Future of Bolliger and Mallibard

IF you have been to six flags chances are you have ridden a Batman the ride and if you have been to any other parks you have ridden a floorless, dive coaster, stand up or any other 4 across coasters. You have ridden Bolliger and Mallibard

If you a fan of these coasters like I am you will hate to hear this and you might agree.

Are the Bolliger and Mallibard coasters going to turn into today's arrow coaters?

If you have ridden Riddlers Revenge, or Scream at Magic Mountain Kumba at Busch Gardens Africa or even Iron Wolf. You might of noticed how rough they are becoming.

I am just noticiing this but, I know this isnt a case for all their coasters because they are all great but some are becoming rough.

Here is my question are the parks not maintaining them correctly or are the coasters the arrow loopers of tomorrow. Tell me what you think

They are definitely not becoming the Arrow loopers of tomorrow. Arrow loopers are just simply horribly designed rides with terrible transitions and rolling stock.

Most "rough" B&M's may not be maintained as well as they should be. However, some new B&M's like Six Flags Over Georgia's Goliath have certain track spots where there's a terribly uncomfortable vibration in the vehicles. Nobody really seems to know why.

I'm convinced there's a bad train on Goliath, Kraxle. In two trips this year, I had rides with and without huge vibration at the bottoms.

Honestly, aside from Iron Wolf which I've not ridden but understand is phenomenally rough, I can't really imagine a Beemer being any more than slightly rough. I've been on Batman and the Scorcher on bad days and ya know what? Still puts the average Arrow loopscrew to shame.

Yeah I think that i phrased it really wrong as that i was meaning to say in the next 30 years will these coasters be as rough as some arrow looprs. Its been over 10 years for Kumba and its gettting worse every year on my annual Busch Gardens trip but i still love it.

Goliath at Georgia I didnt have any vibration on it so i dont know wat that is

I only seem to notice the vibration on tracks filled with sand/dirt (that goes for Intamin's Storm Runner, too). Actually, the only exception I can think of is Talon, which I've never noticed a vibration on (paging Dannerman).

Was back in Orlando last Spring Break and had chance to ride Kumba for first time. Found it to be an excellent ride, although I did like Montu better. They're all going to get rougher with age, especially if the parks neglect the upkeep. Kumba still has alot of life in it. In general, I've always really enjoyed B&M rides, although I'm sure there are exceptions out there.

Yeah I love Kumba it was my first B&M but I am begining to think that the problems with it might not be with the maintance because Busch Gardens seems to take care of alll their other coasters with care except Python which blowed but I still loved got taken down.

I have rode a few b&m's myself, and found a select few to have a couple problems.

Inverts- I have found these to be the best as far as giving the best and smoothese rides. Raptor is by far the worst with the quick turn before the end beating you up, but its really enjoyable. Same goes for Great Bear and Talon.

Floorless- These seem to have a problem with Vibration with the wheels, probably because its underneath you as opposed to feeling it above you where it probably would shake more. Horrible on Batman Dark Knight @ SFNE and really noticeable vibration on Dominator at Geauga Lake. Same with standups im sure as Mantis is God-aweful, with vibration and head bashing.

As far as the Hypers/Megas go they seem to have a great fan base and seem to rank really high in the coaster polls, so i would seem to find them pretty enjoyable based on this, although i have yet to ride one.

The dive machines are a hard breed because we only have one here in the US but i havent got a chance to ride it yet, but might be able to ride Griffon next year, so i dont know much about them yet.

The Flyers are the same with the above dive machines to me.

All in all i think the problem with B&M's recently has just been the lack of a real new layout with some of their existing coaster types, such as the invert. I think that has to do with the companies of the parks that purchase them, seems most have the same layout. B&M by far has made some of the better steel coasters i have been on so I'm not complaining sometimes i have to agree that the parks neglect them.

I doubt very much that the track will change much over time, but the trains do get a lot of wear. When the springs get sloppy or the wheels and bearings get nasty, they will be rougher. The Intamin rides suffer from the same issues.

