Dr. Diabolical’s Cliffhanger opens at Six Flags Fiesta Texas

My friends and I will be heading down to San Antonio in late Sept. for a ride on Dr. Diabolical. Hopefully the weather will be cooler by then. All the reviews I've seen so far have been positive.

I'm looking forward to going back down there as well.

This was a surprisingly great park with lots of great coasters.

Do any other B&M dive coasters have 7 seat rows or is this a new design?

Just remembered Emperor and that has 6… the others I checked were 8 and 10.

Was out there a month or so ago and saw them testing it. Looks like fun. Is it a Valravn clone or original design? I’ll probably wait for the fall at least to ride it when it’s cooler.

It's original.

7 seats seems odd, but maybe they have a lot of single rider joes down there willing to fill that last seat.

Why does it have to be single rider Joe? Why can't it be Max, or Rachel?

There are a whole lot of rides at WDW with three seats across.

I haven't done any research in to this, but I'd think that the number of even and odd numbered groups would be about the same.

RCMAC:

7 seats seems odd

It is odd.

There’s a joke in here somewhere about China’s one child policy.

Anecdotally, 3 across rides seem to have single rider lines. (Test Track, Radiator Springs, some S&S towers). I bet 2 is the most common party size with 4 being more commn than 3, but I’m wildly speculating.

Slinky Dog Dash has a point after fastpass merge where the line is split again--odd-sized parties into one side, and even-sized parties into the other. One side feeds the back half of the train, the other feeds the front half. It's quite clever, because it means no seat goes unfilled except possibly the last seat of the odd-half (if they can't find a single rider within shouting distance).

I don't know of another station anywhere that does this, but probably some should. Did they on Guardians? (I've not been on it yet).

Yes, Guardians does it as well.

In thinking about this 7 across seating I'm wondering what the reasoning was in choosing this. Although coaster trains aren't cheap per se, it would seem the cost of the additional seat for each row would be somewhat minimal in the overall construction cost, so why not go to 8 or 10 (since there are other trains that big)? Maybe size doesn't matter to SFSA? (insert your own joke here).

Seriously, I would like to know the logic behind the choice of seven/row, mainly from the business decision aspect.

Maybe they knew they could afford a six across, but decided to pay a little more and go with seven.

I suspect it isn't just about the cost of the train, but that instead there are some interactions between the layout and the width of the car, constrained by the space they had available.

Brian Noble:

I suspect it isn't just about the cost of the train, but that instead there are some interactions between the layout and the width of the car, constrained by the space they had available.

perhaps something to do with this?

where that ride was constructed is a fairly tight/small footprint area. IMO they kind of “jammed” it in there. They had to take out an old stage show arena.