Cedar Downs slowed down?

Went on this ride at CP during Coastermania and it seemed to be running at 1/2 speed. Saw it run again a few weeks later and it still appeared to not be running it's usual speed. Anyone know why this is? Cedar Downs has always been one of my favorite non-coaster rides and I am hoping that this slow-down is not a permanent thing.

I think that almost every year, but I suppose if it were true it'd be stopped by now. :) Seriously though, I guess my one ride a year doesn't make me a very good judge of it. I actually remember thinking late last year that it went kind of fast, and the ultra-conservative safety cats there would want to slow it down. Maybe they did.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - Sillynonsense.com
DELETED! What time does the water show start?

It's just as fast as ever as Dave A has noted.

You want real extreme, try a ride on SFWoA's carousel. I swear it's just as fast as Cedar Downs. The horses even bank out as the ride speeds up.

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UnfrigginbelievablyIncredible

I timed Cedar Downs. It's running just a little faster than 4 RPM at top speed, which is about usual. I think it may be taking longer to get up to speed than it used to, but it's running at top speed.

The carousel at Geauga Lake runs at about 6 RPM, which is technically faster than Cedar Downs except that the entire Geauga Lake carousel would probably fit into Cedar Downs' infield. So it's higher RPMs, but lower absolute speed.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Ah, so I wasn't just imagining things in thinking that carousel at SFWoA was going pretty darn fast.

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/\ Jonathan Hawkins
Starcoasters.com | ThrillSpot
Howard Dean for President!

They're just treating it like one of their coasters by slowing it down. It really bugs me to hear this because the ride was already slowed down enough from its Euclid Beach days. If you want to ride a Prior and Church racing derby that runs the way it was intended, you have to go to Rye Playland or Blackpool because those run at full tilt. Blackpool's even has a band organ for that added touch. Hopefully this is just a temporary situation with Cedar Downs, although Cedar Fair's track record hasn't been all that great with classic rides. I'm disappointed again, but not surprised.

Wood - anything else is just an imitation
*** This post was edited by Thrillerman 7/4/2003 4:33:07 PM ***

What are you talking about.

We just noted it's as fast as ever.

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UnfrigginbelievablyIncredible

No, it's not. When it was brought over from Euclid Beach Park in the early 70's it really hauled. When you rode it you had to hold on for dear life.The last time I was there during season (would have been late 80's) it was running noticably slower.Knowing the safety people's penchent for reducing carousels to a crawl, it didn't surprise me. I had heard that they were having problems with the drive cable slipping again (a chronic problem with these rides).Four RPM sounds about what it was running then, but that's not the speed it originally ran, even at CP.

I haven't ridden it yet this year, but I ride it every year when I go to CP because it's a classic. Truth is it HAS been slowed because Robin Innes admited to a group of us from NAPHA they aren't allowed to run it at its designed speed anymore (and that was 7 years ago). I've ridden the other two versions and know for a fact that CP's IS the slowest one of the three remaining. I even rode it when it was at Euclid Beach, but I was too small to remember it at the time because it was removed in 1965.

Cedar Downs seemed like it was running normal to me, but I haven't rode it in a long time.

Also, in response to the person who said that they are running it like the rest of their rides, the last time I was at Cedar Point (June 24), Mantis was running without the trim brake, and we didn't brake at all on the one platform midway through Raptor(Don't know if I should call it a trim brake). Very nice, reminds me of a few years ago :).

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My other car is an Intamin giga.

That is nice to hear. I never understood the mentality of a block break being used as a trim either. Why call it a block break when you use it to trim all the time. That seems like a little spin on reality. I'm also glad to hear that Mantis's brake was off, but a friend of mine just gave me a horrible review about TimberWolf at WoF with the Mean Streak falling into the same category. Enough said. Hopefully when I go to CP this year I'll have rides like you described, but my luck hasn't been that good there as far as brakes are concerned. Oh well - I like lumpy oatmeal anyways.

