Intamin Inverted Impulse Coasters

I've only ridden two of these, but both times, several seats were roped off. Problem or coincidence?

Coincidence. It really has pretty much the same hydraulic restraint system as their drop towers and lapbars use. In many situations it's just easier to rope off a row than do work on the train.

I've yet to see a hydraulic lapbar fail to stay closed but have seen them fail to open many times. Anywhere from bad diodes to sticking valves causes it.

Usually it takes too long to fix the problem to justify than roping a row off. Getting someone out isn't hard. There are manual valves that open up that will release the lapbar unless the cylinder ceases, then it would require removing the lock mechanism to unload the guest. The later is extremely unlikely in any case.

I've seen them have to remove the lock mechanism on a seat on S:ros at SFDL. Generally they do it manually but they actually had to remove the mechanism.

It depends on when you went PNE_man. Intamin sent out a maintenance bulletin after one of it's Inverted coaster started developing stress fractures in several of the seats. Hydraulics are easy to replace. New seats, on the other hand, take a bit more time because they must be custom ordered.

*** Edited 12/30/2005 1:23:25 PM UTC by Fun***

It might also have to do with the seatbelts having a problem. Nothing with the restraint system of the whole train.

You roped off seats on Impulse coasters more often since there's only one train and fixing the problem would shut the entire ride down. On other coasters, they'd transfer off the train fix the problem and put it back on the track.

Easier to rope a section off than shut the train down for repair.