new vekoma trains on arrows suspended - picture!

there wasnt a total vekoma overhaul of the ride, vekoma just provided the new trains. other work included gearing the hill lifts, new station interior, dropping station floor for the new trains (vekoma involved here), track painting, tunnel modificatios and support reinforcment. as you can see, not much of this work involved vekoma. the ride did need a serious overhaul though, as it was the most unrelaible ride in the park for the 2000 season, and there was always a mad scramble to get in the trains as they had 20 seconds to unload and load and set the trains off before a safey cut out occured!

Lets hope there is no headbanging..............

This may sound dumb, but does Vekoma manufacture suspended coasters or just the trains? Okay, okay, that sounds really dumb. But still.

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Different Parks this year: 12+ Different Coasters: 80+

DRAGON82487 said:
peabody, i as just wondoering why arrow didnt do it themselves. and what was the complete overhaul of the ride?

It's most likely that the park went with Vekoma because they made a better offer. The "overhaul" was described above...sounds pretty nice to me!

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- Peabody

marimba guy 87 said: This may sound dumb, but does Vekoma manufacture suspended coasters or just the trains? Okay, okay, that sounds really dumb. But still.

the type of coaster that the vampire is (arrow suspended), vekoma have made 4 similar rides ( http://www.rcdb.com/result.htm?coastername=&park=&type=&category=6&contact=7&status=&state=&country=&column=1%2C10%2C3%2C4%2C5&order=1%2C2 ), but for the vampire, vekoma have only made the trains. vekoma havent built a suspended coaster since 1994 (unless you get really technical and count SLCs!).
there are 10 arrow suspended, with the last one built in 1993.

well I CANNOT wait to ride one like that!! Top Gun at PKI probably my favorite coaster and I have been hoping somebody would build a kick-butt version!!

actually, three of those Vekoma suspendeds are the same coaster just moved around so they actually only made 2

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-Bob (formerly Coaster Jedi)
Knott's Berry Farm Cuba ~South Park
"Your proctologist called, he found your head!" ~Jerry "The King" Lawler

d'oh!

DRAGON82487 said:
"stupid question...why are they retrofitting the trains on this ARROW suspended with new VEKOMA trains? werent the ARROW ones fine? and if they wanted an ARROW coaster changed, why ddint they contact ARROW? im sure they could have made a floorless design."

OK, Basiclly The Vampire was an unpredictable ride whenever you visited Chessington, sometimes it would run perfectly, other days it would not, unfortunutly in the 2000 season, Vampire had more downtime than uptime, so something needed to be done, Early rumours were that Chessington would get rid of the ride complety, but this was complete madness from Chessington as It was the only ride worth riding there, It was also the most popular, so getting it of it would probably make Chessie Suffer badly, so they decided to complety revamp it.
It was Said that Chessie did goto Arrow First to see about putting in floorless trains, but because Arrow hadnt made any floorless trains of any kind and it would take a while to do so, they went elsewhere(To Vekoma) and so they got to work changing the Trains, a lot of other work went on too, this involved things like revamping the station, reinforcing supports etc.

The Trains do look very nice and I'm impressed, Also it is said these new trains will indeed swing just as much(probably more) than the old ones, no dought it is sure to be a very exciting change which I hope to ride Sunday 14th April(Opening Weekend)

Didn't Vekoma make a suspended coaster in Japan, and the first year of operation it crashed and someone died? I thought I remembered seeing that somewhere.

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How much more floorless can they get?

Those look great, lets hope they have the swing and bring some of them over to Iron Dragon!

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I went to Sandusky, but there was no Callahan factory

GAdvAdict, you thinking of Birdmen? http://www.rcdb.com/quicksearch.htm?quicksearch=birdmen That isn't Vekoma, but does swing, and did crash.

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Here's another vote for converting TG at PKI, ID at CP, and BBW at BGW to Vekoma floorless trains. What a difference it would make!
Maybe we should start a petition? :)

Anyone know of pics of the 2 Vekoma suspended coasters?

PKI's Face/Off:

http://www.pki.com/attractions_rides_featured.jsp?id=711

http://www.geocities.com/robbalvey/srm01/pki023.jpg

PKI's Runaway Reptar:

http://www.geocities.com/robbalvey/srm01/pki019.jpg

No, those are Suspended Looping Coasters. Someone mentioned two older style Suspended coasters they made.

What is the height requirement for Vampire?

If the redesigned trains could accomodate 42" kids, that would be perfect.

-'Playa

Am I seeing things wrong, or does each pair of seats swing independently, as opposed to the two pairs per car you'd normally have?

Nope, I'd say you are correct. Being a little lighter individually, I wonder if that helps or hurts the amount of swinging? Physics party people?

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com, Sillynonsense.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

Maybe, It is only a matter of time before we see swinging trains on B&M inverts.:) I seriously doubt it but it could be possible yet not very necessary.

I do not think that weight plays that much of a factor into the amount of swing since there should be a decrease in G's which would coincide with the decrease of weight. i could be mistaken but I figuared I'd give my input.

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Peabody said:

This is not unheard of.....Intamin changed an Arrow coaster in Vegas. Morgan changed Arrow's Steel phantom.
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- Peabody

Actually...

Arrow added onto an existing Intamin ride. The only thing Arrow did was add a new lift, gravity section, and break run over Grand Canyon Rapids.