Wood - anything else is just an imitation
*** This post was edited by Thrillerman 7/4/2003 1:44:38 PM ***

From what i gather blocks are used to time the trains as well as being safety devices. So if the trains are running fast that day you should see more trimming at the blocks. Makes sense to me. And i imagine that's how the ride was designed... But i could be wrong.

Perhaps the Cedar Downs seems slower now because one you're older and two you have this built up impression that the ride is so fast that the reality wouldn't live up to your expectations. Since Dave seems to be the only one taking data on the topic, do you have any older readings to compare to?

The only Derby Racer in the US running at normal speed is at Rye Playland. Cedar Point operates their's at a much slower speed.

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A random Mooshter's Dawntionary listing: Pokemon [n.] A Jamaican proctologist.

Personally, I feel it is much slower then before because I rode Playlands last year and can feel the definite difference between the two. It is a shame they cannot run the ride as intended, but I can understand why. With the number of people riding that ride in comparison to Playland's ride, they are far more likely to have an idiot ride it and get hurt (at Playland you must ride it a certain way, you must keep your left foot on the lowest possible stirup, while keeping your right foot all the way up so that you tilt inward, or you would fly off). I think Cedar Point has to take that into account and make their rides slower then many other parks are able to. It is either that or constantly deal with a lawsuit.

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"If you make it too smooth, it'll be like sitting in your living room."
-Bill Cobb - Designer, Texas Cyclone

No, I really don't have any technical data about the Downs other than whats printed in the Euclid Beach Books. Next time I see Rideman, I'll ask him what he knows about the ride. But I agree that my experiences could be jaded by the two(or one) that do run(s) at full speed. The most important thing for me is that it is a ride that came from a grand old park, and Cedar point has preserved its visual presentation in nice detail. Thanks for refering to me as old too. I'll take it as a compliment.

Wood - anything else is just an imitation

*** This post was edited by Thrillerman 7/4/2003 4:00:10 PM ***

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Thrillerman said:
Why call it a block break when you use it to trim all the time.

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John Wardley says on his site that trimming the ride at a mid-course block is normal. The reason, he says, is that the second half of the ride must allow the train to finish the course from a dead stop at the mid-course. To allow for this, certain design characteristics have to be accepted to keep forces in line with what they expect. Obviously a train going full-speed through the blocks will generally exceed those limits. The second issue then is meeting the dispatch interval they'd like, meaning the full circuit time has to be close to constant.

Even when Raptor was trimmed harder it kind of annoyed me that enthusiasts would cry about the trim, because that helix was insane even then. Now they appear to be OK with letting the forces be stronger, but I do think that they've increased the stop at the final brakes and have you on a slow crawl to the station to avoid stacking.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - Sillynonsense.com
DELETED! What time does the water show start?

Do they still use the racing announcer recording like they had in the past? I missed that the last couple of times I rode.

Yeah the announcer is still there.

I remember someone mentioned it was slowed down at the beginning of the 2001 season. I don't know if they slowed it down more after that or what.

Jeff got it spot-on about using trim brakes as block brakes...if you want the ride's performance to be consistent, then ideally you should have the train crawl through the block brake insignificantly faster than it would be going if the train had been stopped on the block brake. Most coasters have more energy than that coming into the block brake, but the ride has to be engineered based on the ride starting from a stop at that point. So the answer to getting proper performance is usually to trim the ride as it goes through the blocks. It would be better to put the block brakes higher up on the ride (so the train would be slower to begin with) but sometimes that isn't practical.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Thanks for all the info guys. I pretty much understood the concept of what blocking and triming are for, I still can't help to wonder if there is a better way to handle all the issues involved. Anyways, you both opened my eyes to a couple of things I never realized were involved in that equation. I'm just one of those die hard purists that hates anything that ruins the pacing, or destroys the feeling that the ride is actually under control. Maybe I'm a little stubborn, but when I recieve my engineering degree in a few years I'll let you both know of another way to solve all the problems with triming/blocking areas in the middle of perfectly fine track layouts. Enjoy the rest of your week-end as I'm off to Buffalo and the Silver Comet as soon as I finish these damn math calculations.

Jon Blakemore

Wood - anything else is just an imitation