Carowinds announces Fury 325

LostKause said:
I do not foresee "the weather" keeping this coaster from opening until halfway through next season.

Since I live in Chicago, I have to speak in defense of Great America. This past winter was heinous. There are many stretches of streets in the city where it was determined it was more cost effective to tear up and re-pave the entire street than just repair the potholes.

I think the park did a great job working with such a difficult situation and getting the ride open as soon as it did.

Regarding the chain, as sirloindude mentioned Fury 325 appears to have one.

B&M appear to have solved the engineering factors that caused Millenium Force and Intimidator 304 to have cable lifts, and Steel Dragon 2000 to have two chains.

I rode Leviathan a couple of weeks ago, and noticed that there is no "chain return tray" hanging below the lift hill like you find on virtually every coaster (even B&M hypers). Its all embedded in the track. The Fury 325 video suggests the same design.

Our of curiosity I timed the lift speed of the world's 4 gigacoasters. Assuming the Youtube videos are at correct speed:

Intimidator 305: 22 seconds

Millenium Force: 25 seconds

Leviathan: 46 seconds

Steel Dragon 2000: 75 seconds

I don't think there was ever an issue with chains in the first place.

If the long chains were not an engineering issue, were the Intamin cable lifts and Steel Dragon double chain simply for speed and blocking (to allow efficient 3 train operation)?

The stated reason on MF was speed, to keep the interval up given the lack of blocks.

The reason SD2K has two chains were for separate blocks.

Makes sense. Thanks for the info.

In that case, the blocking on Leviathan (short pre-lift section and extra long brake run) combined with fast lift allows it to run with remarkable efficiency. When I was there, I noticed a timer in the station that counted down from 60 when the train stopped and the harnesses released. Every time I watched, they dispatched the train no later than -15. So 75 seconds from train to train. It was cool to see, and kept the line moving fast. I doubt the line was longer than 30 minutes all day, and it was a busy day.

Instead of Furry, how about changing the name to Furby 325. That is a scary sounding name to me.

I wonder why Six Flags has never built a Giga Coaster. The public loves them and they have been very profitable for Cedar Fair.

$$$$$$$$$$$$

Judging by Banshee's opening, due to crowds, I'd advise people to stay away on opening day, if it can be helped. The day after opening day may be tolerable, from my observations of past new coasters, however, each park is different, and I could be wrong.

Intimidator's opening day was actually extremely manageable. The weather was perfect - sunny with a high in the mid-70s. We did the first rider auction just before the park opened at 10, and we were able to get four Intimidator rides in before 1 PM when we left to go back to Ohio, with stops at seven or eight other coasters. The longest line we saw was around 30 minutes so it was really nice.

I would expect this opening day to be much busier than Intimidator's. The day that I'm targeting to go down is actually Easter Sunday - April 5 - which would historically be the weekend after the park opens for the season (typically the last weekend of March).

Apparently the park is opening earlier next year. Opening day is never terrible at Carowinds.

I have nothing to base this on, and didn't do the research that could easily have been done on Google, but I suspect it has to do with when the park opens, calendar-wise. SFoT usually isn't mobbed on opening day because the new ride usually isn't open, but also because the park opens sometime in late Feb. I wonder if the parks that open later in the calendar year see a bigger opening day.

Dragon Mt at Marineland, with it's incredibly long and slow lift, uses two chains. I always assumed that this was an engineering decision. I'm not a structural engineer, but I imagine a chain that long would be very strenuous on all mechanical parts involved. 2 shorter ones make sense. The new B+M systems seem much sturdier than anything Arrow ever built.

I was just assuming that Carowinds would be packed based on what I saw at Kings Island this year. It was crazy. As a season passholder, I couldn't get into the front gate until well after the Banshee line was past the Eiffel Tower. People were saying it was about 4 hours from that point. I expected early ride time, foolishly, for some reason. It was fine though, because we just headed for Beast and only waited about 30 minutes.

I still waited about 3 hours for Banshee with my buddies. It was an experience.

Now I am beginning to understand that each park is different. I'll still probably wait until a week or so after opening day, unless there is some kind of awesome Coaster event the day before like Banshee had.

I'm hoping that Carowinds will host a media day were coaster clubs are invited like Cedar Point did for Gatekeeper and Kings Island did for Banshee. I saw PR reps from both parks (Don, Tony) helping out at each others events and I also seem to recall seeing someone with a Carowinds name tag as well.

Opening days at the Ohio parks are a little different I think because winter is more brutal and you have to wait longer. People are itching to get back in there. That's probably less true as you move south.

And carowinds is only closed from November to March. I missed opening day for Intimidator cause I was at the beach but it wasn't bad. But honestly, if you go any weekend in March and April, it's pretty dead. I showed up,to. Set the regular opening day coaster guys this year and it was dead. I actually did Dino's Alive for the first time. And if Fury is anything like Intimidator, it'll rarely have a line over 40 minutes.

Fury 325 is now topped out.

For those that knew him, Max Cannon, former Southeast ACE regional asst rep, and all around good guy (and a personal friend) who lived in the Charlotte area recently passed away. The pic near the bottom was the memorial that the park president tweeted out, written on the cusp of the first drop: http://carowindsconnection.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4162&start=1905

Tek, I'm so sorry your friend has passed. I didn't know him, but he must be deserving of such a beautiful tribute. Please accept my condolences.