New China in 08: Vekoma "Stingray" compact flyer

I understand that flat rides many times don't hit 500 PPH. But you have to understand that although this says it will be hitting 525 an hour, that number is the theoretical number for the ride, which as with every ride is way higher than reality. I believe that this has a good possibility that the actual capacity will be lower than most if not all flats. It is great at a small park theres no doubt about that, but being the parks first coaster, its going to get some attention from the visitors and needs to be able to handle that attention.

If you have ever seen the loading process of a Vekoma flying coaster, you know how dreadfully slow that process is. Now eliminate multiple trains, and bring the cars down to 2, this thing is going to be SLOW, maybe not like a Sky Coaster, but closer to it than it should be. I'd guess the actual hourly capacity would be near 100 excluding the downtimes easy to foresee.

Even the ZacSpins have 3 cars a piece, plus I am sure the loading time moves at a much quicker speed. I like that Vekoma has made a model that is available for smaller parks, maybe I'm being to harsh on them and should accept that fact. I would guess that the price tag for a ride like this isn't equal to the amount of capacity. If there is truly no one that goes to this park, I don't think the price tag is fit for the amount of visitors it will have.

I would disagree with you when you say that designers aren't responsible for the capacity of their rides and that the parks are. To a degree the parks are for sure thats when they determine how many trains, cars, etc. The designer in my mind has a great deal of responsibility in designing a ride that has acceptable capacity. To have the audacity to say that capacity is not something designers should be taking into consideration is beyond me.

It looks pretty cool...although I'm not so excited for that all-the-blood-rushing-to-my-head final inversion/brake run.

If the price is right (exclude Bob Barker), I think this coaster is geared toward the lower attended small scale parks who would like something interesting in a steel coaster and not just having the option of wooden coasters in their budget.

IB is going with an S&S coaster in 2008 with Steel Hawg, so this flying concept could be just the right thing for parks in the U.S. of IB's size.

According to my information (and the video confirms this) there will be two trains with 8 seats on the track.
This might help capacity but it demands a very harsh braking at the end. Just imagine being brought to a standstill while lying head on on your back. Ouch!

I was hoping that the train would travel through the station and halfway up the hill only to be lowered into the loading area.

Vekoma was the last manufaturer to offer a small footprint/pizza-slize coaster. But they sold this concept in no time.

Vekoma is at least being innovative. I have to give that to all the smaller manufacturers. Or is it even fair to call them small, they build more rides than B&M and Intamin every year.

I agree with Intaminhater on this one.

Remember - X has a stated capacity of 1600pph. I've never seen it cross 400phh when I've wated in line.

Deja Vu has a stated Capacity of 870. It was right at 400 when I rode.

I struggle to believe that even if this had two trains that it would come close to it's stated capacity.

Anyone else think that the outside half-loop after the horseshoe turn will be totally insane? You are literally going to feel like you are being yanked out of the train on that.

Arguing that Vekoma designed a low-capacity attraction is making quite an assumption, I think. Just because this ride only runs two cars doesn't mean Vekoma doesn't offer a model with more than that...it just means that this park purchased the ride with two cars. Big difference.

Obviously there's no way to tell whether this thing will be painful or not, but the design itself looks pretty sweet IMO.

-Nate

Santa can you bring one to Beech Bend please?

By the way, for the folks talking about having only one train above, I guess the artist who made the clip didn't get that memo. ;)

They also claim 960 PPH with two three-car trains. Hmm.

Was that an official video? It looked a little amateurish to me.

-Nate

In the clip, it looks like it has magnetic brakes going down that half-loop into the station, so maybe they can pull off two trains on it.

I'm suspicious that the video is just a fan's recreation in No Limits. I wouldn't take anything the video shows as fact.

525 peeps/hour and 8 peeps/train means train dispatch every 55 seconds! Good luck.

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janfrederick said:By the way, for the folks talking about having only one train above, I guess the artist who made the clip didn't get that memo.

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It seems likely that Vekoma intends for parks to have *up to* two trains. This park apparently has hundreds of visitors a year, so perhaps there's no NEED for them to have a second train...

I don't see why they couldn't have two trains.. I mean, if they had at least two sets of brakes behind the station that could bring it to a full stop, there's your redundancy. And if the brakes on the final drop into the station are magnetic, those can't really fail to slow it down unless they are removed or the fin that they are acting on is removed.

Actually, for the amount of room they have behind the station for those brakes, I think it would be even more fun if you just had a 4 car train that flew up the lift hill a bit before rolling backwards into the station.

I think this concept looks waaay more fun than your average boomerang, and it takes up about as much room. Vekoma sold alot of those over the years, wonder how many of these will sell?

-Chris

It would be an interesting to use this layout with a "coaster in a box" concept. There you go -- the next Batman Knight "Flights" ;)

This looks like one of Lord Gonchar's super small RCT2 creations :)