Cedar Point announces Top Thrill 2 roller coaster

The trains look awesome and are a pretty nice bit of tech being machined aluminum. Also, in the renderings the wheels look massive? Not sure if that’s a rendering thing or if the actual wheels will be that large.

And the spike… Pantheon in the back car is fairly unnerving.

One of my favorite parts of announcement day is reading all the comments here after the announcement. Today did not disappoint.

The wheels on the demo at IAAPA did seem huge, but I only really have an old Arrow suspended guide wheel to compare to. These wheels are going to spend a substantial time going over a hundred miles per hour, so I imagine they have to be pretty robust.

Jeff:

These wheels are going to spend a substantial time going over a hundred miles per hour

That's kind of what I'm thinking about for the ride experience, this ride is going to traverse a HUGE amount of track very quickly (well, the same section a few times). The sustained speed and relative moments of solitude between towers is going to be great.

Part of me also thought "huh, they could have easily done a station fly-by" but quickly remembered why they obviously didn't do that.

Brian Noble:

It's like Wicked Twister and Dragster had a kid.

Are you saying that Wicked Twister just went out to get milk and cigarettes and should be back any moment?

Is it too soon to start a rumor the spike tower is sinking? 🤔

What's going on here, or over on Pointbuzz is nothing compared to what's on the various FB groups. All I can say is "whoa."

Hyperbolic overreaction on social media? That's unpossible.

The trains look incredible. In this video (around the 3:00 mark) they talk about speed, and how increasing the wheel size would be necessary to go faster than 100 mph.

We're all entitled to our opinion, but I don't see how this isn't a huge upgrade in pretty much every way. The back seat on the backwards launch might become my favorite moment on any roller coaster anywhere.

There was one video floating around that was especially cringe-worthy; basically a guy and his kid walking around the park after the morning's events, and when they arrive at the ride area they essentially ambush Tony Clark while he was clearly having a conversation with someone else and start asking him question after question (to Tony's credit he kept his composure); they essentially begged to get invited to media days in the process.

The best part, however, was when they first ambushed Tony the guy told them who they were, and he looked right at them and said, "who?". As if he was supposed to recognize them from their Youtube "popularity".

EDIT: Just because I never saw this video before, here is another quick video about the Lightning Train. Seems very versatile.

OhioStater:

The back seat on the backwards launch might become my favorite moment on any roller coaster anywhere.

I always liked 15-1 on Wicked Twister for that very reason. The straight down, unobstructed view of the ground below on the backwards spike below was incredible. While TT2 will have a much higher view of the ground, it will be obstructed by the seats in front of you. I am curious to see which I like better.

I will probably prefer the one I can still ride.

eightdotthree:

Also, in the renderings the wheels look massive? Not sure if that’s a rendering thing or if the actual wheels will be that large.

Jeff:
The wheels on the demo at IAAPA did seem huge, but I only really have an old Arrow suspended guide wheel to compare to. These wheels are going to spend a substantial time going over a hundred miles per hour, so I imagine they have to be pretty robust.

Pretty logical that for higher speeds, they'd use larger wheels.

For sake of analysis, if the normal wheels are 12" diameter, at 60mph (the base speed rating mentioned in the video), they'd rotate at;

Circumference = 2*pi*r = 2*3.1416*6 = 37.7 inches per revolution, or 3.14 feet per rev
so, at 60 mph*5280 ft/mi*1hr/60min = 5280 ft per min
Divide those two (5280/3.14) and you get roughly 1700 rpm on that wheel and bearing

For traveling 120mph, that's twice as fast, so you'd go 10,560 ft/min.
To keep the rpm in that same 1700 range, you'd thus need to double your wheel diameter up to 24" (10560 ft/min div by 6.28 feet/rev)

Makes sense that they'd design the whole system to keep wheel rpm constant.

Only drawback I see to the whole set-up is that by making the chassis out of aluminum, the trains will have a definite service life (like an aircraft's airframe). No welding or repair will ever be able to get you past the fatigue limit of the material;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_limit

Later,
EV

Guess no one remembers the wheels on Steel Dragon 2000 from 23 years ago.

Also, I can't imagine the feeling of height will be that much greater in the back seat than in the front when you're 400+ feet up.

That's actually the B&M train that they installed in 2013.

Original train: https://www.bannister.org/c...03sd2k.jpg

(hey, I know that guy)

Guess no one remembers the wheels on the Steel Dragon 2000 B&M train that was added 10 years ago.

Including me.

If you still want a powerful launch, Maxx Force at SFGAm was amazing. I rode the front seat and it took my breath away. It's an S&S, and was just built last year. I don't hear a lot about it, probably because the ride was pretty short.

S&S isn't exactly a gleaming example of quality engineering (looks at the yet-again-closed Steel Curtain), but I don't recall there ever being an incident of one of their launch coasters breaking a cable and injuring riders despite their rides having faster acceleration. Makes you wonder what they did but Intamin did not do.

Hell, Intamin's cable broke on Millennium Force, which isn't even a launch coaster.

LostKause:

If you still want a powerful launch, Maxx Force at SFGAm was amazing. I rode the front seat and it took my breath away. It's an S&S, and was just built last year. I don't hear a lot about it, probably because the ride was pretty short.

Not to be that guy, but it opened in 2019. You probably aren't hearing much about is because it's a four year old ride.

any chance they will turn the Power Tower West camera around to watch construction?