more 4D's are coming including launched!

For the record,

Arrow HAD to build the 4th, they were out of money and on the verge of bankruptcy. They had just ousted Alan Harris when Six flags gave them a hundred and fifty thousand to build a working prototype. Also, the prototype did'nt look anything like the production vehicle. So much weight was shaved off to lighten it up it was a big joke when they shipped it, then it blew apart after 50 test cycles ...oops ..back to the drawing board(sic)
*** This post was edited by Evil Coaster Designer 2/18/2003 7:05:35 PM ***
*** This post was edited by Evil Coaster Designer 2/18/2003 7:06:23 PM ***

I'm really getting sick of ignorant people bashing X because of it's down time(while knowing exactly nothing about how revolutionary the ride is), while making excuses for So-Cals other prototypes that have equal if not *more* downtime. Arrow did a fabulous job on X, but obviously didn't have the time left or money to flesh out the kinks in their first full fledged model. I agree with Tom, since the mid-July modifications, X has run more reliably than most people think. I feel MUCH more comfortable heading out to ride X than I do Xcelerator.

If what I'm hearing is true, there should be another one announced towards the end of the year. If it's in the region that I think it will be, it's safe to say the 4D will suddenly become the greatest ride on earth, and totally reliable, and everyone will deny they ever said a negative word about X(rolls eyes).
*** This post was edited by DWeaver 2/18/2003 7:32:55 PM ***

DWeaver, that was pretty specific stuff there...did you just say what I think you just didn't say...;)

bill, thinking he needs better connections...

No, Arrow did not *have* to do anything. They went bankrupt anyway, so how did X help them?

And no, Arrow did not do a good job with X. Say what you want about people making false claims, but how late did Xcelerator open vs X? Has Xcelerator gone down for a period of months to be fixed up? I don't think so.

-Nate

i doubt thrust X will be a 4th dimensional. I dont think that they would keep the X part. But it is possible

"No, Arrow did not *have* to do anything. They went bankrupt anyway, so how did X help them"?

X gave them something to sell, thus making them more viable to S&S, Duh. You can only sell so many wild mice.

"And no, Arrow did not do a good job with X. Say what you want about people making false claims, but how late did Xcelerator open vs X? Has Xcelerator gone down for a period of months to be fixed up? I don't think so".

X currently runs more reliably than Xcelerator. And beyond that, Perilous Plunge *has* gone down for months at a time.

rollergator, my source is a pretty good one. But of course nothing is ever set in stone until there is an announcement. But I'm not one to post bogus rumors.
*** This post was edited by DWeaver 2/19/2003 4:02:38 AM ***
*** This post was edited by DWeaver 2/19/2003 4:04:26 AM ***

Even if Arrow never built X, the fourth dimension would still have been an attractive purchase for S&S. Arrow also could have either said no to building such a large prototype, or no until they were sure they could handle it. Sorry, but this "Arrow is innocent" is BS. Nobody forced Arrow to build it, period. Arrow made the choice (and a bad one at that) and suffered the consequences. Like I said, they still had the 4-D idea to sell whether one was built or not.

I don't know how anyone can insist a company did a good job with a ride that took a year and a half before it started running consistently Heck, even now it's still not up to what it was built to be. X valleys. X does not run three trains regularly (if at all). And Arrow isn't responsible for X now working anyway! Is it not true that SF had to fix the ride themselves after they closed it in in June? Even if Arrow *was* willing to work on it, they didn't, so you can't claim it's Arrow who got it working.

Compare the ride to Xcelerator all you want, but Xcelerator isn't nearly as old as X. I'm sure Xcelerator will be running fine by the time it's X's age. As for PP, I'm not as familiar with the history of that ride, but one of the times it went down (the only?) for months was completely unrelated to the operation of the ride. X is a piece of crap.

-Nate

Ok. I have something to say to all of you who think that Arrow is out because of one lousy prototype. Does anyone remember Arrow's first prototype for the first suspended coaster, the Bat? It was big, loud, and had an 80% downtime ratio. Hmm... sounds like X to me.. but X isn't that bad. I think everyone here should just sit back and let the parks and arrow decide their future, not guess and argue about it. I mean yeah the suspended coaster didn't become as popular as the floorless coaster or whatever, but it did have a pretty good future. The whole purpose of a prototype is given, and when they built it they knew there was going to be at least a few problems... Arrow has a horrible history of building bad prototypes. But the outcome of those prototypes is truely beautiful. The other thing though is look what park it's at. I mean c'mon that's freaking Magic Mountain. That's (one of) the parks other parks live up to. I doubt that other parks will shun upon what the leaders do. I mean I may be wrong about that though. But remember the Bat people... no not the bat people, but remember the Bat, people.

