Formula Rossa takes the crown but it looks rubbish (POV)

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Trim: The Ride. I must confess I didn't really know much about the layout, other than the immense launch. If I had, I perhaps wouldn't have been so excited about this ride!

Doesn't look as chaotic as I305, regardless of trims.

Four months ago, I said:
...launch slower, or put more trims on that first hill. Slow the ride down. Doing that kills the high speeds through most of the course, kills or weakens all the air, and leaves you with...

launch and meander.

...and it's tough to get excited about that. I'd love to be wrong though!

I hate it when I'm not wrong. That looks like the largest, fastest, most expensive Vekoma Roller Skater I've ever seen. My 4 year old nephew will be thrilled.

Really? I mean, those are big, sweeping turns. What if it's still going 80 or 90? It's really hard to tell from a video.

It looks to me like it does exactly what it is supposed to do.

I hate to be part of the group that forms an opinion based on a POV video, but yeah, that looks monumentally boring. Fast, sure, but uninteresting.

I thought somewhere it claimed it was "based" on several famous formula-1 tracks around the world. How in the world you can quantify that is beyond me.

djDaemon said:
I hate to be part of the group that forms an opinion based on a POV video

I hate to be part of that group, too. In fact, I won't be. I'm with Josh on this--hard to tell from a POV video how fast it's going. The launch and first hill don't look all that fast in the video, either, but supposedly it's hitting ~150mph. That's insane. I'm doubtful the layout will feel like it's 'meandering' if I'm traveling close to 100mph. Those are some big-ass turns.

I've mentioned before that I'm more excited about the park as a whole, but this coaster seems like a nice part of it.

That certainly does not look like 150 mph. I'm thinking they launched it at a lower speed so that the POV camera wouldn't fly off. And the layout does not look *that* boring in my opinion. Looks like more airtime hills than I-305.

The video doesn't work for me, so here is a YouTube POV of the ride...

The sweeping turns do remind me of the turns on a race track, but it's still not my kind of coaster. I'd take Flight of Fear or even Storm Runner over these super-fast extreme coasters (like TDD) anytime!

20,800 Horsepower. That's amazing. I don't remember what Kingda Ka's is, but Dragster is something like 12,500.

Vater said:
I'm doubtful the layout will feel like it's 'meandering' if I'm traveling close to 100mph. Those are some big-ass turns.

That's the thing, though - it's just some big-ass turns leading into and out of some big-ass hills. Sure, there might be some airtime, but it just seems like something far more interesting could have been done with the money.

But, then it wouldn't have been simulating the experience of driving around a race track in an F1.

Exactly. :)

Raven-Phile said:
But, then it wouldn't have been simulating the experience of driving around a race track in an F1.

But its not a simulator, it's a roller coaster. The Intimidators really don't simulate the experience of driving a stock car.

I think the launch looks as fantastic as Ka's or TTD's. If the video is correct, it really looks like it barely makes it over those hills. I'm not saying that it does suck, I haven't ridden it. I'm just saying it looks boring after the launch (having experienced similiar launches), which I can definitely tell after the POV.

djDaemon said:

That's the thing, though - it's just some big-ass turns leading into and out of some big-ass hills. Sure, there might be some airtime, but it just seems like something far more interesting could have been done with the money.

That pretty much describes every non-looping coaster, doesn't it? ;)

But its not a simulator, it's a roller coaster. The Intimidators really don't simulate the experience of driving a stock car.

Oh, but it kind of is. It's a roller coaster that is intended to simulate the experience of taking a high-speed drive around a track in an F1 race car.

The whole point of this ride is to do that, the Intimidators, as far as I know, weren't intended to try and replicate a stock car. (that would take creativity, and going in a circle while turning left only.)

There's no question in my mind that the launch is a pretty amazing trick. It's the reason to like Dragster. But do it a few times, and it just seems routine. With nothing to back it up, I fear this would be boring as well.

It's not likely that I'll ever ride it, but I've been saying from the start that I wasn't that impressed.

I don't hate to be the one to judge from a POV because I'm pretty goshdarn good at it. It really isn't that hard to judge the dynamics of a ride from a mounted POV, especially when you've been riding coasters and watching POVs with an eye towards that sort of thing for years. You can tell that this thing crawls over the hills and is probably on average a solid 10mph under its design speed after the first hill (you can tell by the angle of the banking in the turns vs. the speed, the shape of the hills vs. how it travels over them, the shape of the lead ins/outs vs. how it travels through them). You'll get a moment or two of floater air if you're lucky on those hills and they're shaped like you should be out of your seat much more purposefully, and for much longer.

But.

It *can* be fixed. Remember this is still early in its existence, and if it rides like a snoozefest I'd bet the park is well aware of it. Even if it isn't quite hitting the advertised speed on launch (and really I have no reason to believe that it isn't), all that's keeping it from being AWESOMEOMGINTENSEWITHAIRTIMEFASTFASTFAST (a technical term) is a few of those copper fins. Take out a few of them and the ride performance changes drastically. It really is that easy. See also the semi-frequent adjustment of Sky Rocket's holding & mid-course copper fins earlier this year for an example. Now, it was *always* designed to launch into brakes (though apparently that got forgotten as it was being built), so they're never going to take out all of them, but they don't need to. Get that extra 10mph or so at the top of the first hill and suddenly we're back in the high-Gs & airtime.

But.

I'm not so sure that's ever going to happen. See also Intimidator's numerous problems when it ran as fast as it was supposed to.

We'll see.

Looks better than Dragster or Ka and probably even I-305, but I think Cheeta Hunt will be better than all of these.

Raven-Phile said:
20,800 Horsepower. That's amazing. I don't remember what Kingda Ka's is, but Dragster is something like 12,500.

Those are 20,888 metric horses.

Giant drawn out version of Rita with a head start and some kickers at the end?