Another ride delayed until 2007

Walibi Belgium announced today that "Vertigo", their new prototype is delayed until 2007! The reason mentionned is that the company, Doppelmayr, is still having issue with the braking system. The braking system consists of brakes mounted on each of the 8 cars and its controlled by radio, which also keep track of the cars positions.

After Efteling, Walibi Belgium... At least little Plopsaland opened their Mack Supersplash!

Why does the idea of breaks controlled by radio kind of scare me? I like the idea of breaks hard wired into the system. Sure would hate to be on the thing and have the radio transmission cut into by someones cell phone or something. Oooops.

BRAKES it's BRAKES not BREAKS! lol :)

That is a scary thought, kinda like a roller coaster operated by cellular technology. Is hard-wiring control systems THAT outdated? Sounds like technology for technology's sake and that's not usually a good thing.

I would assume that if the brakes every lost radio contact with the controls would instantly go into the "brake" position.

The only thing more frighteining is if the control system was run on Windows.

^ WOULD give new meaning to the terms "Blue screen of death" and "fatal exception error"...

^^ Yea...3.1 or 95...lol

^

When a train gets stuck on the course and won't move any further, first thing to do is hit Control-Alt-Delete... if it doesn't work then... turn the damned thing off and start it up again.

As far as I understood the translation of a press release, the brakes are not controlled by radio but the proximity sensors on the track are. Due to the track structure they can not use the usual sensors to determine the position of the cars.