Hagrid roller coaster in Universal Orlando still operating inconsistently

They should have hired a few more ride mechanics........

LoL.

But seriously they shouldn’t have hired Intamin.

Now that Maverick Mini, I mean, Copperhead Strike is 45 minutes away and Mack and RMC and S&S Sansei | Vekoma are making rides that offer what Intamin has offered as far as ride experience, I don’t know why we still see so many Intamin, of which many I’m a fan of, being built and still so unreliable.

I'm pretty sure Intamin is still the cheapest. You get what you pay for.

From what i have read supposed to have 7 trains ,3 are all that are running.also being affected by computer/sensor glitches. No soft open to work out these issues . Universal Creative designed the ride. Intamin built it and designed actual ride components. Had the same issues with Rip Ride and Rocket .It took them months after open to get moving walkway issues fixed .Here is hoping when they open New park down the road they leave time to test all rides thoroughly.

This is a sloppy mess. Whatever the issues may be, it's pretty obvious this attraction was rushed to open before it was ready. Universal's response - both from an operations perspective and their public messaging around it - has been wholly inadequate. I hope they learn from this and get some grown-ups involved in the decision making.

I had been wondering why Universal opted for Intamin on this one. It seems almost every one of their rides built in the last 15-20 years has and many continue to have uptime issues. I can see how a small park with limited budget might be willing to deal with the issues. Universal, however, has a much larger budget with guests spending much more to visit. With the theming going along with the ride, I just don’t understand why they didn’t spend the extra $8 million (total guess) to go with a manufacturer with a reputation for opening on time with minimal downtime.

When will they learn? I also love seeing all the fan boy excuses about the ride being overly complex and everything has growing pains, etc... I get the thought process because I was once a naive coaster enthusiast that believe that, too - but now I'm older and I see things like this as not only PR nightmares, but dollars circling the drain.

0g said:

I had been wondering why Universal opted for Intamin on this one. It seems almost every one of their rides built in the last 15-20 years has and many continue to have uptime issues.

There are many solid Intamin rides in China.

Richard Bannister said:

0g said:

I had been wondering why Universal opted for Intamin on this one. It seems almost every one of their rides built in the last 15-20 years has and many continue to have uptime issues.

There are many solid Intamin rides in China.

Intamin just opened a dueling sitdown/inverted coaster in China with no issues. They have a ton of rides running great in China, including Soaring with Dragons, the first of those Intamin rides to have forward/backward/forward launches, without the high speed transfer track though that seems to be causing the most issues on Hagrid. The Intamin everyone in America remember is quite different now. Like Vekoma, they have a brilliant young layout designer and they are pushing the envelope with amazing concepts and rides. Islands of Adventure new coaster coming to Jurassic Park should highlight the imagination of Camiel Bilsen, Intamin designer.

POV of Taiga, a new Intamin LSM coaster that just opened in Finland.

Benjamin Bloemendaal work was seen this year with Dragonflier at Dollywood and a new gen Vekoma, either a Shockwave or Firestorm was seen in the teaser video for the new Amikoo Park coming to the Riviera Maya south of Cancun, Mexico.

Lech Coaster POV, a Vekoma Bermuda Blitz in Poland:

Mack is currently the most expensive ride manufacturer and it still did not prevent them from messing up a contract in China this year. Sunac Land Wuxi (Sunac Land is the new name for Wanda theme parks in China after Wanda was forced to sell off their parks) was to open with a Mack Blue Fire clone last month... The ride won't open until the fall because the local safety commission found 2.1 million euro worth of track to be of poor quality, forcing Mack to remake it and ship it to China after. I was at the park last month and the ride had just started testing with two trains out of three.

If they still have Sandor running the show in the US, it doesn't matter how good their engineering is.

And, on that note, we cue the legal threats.

According to Linkedin , yeah he's still in charge of US operations

Richard Bannister said:

There are many solid Intamin rides in China.

Big difference between Intamin AG and Intaride US.

See Jeff's statement above.

So... has it improved at all ? (In recent months that is, hopefully)

There are now swarms of bees around the ride causing periodic closures.

I finally had a lap two weeks ago, with the signs out about early closures. We were stuck on the ride in the cave for about ten minutes.

Raven-Phile said:

I also love seeing all the fan boy excuses about the ride being overly complex and everything has growing pains, etc...

Sounds like what we've been hearing from Dragster lovers for 17 seasons. :)

I mean, growing pains usually last well into your teen years, right?

I stopped having Intamin Pains at 18.