Revolution Love

I had no idea Revolution was full of trims now. I always thought it went straight through. I obviously don't share the same sentimental value as others do. Still I would like to ride it someday. I've always been interested in riding by the terrain and the long shallow drop to the loop.

^Type in 'rollercoaster movie' and a few things will pop up. Pick 'rollercoaster movie part 2'. It shows most of the ride POV, and it flys! Then watch some newer Revolution vids - it's buried in the trees now - nice! But it damn near stops before the loop (notice the 'keep heads back' sign) and after the tunnel, grabs pretty hard too.

I watched a POV just now. Pretty cool how the hills are around it and bottoms of trees are at the top of the lift! And there's machinery/brakes on top of every hill.

I have a question. Is that a lift chain helping it get up the first hill after the main drop??? It just seems so. *** Edited 12/15/2007 5:18:10 AM UTC by Hatham Al-Shabibi***

nahh.... That! Is a metal anti-rollback section. I'm pretty sure it's at the top of every hill. Like when u ride a coaster... and it races up some of the bigger hills and you can hear "click click click" (real fast) those are anti-rollbacks :) so basically, the designer figured on a very cold and well-greased day, the train may not make it up that hill (like the 4th hill on the Blue Streak, and the turn around and the 2nd hill after the turnaround drop, and into the brakes...)

Sometimes a 'cold' coaster train won't make it up the bigger hills, so you have anti-rollbacks incase it doesn't. When they don't make it, sometimes a maintenance team can 'push' it the rest of the way. Sometimes they have to evacuate the train, and set up a 'winch' (fetch me me yale ya winch, not that type!) to pull it up the rest of the hill.

Is it possible that the lift was faster back then? A dispatch time of 25-30 seconds is actually what most Anton coasters were aiming for - at least his fairground monsters which were designed with the purpose to pump through as many paying customers as humanly possible.

On busy fairground days there would be one crew member for every single car (!). You would sit down, they slam down the restraint and you´d be on your way up the lift. You have to see Olympia Looping running on full capacity! Its amazing to see and to hear. The trains are actually "duelling" while one races into the second loop, another one comes out of the last one.

Scorpion at Busch Gardens was a fairground design as well (the second, smaller one after the prototype Looping Star model). Both rides had no blockbrakes on the main course but they have a quite long stretch of track from the final brake to the station. So they were indeed conceived to run three trains.

Back to Revolution: What is up with that post-tunnel brake? It is horrible and seems so pointless! I dpn´t think it was actually there in the original design. There used to be one after the loop turnaround. Maybe they could have stopped the train there to time the photoshoot?

I don't remember the lift being any quicker, but I couldn't answer that for sure.

I do know that Revolution never had anything close to an attendant to each car. I remember maximum a couple of attendants on each side of the train - again, there could have been times when that was different, but I don't remember it. Would have been interesting to see them moving it out that fast with that many workers, but even when it opened with the entire station ques filled (more than what's there now), and a line down past the carousel, I didn't see it run with that amount of workers in the station.

Then there is the question about the brake after the tunnel. I'm going to get a little hazy about this, but originally when you went into the turn after going through the center of the loop, you slammed into the left side of the train. If you were sitting with someone, you slammed into them ... pretty hard too, especially if you were in the back, your whole body would shift over in the seat too, not just your upper body. Quickly in the first year, they used to tell the heavier person to to board the car second if you were in the last rows, so a smaller person wouldn't get smashed. Later (maybe in the second/third year?) a little divider thing appeared in the last cars to keep the slide over from happening. Then later, the extra brakes started appearing, and continued to do so. I'm almost positive that the little divider things were taken out at that point (I know that they are there again now in every car). But from that point on, the cars kept getting minor changes (too many to remember) in what seemed like every year. Finally, the dreaded shoulder restraints appeared, so I don't ride it as much anymore to know every little change.

When the trees really started growing up, and there were no shoulder restraints, the ride was one of my favorites at night. It was a really great dive into the dark.

The lift used to be much faster and didn't slow at the top.

Hopefully this link will work for the scan I did of the original Revolution ad in Sunday Calendar of the LA Times in 1976. I tore it out of the paper at the time, and have kept it all these years.

http://pictures.aol.com/galleries/bunchastuf/d960*8UyAJyIRUj4Cnj2NLBiDU*TPhjMly8Cv4xQp5Fd3Ig *** Edited 12/16/2007 2:04:38 AM UTC by bunchastuf***

It worked. Thanks for posting it, I remember that ad quite well :)

EDIT - just noticed that, back then, the park wasn't open daily until Memorial Day. Ahhh...the good old days when going to (SF)MM was a day of fun. Now I'd rather have my wisdom teeth pulled.

