2013 wood coaster crop has been seeded...

Jaw, meet the floor! Wow!

I might have a need to budget time and money for trip to SDC in addition to a California trip next year.

I will ride this next year. Amazing.

Is this an actual wooden coaster, or is it steel with a wooden structure. If it's a true woodie, then that's one hell of an element!

It's got the steel topper on wooden track bed, and RCDB is saying wood, so...

Personally, I'm considering it wood. It's not the same Iron Horse Track thats on Giant.

I wonder how they're getting around SOB's issue of needing too heavy of trains (in order to negotiate the loop) for the wooden track/structure to handle?

Seems to me like since it's not traversing a genuine vertical loop, it will not need the weighty trains that SoB used to sport. This coasters element looks like it does just about the same thing a normal wooden coaster might do, except it tilts on it's side and overbanks while doing it.

...If that makes sense.

It reminds me a bit of the high five element found on Gravity Group's racing/dueling coaster in China (Happy Valley).

Looks incredibly innovative, fun and exciting.

I'm kind of surprised they went so near to a zero-g roll without actually just doing so. It climbs, banks to almost inverted, then rights itself followed by a left twisting descent and exit of element. Wouldn't a zero-g naturally take it in the same direction?

Can't see it being any more stressful to the train than what's already happening. Then again, I just stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.

That's pretty impressive. Too bad the engineers, for all their skill, couldn't find a solution to the design flaw of the coaster's location in Branson.

Ensign Smith said:

I wonder how they're getting around SOB's issue of needing too heavy of trains (in order to negotiate the loop) for the wooden track/structure to handle?

SoB's premiers were not supposed to be that heavy, They were the settlement of the OLFOF lawsuit and when they arrived they were about 400pds per car heavier than stengel had designed for. I remember seeing them a couple times with the fiberglass removed and they were solid steel tube frame above the chassis., Interstingly enough is the fact that when they went from OTSR's to Lapbars on FOF it lost several hundred pounds per car (I possitive but I think I remember hearing 800pds per car lighter) and required a lengthy re-calibration of the launch.

SOB's Premiers were far more damaging to the track and ledgers than they anticipated. Sitting in the back and going around the horse shoe, You could see that track flex between ledgers far more than any other woodie I've been on.