BBC reports on Ferrari World and Formula Rossa

Hard to tell from the video if they have started slowly removing a few of the trims or not... I want to see this beast run like it was designed to.

What makes you think its not already running the way it was designed to?

Because he saw the POV, duh. ;)

One wonders if he counts it as a credit due to POV riding...

Wow! No shoulder bars - I'm very impressed at that. Those trains do look pretty cool too....

Watching any POV or off-ride footage of this ride shows a train moving a bit slower than one would expect given the curvature of the turns and the hills. The train barely even makes it 1/3 down the final brake run - an odd behavior for an Intamin ride. The bunny hills at the end also look like they were designed to be taken faster. The wheels get soaked with water in the station so it's quite possible that we are talking about an i305-type wheel melting problem.

Laugh all you want bad armchair comedians, but you are ignoring the actual discussion of the issue.

I'm not ignoring the discussion. I just don't understand how you can make a comment like that based off of POV of a coaster when you're not privy to how the coaster was actually designed.

The facts are that they wanted a fast launch. But they apparently didn't want to build a hill and course that could burn the speed off (be it due to money or space constraints, or the fact that it's in the desert with all that sand), so they put brakes on it right after the launch. I'm sure they knew how it was going to ride before they opened it and would have been able to 'get it right' if all they wanted was to speed it up.

Much like Sky Rocket, they tested it and tweaked the brakes *before* it opened to the public (and maybe some afterwards too). But regardless, you have no real information to say that this ride was designed to go faster or be different than it is.

This isn't like I305 where it's going *faster* than they'd apparently like (if that's even the issue) and melting wheels. It opened going slow, not too fast.

Again, I've seen people declaring that something is the gospel based off of nothing. I'm not convinced that this isn't running exactly how they'd like it too (and it still looks as boring as Rita looks, even if it were going faster).

To Tek's point, I think it's reasonable to assume that the ride was designed to have the brakes at the end of the launch. One could certainly debate about how much they're slowing down, I suppose, but the POV gives no indication that it's running any way but the way it was intended.

I'll agree that the brakes at the end of the launch may be "intentional" and reflect the design of the ride....but it still goes against my better instincts to spend extra money launching a coaster faster only to spend *more, more money* only to slow it back down to where it can navigate the course properly without excessive forces...

I may be thinking of Ring Racer, but I thought that this (and Ring Racer) were both spoken of as being designed with the brakes after the launch even before they were built?

Clint, it's time to add "armchair comedian" to the list of things you are in your sig...

I would speculate that Intamin simply hasn't figured out how to make wheels and wheel assemblies that can work with extreme speeds or G's. Maverick's issue with the roll was excessive wear on the wheel axles. I-305, Dragster and Millennium Force appear to have issues with heat. This all makes me believe that outside of the novelty of a really fast launch, the wheel systems themselves just aren't cut out for sustained high speed. Makes you wonder why they haven't endeavored to put resources into solving that problem, instead of expensive band-aids.

On the other hand, it could be as simple as the design criteria was to not subject riders to sustained high speed. That doesn't strike me as unreasonable (from an operator perspective).

Tekwardo said:
The facts are that they wanted a fast launch. But they apparently didn't want to build a hill and course that could burn the speed off (be it due to money or space constraints, or the fact that it's in the desert with all that sand), so they put brakes on it right after the launch.

It's really no more complicated than that. Read it again, kids. Then read it one more time.

It's about wanting a selling point (speed, height, etc) that goes beyond a reasonable layout and having to contain that selling point (via trims) to accomodate what is a reasonable layout.

It's why TTD and Ka hit brakes at 100mph. It's not a design flaw, it's intended to do that as opposed to creating a layout that can handle that kind of speed without additional braking.

Trims aren't evil, they're not indicative of a design problem and it doesn't automatically mean you're getting gypped in some way.

(and that applies to I305 as well :) )

OTSR's are still evil, though... right?

According to my revised handbook, yes.

I never said these trims were "evil," it was obvious from day 1 that this ride would have a lot of trims to make the layout rideable.

I don't think many of us thought it would slow the ride down to what it is now - there are probably a few more trims up there than planned.

It's not a crazy hypothesis, i305, Millie, and the sprayers below the station on Formula Rossa are evidence that the wheel materials are a weak point in the Intamin engineering scheme.

For what it's worth, the Gio hypers (or Titan at least) also have sprayers under the wheels on the final brake run.

RollrCoastrCrazy said:
I don't think many of us thought it would slow the ride down to what it is now - there are probably a few more trims up there than planned.

Or not.

Just because some of us think it's slower than we anticipated doesn't correlate to additional trims being added and/or it running in a way it was not designed to.

There's no reason to believe, nor any indication at this point that the ride has been built or is running any way other than planned and intended.

Lord Gonchar said:
There's no reason to believe, nor any indication at this point that the ride has been built or is running any way other than planned and intended.

I don't agree at all. *You* may have no reason to believe that, but years of studying coaster design and looking at track shaping vs. how a ride actually runs through the course indicates very strongly and makes *me* believe, quite simply, that the ride was designed to go faster than it [s]is currently operating[/s] was operating when the first mounted POVs were shot.

That said, the trims will always be there, and they are there by design. However, as any Kennywood mechanic will tell you, it's not an exact science as far as how many of those little copper fins you need give you the desired ride performance. Adding or removing one or two can have drastic results on ride performance.

Now here's the catch: what we don't know is if it's still operating as it was when the POVs were shot. Again, taking off just one or two of those trims would make a difference in the ride performance, and can be done in a night. We also don't know if Ferrari world even cares... maybe they're totally pleased with speeds [s]it's reaching now[/s] it reached in those POVs? Maybe, despite all our poo-pooing, it's fun just the way it is and doesn't need those extra MPHs to be the flagship ride of the park.