Question About Deja Vu Coasters

I have one simple question. Why do the coasters always valley? Did Vekoma build these coasters to not produce enough speed? It looks to me the coaster should have enough speed to make it through the whole cycle. IMO, all 3 coasters should be demolished, unless they can find a way to increase the speed! Just a waste of good coaster land.

They do not always valley, and they are multimillion dollar rides which would not be economically smart to demolish. Do you have any idea that these things are 170-196ft tall?! It would just not be practical.

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I prefer the pears in the heavy syrup. They're just good.

*** This post was edited by S00perGIR on 11/8/2002. ***

Here is my point. I either said demolish it, or increase the speed. Dont disappoint your customers by having a **multi-million dollar** coaster, only running on average 2 months of a season. That's nonsense. Just fix the piece of junk!

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Enjoy Your Flight on the Raaaven!

And why should Six Flags care if they are only be there 1 a year and will figure it is just broken down for the day? Six Flags already has their money!

How will you increase the speed? Hmm?

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I prefer the pears in the heavy syrup. They're just good.

I invite anyone on this board to try to fix Deja Vu. It's a complex ride... Six Flags is trying to fix it but they never many work as well as we would like them to. And no, they won't remove a multimillion dollar ride if it can work a decent amount.

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Is that a Q-bot in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Well, have you ridden any one of these coasters? I'm sure that after riding it once you'll have a second opinion about have them demolished. Also, they have a small footprint as compared to other rollercoasters. Third, they're not too expensive, so there is a possibility of smaller parks aquiring a pretty decent ride.

It's not the design per say, Because the Deja Vu triplets + 1 are designed to make it through the circuit with speed. The problem is with the catch car. It sometimes releases too early.

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Is it a dream or a memory? It's both, it's X

First off Deja Vu isn't wasting any good coaster land. The ride takes up very little room, and it would be hard to fit any other type of coaster into its plot of land.

Secondly the Deja Vu at SFGAm worked great this year besides the 2 valleys. I went to the park 31 times this past season and it was only closed on 5 visits, and during those 5 visits it was during one of the 2 valleys. American Eagle Red was down more often than Deja Vu was this year at the park.

Plus it seems SFGAm has found out how to run Deja Vu in bad weather, towards the end of the season it was running perfectly in 30 degree weather and in some rain from opening to close. I think the longer these rides are at the park the more the park will learn about how to keep them open. Who knows in a few years Deja Vu could be one of the most reliable rides at the park.

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Final Deja Vu Count for the 2002 Season: 52
SFGAm CoasterWorld

*** This post was edited by CoasterDude316 on 11/8/2002. ***

Other than the Great America ride (which has been running fine), there is no more reason for anyone to rant on about these rides. The Over Georgia and Magic Mountain rides have been running consistantly for along time now.

They are very thrilling, my favorite shuttle-roller coaster among alot others I've ridden (Wicked Twister, Superman Ultimate Escape, Speed The Ride, Superman The Escape, Montezooma's Revenge, Invertigo, Screaming Condor, Boomerang).

i love deja vu but its a waste to keep if its always breaking down everytime i went to ride it had to stop operation. its a great ride but if its not gonna work put something else their

...the funny thing is I really do think of DV as just an "extension" of the Invertigos, which seem to run pretty smoothly. *Thinking* that the amount of speed loss increased dramatically when the towers went all the way to vertical...maybe even moreso than the Vekoma engineers *estimated*...;)

It seems to me that it really wouldn't be too difficult to fix the Deja Vu rides, but it would probably be costly. The reason is valleys is because of the lack of speed when traveling in reverse and (apparently) an inadaquate computer sensor system. How do you fix those issues?

1) Increase the height of tower two. Just by a bit. Obviously this is going to increase the forces riders experience, but, though I love the ride and think is good as is, I've never felt any massive forces in the backwards run. Dropping from ten feet higher would assure proper speed through the course and would eliminate the ridiculously slow movement through the cobra roll.

