Ghost Town coaster had crack in the seat bracket

It figures.

I am going to be in that area next week, and was planning a stop at ghost town to ride the coaster :( .

Looks like it will have to wait another year.

Poor Ghost Town, its one hit after another.

I hope they do well enough this year to be able to afford another *not as expensive* major attraction, say a spinning coaster off the Mountain

How unfortunate, and why do they keep referring it to as "a new coaster"? Its been around how long with the original trains, and these trains crack after the first opening day. I would be pretty upset if I were them with how much effort they have been putting into it to come down to a train manufacturers error.

This is hardly unexpected. The trains were built by a company that had never built a coaster train before, and they had a very limited amount of testing they could do before the ride opened. They really had no idea what the dynamic loads were going to be like on the seat frame. The reason for going back to the foundry would be if there is a problem with the steel causing it to crack...but if it is just a stress crack, then the answer is to either reengineer the bracket or to engineer a reinforcement, build the fix and put it into place. That doesn't have to be a long, drawn-out process. It just means there is a service bulletin out now on all steel coaster trains built by Rotational Motion regarding seat frame brackets. :)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

All one of them, Dave? lol

Why would they go with a company that has never built a coaster train before?

Seems to me that they would have been better off going with intimin or someone else.

Not exactly sure what exactly the relatiosnhip is between Rotational Motion and "Advantage Rides Manufacturing" (that *is* the old ARM, right... Dave?). Tempted to suggest it's the same people in charge.

Also says on their site "We are authorized factory service for Tivoli Manufacturing and Dartron Industries. Our relationship with these and other companies enable us to perform factory approved repairs." I tend to think their industry professionals who just haven't built an actual coaster train before. Fairly confident this will be a short-term delay in operation...and I hope to be right just this once. ;)

Advantage Rides is not ARM. ARM-UK got bought by Chance Rides, and in fact was the fabricator for all the Inverters before Chance bought them. ARM-US is run by somebody in the Bates family organization (I forget who) and builds drop towers and kiddie rides, with much of the fabrication farmed out, I believe, to Larson.

Tivoli was always represented in the US by AmTech, so much so that until recently rides like the Force-10, Orbiter, Scorpion and Quasar were often identified as AmTech rides in spite of the attached Tivoli nameplates.

The fact remains that the Ghost Town coaster train is a totally new design. The point is, that problems have appeared in what is basically a prototype is hardly unexpected, and has no bearing on the suitability of the company for completing the job. I'm with Gator; I expect the coaster to be operating again before this season is out.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.