Yeah about Griffon is its train going to be a giant floorless train or like shiekras. I know Shiekra is going to make a change in the future of trains.

I love B&M's but they need to mix it up more and come out with some new features the flying coasters are not as great

Tatsu is great.

I still prefer some of B&M's older designs (Iron Wolf, Batman the Ride). If the trains were replaced every so often on them maybe they'd run smoother. I believe Iron Wolf is still using Intamin trains.

Most Arrows were state of the art when they were built. Same for B&M, but they advanced the state of the art. In twenty years, posters to coaster boards will be laughing about B&M only calculating forces every meter the same way people today talk about Ron Toomer designing rides by bending coat hangers.

The designers and engineers of tomorrow will look at today's B&M and Intamin standouts as a starting point, not a bar to be reached. And people will be saying, "thank goodness they're finally tearing down (B&M coaster) to put in a decent ride!" It's progress.

Iron Wolf has been rough from the start. Ridler's Revenge and Chang were smooth for a year or two but got rough. I think this has a lot to do with the position and the restraints. If I weren't pounding my head into the harness I could ride Iron Wolf all day.

Batman and Kumba were also smooth in the beginning but all rides rough up after a few years. The rough rides couldn't compare with how bad SFGAM's Shockwave and Drachen Fire and Steel Phantom were. The Arrow mega loopers were a rough ride from day one. I couldn't even bring myself to take a final ride on Shockwave before they took it down because the headache wasn't worth it. Even the smaller Arrows like the Demon are pretty bad.

I noticed some bad spots on Raging Bull this year with the vibrations but, those seats are so comfortable it's really not that bad. I wish I could have the B&M hyper seats as chairs in my home.

I doubt very much that any B&M that you perceive as rough can't be fixed by new springs (and I don't think Iron Wolf is "rough," it's just too much direction change too fast for that kind of ride). Batman at Six Flags Great America was the first inverter and it sure seems smooth to me. Raptor is running better than ever after 12 years. These rides aren't going to "age" like Arrow coasters because Arrows weren't smooth in the first place!

I rode Kumba recently and found this ride to be as great as it's ever been. It got a new paint job recently and has the great forces everyone craves on a coaster. If anything it has gotten better with age.

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Jeff said:
I doubt very much that any B&M that you perceive as rough can't be fixed by new springs (and I don't think Iron Wolf is "rough," it's just too much direction change too fast for that kind of ride).

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If that were true, wouldn't it have been rough from the start? I know PGA's Vortex was glass smooth the first 3 or 4 seasons. Since then, it's been as brutal as the worst of the Vekoma hang n' bangs. PGA's Top Gun on the other hand was and still is glass smooth, is it really possible that parks like PGA, SFGAM, and PCAR would allow the springs/bearing etc. to go to crap on their early stand-ups and not on their inverts, if this theory is true? I agree more with the theory that certain types just aren't aging well.

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BogeyMon said:
Most Arrows were state of the art when they were built.

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This I diasgree with. Arrow coasters were sloppy engineering and lazy in many aspects even brand new. Compared to other coasters of the day (Schwarzkopf) they looked like amatuer engineering. Do I need to quote my old "Arrow from 1976-1998 was a bunch of crappy, lazy engineers" rant that I tried hard to and couldn't get anyone to disagree with? :)

I disagree with that as well. When I rode Viper (SFMM) for the first time, I thought it was awesome, but those rough transitions were there even back in 1990. It's just that I didn't have the smoother B&M's to compare it to back then, nor was I concerned with what was "rough" back then. I figured coasters were suppose to be a little rough and tumble. People didn't whine nearly as much as we do today. Today, *everything* is rough...

Agreed, but the concept of rough today is a 2 sided coin. Back in the 80s I had a good 50+ coasters under my belt......if my memory serves me correctly of course we didn't have too many butter smooth coasters like B&Ms, but I also believe that coasters weren't as rough as today. So, today we have a much wider range to experience....much smoother coasters which can spoil us, and much rougher coasters which can sour us.