PKD's Drop Zone, Gyro-Drop????

Does anyone know if PKD's Drop Zone will be a Gyro-drop simalar to PKI's?

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CBCon Quote "We didn't even get wet"......30 seconds later you hear plop, then splash!!!!

http://www.kingsdominion.com/attractions_rides_featured.jsp

There ya go! ;-)

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"...they came like a winged curse. A twin plague of demonic dragons!" - Dueling Dragons

It dosen't say it is....... But it shows a pic of PKI's.........

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CBCon Quote "We didn't even get wet"......30 seconds later you hear plop, then splash!!!!

I've been under the Impression it will be a Gyro Drop.

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So you believe that you are studying us, then kindly explain why you are the ones trapped in your seats.

Yes, it's a gyro-drop indeed. The ring will hold 52 victims.

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Coreo81 said:

Yes, it's a gyro-drop indeed. The ring will hold 52 victims.

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According to PKDs website the disc will hold 56 people. I guess the extra 4 must hang on the a restraint.

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So you believe that you are studying us, then kindly explain why you are the ones trapped in your seats.

No, it will be like PKI's. They technically could hold that many people but they will have seats that are "broken" so they don't confuse the computer.

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Wood Rules!

This is one attraction this year that is flying underneath the radar. Does anyone have any pictures?
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This is counter culture from the underground eternal revolution this is our sound KMFDM better than the best Megalomaniacal and harder than the rest

Check out www.sfa-pkd-place.com/, they have pics of the finished tower

Oh, 56 people? Oops!

Beastfreak, why go through the trouble of making that many seats if they won't be accessible? I find that to be unlikely.

Coreo, I was told two years ago by one of the ride ops that the ride was struck by lightning and so now, if every seat is full it runs a greater risk of maxing out the weight limit. So to avoid this they just have 3 or 4 seats permanetly closed.

Uhh... Drop Zone at PKI has 40 seats in the ring.

As much as I *cannot* wait to ride this sucker....305-272, according to my math teacher, means this ride BEGINS braking a mere 33' above ground...

*Victim-ize* me....:)

BeastFreak Said:

"if every seat is full it runs a greater risk of maxing out the weight limit. So to avoid this they just have 3 or 4 seats permanetly closed."
>

That does not make much sense. You think that the engineers would design the lift motors to hold a weight that is at least 4x the weight of the ring and the riders. If I designed the motors to only hold + - 400 lbs of a full load, I would be scared that the ride would fail, and I'd be in court and out of a job. I can't see the engineers signing off on a project that is not even powerful enoughf to operate with a full load. Intamin had to design this with loverload safety factors.

Well that is the thing. This ride has had significant problems since it opened.

I have heard many things but not sure which is really true.

1) Being the mentioned problem ealier of being struck by lightning thus messing up the computer controls and "tricking it" into thinking it is over loaded.

2) Hearing that there are two motors mounted in the top of the tower (one for each cable that runs to the car) and that one of these two motors had burned out (eg no longer works) If you notice, when that rides starts going up it moves slow until it has started to clear the sets of magnetic brakes and then it goes much faster to the top. So this could be true. Thus if only one motor is working and is already having enough trouble pulling it through the magnetic brakes, then having a fully loaded car with all 40 seats full of heavy people (as aposed to 40 100lb kids), then yeah you may not be able to lift it without burning out the one motor that is left.

I don't know if either are 100% true because it is all stuff that I "heard", though it would explain it.

The problems with PKI's Drop Zone has to do with the steel cabling, plain and simple. It goes through them like crazy.

I have heard that Intamin reps were on site late last year inspecting the ride.... among other things.

FYI, I have been told by Paramount Parks Reps that the PKD version will not turn.

Shaggy

It doesn't matter how hard you pull the ring, the magnetic brakes will always keep it at the same speed. This is because with magnetic brakes, the harder you pull, the stronger the braking force applied. All Intamin drop towers move slower till they clear the brakes.

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The Other Siebert

That is true, but I swear it went faster through the brakes than it does now.

Why the heck would they build a gyro drop model if it isn't going to operate in a rotation mode? that makes no sense whatsoever.

If they were to build the ride with the intention of not having the ring rotate then they could've opted into building a standard giant drop freefall ie tower of doom @ SFA.

Also if capacity on PKI's DZ is a problem due to a motor having burned out then in all likelyhood the park would simply call in Intamin to replace the damaged/worn out motor,I wonder if SFOG has had this problem with Acrophobia yet & the problem rgarding the weight issue due to lightning striking the ride can be solved by simply replacing the PLC which I take it got fried as a result,after all the same thing happened to Acrophobia last year(2002) if you all recall which left the riders stranded some 200ft in the air & they didn't even get the chance to enjoy the freefall on the way down as a result. :-(

Maybe they opted for the "gyro" drop model because of the greatly increased capacity? That's the only reason I can think of.

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The Other Siebert