Ok, I'll cut straight to the point right off the bat. Hypersonic is incredibly short, incredibly intense, and incredibly fun. PKD could have named it Hypersonic XAC (for eXtreme Air Coaster -- both for the compressed air launch, and the insane airtime it provides.)
Ok, having said that, Hypersonic also provides several SERIOUS concerns. For the media day, they were only allowing 5 people on the "train" (which has capacity for 8), *AND* only one train was on the circuit. We timed the interval at about 3 minutes (sometimes quicker, sometimes longer). 5 * 60 / 3 leads to a rough capacity of only 100 pph. Ouch. Add onto that the fact that there were breakdowns, and 1000 tickets had been given out by some area radio station(s), and, well, you get the idea...
We only rode Hypersonic once. Managed to score a front seat ride in the process. The ride is
GREAT (if short) if they can work out the capacity issues. I observed 2 additional trains on the transfer tracks, AND there are 4 storage tracks, for a potential of 5 trains. As I said, only 3 were visible, and only one was in use.
The layout on this coaster is short and simple, but provides a pretty good ride. For all of 20 seconds from launch to brake run.
After loading in the station (incidentally there appears to be 2 separate loading positions in the station), the train is dispatched and moved by advancing tires around a curve to the launch section. There's a set of dragstrip lights at the launch point, although they weren't functioning. After a whoosh very similar to the Space Shot's compression (surprise, surprise), you get launched. WOW. Straight out, straight up, over a very sharp peak (which gives some VERY good ejector air), you plummet straight down. Then the train goes through a very sharply banked turn, over a bunny hill that provides EXTREME air, and you hit the brakes. That's it. Short, but to the point. This ride's a keeper, and a winner for PKD if the capacity improves. We figured at least 6 blocks (2 in station, advancing section, launch area, circuit, and back break run), which would allow for 5 train operation. (See "storage" above ;) )
After our one launch on Hypersonic, we hit the other open sections of the park. Hurler and Rebel Yell were both running, and were getting pretty minimal traffic. We took 18 rides on Hurler (we love that ride ;) ) and 6 on Rebel Yell (4 backwards, 2 forwards).
Overall, not a bad way to spend 4 hours. We were HOPING to get more rides in on Hypersonic, but that wasn't meant to be. The fact that Hurler was running more than made up for that, though ;)
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--Greg
http://www.pobox.com/~gregleg/
*** This post was edited by GregLeg on 3/23/2001. ***
