Maverick work has begun

Nice! Great pictures, thank you. Hat's off to CP and (yes) Intamin for getting this work completed so fast. Can't wait to ride Maverick and will make my reservations for a CP trip as soon as it opens to the GP.

I believe CP made the announcement on 5/8 while the new track is being installed today (5/23) - 15 days - impressive for all parties involved imo

I agree with you Thom that the turnaround time on this is nothing short of phenomenal.

Touchdown-the number I have always heard is 100 hours of operation.

I noticed the number of track piece changes as well. I am wondering if the design of the replacement track just happened to be 4 pieces, due to the original placement of the footers.

I am just confused to why they continued to run the ride when they knew they were going to replace track.

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Thom25 said:
I believe CP made the announcement on 5/8 while the new track is being installed today (5/23) - 15 days - impressive for all parties involved imo

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Personally that tells me that they knew this was going to happen well before they actually announced it, but I could be mistaken.

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SVLFever said:
I am just confused to why they continued to run the ride when they knew they were going to replace track.

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There are other reasons to run the ride, outside of certifying the ride itself -- operator training and the like, for example. Anything they can still get done during the downtime, why not?

*** Edited 5/23/2007 1:08:24 PM UTC by GregLeg***

They also need to be sure that all the blocks work, the launch is firing when it should, the brakes are working etc.

Well yeah. That would be part of "testing" the ride, right? ;)

PLus with the element changed, they may need to tweak the trim brakes after the tunnel, and/or the launch speed to tget the timing right forthe trains to have their 'flybys'.

Do you really think that replacing 120 feet of track and not changing the elevation is going to make any significant change in the timing of the ride? When it took a half second at most to navigate it in the first place?

Were the flyby's ever part of the actual marketing or is this just something that's a by-product of the twisty layout and the multiple trains?

I can't really remember, it just seems like something that would happen naturally on occasion regardless of the timing of dispatches or whatever.

I wonder if we'll notice the change. It looks like they only really replaced the actual 'twist' part, and not the leadins and leadouts. I wonder if it'll just feel a little funny through that section of track. With Intamin you're used to completely seamless transitions *** Edited 5/23/2007 3:23:24 PM UTC by DanLinden***

I'm not sure if the 100 hours (or whatever the so called requirement is) is on the trains or the ride in general in its finished state. I'm sure they have a good number of hours on the trains already. I've heard good reports about the way the ride was running (six trains, blocking issues, etc) before they discovered the problems so I'd imagine they are going to put Fred the dummy in there, get his readings, have the ride inspected/certified, and open it.

The latest releases from the park are still saying early June, so I don't think it's going to happen this weekend, but given what's already been accomplished, I'd say the chance of it opening this weekend are greater than 0% for sure.

They're also ending the Red Cross auction tomorrow at 8:30 am. Interesting... *** Edited 5/23/2007 5:01:21 PM UTC by MDOmnis***

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I wonder if we'll notice the change.

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Probably not, since no one has ridden it. Although, half of the people here have already written it off due to the "best" element (through no experience of their own) on a ride they have never ridden being taken away.

God forbid we wait for ONE actual review of a actual ride to even begin forming some type of opinion.

That said, I have a feeling that this ride will be so much fun you wont realize anything but the smile on your face when you hit the brake run.

I wonder why they had to weld that "bridge" there. It looks like they cut part of a "good" section off and merged the new track to it there instead of replacing the whole section.

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Jeff said:
Do you really think that replacing 120 feet of track and not changing the elevation is going to make any significant change in the timing of the ride? When it took a half second at most to navigate it in the first place?

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I really have no idea. I was just suggesting it as a possibility. A half a second could make a difference though when your looking at trains going 50mph.(73.3 ft/sec)
*** Edited 5/23/2007 6:17:15 PM UTC by Jason Hammond***

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Jason Hammond said:
A half a second could make a difference though when your looking at trains going 50mph.(73.3 ft/sec)

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Yes, if the track had been removed altogether. But it's probably within one or two feet of the original length which means the change in timing would be on the order of milliseconds.

Like I said, I was just suggesting it as a possibility that they may need to tweak it. "Tweak" as in Minor adjustment.

^I agree. Granted, it may not be MUCH, but an S-curve would *seem* to take less momentum off the train than a zero-g roll would. If anything, keeping the launch speed the same while making this change in trackwork would likely give the train a LITTLE more energy (speed) going through the remainder of the course. I said "a little"... ;)

Gregleg, I intentionally tried to imply in my previous post that a 15 day turn-around "confirms" (to some extent) all parites were aware of this potential issue for months (not days). If nothing else, this illustrates Intamin's customer service skills, which may in part be motivated by their legal obligations to CP? Hopefully this will throw some cold water on all the Intamin bashers.

^Good customer service is fine but it doesn't change the fact they delivered a faulty product.

There's been major problems now with Maverick, TTD, and WT. Even MF has had a few issues here and there but nothing super-major.

Maybe park operators know something I don't but if I were in the market for a new major coaster I would avoid anything Intamin-built like the plague.

Well....

They are aready sending empty trains around maverick's course as seen on pointbuzz. Here about 3/4 down the page is a link to a picture.

http://www.pointbuzz.com/cpplace.aspx?mode=thread&TopicID=20854&page=14

Interesting to see what is to happen next.

^^^ It was a heartline roll not Zero-g.

Also to the people posting about why it was running when they knew track would need to be replaced, they do that for crew training so they are not doing that last minute.

For rides where the crew is trained last minute only one ride comes to mind, Tatsu, if any of you have seen the building of Tatsu on discovery channel they even say the crew was trained right before the crowds were let in.