Fun Spot Mine Blower roller coaster to get partial RMC treatment

It’s been a few years since I last rode Mine Blower (worst name ever, btw) but I didn’t think it was nearly as bad as current reports make it to be. I mean I believe it, but what happened? Isn’t that a Gravity Group? I guess it’s no secret that The Voyage is a money pit but I attributed that to length and overall aggressiveness. How are their other, smaller rides faring?

The excitement is building in the roller coaster community over the retracking project that is currently underway.

Whoever is writing their copy is really working without a net.

That would be a good friend of mine, so, you know, maybe understand that's what PR people do.

I haven't been on it since it was new, and I thought it was fine. It does an awful lot for the confined space, and I rather enjoyed it. My assumption is that they're likely using this track on the inversion, which from a maintenance standpoint makes a lot of sense.

I have been on it once. It was about a year or so after it opened. It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad ride. But when it reopens I'll give it another chance.

Jeff:

That would be a good friend of mine, so, you know, maybe understand that's what PR people do.

I understand. Just poking a little fun at the hype machine.

Pardon my ignorance, but is this the same type of retrofit which RMC performed on Lightning Rod? If not, is Mine Blower the first ride with the 208 retrack?

just wondering if we have any data on how this will hold up over the years.

I believe that Tremors and Timber Terror at Silverwood was the first with ReTraK.

BrettV:

I have been on it once. It was about a year or so after it opened. It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad ride. But when it reopens I'll give it another chance.

Same here... Rode it a few months after it opened and the thing felt like it had been neglected for years... The tracking was completely horrible, especially for a brand new ride. I don't even want to know how the thing feels today...

The RMC retrack will be a huge welcome. Now to wait until they do the entire thing (hopefully?).

I rode it last November, and honestly, I have ridden a whole lot worse. It really only had one really bad spot on it, a turnaround that was just nasty. But that's part of the problem. If you have a bad spot on the track, it will cause the train to start oscillating and make the rest of the ride run poorly. I first understood this after a look at the Starliner at Cypress Gardens. There was a spot on that ride on the turnaround where the outside rail wasn't cut right, it was a bump that pushed the train about 3/4" to the left in the middle of the turn, when the ride forces were holding the train to the outside rail. It wasn't bad; it was a noticeable jolt, but not really even objectionable. What you could see, though, was that there was a beautiful smooth, straight wear line on the top steel all the way to the turnaround. From the turnaround to the end of the ride the wear line was ragged and uneven, showing that the train was chattering from the bump on the turnaround all the way to the end of the ride.

Personally, I think this was a missed opportunity for the Gravity Group. They knew Mine Blower had problems, and they probably understand better than anyone else exactly what the problem is. It would have been an ideal place to show off their engineered wood track product on that very turnaround. Instead they're going to break the Commandment of Gravity ("Thou Shalt Not Steel") with this RMC project.

Of course the most important takeaway here is that Fun Spot cares enough to fix their imperfect coaster. no matter how they go about it, that's the key to keeping the ride popular and the park busy.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.