Kings Island removing Son of Beast

They could sell the wood to Six Flags to fence off the low zones on thier B&M inverts...

..too soon?

There is definitely going to be a coaster there in the near future. I'm calling it now :) KI needs a good Intamin.

I'm not sure how much the new corporate management is willing to embrace ride shopping on price. Intamin's track record has never been good, even if the critical response over time to the rides has been good.

As much as it is playing fantasy Theme Park CEO, I'd really like to see a B&M Inverted there.

Not too many US parks are in a situation that warrants such a purchase and for my money the B&M inverted is one of the most solid designs around. Even the worst of them are still exceptional rides.

Yes, it's a 90's thing. But we're due for 90's nostalgia any minute now, right?

A quick RCDB search to confirm what I suspected shows that only three new B&M inverted coasters have been built in the USA in the past 11 years.

Time for a throwback. A solid B&M inverted could get me interested in Kings Island again.

Going back to Ensign Smith's comment to my prior comment...

I don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with building a really tall wood coaster. If anything, the Voyage has shown, especially with its performance this year, that it can be done successfully. Remember that last year, the Voyage was suffering from a number of unique ailments brought on by a combination of some deferred track work because of the expected train swap, and a set of horribly mismatched cars. Now that all 14 cars have gone through annual rehab together and some more routine maintenance has been performed, the Voyage has delivered some amazing rides this season.

More important, those of us who have ridden Son of Beast throughout its operating life can report that really none of the problems with that ride are positively connected with its 218' height. I am not aware of any recurring problems with the high parts of the ride, and the first drop was never a serious problem. The problems on Son of Beast started at the top of the second hill, where the high-banked curve was taken too slowly by the back of the train, causing the last two or three cars to fall to the right halfway through the curve. That was followed by the boring first helix, which is the part that caused the most trouble. That finished with the 160' high mid course brake, which was the setup for the 108' loop...which, again, was not a problem, but was probably too tight at the top for the Gerstlauer train to navigate. Coming out of the loop (or the straight track that replaced it) was the boring second helix, less problematic than the first, but still problematic. Aside on a few misplaced ledgers, the end of the ride was actually pretty decent.

To me, the big issue is one of how the energy is managed. Texas Giant, Hercules, Rattler, and Mean Streak all employed big, sweeping, high banked curves, helii, and other cool looking features that tended to completely ignore the mechanics of what the train is doing, often without proper mechanical support, resulting in poor quality rides. To make matters worse, carpenters who don't fully understand the problem tried to fix the rides by slowing them down, which is quite often the exact wrong thing to do. Or by stiffening them instead of properly supporting them, again, the wrong response to the problem.

The bottom line is that the problem with the 1990's mega-woodies is not that they were too tall. The problem is that they were improperly designed.

Incidentally, if you measure vertically from the top of Lift #1 to the bottom of the lowest dip on The Beast, that ride is approximately 200 feet. Of course, there is so much track (not to mention brakes) between the bottom of the first drop and the bottom of the ride that it loses a lot of energy before it gets to the bottom.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Lord Gonchar said:

A quick RCDB search to confirm what I suspected shows that only three new B&M inverted coasters have been built in the USA in the past 11 years.

That's 2 new ones and 2 relocations of a used ride. Nonetheless, your point remains 100% - B&M's best product, IMO. And KI still lacks an adult full-circuit invert.

Lord Gonchar said:

A quick RCDB search to confirm what I suspected shows that only three new B&M inverted coasters have been built in the USA in the past 11 years.

rollergator said:

That's 2 new ones and 2 relocations of a used ride. Nonetheless, your point remains 100% - B&M's best product, IMO. And KI still lacks an adult full-circuit invert.

2006 - Patriot
2004 - Silver Bullet
2001 - Talon

:)

Great points Dave. One thing about the "plug n play" Intamin wooden coasters is that a lot of it is the quality of the ride design and who is behind the whole ride. Curiously, Intamin subcontract a lot on those rides. They provide the ride control system, trains, lift and brakes. Rocky Mountain Constructions (who did the brilliant New Texas Giant) built both El Toro and T Express in South Korea. Stengel engineering office delivered a solid design and RMC did their magic assembling a great structure for it. The "plug n play" track was delivered from Germany and assembled on top of the RMC structure. I know it sound shocking, but I did see T Express getting built and it was traditional wooden coaster construction until the premade track was bolted to the ledgers.

T Express basically succeed at what Hercules and others could not do: take a high speed banked turn at 65 mph and suffer no issues with it.

Perhaps my argument would be more correct if expressed in terms of speed rather than height. Voyage's top speed of 67 mph is reached at the bottom of the first drop, which is one of a series of three relatively straight (i.e., uncurving) drops/bottoms that begin the layout. In fact, serious laterals don't begin until the spaghetti bowl, halfway through the ride.

Here's where I'm going with this. It's been my utterly unsubstantiated opinion that a trains's negotiation of laterals is far more devastating to track integrity than it is to straights. Forces on curves are far higher and more varying (or so it seems) that what is incurred on straight track. This being the case, as speed increases, so do these destructive forces on laterals. Trains shimmy, shuffling violently through turns that are not engineered (and maintained) perfectly. Which messes with track gauge, which worsens the train-to-track fit, all of which contributes to an ever more painful rider experience.

If so, then Voyage has precisely the best design for a high-speed woodie. That is to say, a significant portion of the speed (and most destructive forces) is bled off before any laterals come into play. But even so, with its high speed and intense curves, a mega-woodie like Voyage (or MS, or SOB, or Hades, or etc.) is going to be more challenging to maintain as a rider-friendly coaster than a more intermediate woodie. And this doesn't matter whether you're a Dinn or a Summers, or if your initials happen to include a G, a C,and an I.

