Maurer Sohne warns of X-car flaws, urges Universal to close roller coaster

delan said:
Hey hey hey, don't poke fun :-) I too have my lemon chill contacts :-). Actually I heard from a few leads at Universal. Now I know the workers are not privy to such things, but I thought it was interesting that three different people told me the same thing.

To be fair, Someone that works in the area, in the industry also told me it was originally supposed to be a B&M. I don't recall exactly if this is something he told me, or if we were talking about something else and I'm relating it to this, or what, but I seem to remember being told maybe part of the reason was that the buildings at USF were actually used as offices on the 2nd floor (in the area they wanted to build the B&M, which would have went over the buildings like the one in Japan), where as the ones in Japan were mostly facades past the first floor.

RideMan said:

What happened is that once they got the ride built and opened, they put a strain gauge on the coupler and discovered that the actual loads are higher than what they had calculated. Apparently those actual loads are in fact higher by enough that they now have concerns about fatigue of the coupler components.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

It's all those guests of exceptional size! (present company included) :-)

UO just posted to their FB page that HRRR will be down for an undetermined period of time. Of course, some have responded with some knowledge of/from this M-S bulletin.

The only other X-Car I've ridden was Drayton's, and I'm a pretty big fan of the rides (even though the beyond-vertical lift wasn't entirely comfy). Hoping they get the coupling issue resolved fairly quickly...

It'd be nice if they had it back up by December. I want that credit!

You'll change your mind on that one once you've ridden it.

I thought so too, lol. That was the most waisted 90+ minute wait of my life.

Tekwardo said:
...the most waisted...

So they make you wear a corset as part of the ride restraints? ;)

Well...have you seen the way that lap bar works?

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

LOL, I hate that there isn't any spell checker on this computer.

Yeah, actually you're right, Dave. It does kind of fit.

I rode it last month and it was good the car was stopped for
3 or 4 minutes at the bottom of lift hill. When we launched we went through the whole ride with no trim brakes(i assume because no one was on the course)
That was a whole lot of air time. I was just wondering when they do that if the car is going faster than normal causing more stress on the bar.

I'm surprised by the amount of people that don't care for it. I thought it was a great ride with tons of air. There was however, tons of downtime when I was there.

Definitely a lead-car ride IMO. The back end offers little in terms of air, since the drops are pretty shallow after the first one. It's almost entirely the front end hopping onto the next block where you get the good airtime. YMMV... :)

Well I was in the front seat of the front car so I guess that explains it. :)

I totally loved that ride. Seriously, with ZZTop's Gimme All Your Loving playing...pure bliss...