Rest in Peace Mister Twister

Or check out this nice aerial view!

http://members.aol.com/wecorhsc/elitch_twister1.jpg

Beautiful, just beautiful. Yea I can see were it was ment to be a figure 8 it was really noticable. If anybody else got demolition pictures of Mr Twister besides Foxer please Post them :)

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millrace said:
Have you checked out Bob Hooley's excellent Mr. Twister site?

http://members.aol.com/Bobcoaster/Twister.html

He also has a lot of info about Knoebels Twister - a pretty close recreation of the original ride.

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Ahahahaha. Wow, the internet's come a looooong way.

And uh...I'm sure Twister was a great ride.

The internet has come along way, lol Thanks I hope it was, lol

I have some demolition pictures. I don't know who took them but since I know they're not mine, I don't feel right posting them. But if you want me to email them to you, PM me with your address.

monkey: What is that supposed to mean?

When Mister Twister was built in 1964 at Elitch Gardens, it was crammed into a park which already was feeling the effects of being landlocked – the problem which eventually drove the park away from its original site (and from its two signature coasters) a decade ago. The ride was designed as a 72’ tall out-and-back with the first drop falling directly into the helix. There was no sudden drop, no marvelous feeling that the world was falling from under one’s seat. The train just gradually accumulated speed as it swirled downward in this very unusual first drop.

It may have been the case that the ride was a John Allen-ized version of the nearby Lakeside ride: come off the lift into a helix, make a trip away from the helix, and then back to the station. I have no proof of this connection, just conjecture.

The original version of the ride was a dud. It had only five up-and-down transitions, and not any of them were what could be called “real roller coaster” hills. Worse, the train was supposedly prone to stopping partway through the helix on days the friction losses were greater than normal. So the ride was difficult to live with and not popular with the public.

The problems were so bad that after only one season, it was extensively reworked. This is amazing, but made even more so by the fact that the ride had been a tight fit in 1964 – it had to be wound around the existing Wildcat coaster to be shoehorned into its allotted plot. To have to add more to it would be even more difficult than the original shoehorning act was.

For part of the solution, Allen likely turned to a ride he was familiar with. The Rye Aeroplane had been built in a similarly small plot of ground at Playland Park, and it had been torn down only eight or nine years prior to Allen’s dilemma with MT. His builder, Frank Hoover, had been a consultant for Playland back when the Aeroplane was condemned, and so Allen would have been very familiar with the design of the Aeroplane, including the first turn, the brief downward drop into a 180+ degree turn, followed then by the complete drop to the ground. In fact, the turn he designed for MT made its initial drop virtually the same distance as the Aeroplane turn, roughly 25 feet, before making the turn. His version needed a relatively flat link between the turn and the ensuing full drop, a difference dictated by the more-remote placement of the first valley and the rise up from it to the turn above the tunnel. The flat area arguably adds to the fear and anticipation factor which is lacking in the Aeroplane’s more tightly coupled design without the flat.

So the swoop turn of MT was probably lifted directly from the Aeroplane.

The addition of 1965 provided two “real roller coaster” drops of substantial height, but more importantly, it added speed and energy to the entire ride. Whereas the original 1964 design dumped the train into the helix at the lift chain’s speed of only 9 feet per second, the redesigned ride had the train already speeding along at over 30 feet per second at this point. And every inch of the rest of the ride was similarly supercharged with speed and energy which simply were not available for the original ride.

The result was a more exciting ride which was much more popular, and no longer prone to rollbacks in the helix. However, the problems with the design did not cease. The train originally used for Mister Twister was not articulated. It needed to negotiate the path of the heavily banked track by essentially twisting itself apart. It had largely succeeded in this unwanted deed by 1968, when Allen designed the components for the now-common articulated train, the rear wheels pivoted to allow the train’s frame to remain stiff while the banking angles were accommodated by allowing some parts to pivot on the new rear axle.

So in addition to needing to be profoundly redesigned, Mister Twister also demanded a profound redesign of the rolling stock PTC built and sold at the time.

Another change came in 1976. This bit of information has never, to my knowledge, been publicly discussed prior to this, but the original ride had a descent angle of 51 degrees. This was reprofiled in 1976 to 49 degrees. When we designed Knoebels Twister in 1998, I chose to use the more conservative 49 degree figure. We were committed to using a 24 passenger train, whereas MT used a 20 passenger train. I figured that Allen and Elitch’s had made the modification to the drop for good reason and did not want to have to relearn what that reason was by having a train return to the station with fewer passengers than it had departed with.

Fact is, the builder of Knoebels Twister, Leonard Adams, is so good at laying track, at accurately reproducing the theoretical design in real wood, that we actually could have increased the 51 degree figure safely, but at that time, I still did not know how good he was and chose to err on the safe side. We believe now that Frank Hoover built his rides with a little “knuckle” remaining in the track profile, a field modification made to add excitement beyond the designer’s intent; that was likely the reason for the needed change made in 1976.

I also have heard that MT was John Allen’s least favorite ride. But it does not have to be a question of style, or intensity, on which his low opinion of the ride hinged. With the design of Mister Twister, he had very effectively “screwed the pooch” to the tune of what today would be millions of dollars of mistakes. There is no doubt that his other coaster designs tended to deliver less power and intensity, a fact likely dictated by his distaste for the then too-common practice of having to go scrape a patron’s body off the ground after a coaster ride gone wrong. His own numerous safety advances helped stem this tide. But MT was not a dangerous ride, not in any of its guises over the years, and it was popular after the 1965 redesign. It was simply to Allen a reminder that he was fallible.

Allen could certainly take comfort in the result of all his work to make it right. Regardless of the circuitous route required to get there, the resulting ride was very popular, a masterful use of space, and a monument to being able to make things right in spite of early missteps.

Seven years ago today I hopped on to a plane and flew to Denver for four days, which I spent crawling over the idled Mister Twister structure, taking photos, making measurements, and getting impressions of this marvelous ride. The time spent there was essential to the design process which produced Knoebels Twister. There is also some video shot of the ride. The photos are pre-digital, but would obviously be available to any serious scholar who one day might wish to further his research into the ride.

I, too, have never ridden Mister Twister, but loved the ride. In my mind, I rode it in a marathon from the summer of 1996, endlessly until 1998 when the design of our replacement became firmed-up, and my mental marathon then began on the new ride. It is possible to “love” a ride one has never ridden, but it’s important to keep learning as much as possible, to keep the affection grounded in reality. That kind of love can actually have resonance within this industry, and it can influence real decisions made by the movers and the shakers of the amusement park industry.

Thanks to all of you who have an interest and a passion for this remarkable industry *** Edited 9/17/2005 4:12:57 PM UTC by John Fetterman*** *** Edited 9/17/2005 4:17:13 PM UTC by John Fetterman***

Thanks John. You gave some really interesting insight into the design of Knoebels's Twister and the history behind the original MT.

How's the work down in Florida coming along? I was wondering if you could tell us whether the Dragon tunnel was saved on Starliner and will be part of the rebuilding at CG.

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millrace said:
monkey: What is that supposed to mean?

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Well, the site, while content-filled, is very Pre-2000 in Design. I hate to say it, but it looks ametuerish.

Sorry, but It just reminds me of the Dial-Up and AOL Dominance age(re:1996-2000).

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