*** Edited 12/16/2007 3:10:40 AM UTC by Mamoosh***

Hey thanks for posting that! That's pretty funny. Especially the 'hurtle straight down' part!

I always thought the name "Magic Mountain" was such a great one. Only to be ruined by "six flags." That big sign at the front of the parkway is one of the best as well.

Hey, now what about the tunnel lights? *** Edited 12/16/2007 4:18:18 AM UTC by J7G3***

Pretty good huh? It's weird because that ad never appeared anywhere except the LA Times - at least that I ever knew of.

I bet Moosh is right about the lift being faster, but mostly the crawl over the top not being there. If they could reduce the lift climb time to under 25 seconds which seems easily possible, a 20-25 second dispatch time shouldn't seem impractical to anyone who has witnessed it done even today on Phoenix at Knoebels. Back then, guests were so much more cooperative and not covered in loose articles. Combine that with the simple lapbar restraints and again look at how Phoenix dispatches while the previous load of guests are still filing off of the platform. This seems quite possible to me. BUT it would be difficult to pull it off routinely, so I'm not surprised no one seems to remember it ever happening.

^Hmmm.... makes you think huh!? I do remember at least one ride that lapbars were NOT checked on. King Kobra at King's Dominion... It was probably 1984 (yep, the year before Shockwave came, I remember-last time I was there!). I rode with some older guy and he told me that I didn't need to put my lap bar down. I did anyway, and off we went.

Now that I think about it, there were probably a lot of rides that this happened on (pre SFGAd Lightnin' Loops accident).

It's funny, or rather annoying, how crazy people are when getting on a coaster. Gotta put your stuff away, gotta go a seat back and make sure your kids seatbelts are on tight enough (seatbelts basically didnt even exist on coasters in the early 80's.)

That was definitely one contributing factor to the maming of CP's Blue Streak during the '93-94 off season (NO, still not over it - the park had other options rather than screwing up those beautiful trains.) We got alot of complaints b/c that train had to be out, otherwise the ride would shut down.

Ahhh.. all those trains we pushed out. It was also common for one of us to run out to the front of the station and hit the limit with our foot to trick the system. NO, I wouldn't condone this, but things change... we were a good crew. Our trains never touched eachother! And we had over 1300 PPH sometimes. AND, we also let people wait for the front seat (something I cannot believe CP still doesn't accomidate on some of the 'big rides' - rediculous).

Let me start out by saying that I've always wanted to ride the Revolution after seeing it in Rollercoaster. It was so different from the steel coasters I knew, from Arrow. I thought it was beautifully constructed and hope to ride it some day.

Now, on to the topic.. It seems that the lines for rides have grown over the years. Maybe it's caused by seatbelts, cell phones, sunglasses, etc. I don't know. One thing I have noticed, is that as seatbelts and other additional restraints are added to rides, they haven't added crew to help keep the lines moving. And so the lines grow longer.

^Unless your on Thunderhead! Man they know how to run a ride. The best coaster crew I've ever seen (and they were mostly seniors..)

It still amazes me how many so obviously lame Arrow coasters were installed. I do appreciate Arrow and Ron Toomer, but I wonder what his opinion (or how it effects him) that so many of his rides (including some of the biggest ever) have been torn down.

Just imagine... if some of those Arrows were Anton/Werner/Intamin. Could you imagine the Demon, GAm Shockwave, Orient Express and Loch Ness Monster!? (Deja vu... think I said this before, probably a few times!)

When the ride opened, trains would be dispatched as soon as previously-dispatched train reached the bottom of the second drop, where it did the station pass. And lift was much faster and did not slow one iota at the top.

^Yeah, that lift sure seems alot faster with no pause in the old movies it's in...

I sure would like to see a video of the the trains crossing (loop and bridge). I would like to see some pics or something of those tunnel lights too.

I can't stop stalking the old Revolution, you were right Moosh!

Word on the street is that Revolution just filed a restraining order against J7G3 ;)

Crud! Well, I'll at it to my list ;)

But I really just want what's best for Revolution! It's all in the name of love! *** Edited 12/20/2007 1:04:43 AM UTC by J7G3***