Kenban

It’s official RMC is RMCing an RMC. ACE received confirmation during a Q&A with Dollywood. RMC will be installing I-Box on Lightning Rod, it’s already been confirmed the layout is staying the same. It’s unknown how much track is being replaced. https://www.instagram.com/p/CHlbR53M5N5/

I am pretty certain you are wrong about it having the highest profit margins. The best profits on the least amount of capital investment? Maybe, but that is not how profit margins work, it’s about total cost of operating the parks. The problem with MA is they have the lowest revenue of the whole chain, and frankly it’s not even close, and in total profits they are either last or next to last. I do think it’s about time for the park to see a big new ride, and I think an RMC Raptor would be a great fit.

I got my order placed, received my confirmation, and the site says sold out already. Not sure how many were available but they went very quickly.

If the park does open, I suspect it will be almost only be lights, crafts, minimal shows, maybe flat rides but no coasters, and will not be called Winterfest. Since it’s what the other parks are calling it likely Taste of the season. No regular food stands so that they do not have to provide anything to holders of the meal plan, but specially foods with a tasting card would likely be available. That’s all just a guess, but Carowinds will have a few coasters open, and food stands and the parks FAQ says the meal plan will work, so it’s always possible there will be more. Having said all of that the park posted a video a few days ago and Mike Koontz states the gates closed for the final time in 2020, and the video ends with see you in 2021. Putting the lights on the tower just as decorating and leaving the park closed would not surprise me. We will likely know this week if it’s opening but I doubt it, there should be signs of the park hiring and I checked the parks job site and there was nothing seasonal.

The effects in the last tunnel do not appear to me to be new. It just appears the existing effects have been fixed. But it does look the best I have seen in a very long time. There are a few feet of red track, the area it is in is very smooth now. It’s hard to tell while riding but I do not think the sections correspond to track segments. Which suggests to me that the rail or maybe more was cut out and refurbished or replaced. Overall though it’s a few feet of track, maybe 10 ft total.

Easily the total change in elevation from the top of the lift hill to the lowest point is 201 feet. Ignoring the trim brakes, friction, and wind in theory the ride should be able to hit around 78 MPH. Wooden coasters are actually known for how well they maintain speed because they experience a lot less friction losses then a steel coaster, if I remember correctly a wood coaster losses about half of what a steel coaster does over the same distance. Before the change to magnetic trims I do not see any reason why it would not have been possible to hit 75 MPH, although likely only after it rained. Today it’s unlikely, but I suspect 70+ still can and does happen.

Holiday World still does a charity auction annually. They do it as part of Holiwood Nights. You can see the items they had and the prices they sold for here. The big item this year, an actual ride logo off the front of one of the Voyages trains, for only $681 dollars.

Wheels are somewhat rare. They are a wear item so you would think they get replaced frequently. But what happens is they are reused like car tire rims. The nylon, urethane, etc is removed, and they are checked for damage and relined. Since they are remanufactured parks rarely dispose of them. For a ride like Vortex the wheels will be interchangeable with others in the chain, maybe even Adventure Express, and they would have been sent to other parks or kept at KI if possible.

I had a friend visit Cedar Point a few weeks ago, and his experience was similar. He went home extremely unhappy and while he is an enthusiast and would never vow to never return, he really did not seem to want to return anytime soon. He rode three coasters and was in the park from open to close. I know Cedar Fair is trying to make as much from their Ohio parks as possible, but they are really ruining a lot of good will. They have to reduce capacity if to do nothing else then to get the lines under control.

I can confirm it is operating.

B&M has maintenance guidelines, they detail how often to inspect the track and what to do if something is found. Often the first step is to contact B&M. Having said that I have read several B&M service bulletins. The typical response to a crack is to grind it out, weld a replacement piece of steel, NDT to verify the repair, and repaint. The only times I remember seeing to replace the item is for parts on the trains if the material is too thin. Replacing a piece of track is not typically done, even for a crack. Just to add we have no idea what is going on, and we have gotten pretty far off into wild speculation.