You guys don't seem to understand that at the time of Six flags interest, Arrow had no jobs, no resources, and couldn't even meet the next payroll. They still owed vendors money for past work. Arrow has suffered from bad management from the mid 80's. A hand full of people at the top were making outrageous saleries and protecting each other while they were paying most of their fabricators and engineering workers lower than normal wages. Six flags lawsuit even claimed that arrow was using the X money to pay off vendors from previous jobs. There were only a handfull of people involved with the design of X ; Alan Schilke, 2 mechanical engineers, 1 stress engineer, 6 very good designers, and a couple of drafters. This ride was not designed by a comittee, it was the brillant work by a handfull of talented people. If anyone investigates history most of the breakthroughs were done by individuals and small groups, Apple, not IBM, id, not Microsoft. Most of that is gone now, the people who developed the prototypes were kicked out the door, the one talented hardworking designer who did all the chain lifts for over a decade exclusively was shown to the door. the track, structure, mechanical and electrical guys the same thing. how do you replace that? One of the Engineering project Managers made an interesting comment as he was leaving the company a few years back he said "I think arrow will get another ride contract but it will just be another loser like the last one" Arrows track record isn't good, they have been bankrupt multiple times, have drained a myriad of investors ,and now S&S. If history repeats itself, whats left of Arrow will slowly drag down S&S until both companys are consumed in debt. I hope not, but its going to be an interesting ride!

ecd ;^)

"Compare the ride to Xcelerator all you want, but Xcelerator isn't nearly as old as X. I'm sure Xcelerator will be running fine by the time it's X's age. As for PP, I'm not as familiar with the history of that ride, but one of the times it went down (the only?) for months was completely unrelated to the operation of the ride. X is a piece of crap".

You just made my whole point with your first sentence. X is running fine, and so will Xcelerator once the bugs are worked out. Um, they aren't called prototypes because the word sounds cool. (rolls eyes).

Nate, I'm not going to argue any further with you on this, because you don't have your facts straight. I will only say that the many riders that have claimed X to be one of the best rides anywhere, would strongly disagree with you. And your obvious bias against Arrow and ignorance of the growing pains of prototypes only diminishes the strength of your arguement. X is *anything* but crap.

*** This post was edited by DWeaver 2/19/2003 3:49:55 PM ***

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DWeaver said:

X gave them something to sell, thus making them more viable to S&S, Duh.

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That became relevant last fall, sure, but when X was announced, heck, even prototyped in the shop, S&S wasn't even on the radar.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - Sillynonsense.com
"The world rotates to The Ultra-Heavy Beat!" - KMFDM

They didn't need to be at that point Jeff.

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DWeaver said:

But I'm not one to post bogus rumors.

Come now, when you've been around this place as long as I have, you get pretty good at separating the *wheat* from the *chaff*. The fact that I responded the way I did, that was a clue that I know which group you fall into...;)
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Never go unarmed into a battle of wits...;)
The secret to life is sincerity...once you can fake that, the rest is easy...

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I love you man! ;)

Arrow rules, and with the right management they could be there with the Intamin's & B&M's. Don't you people realize that they are not the Arrow from the 80's? Look at Tennessee Tornado, and that is the prime example of what we could be riding from Arrow. They can still build formidable coasters when given the opportunity. The right park that has to come along and offer them the right opportunity. With the 4D that is going to come. Just give it time.

Dweaver, not to be harsh here, but what "facts" don't I have straight? I don't think I said and/or argued anything that wasn't the truth.

Sure X was a prototype, and sure prototypes often have problems opening. Most prototypes have had some major downtime when they first open. Comparing X to Xcelerator, though, is ludicrous. When *any* new coasters open, downtime can be expected. Computer systems and monitoring equipment is new and finicky, and often cause set-ups and whatnot. Xcelerator's downtime seems to be mainly because of this, and though I'm sure some of the downtime is due to the new launching system and such, it doesn't sound like Xcelerator is down an unusually large amount of time. Maybe I'm way off with that, I don't have much experience with the ride, but it seems as though Xcelerator's downtime is similar to the downtime any new ride experiences. Perhaps it's just taking a little longer for those issues to be worked out with Xcelerator. Most new rides would be closed now after the first season or operating, so it's difficult to compare. X, on the other hand, went down due to major structural design flaws. That's a *major* issue, and a *major* fault and mistake of the designers of the ride. And like I said above, Arrow isn't responsible for the current (working) condition of the ride. You can credit that to Six Flags and whoever worked on it during the downtime this summer.