Gonch: I kind of like your thinking. Just be aware that unfortunately you're more likely to get a ride like Patriot or Silver Bullet than a ride like Raptor or Alpengeist. Interesting that Kings Island lacks a B&M inverted coaster, yet they seem to have had more coaster-below-track coasters in their collection than anybody else!

Absimilliard: The one thing that bothers me is that my understanding is that Stengel did the layout for Son of Beast, and we know how well that worked out. But other than that....
That said, I would like to get a good look at the Intamin coaster train used on El Toro and the like. I haven't seen what those are like mechanically, but I think they are not merely bad copies of PTC's 70-year-old design, and I think that makes as much of a difference as the prefab track. Probably more.

Ensign Mike: Your opinion may not be entirely unsubstantiated, and you're getting at exactly where I was heading with the problems with the Summers/Dinn and Pierce mega-woodies. A lot of the trouble has to do with the trains. You've got a boxcar that can't negotiate the turns, and you run it through a layout that is nothing but curves...it's just asking for trouble. My understanding is that much of the track wear and damage comes, as you suspect, from lateral loads.

This was never a problem for Miller, Schmeck and Allen, because they had the good sense to put their turnarounds at the tops of hills. But as designs got more interesting, trains didn't get any better, and as you point out, tracks start having problems. Track gauge, incidentally, is really only a problem because the train isn't going fast enough. I have a photo of the inside rail on Ravine Flyer II on its last curve before the station. The photo was taken on the last weekend of the opening season, and there is not only no wear on the guide rail, but the guide rail is rusted. That's because the train takes that curve fast enough that it doesn't ride on the inside rail. Clearly the gauge is a little wide right there, but it isn't a problem because the train is moving fast enough to stay stuck to the outside rail.

What all this tells me is that instead of writing off really big wood coasters, the better answer is to look at them critically and understand why they have been problematic. That knowledge should make it possible to solve the problems and come up with a design that works.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I enjoyed it opening year, but if I recall did not get many rides on it after that. The first drop was splendid, I liked the bracing rawness of the first helix, and the loop was delightful - I don't know what it was about that loop but it just seemed to go on and on forever, compared to most standard vertical loops. It just felt really weird.

That being said, I'm happy to see the park coming to some sort of conclusion on the ride's story. If I were a betting man, I'd put money on KI's next big coaster coming in 2014, but I doubt we'll see anything in SOB's location for a long time. The park has a lot of other land to work with, and I'm not sure what they could build with the sort of scope and scale that would fit that terrain, especially so soon after Diamondback. A full-on B&M terrain invert in that spot would be an absolute dream but I can't imagine what the business angle would be on that one. Stranger things have happened though.

I think you're right about the turns, Mike, and it definitely depends on the trains. PTC's don't turn very well. The GCI Flyers work better, and Thunderhead just blew my mind. In theory, the Timberliners should steer through turns better than any other train. I'm probably biased, because the dude who designed them explained some of the finer points about their function to me, but it makes sense to me. The original SOB trains... I'm not even sure what to make of those. They were Frankenstein creations at best.

I agree 100% about a B&M invert for KI. They didn't have aB&M until 2009, 15 years behind the curve. It would be nice to have 2 high capacity coasters to offset the Vekomas.

RideMan said:

Absimilliard: The one thing that bothers me is that my understanding is that Stengel did the layout for Son of Beast, and we know how well that worked out. But other than that....
That said, I would like to get a good look at the Intamin coaster train used on El Toro and the like. I haven't seen what those are like mechanically, but I think they are not merely bad copies of PTC's 70-year-old design, and I think that makes as much of a difference as the prefab track. Probably more.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Dave, the trains are not really a factor at all. Give them them terrible trackwork with a terrible design and they will run like garbage. Take a look at this "gem": http://www.rcdb.com/1368.htm?p=28645 . Its basically a Stengel designed, RCCA built, Intamin Plug n Play trains, brakes and fast chain lift hill coaster. Its got the SOB large helixes and little airtime philosophy and even if it has the same trains as El Toro... The ride is still one of the worst in the world.

Stengel second woodie that he designed was this: http://www.rcdb.com/967.htm?p=15029 . The Bandit is in Germany and is again a terrible ride. Stengel took the Cyclone layout, mirrored it and then RCCA was given the task to build this monstruosity. Even if the german TUV requested that 30% more wood than necessary be used in the structure, the ride is still total garbage. It opened in 1999 with those Intamin trains that are bad copies of PTC articulated two rows cars. http://www.rcdb.com/1081.htm?p=19977 . The lap bar piece bang your legs and give you bruises. You got shaken to death at the bottom of each drop. The turns were taken so slow and were so banked you felt like you were falling down to the ground.

They ran so bad that they were replaced after a year by the SOB Premier Rides trains and they are actually an IMPROVEMENT!

Lord Gonchar said:
2001 - Talon

I wasn't counting this, since I'm already looking at 2013 model year. I stand corrected.

I think a Dive Coaster would be nice in that area. Either way, I'm hoping for a B&M.

Eric Hossfield said:

The only ride that can compare to the epic failure of this ride is Ring Racer

And The Bat.

And windjammer.

Does B&M design custom inverts? I'd love to see something that takes advantage of the great terrain under the mountain of arsenic-laced scrap wood that currently inhabits the space. Maybe even one that interacts with TCFKATG...

and Drachen Fire?