More scheduled downtime for Steel Vengeance

I just got back from a 4 park trip that included Kennywood, Hershey, Dorney, and Kings Dominion. I may or may not write a full TR, but none of those parks had outstanding ride crews. Perhaps living in Orlando and being used to Universal and Disney and then taking 3-4 trips to Cedar Point a year has spoiled me, but wow - some truly awful dispatch times at all four of these parks. Makes my opinion of SeaWorld Orlando and Busch Tampa operations seem minor now...

Shades said:

Or your idea of hustling is different than mine.

Or you're both right because individual experiences are going to vary from one hour to the next. I see this sample size fallacy often here and I don't get it.

I wish all parks would create a training video using the Fury 325 crew to show other crews how it can be done. They were dispatching us so fast that we had to wait for the train that was out on the course to hit the brakes before we were advanced to the lift hill. That crew is phenomenal.

As soon as a train drops off the lift on Fury, the next can begin the climb. The entire course is a block. When I have gone, they had us dispatched within a few seconds after the previous train dropped off the lift and we would start the climb right away. The previous train would hit the final brakes when we were about 3/4 of the way up, and not more than 5 or 6 seconds after it cleared the block, we were cresting the lift.

The only way you would be held on the block prior to the lift would be if the previous train was still on the lift.

Fury has the most efficient operation I've ever encountered on any coaster, hands down. Like RCMAC, I thought that the ride ops on Twisted Timbers were outstanding. However, loading and dispatching I-305 was somewhat less efficient when I visited KD in April.

Any update on possible 3-train operation? I figure if they got it worked out, this will be the week we see it.

I didn't see any update on this so it caught me by surprise to see Steel Vengeance running with 3 trains this weekend. I didn't even notice until I was in the station and saw that the storage track was empty.

This started a couple of weekends ago and was covered on PointBuzz but I think people lost interest here.

Even with three train operation the line crawls... in my experience from this weekend, two cars were seemingly always roped off for exit passes, leaving two for Fastlane and two for the standby line. I strongly disagree with giving Fastlane a full 50% of capacity on rides, but that’s the new normal at Cedar Point and a rant for another day :)

It's still slower than it needs to be as well because the midcourse is not being used as a block. The crew is ready to go with at least 20 seconds to spare nine times out of ten, but they wait until the countdown hits zero and the lift runs slow until the previous train clears the main brake and then speeds up. If they could get the midcourse enabled as a block, they could improve capacity by at least another 18-20% since they'd be able to dispatch when they're ready (about 1:25 or 1:30 for an interval I'd say instead of 1:50). I think there's also room or improvement with the movement of the train into the station. It still takes a while between dispatch and the next train being parked. I remember the guy from IOE talking about adding a second block in the station of Twisted timbers so they could start the next one in before the previous one is all the way out. It doesn't appear they've done that on Steel Vengeance. Hopefully they continue to work on it in the offseason and aren't sayng "good enough" at this point. It is a whole lot better than it was though.

I will say though, the ride seemed to be running very well this weekend. I don't think I saw it down for any significant amount of time from Friday night through Sunday afternoon. I wasn't staring at it the whole time, but I always saw it running when I did look and managed to get 5 rides this weekend. Dragster seemed to have a good weekend as well.

Ah. I was wondering why they weren't dispatching up the lift when they were ready. If they can get the midcourse working as a block I think they will.

Wanting to turn the MCBR on in two train ops so that you can dispatch earlier and don't get stuck on the lifthill. #Firstworldproblems

While other 3rd world parks at Six Flags and stand alone parks have one train ops with shiftless ride ops and guests.

If they could only move the train into the station the same way they do on Skyrush....right behind the outgoing train at nearly the same speed. It almost looks like one train with Skyrush.

Remember when two trains got a little cozy with each other on Opening Day? Not gonna happen

^Because Skyrush/Intamin has a better system for braking and moving trains? Pull up any Youtube video that shows the train leaving and entering the station. It's crazy how synced they are.

When I think of top notch braking systems and overall ride reliability, Intamin is the first company I have in mind.

Yeah, Intamin is the leader in that fie... Oh, you said top notch BRAKING...