Millennium Force/TTD seat belts

It still amazes me that the B&M hyper coasters have the simple clamshell restraints with no belts and can accomodate more riders with no accidents, yet Intamin has all these issues.

Last year I was able to ride at 6'3", 250lbs with slack on both MF and Dragster. MF was sometimes close, dragster always had 2+" of room easily.

This year im at 6'4" and 260lbs so it may be closer. Lost a pound or two in past few weeks, so im hoping another 5 by season start... 8 weeks, 5lbs... I can do it!

Chitown the answer you are looking for is that B&M is a better company with better engineers ;)

B&M also integrated a lapbar minimum position feedback. The best Intamin has done so far is on Kingda Ka. There is a button that the hosts press that says "Restriants are in the Minimum Position for Largest Guest" above the button and below it states "Push to verify all Restraints Checked."

It seems that Intamin has been avoiding radio transmission of logic. They probably do that for reliability reasons. :)

Why is it necessary to press a button to initiate the check? It requires two more contacts on the bus bar right alongside the contacts that release the bars. The system should be entirely passive: once all of the bars are down, the green light should come on. This isn't brain surgery.

Making sure that all the limit switches are in the correct position and not jumpered is another matter entirely, but that is beyond the scope of the project. :) Personally, I'm not a big fan of limit switches to identify lap bar positions because invariably they get damaged to the point where people are jumping up and down on lap bars that are down too far already, just to get a green light.

My question is, how do you determine a minimum lap bar position? I mean, for some people the bar could be halfway open and do a great job of securing the person in the seat (for instance, on Millennium Force, once the bar is ANYWHERE past my knees, I'm not going anywhere) while for others it could be rammed into the gut and still let the person slide out. If you set a minimum bar position, you're saying that you can let the train go if all the bars are at that minimum position, and therefore you really have to make sure that the minimum position is secure for the smallest rider you can put on the thing.

Well, if you're going to do that, why bother making the bar adjustable in the first place? Why not go back to a bar that is either "open" or "closed" so that you don't need a complicated checking mechanism to determine whether it is closed enough?

(Of course that would require a re-write of ASTM F 2291 section 6, but that needs rewritten anyway...)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Amen

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macho nachos said:
Ride of Steel I have observed that the opposite is true. A heavy man is more likely to fit because of his "gut" which rides above the lap bar/belt area. A heavy woman has more problems fitting because her weight is most likely in her hips and thighs, which is the area that the belt goes across. I might be wrong, but this is what I've typically observed in the station.
Jeff Reim it is hard to give you a yes or no answer because it depends on your body type. In all honesty, I would definitely shed a few pounds before the trip just to be safe.

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DEFINATELY true. My husband is around 220 and about five eight, and he had problems getting into MF last year. I'm about five foot eight and weigh about 190 and I had no problems at all. He had no issues with dragster though.

I'm interested to see if they DO do something to adjust the belts a bit. =) will make my yearly trip to CP a bit more enjoyable, minus a mopey husband. LOL

Last year I did fit on both MF and TTD with a size 42 waist. I don't know how I did it, but I made it. It was a tight fit more on MF then TTD. Now I don't have to worry about since I lost 52 lbs, and am a 36 waist. One of my proud acheivements.

Actually I think its like the person above stated. It depends on where your body takes on the weight. Around the waste, and hips aren't a good thing. Check the test seat at the entrance. I'd think it'd be pretty embarrassing to find out after you had waited in line.

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RideMan said:
My question is, how do you determine a minimum lap bar position? I mean, for some people the bar could be halfway open and do a great job of securing the person in the seat ... while for others it could be rammed into the gut and still let the person slide out.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

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The lapbar should be in the correct position which is: "The lapbar must be placed such that its pad touches the rider's leg between their hip and half way from their hip to their knee. If the lapbar is prevented from touching their leg in the prescribed manner for any reason then they are not to be permitted to ride."

I have personally gotten out of a locked Millennium Force lapbar that was just under 2" above my leg at the midpoint between my hip and knee. It should be noted that the ride was safely parked and not operating at the time.

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RideMan said:
For instance, on Millennium Force, once the bar is ANYWHERE past my knees, I'm not going anywhere.

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As someone who has check your lapbar on several occasions on Millennium Force, I can safely say that is not true. Maybe you have the sense not to unbuckle your seatbelt and the experience to know when you have to hold on in case of an emergency. Your statement does not always hold true for someone of your stature.

I would tend to agree with you on that one. I do think that if I could rotate my legs in the same direction and find the leverage to pull myself up, I could get out. This is not the case with Dragster though, which of all the iterations of this seat design makes the most sense. Because your knees are higher than your ass, and the bar (with a bent post so as not to crush your goodies) generally ends up slightly lower than your knees. That's a good design, and similar to the B&M speed coaster aside from not being able to touch the floor.

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RideMan said:
My question is, how do you determine a minimum lap bar position? I mean, for some people the bar could be halfway open and do a great job of securing the person in the seat ... while for others it could be rammed into the gut and still let the person slide out.

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to which SteelMonsters replied:
The lapbar should be in the correct position which is: "The lapbar must be placed such that its pad touches the rider's leg between their hip and half way from their hip to their knee. If the lapbar is prevented from touching their leg in the prescribed manner for any reason then they are not to be permitted to ride."

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Ah. You misunderstand my question. The issue was one of adding compliance testing to the lap bar design, and your answer actually illustrates my point quite nicely. The position you describe is going to be different for every rider. This means that there is no way to detect it mechanically. If you put a mechanical device on the lap bar that indicates when it is safe for *me* to ride, it may allow the lap bar to be in a position that will allow *you* to slide out. If the device is calibrated to make the ride safe for *you*, *I* might not even fit...but some kid can still slide out. THAT is the problem.

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(SteelMonsters again...)
I have personally gotten out of a locked Millennium Force lapbar that was just under 2" above my leg at the midpoint between my hip and knee. It should be noted that the ride was safely parked and not operating at the time.

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RideMan said:
For instance, on Millennium Force, once the bar is ANYWHERE past my knees, I'm not going anywhere.

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As someone who has check your lapbar on several occasions on Millennium Force, I can safely say that is not true. Maybe you have the sense not to unbuckle your seatbelt and the experience to know when you have to hold on in case of an emergency. Your statement does not always hold true for someone of your stature.

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It doesn't always hold true, but it holds true for me, at least in terms of unintentional exit: once the lap bar passes my knee, I can't raise my leg far enough to pull my foot back from under the angle-iron on the car floor. My thigh is long enough that I can't slide backward in the seat far enough to drop my knee under the lap bar, which is what it would take to slide out from behind the lap bar. It's a kind of an interesting situation because even with a lot of space behind the bar, the geometry doesn't allow me to unfold enough to come out. It's particularly interesting because that wasn't the case on Superman at Darien Lake...if I had wanted out of that thing, I'd have been out.

Now, if the lap bar isn't down far enough to make the gap between the end of the lap bar and the tube on the side of the seat smaller than the diameter of my thigh, I can probably force my way out sideways, then up on the other side to get the other leg out, but that isn't going to happen as a result of anything that the ride does. If that happens, it's intentional...and there is very little that can be done about intentional acts. Remember, someone managed to actually climb out of a Togo stand-up mid-ride a few years ago. Most of us find it hard to get out of those things when they're *open*, let alone locked up and out on the course!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

(fixed a formatting problem)
*** Edited 3/3/2006 3:27:13 PM UTC by RideMan***