Cedar Point already has at least one coaster (Top Thrill Dragster) that can’t operate if the wind is above a certain speed. I assume this new ride will be similar.
Someone just crapped in my pants.
mmm
I emailed the clip to my daughter. She “loves” rollercoasters, but only if her first ride is with me. (She says she loves them, but exits the ride shaking and near tears). I like rollercoasters but this one looks uncomfortable.
She leaves for Hawaii with her husband next week, but wants to plan a trip to Cedar Point next summer.
“For people who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they would like.”
I’ve had a couple of near-death experiences in my life. It seems foolish to deliberately inflict another on myself.
My wife is a coaster fanatic. I’ll have to see if this new coaster is a bridge too far even for her. The last time we went to Cedar Point was Summer 2023, and after that trip I told her I was pretty much done with amusement parks. Waiting in line in the hot sun for an hour or more, and then subjecting myself to high G forces, just isn’t much fun anymore at 60.
What realistically may go wrong is with that degree of moving parts, it could be constantly down for repairs like the Top Thrill Dragster used to be, more often than not.
With a loop, the only thing that can go wrong is if the immobile structure breaks. You don’t need any sort of controls or interlocks to make it safe; the physics does that all by itself.
Here, though, there must be some mechanism that grabs and holds the cars, and some way for that mechanism to release. Mechanism, as in moving parts, which means that it’s possible for them to move when they’re not supposed to, or to not move when they are supposed to. If that mechanism fails, and the cars aren’t stopped or are released early, Very Bad Things happen.
I’ve ridden a couple of coasters where the train comes to a stop during the course of the ride, the train is quickly locked onto the track, and the entire section of track then abruptly drops straight down through the floor (on one coaster, it was a short drop followed by a much longer drop). The dropped track then connects to the track underneath the floor and the train continues on its merry way.
There are also “dive coasters” that allow the train to start over the first drop and then hang there for a few seconds before releasing, but those tracks don’t have to move into position.
I assume this new coaster will have some combination of similar (but much more robust) technologies given that it has to hold the train at a 90-degree(?) angle while the tracks connect. If the tracks fail to connect and the train can’t release, I’m curious about how they’ll evacuate the passengers.
It’s not the first coaster with the idea:
Pretty cool, anyhow. Count me in. Been forever since I’ve been to Cedar Point.
That’s what’s supposed to happen, yeah. The point is, there are no permanent stops on that track section to prevent it running off the end (if there were, they would prevent the ride from continuing after the track section tilts and joins to the vertical section). All of the things that stop it running off the end, are mechanisms that have to do something to stop it happening - they are not like, say, physical fixed buffers that just have to be there to stop it.
Not that I think this makes it inherently unsafe or anything - I’m sure it should be possible to design sufficient safety into it.
After a couple of frustrating days of things going wrong, I am now of the opinion that it is the default of mechanical devices to fail. That there’s no reason why anything should work, unless you have bent over backwards to force it to and to rule out five-9’s decimal places failure modes, and even then there could still be something you never anticipated going wrong.
It reminds me of the bits like this one in a Mr Magoo cartoon in which Mr Magoo wanders around a construction site, stepping from one I-beam high above the street to another being carried by a crane, completely unaware of the danger.
Not that I would ever try this roller coaster; ever since I was a kid, I would get really ill on any sort of ride to the point of losing my lunch. Even a carousel or a Ferris wheel had the possibility of making me ill. (When my niece was ten, I did ride on a very small coaster with her at Disney World, but she was laughing while I was deeply unhappy.)
I hate it when that happens. And the older I get, the more often I hate!
We have to catch these people!