SeaWorld Orlando Pipeline 11/12/23

I'm down in Orlando for the week and brought the Cleveland weather with me. It's for work, but no, not for IAAPA.

I decided to come down a bit early and do a couple of park visits to round up a few credits.

11/12 - SeaWorld.

I've had various passes to SWO/BGT off and on for years. My last pass expired the day Pipeline opened and I was bummed. It actually looked like it had potential. So I came down Sunday morning and headed over to SWO for a short afternoon visit. I gotta say, Pipeline was way more fun than I ever thought it would be! I expected it to be, at a minimum, a good stand-up. But what I got was so much more.

First off, it's obvious over the last decade that B+M has finally evolved after being stuck in a rut. (admittedly a good rut, but still a rut.) I think the problem with their old Standups was that they didn't change enough to provide a comfortable ride experience. The transitions into and out of elements was the same as they were as far back as Iron Wolf, which just led to headbanging, whiplash, whatever you want to call it. (Not to mention the "male discomfort" that gets brought up so often.)

Okay, I'm rambling. My point is that you can tell Pipeline was a ground-up rethink of the concept. Who here, when they first saw the announcement, didn't say "A standup? Are you serious?" Every element of this ride was designed specifically around the concept of a smooth standup. It's all about graceful turns and hills. There's only one inversion and it is smooth, not the old snap rolls of B+Ms past.

The standup "seats," for lack of a better word, are about as comfortable as they can be. And the best part, which caught me off guard, is that they are made so that every airtime moment you go through you are completely lifted off the train and floating a few inches above it. I wasn't expecting that and was laughing and smiling throughout.

I took 2 rides and absolutely loved them. The TLDR is B+M had something to prove and they knocked it out of the park with this.

I then set out to do a quick loop because I didn't want to stay too long.

Ice Breaker still sucks.

Mako is still amazing in the first "half" but makes me queasy now in the 2nd part. Yes, I am getting noticeably more sensitive to this as I get older, YMMV. I love the first part of Mako so very much, and there was no line, but I opted for 1 and done.

A little bit of walking around and looking at fish and I was outta there.

I know we've all had discussions about which rides make which of us queasy as we get older, but I don't think I remember anyone mentioning Mako. As a local, I can't tell you the last time I rode Manta because of that "I'm not a kid anymore" queasy feeling, but I've never had an issue on Mako. Just curious what about it does the queasy thing for you.

I also get queasy on Mako after a few rides. Any ride that has repetitive floaty and positive Gs will do it for me.

For me it's the slow/fast/slow/fast repetitive motion of only the small hills. Just about every B+M hyper gets too slow over the small hills in their 2nd halves. It ends up being too much like the motion of a Swinging Ship type ride, which I simply cannot do anymore. I don't know if it's a function of age, but Mako is pretty new, or the parks turning the MCBR up higher than recommended, or what. It's too bad, because Mako is amazing otherwise. I plan to visit SW more over the next year, as I got the Funcard at a pretty good price and I'm at the Florida Hotel (At the Florida Mall) often.

If there’s a B&M syndrome it’s the second half let down. (Orion would be an exception:) )
I thought Mako was thrilling and almost scary during its first half, and I could see where the second half would be awesome if it hadn’t been for that pesky MCB. It seemed like a ruined opportunity and just pissed me off.
As for queasy, I’m in the same boat. An embarrassing recent example was when I rode Iron Dragon this last spring. Iron Dragon, wth? But for some reason I was quite dizzy. I love flats and now I have to be really careful. It makes me sad to think that my lifelong hobby has taken this turn. When I was a kid I’d go to the state fair and ride every Zipper they had all day long. There might’ve been some dizziness but it was nothing more than the pleasant, mind-altering experience one seeks in their youth, lol.

Tommytheduck:

For me it's the slow/fast/slow/fast repetitive motion of only the small hills. Just about every B+M hyper gets too slow over the small hills in their 2nd halves.

Yeah, Diamondback is probably the worst offender on a B&M hyper for me. After the MCBR its horrible in that regard.

I've always been sensitive to those type of forces, even Big Dipper at Geauga Lake would tear me up in my younger days. Don't think it got worse for me as I got older, I just care less to ride stuff as many times so that helps.

But yeah, the sinusoidal positive-to-negative (floaty or ejector) in a repetitious manner do it for me. Can throw me on a something with endless inversions or positive/lateral forces all day long, but two or three rides on something like Diamondback, Magnum, most RMC's, etc... Meh.

In general (spoiler alert: first world enthusiast problems ahead), B&M's tend to die after the MCBR. One of the reasons Goliath oG and Candymonium are my favorite B&M speed coasters (haven't ridden Fury, but have ridden Leviathan) is because there's no MCBR to mess up the pacing. Occasionally the MCBR does a decent job of creating a surprise pop into a decent second half (Apollo's comes to mind) but more often than not, it's just slow series of small barely floaty hills.