The bottom line is this: you don't build a radically new prototype so large. B&M knew this with B:TR, and Arrow at least knew that at one time with their corkscrew. It would have been *stupid* for Arrow to build Viper or Shockwave in 1975, yet that's basically what they've done with X. Even if Knott's had pushed for a *huge* ride in 1975, I don't think Arrow would have went for it. The same goes here, only Arrow wasn't nearly as smart this time. You can't deny the ride has or had major problems, and you can't blame parks wanting to build one of these rides until they know X is going to continue to operate reliably. And with the problems that plauged the ride when it first opened, it may be awhile before parks are sure they're going to want to purchase such a ride.

-Nate

O ye of little faith....just wait.

Look, you can keep rehashing X's initial problems and blaming whoever you want, it still doesn't change the *fact* that X has been running pretty darn good since it re-opened last July. When is the last time it's gone down for a significant amount of time? That's what I thought.

What makes you think any park interested in a ride like this isn't smart enough to do the nessessary research into what happened to X, and what Arrow/S&S has done since to fix the problems? And trust me, parks *ARE* interested.

Coasterdude318

I agree with what you are saying with the exception that the corkscrew vehicle is the best ride component Arrow has ever manufactured. Many have been in service in excess of their ten year service life.

Also to clarify Arrow would accept any contract even a *huge* ride I mean money is money, I remember getting called into a meeting and Alan Harris telling us "we just sold a wild mouse, (Myrtle beach)go design it". Well heck no one had any experience presently working there with a single car proto that small, so we all started looking at what was out there in the industry and started designing. well to make a long story short we pulled off another miracle and started releasing finished drawings in four months, the only problem was the track guru "Alan Schilke" neglected to tell us that the bank angle (deflection of wheel carriers in relation to each other measured from center axle) of this "flat" ride went from six degrees to sixteen degrees with the introduction of the radical gooseneck on the downdrop to the lift.

So everone scratched their heads as we were already in a schedule crunch. but somehow the vehicles were redesigned in an amazingly short amout of time and sent to myrtle beach untested and they worked! I hope Im not boring anyone here. the main problem after 93 was that anyone working at arrow was essentially new and ther was no experience base to draw from, the wild mouse was originally designed with two 12 inch rotek bearings which the axles attaches the snubbing washers provides the six degrees of deflection for this "flat ride" well after the vehicles were designed.

Ron Toomer comes out to the shop (Ron was working mostly as a Representative at this time and wasn't doing any actual engineering) well he take one look at the mouse chassis and says "thats not going to work!" Ron was essentially right, in the early days of Arrow all sorts of things were experimented with and evolved was a vehicle with a "fixed font axle" and a rear "swing" axle what this means is the front axle is fixed in relation to the bank angle of the track but the rear has to be free to accomodate the difference between the two axles on the longatudal axis. The problem was we were trying to learn the hard way all over again what had already been done in the past.

Most of the knowledge base was gone, arrow had a huge drawing database from past projects but finding the information was difficult due to poor documentation, at one point Arrow had no idea what was actually out in the field! many rides had been relocated modified/upgraded and documentation was scant.

well anyway going back to the corkscrew, anytime we looked at a new design design considerations would always go back to the corkscrew, it really is a work of art everything on it was perfect from a mechanical point of view from loading locations, cg ,pivot points and direction of travel. the only upgrade in ten years consisted of beefing up the main chassis spindle nut which had a tendency to crack over time, not due to the chassis design, but to rough arrow track.
*** This post was edited by Evil Coaster Designer 2/20/2003 10:25:03 AM ***

Talk about big prototypes? Look at the Matterhorn.... 'nuff said.

Dweaver, you can continue to ignore the fact that Arrow *isn't* responsible for X's current working condition all you want, but that doesn't change anything. :)

X does not run at any sort of acceptable capacity. And there are still reasonable doubts as to whether the ride is going to continue to hold together or not. And then, of course, there's the valley issues. So I honestly cannot think of *any* park that's willing to take such a risk to build a ride like that, not until we've seen X operate with three trains consistently without falling apart.

ECD, when did I ever say anything about whether or not the Corkscrew was a good prototype?

-Nate