2) Time to fix the computer! If you haven't noticed, there are brakes along much of the course to stop the train in case one of the catch cars lets go too soon. These brakes automatically open when the train is past the "safe height" (ie the height above which the train should not valley from). Obviously, these don't work correctly because the SFGAm ride has valleyed twice in a spot it *never* should. There either needs to be an adjustment in the height the ride considers safe to drop from, or an all new system needs to be designed that's going to stop the ride *for sure* if it lets go too soon. I don't understand why this hasn't been by not!

-Nate

Rollergator is kinda right with his theory there,for some reason the regular invertigo seems to run much more reliably.

I think it's mainly due to the lift beiing set at 55 degrees on invertigo as opposed to the 90 degree lifts on Deja Vu,also the catch wagon for some reason is releasing the train too soon as most have pointed out while the invertigo uses a traditional chain lift that doesn't require a catch wagon at all and allows the train to reach the required height to provide enough momentum to travel the full circuit.

Hopefully next year they'll get these rides to work correctly and if not SF should really consider cutting their losses & removing these rides,it doesn't make good sense to have a ride that isn't running right half the time when they can get a ride that will run more reliably.

It's the computer system among other things, like mechanical problems on the catchers. I don't think adding height to tower 2 is practical by any means. The cost couldn't be justified and no one really knows if that's the problem anyway. An extra ten feet won't accelerate the train much more than it already is going.

Bottom line, there's way more happening on this ride than most of us know about. I'm fortunate enough to talk to the mechanics at the park (SFOG) to hear what the deal is. Still, even I don't know the full story.

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Is that a Q-bot in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

The ride doesn't *need* to go much faster than it already does (after the fall from tower two) but, like I said, an increase in height of tower two would guarantee the ride wouldn't valley due to lack of speed. Also notice where I said that it would be costly to fix the ride that way; I never suggested it would be cost effective, I just offered a solution.

As for the catch wagons failing, like I said - adjustments in the computer software would fix the valleying problem (due to an early release) easy.

-Nate

They release early do to mechanical problems a good bit of the time.

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Is that a Q-bot in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

it also has problems with the restraignts not locking at times. hi coasterdude its me fancyblue forsomereason i couldnt log on with that so i changed it.

Oh yes the restrains are POS's and one of the main reasons I hate this ride as an operator. Unlike other companies, you can't unlock/lock one or two rows of seats independently of the other rows. So if someone pulls the harness down and decides they want to chicken out, we have to release ALL restrains and recheck every one, slowing the dispatch down.

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Is that a Q-bot in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

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BATWING FAN SFA said:
SF should really consider cutting their losses & removing these rides,it doesn't make good sense to have a ride that isn't running right half the time when they can get a ride that will run more reliably.

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The ride is already more reliable. It ran great at SFGAm this year besides the 2 valleys. The most common breakdown I have seen on the ride is when the train doesn't line up in the station and the floor doesn't come up. Thats no reason to take down a ride though, it gets fixed in 5-10 minutes each time depending on how fast the mechanic is.

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Deja Vu Count = 52
SFGAm CoasterWorld

If they really, really had to, they could install a few LIMs, or even some rollers like the Hulk or something on the towers to give it a little "push" for some extra speed. Of course, this is not likely to happen, rather they will redesign and modify the catch device and will fix the problem eventually. It's a great ride when it's running, and it's "most of the time" reliability this year proves that they are making an effort, and that whatever the problem is, that it can be worked out. They'll fix it, don't worry. Tearing it down at this point would just be stupid.

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General Public, I never said the trains release early from the catch cars due to computer issues (on the contrary, I never suggested such a thing). What I said was that a better computer system would prevent a *valley* if the train is to release early, which has been at fault for the SFGAm ride's valleys.

The mechanical issues with the catch cars are pretty unavoidable and a necessary evil. If the train is stopped at the bottom of the drop each time it releases early, however (like it should!), the ride wouldn't have nearly as many problems.

-Nate