a "full stack" would result in several trains on the MCBRs. Iron Dragon couldn't "full stack" or a train would stop on the lift, because it only held one train in the pre-station brakes, becuase it wasn't designed to stack regularly.

Now, coasters can stack all trains in the main brakes, because they are designed to stack every train comfortably and routinely instead of keeping people moving. MCBRs are only to facilitate faster dispatches, and that isn't always heeded.

BTW, rumor has it Six Flags moved away from IROC or whatever, and they actually are doing well in operations so far this season. "Please get in your seat within x seconds", etc. So hopefully CP takes notice.

*rant over*

As for the trains, I think they were modeled after the NASA space shuttles.

I don't know if I didn't get enough sleep but all this talk about Magnum and iROC, all I came up with was this..

I'm at Kings Island today, which by the way was a wonderful choice of days to go, and they are scanning on every ride and are using the word "scan".

Efficiency is something I would like the park (and company) to invest in more heavily. And I'm not just talking about rides. Though I believe Cedar Point in particular still does an above average job with ride efficiency, other aspects of the park operation could also use some rethinking. Food and Beverage being the most obvious.

I would actually like to see efficiency be added as one of the companies cornerstones, or even replace one of the existing cornerstones. While running rides as efficient as possible is part of it, efficiency plays a key role in the guest experience at almost every aspect of your visit (foods, accommodations, tolls, parking, etc.). This is one of the areas I see not just enthusiasts, but guests complain about the most. How long they had to wait to ride Roller Coaster A, how long they had to wait for the bathrooms, how long they had to wait for their food, etc. At the end of the day, most guests, not just enthusiasts, want to experience the most they can and feel like they really got their money's worth. From a guest service perspective, I believe it can pay to have as efficient as operations as possible.

The obvious comparison is Disney. Efficiency is actually one of the "four keys" at Disney. The four keys are the same idea as the five Cedar Fair cornerstones. I don't know which came first. But either way, it's clear that Disney invests heavily in efficiency in many aspects of the experience and it makes a big difference. I would really like to see Cedar Fair follow a similar philosophy.

We're at kings island this weekend too. What is "scanning?""

I saw this a Carowind's when we were there for Fury 325s opening a few years back. The riie op can be heard over the PA system saying "Scanning..." while looking at all ride ops on the platform and guests to verify all is clear for dispatch.

It's theater.

The worst example was on my last visit to Carowinds where, after all other pre-dispatch duties were completed, including each platform attendant giving a signal that he was ready to go, the operator in the doghouse would say the word "scan" and everybody would go into a salute pose and slowly rotate around and presumably look for trouble.

Note this was AFTER the "all clear" signal was given...the signal that tells the dispatch attendant or operator* that, "Everything in my zone of awareness is ready for the ride to start." Which means it is either redundant to what each attendant had already done, or the clear signal should not have been given. It wastes about five seconds per dispatch, so if the ride is supposed to have a 75-second interval, that's a loss of three dispatches per hour. With either no observable improvement in safety, or worse, the degradation of the "clear" signal.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

* Just because an operator is in the doghouse with a hand on the button doesn't mean that person is in command of the go/no-go decision. On Magnum, the old way of doing it gave that decision to the attendant at Unload 1, who would give the "go" signal to the controls operator by knocking two times on the window. This was done because the controls operator was not watching the platform operations but was instead monitoring the ride.

--DCAjr

What everyone is referring to here as "scanning" is when all of the ops are "clear" of the train and the person in controls announces "scan" or "scanning" and looks around like an idiot for a few seconds before announcing "all clear" and sending the train. It doesn't seem like CP is as hung up on it as Kings Island and some other places. This procedure is part of a training that Cedar Fair bought into a couple years back from a company called IROC.

It's not that scanning is a bad thing - it's just that the pause and audible saying of it seems like something that is done for show and to please lawyers similar to when several years back, they got hung up on saying "check" as they checked every seat. The constant headbobbing by lifeguards seems similar to me and it seems to me that it would be more hypnotic than effective at saving lives.

Anyone "driving" a coaster should be "scanning" all of the time. When I worked Magnum, I'd watch each row of seats as the train rolled out to make sure belts were buckled and lapbars were down. I'd watch the next train coming around into the station so if someone came running up the exit ramp onto the platform and got too close, I could stop the train quickly. Once the train was parked and the lapbars were released, the train I just sent to the lift was getting up over the treeline, so I'd watch that as it went up the lift. Also during this time, the train coming back from the course would go through the safety brakes and come around the curve so you could watch and make sure there weren't any obvious bad wheels on the train, people throwing up, etc. When the train got close to the top of the lift, we'd say "ready" meaning its almost time to send the next one, and focus our "scan" back on the station area, making sure people had exited and were not hanging around on the platform. By this time, the gates should be closed and no guests should be on the wrong side of them. I'd observe the ops clearing in order from front to back. As soon as the person at unload 2 gave the high clear, I would announce "Clear" and send the train. I didn't need to stop and scan for three seconds right then because I had been scanning for the previous 75 seconds and knew everything was good to go.

IROC is a bunch of crap. Cedar Point's operations were way more efficienct before. What makes me laugh is seeing an IROC employee come up to the platform with an obvious GoPro camera filming the crew to "audit" everybody and see if each ride host is performing their IROC duties. Just like RideMan said, its theater. I know people who got a bad audit review for not having a "defined" push down/pull up motion on all safety restraints. However, I know these specific people take their job and safety seriously. Like I said, it's crap and I really hope they get rid of IROC for the sake of efficiency. Cedar Point is too good for this nonsense to be coming in and switching up how we operate. End rant.

Thank you everyone

To repeat a post that someone said a while back:

IROC - Idiots Ruining Our Coasters

Echoing the IROC is garbage nonsense...

At least our scan isn't as bad as Six...I genuinely feel sorry for those kids. However, ours is terrible because it's a waste of time and solves nothing. The order of clears, with a ready/all clear does just as much as a scan, without seeing people who don't know how to salute, salute.

I don't see it so much as a salute, but more like a Tonto-esque move thats a visual cue to others that they are "looking". The concept is to put a specific motion to the task. That way it's more likely to be remembered as well as recognized by those who check up on these things.
The first time I experienced the "scan" was at SFGAdv and I about died laughing at those poor kids. They looked ridiculous. A few looked downright humiliated.