Drachen Fire Rumors Dispelled-or Not?

Jeff or Agent Johnson may be able to help. As I was searching RRC, I came upon a post that seemed to dispel all previous rumors surrounding the reasons for Drachen Fire's demise. It can be found at this link: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&threadm=qlq58uc8b97vjrfdndr2objcf42ru691no%404ax.com&prev=/groups%3Fhl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26group%3Drec.roller-coaster . Now, my question is, is there any sort of verity to this article whatsoever? Or is it a complete load of fodder? It sounds plausible enough, but I'm not sure if all of the pieces fit together.

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Welcome to Six Flags Great America, home of the fastlane and delay-ja vu! We have now officially been deemed the world-wide wait!

Well, that was an interesting story. Its the most reasonable that I have seen so far. Maybe true, maybe not the details appear to add up...

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Xcelerator-
0-82 in 2.3 seconds! =Wow!

That looks awefully beleivable, I think he is telling the truth. It would take a long time to make up a story like that.

The only question I have is, do parks hire contractors to "service" coasters? I would think a chain like Busch would do work like that in-house. Very interesting article. Certainly explains why no one would have any part in buying the ride.

all believable pretty much, except for calling the price tag on DF a "steal". Wasn't the asking price on the coaster $4.5M...before the cost of needed repairs...

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Florida needs an Intamin and/or CCI soon...Please!
We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams...

This report seems to make a lot of sense.

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Excalibur Crew for 2002!

Sounds good to me, then again, what the hell do I know. Could be a load of smelly stuff.

When I read it it sounded good to me, but there is one thing I really need clarifying... If a contract was signed with B&M, how did the park suddenly decide to use Arrow.

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|| Jonathan Hawkins ||
http://www.starcoasters.com
http://www.thrillspot.com

It does make since. I knew B&M had something to do with DF

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"The opposite of war isn't peace, its creation," Rent.

I *STILL* think it's all crap! Until @ some point either Arrow or B&M make an *official* statement saying that B&M designed Drachen Fire, I will not believe it.

Good story though....

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Besides, if we were really shutting down people we disagreed with, would Jeremy (2Hostyl) still be around? :) I think not. - Jeff 1/24/02

2Hostyl,

You still think it is crap? Come on... it was on the internet... don't you know that everything on the internet is absolutely and positively true?

Okay... enough is enough. Bad steel, bad design, roughness, down time, what ever... Basically, Busch had a coaster that was costing them money to maintain that had a relatively low ridership. They got rid of it. Sounds like a sound decision to me. Hate to break it to some, but parks are not in business to cater to a relatively small handful of people and re-open and maintain a SBNO coaster (that by many accounts was painful to ride) that they have raised to legendary status. As I said before... had it still been running, we would all be complaining how rough and painful DF is and that it should be torn down to put in a new and better coaster.

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Please, it's all crap. Never happened. All lies. It was always an Arrow project, period. Trust me. It's all about People Who Know(TM).

And to suggest that Anheuser-Busch can't get a loan? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. A company that size with good credit can get a loan for millions today if they so desire.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com, Sillynonsense.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

Didn't B&M publicly declare many times that they had absolutely nothing, whatsoever to do with DF?

Also, AFAIK, no park/designer/manfucaturer has EVER made a "multi-coaster contract" in the history of the world. Not Alton, not BGW, not CP, not SFMM. That's not the way the business runs. It doesn't make sense to run it that way.

So I think it's a load of crap.
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If you don't have it, get the Screamin' Serpent.

Put me in with the people who believe the talk of B&M designing is just that, talk. Was Drachen Fire an odd departure for Arrow? Sure, because Busch was paying for them to do so.

It was an experiment. Arguably, it failed. Busch has finally decided to write off the ride (figuratively, at least, if not literally) and scrapped it. Arrow and BGW have both gone on and built newer, better rides. End of story.

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--Greg
"The collective women in your life have more baggage than a Samsonite factory..."
My page

I don't buy the B&M tie-in either, but wouldn't you just LOVE to see a B&M floorless with DF's exact layout? I think it would be awesome!!

Later,
EV
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"Just remember, wherever you go, there you are." - Buckaroo Banzai

....note: just because I said it was "believable" does NOT mean that I believed it in its entirety....I know WAY too much about RRC to take stuff there as "gospel"...

I was also thinking about the "loan" thing...I mean, if a bank will loan ME money for a house, I'm absolutely SURE that A-B could get funds whenever they want it....

*** This post was edited by rollergator on 3/5/2002. ***

Its goin down and a woodies goin up the articale is crap an if it did reopen it wouldnt even be good get it in your mind df is no more

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1.Alpengeist
2.Montu
3.Incredible hulk
4.Kumba
5.kraken
6.Duling dragons
7.Gwanzi
8.Great bear
9.chiller
10.Loch Ness Monster

Holy unnecessarily long sig. Batman!

Mr. Alpengeist, the sigs here need to be less than 3 lines. Besides, no one cares what your top 10 is.

Also, please do us all a favor and read No 1 on the TOS carefully!

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- Peabody

*** This post was edited by Peabody on 3/4/2002. ***

MrAlPenGeisT:... I think that your signature is WAYYYYY too large, and I don't think I'm the only one who would agree, don't ya think? Nobody cares what your top 10 coasters are... and if they do... try listing them across horizontally!

Not to sound too "authoratative", but it's annoying when a signature is 10 times larger than the persons post.

[EDIT] Hmm... looks like somebody beat me to it! ;)

*** This post was edited by DawgByte II on 3/4/2002. ***

The first tip of that this is a bunch of BS is the statement that low ridership had nothing to do with the demise of Drachen Fire. The station was practically a ghost town. The trains rarely went out more than half full. Whatever the coaster's problems may have been, you can bet that Busch would have been willing to spend a lot of money on the coaster to keep it going if it had hour long lines.

Also, the description of what some of the problems were supposed to be doesn't seem likely. Steel quality is rarely an issue for roller coasters. They generally use low strength steel that causes very few problems with quality issues. Where problems usually come in is with the welding or just plain underdesign. Also, the couldn't repair it in the winter theory is ridiculous. If temperature is an issue, which seems extremely unlikely, you just wait for some of the 60 and 70 degree days that aren't all that rare in Virginia during the winter. For example, Willliamsburg is supposed to have highs in the 60's 4 days in the coming week. Several of the other technical and construction issues mentioned also sound kind of spurious.

*** This post was edited by Jim Fisher on 3/4/2002. ***