The park still has some pretty good sized pieces of track. You can see them when riding WindSeeker at the edge of the clearing. People have been speculating about using them as decorations, but at these prices and demand it makes sense to make more collectibles. My guess is there is at least enough track to make 200 more.

At least as of right now nothing has changed at any of the major Florida parks. Disney, Universal, and SeaWorld have all kept the previous restrictions in place, and it appears they have no intentions of removing them. This order was done a few days ago and I have heard that it’s been causing issues with some guests not wanting to follow the parks restrictions.

I was at the park Saturday and I have to say even though I like Haunt. I really preferred this fall festival at least for the feel of the park during the day. The park feels better when they are not blocking off pathways and putting out random obstacles which are there all day for the scare zones. Plus I preferred having the trick or treating in the main park, it was nice seeing the kids run around in the main park instead of the water park. I want Haunt to return when it’s safe. But I kinda think they should stick primarily to houses and roaming scare actors. Not sure I want the traditional scare zones to return. I just prefer when they do not ruin the look and feel of the park during the day. If they want scare zones figure out a better way to hide items during the day. For instance at Universal they close the park for about an hour and use forklifts, cars, and on smaller items they just wheel the items out from hiding places. If needed they will leave them out but typically they do a great job fitting in with the season. I think Kings Island could do something similar by just closing the paths temporarily as they bring out the props and designing scare zones that blend into the park better. So the tricks and treats menu, the food looks good. But I have a meal plan, and it feels like there should be a way to pickup one of the cards at a discount by expending my meals. Going to the park by myself and buying one of the six item cards and using it solo seems hard to do in a single day. Maybe next trip I will actually try one of the items. I did get the chefs plate and it was fantastic, hope to see it continue next year.

The launch itself is the same, the difference is the location of the train. Launches and magnetic brakes need more precision in the location of the train then wood has typically been able to provide. A slight misalignment can cause serious damage to the launch or for the launch to not push the train properly. There have been cases where a bent launch fin has done a million or more dollars of damage to a launch system. Wood has a lot more flex to it, and trains deform the wood, it also changes size due to the weather. Steel just does not have these issues. Basically this is why before topper track no one was willing to even try a launch, just too much that could go wrong on a wood coaster. Take a look at the brakes on Racer or The Beast and you will see an angled section at both ends to make sure the fin aligns with the brake. Magnetic fin brakes do not have these angled sections they just have to align correctly every time. My understanding is the components are just too fragile to have any alignment assistance. Although you will see a piece of angled rubber before the brakes on Mystic Timbers. During coasterstock the designer of Mystic Timbers explained why the brake run is not level and instead leans to one side. This forces the train onto one rail due to gravity. Then since the train has to be against the rail and they know the offset of where the brake fin is located on the train. Which allows them to correctly position the brakes.

I did not say that RMC was not comfortable using it. It’s still safe and my understanding is they are willing to use it if if the track can do the job and the park is determined to use it. But frankly there is nothing topper track can do which IBox cannot, and they would prefer to just use IBox. The only reason I can think of using topper track is marketing.

Lightning Rod has actually been down for around a month now. Rumors at the time pointed to damage that prompted the park to contact RMC who told them to shut down the ride. Over the years the ride has had issues with potholes in high stress areas and there were a lot of people complaining earlier this year about a new one. I know people keep placing blame on the launch but I suspect it’s a track issue. Reports out of RMC a year or two ago were they wanted to stop using topper track and were pushing customers to use IBox and they were going to charge extra if someone really wanted topper track. Currently I have seen a lot of speculation that at least some of the track on Lightning Rod is going to be replaced by IBox and I suspect they are right. We might be looking at the first RMC conversion of an RMC coaster. I have no idea how much of the topper track is going to survive but I really do not think the entire coaster is going to be topper track next year.

