Perilous Plunge Restraints

I was at Knott's this past Monday and went on all the rides in a fairly short amount of time. Xcelerator was nice, but it goes over the tophat slower than I had expected. I was on Perilous Plunge and couldn't get my harness tightened, the operator came over and made it extremly tight, it was rediculous how tight he made it. Has anyone else experienced this? Also he seemed kind of rude about it, like he was annoyed with me. The restraints on Xcelerator were not too tight though. They ride op pushed down the lab bar so it was snug, but not all that tight really. Well I was just wondering if anybody else experienced this on The Plunge.`

I would assume that the ride op was not annoyed with *you* just that after a couple of hours of frustration with those darn restraints anyone would be a unhappy camper.

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The Other Siebert

Does anyone have a picture of the restraints on PP?

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Good Times!! Good Times!!
CCI Lives On!!!!
-Patrick

Nobody likes the restraints on the ride, not the ride ops and not the riders. For that reason, I am hearing that there are new harnesses in development for Perilous Plunge.

No I had the same experience with a rude op on PP. I was also trying to get my restraint tightened when a ride op came over, kneeled beside me (I was on the end) and started to tighten it for me. The entire time she kind of looked and seemed irritated or mad or something and then she looked over at my friend who already had her restraint tightened and she said in a real smirky type voice "Oh wow thats amazing, some people actually know what they're doing!". As she said it, she kinda gave me this bad look too. I was pretty annoyed especially after having a "rude free" day at Knott's.

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Six Flags Marine World.......home to the new "not so vertical anymore" V2!

Yeah, same thing happened to me. It killed the thrill of the whole ride. I think alot of that has to do with lawyers. They seem almost paranoid about it. Don't feel too bad. After wrestling with that damn thing, the ride-op (who wasn't rude, but you could tell he was pissed ) had to do it for me. Then when we were about to take off, the ride breaks down, so I had to undo the damn thing and get off, wait 15 min, and go through the whole process again! It still was a great way to cool off.
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Coasters and Chronic
What a Combo!

A lot of the Perilous Plunge ride ops are rude. I've noticed that some of the guys are good (just some) and a lot of the female ride ops are too (heather, the african american girl who's really nice). One yelled at me when I went past him while he was trying to block the queue. I said pardon me over 3 times and he wasn't looking, so when there was room i ran between him and a pole.

Blame all those fat people who keep falling out of rides.

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.:| Brandon Rodriguez |:.
http://www.coasters2k.com

Ahrg its not the "fat people" whose fault this is. Its the parks for not enforcing weight and perportion limits.. Well its actually more like not properly following the Intamin manual.

IMO, the new Perilous Plunge restraints are just plain ridiculous. An overweight man fell out of Six Flags Darien Lake's Superman: Ride of Steel, as you may recall, just after its debut back in 1999 and the problem was solved with the addition of seat belts.

I couldn't stand going on a nonlooping water ride with a 4-point harness.

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~ Blast Coaster - COASTERnet.MegaCoasters.com - now open!

*** This post was edited by Blast Coaster on 8/1/2002. ***

Ah, but you forget...

When the incident happened on Plunge, it was already equipped with seat belts, and the belt was fastened on the seat in question.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

RideMan said:
Ah, but you forget...
When the incident happened on Plunge, it was already equipped with seat belts, and the belt was fastened on the seat in question.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Thanks. I wasn't aware.

Still, though, a 4-point harness for a 115-foot water ride with a 75-degree plunge seems like definite overkill when you've got a 31-story giga-coaster with a 80-degree plunge and 93 MPH speeds and lapbars.

More adequate weight restrictions would have completely solved the problem IMO.

But it was the city which forced KBF to add the harnesses, wasn't it?

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~ Blast Coaster - COASTERnet.MegaCoasters.com - now open!

As I understand it, the State investigation found that the rides restraints were "clearly inadequate", which is a perfectly logical conclusion given that the secured restraints failed to prevent a rider from being ejected from the ride. The state's report did indicate that the position of the lap bar may not have been optimal, but didn't go much beyond that.

To the best of my knowledge (remember, I'm 2500 miles away...) the various controlling legal authorities did not make specific recommendations on what changes needed to be made to the ride's restraints; Knott's came up with the harnesses themselves, and the state gave its +blessing to the new configuration.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

The harnesses also smell very bad. I find that after being tightned in to that ride its best to let the slack out of the harness on the lift hill. I'd rather risk getting ejected from the ride than dying of asphyxiation. On a related note about having to cater to the overweight riders...how come no one says anything about parks catering to tall people like they do with fat people. On rides like Deja Vu and Intamins Impulses theres a height restriction for riders. Parks and public go out of their way to respond to cries to accomodate heavy riders, but it seems that tall people are ignored when it comes to things like this, and being tall is something you cant help, no matter what. You cant diet yourself short. It seems it wouldnt have been too much trouble to add a retracting floor to these rides, but instead were worried more about hurting the feelings of an overweight person who gets booted from a ride in front of an entire queue of people cause theyre just too damn not slim.

BrandonR said:
Blame all those fat people who keep falling out of rides.
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.:| Brandon Rodriguez |:.
http://www.coasters2k.com

Not to start a flame war or anything, but that's a pretty insensitive/ignorant thing to say. I'm an overweight rider ( not 300 lbs. or anything) and most other overweight riders are mindful or height and weight restrictions.

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"Enjoy your record-breaking ride on Millennium Force"

The restarints ruined the ride. I couldnt evn lean forward to enjoy the drop.

Why would you want to lean forward to enjoy the drop?

Anyway, the state told Knotts the restraints were inadeqate. Knotts had the choice of how they wanted to modify them, but if the state didn't find the new restraints to be "safer" then they wouldn't clear the ride to reopen. So, the idea is that OTSR's or 4 point harnesses were the only real choices. They picked the 4 point harnesses (I would have done the same), and this is the results.

I did mention earlier that they are working on a simpler version of the harnesses for the ride, where the rider can pull just one tab to tighten the restraint instead of two.

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Xcelerator-
0-82 in 2.3 seconds! =Wow!

Why wouldnt a Fyling Dutchman type restraint work on PP? Just a thought.

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All I need is 4.5 million bucks and a half a mile long sliver of land and maybe someone could build me my very own Shivering Timbers. ;)

remember that the 2nd versions of the intamin vertical shoot the chutes uses the same restraints as the original PP ones, so intamin clearly dont see any problem with them.

Intamin AG CEO Sandor Kernacs even warned Knott's/Cedar Fair, L.P. management and even state regulators that modifying the ride's restraint system by taking or adding from it may even make riders more susceptible to harm, injury, and maybe even death.

But the manufacturer's advice was ignored anyway and the harnesses were installed.

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A CoasterForum Member
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