I suspect Intamin will have the same problem RMC has had with producing T-Rex track. The problem is it takes pretty specialized equipment to bend that large and thick of metal into the right shapes before welding. RMC has stated they would need some very large equipment orders to be able to actually produce a T-Rex coaster, simply put it’s not coming anytime soon. Also is there anything a wider single rail can do which standard track cannot? What makes Raptor track so special is the riders are straddling the rail, but extending the track width removes this advantage because riders are basically in the same position as on regular track. I am not convinced for a company like Intamin who has a long history of producing standard track using round rails there is much of a point in investing in a wider single rail. Before anyone mentions that new boat ride from Intamin which uses a single rail, it does but the rail only bends in one axis, no complex curves.

Based on the length of the project 10,300 feet it appears to be going all the way from King rd, to Western Row Rd. So this is not just something for the park we have to consider the entire distance from one side of the park to beyond the park. Which is the problem that it feels like people are ignoring. The problem is one half of the park grew past Columbia road years ago. One of the wave pools is located above where the road was located, the water park entrance plaza is directly on that path as well. So is a quarter mile of the handicapped parking, and employee parking, and there is no easy way around this area. Open up a satellite view of the park, trace out the road and you rapidly realize there is a lot of things to work around and in many places it’s going to require ripping up a lot of path ways and parking. Now go trace Kings Island Dr, the park has a big enough set back along most of the road, that the worst areas are the entrances and exits to the parking lot, the exit from the toll booths, and finally the lighting for the drop off lot. Compared to what it’s going to take trying to thread a new pipeline between the park and the parking lot this makes a lot more sense.

Based on the information we have the water line project is still in the design phase, they might have realized it’s a mistake placing a new water line next to a defunct road that passes through an amusement park. It’s very possible we are looking at the early stages of the county deciding if the water line should be moved, or they already reached that decision, etc. Its a bad idea to jump to too many conclusions based on what we have seen so far. Redoing the drop off lot is the very kind of project which a park would be delaying or cancelling due to the pandemic.

I was at Nagashima Spa Land last year and I am pretty confident they do not have one. So I started doing some searches, and I found a map from 2007 on Theme Park Review. I cannot find it on the map and according to that previous post from 2007 it should have been installed and operating.

How tall would Orion be if it was built on flat ground? Around 305 feet tall. How tall would it be if instead of a slight rise in ground level under the lift there was instead around a 25 foot drop in ground level? 330+ feet tall, making it the “tallest” giga. Would it actually deserve that title, no. Either way it’s the same ride, just more steel would have been used. If either of those were true no one would even question if it was a giga. Frankly it’s time for this stupid pointless debate to end and to move on. Height is a terrible measurement on its own because fantastic rides like Lightning Rod get screwed, since it’s a terrain coaster it has a 165 ft drop, but It is only around 50 feet tall. At the other end parks cheat, Superman Escape from Krypton flat out does not deserve the title of strata coaster in my opinion. Putting the station on top of a hill and building out over the slope so the tower is taller is cheating. The same ride located in Australia when it still existed was 377 feet tall instead of 415 feet. Also why count the height of the track on a shuttle coaster, if the train never reaches that point does it matter if the ride is that height, or should the measurement be the highest point reached during the ride?

I just wonder how are they using the train? Is it going to be stripped for parts, put into a rotation with the other trains?

It’s not just that the website and author refuse to say they are wrong, it’s almost like they refuse to read and understand the very documents the website is posting. Immediately after that paragraph posted above, is a single page from a bigger document which you can find here. It lists 2022 not as the project start date, like they claim, but as the design completion date. Construction complete is listed as 2026. There is no construction start date, but considering it’s not going to take 6 years to do the work it’s not likely to start anytime soon. Simply put the county is obviously not in a hurry, and the markings appear to be for helping with design. Also one final quick question, what leak? That paragraph above states “leaked purposely”, this project is listed in the 2018 annual report, it’s not new, it’s just none of us keep track of water and sewer improvements around the county obviously. This entire discussion was a creation of enthusiasts.

With that we conclude this weeks episode of crazy coaster theories and return you to your regularly scheduled program of minor change equals new coaster.