Shoot the Rapids: "The boats didn't fit the flumes"

Touchdown said: To me thats what makes a good non mountain theme flume (which lets face it are the best flumes by far.)

Only until Six Flags builds Terminator Salvation: Flume of Steel. ;)

That one, of course, will feature stereo sound and fire effects.

Zipping along is nice, but not mandatory. If you can't zip, rapids will do. Shoot the Rapids, though, has neither.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the flume at Dollywood. I would have loved to see something like that installed at Cedar Point. The layout is very compact, but you can't tell, because of the level of themeing.

Just an observation... StR is located in the only real themed section of the park.

Carrie M. said:
I don't remember my last run on a traditional log flume taking me to the brink of ecstasy, either. We're expecting this flume to do more than meander through water with two drops, because.....?

Because of this?
http://coasterbuzz.com/Forums/Thread/56404.aspx

... and this?
http://www.foxtoledo.com/dpp/news/local/wupw_What_is_Whyte_Lightnin...ajr_090109

Well, after reading many reviews and hearing about the commercial shoot from pointbuzzers, it certainly seems that the "fix" to open the ride was minimal. I'm not sure if the fix entailed putting in better/heavier bilge pumps to get rid of the water, but the boats are definitely back-heavy as they have yet to let anyone sit in the back row (capacity -20%).

In addition, there are plenty of reports that the the bigger you are, the more likely you will ride in the front of a loaded boat. This lines up with the giant water dummies we saw during testing in the front of the boats.

So, will improvements to the boats continue? Or was a band-aid put on until 2011?

Or until new boats can be designed, built & tested. (All on Intamin's dime, I suspect)

I found this nugget on Holiday World's facebook page...

What is the new ride if its not a coaster? Also, why did you guys put windshilds on the Pilgrams Plundge? You don't get wet now!!!

They're splash guards, to reduce the amount of water that splooshes into the boats. Otherwise we'd have to slow down the ride significantly, as the water would have to pumped out in the station. That would reduce capacity significantly.

So it seems like Intamin is still trying to figure out their own boats. The "water wave" the dumps onto the lap of the front seat is apparently being addressed by this new splash guard. I would assume these now exist on Shoot the Rapids as well.

Actually they don't. But Cedar Point has changed the boat loading on Shoot the Rapids...they are now leaving the middle row empty. I haven't ridden it since that change, so I can't say for sure if the change in boat loading reduces the spillage over the bow or not.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

If they're having "excess spillage" over the bow, wouldn't it make more sense to leave the FRONT row empty? Unless it would then cause the Buzzsaw Falls problem of having the stern partially-submerged as the boat leaves the station...I thought I was going to need a life-vest to ride that thing, LOL.

Stupid, stupid Intamin. Seriously. Why the heck do parks still buy anything from them, over and over even?

Wow that is just pathetic. To think a company like Hopkins fixed this problem years ago. There really is no good excuse for a problem like this.

On Valhalla, at the Pleasure Beach (uses the same ride system as Typhoon Sea Coaster at SFA) the water comes in and over the front of the boat after a 4ft drop - they have to remove 30/40 litres of water after each cycle.

They tried to reduce the amount of water in the flume but the boats then got stuck.

Cant they just raise the track out of the water a few inches, or make the track run out a little longer? I don't understand how that wouldn't be a solution.

Edit - moved hyphen

It's interesting; I need to look at my earliest video footage of Pilgrim's Plunge to see what's going on...

But over the past couple of weeks, I've taken an interest in Snake River Falls, because I noticed that when those boats come off the end of the drop, they cruise very nicely through the channel back to the station...and those are HUGE boats. Meanwhile, Shoot the Rapids *crawls* through the channel. So I investigated a little.

What I noticed was that the boat channel on Snake River Falls is incompletely separated from the reservoir. What is more important, though, is that downstream of the station, as the boat goes up the lift hill, the Snake River Falls channel drops into a pit that is maybe 8'-10' deep. Water is then pumped up from there back into the channel. I wasn't able to see where it comes back up, but my guess is that the pump outlet is into the channel behind the drop chute. What I realized was that the long drop between the station and the pumphouse is what provides the substantial flow for the entire boat channel through the reservoir...and in fact the flow through the channel is so strong that water actually drains from the reservoir into the channel.

Meanwhile, over on Shoot the Rapids, it doesn't look like there is much of a drop at all from the bottom of the channels (at the bases of the lifts). The channel doesn't drop much, and the flow comes entirely from the drop along the run of the channel. It seems that they did the same thing with Pilgrims Plunge, and as on Shoot the Rapids, the result was intolerably slow boats. I think Intamin was counting too much on the momentum of the boat coming off the drop and mostly ignoring the need for strong flow in the channel. It seems like a reasonable assumption but in the real world it doesn't work that way. Holiday World has somehow managed to dramatically increase the flow in the Pilgrims Plunge channel, and I wondered how they managed to do it until I noticed the eight foot plume of water coming off the pumps into the reservoir behind the station. I think Holiday World has opted to brute-force the problem, pumping a much larger volume of water out of the channel than its drop actually requires.

I still haven't figured out exactly what is going on, but that's my observations so far...! It doesn't help that the parks work so hard to hide the mechanics of this stuff... :)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Walt's first law of entertainment: Make it operate (as if) by Magic. ;)

You are making me think I need a trip to Lake Winnie.

Pagoda Gift Shop said:
The "water wave" the dumps onto the lap of the front seat is apparently being addressed by this new splash guard. I would assume these now exist on Shoot the Rapids as well.

On Labor Day weekend, one of the STR boats had what I would describe as a "prototype" splash guard on it. All the other boats were unchanged.

Hmm, I saw that on the web cam. I didn't say anything because after the cam refresh, the next boat I saw was normal. Thought I was seeing things.

Splash Guard sounds like a very powerful anti-perspirant.

Or a new feature of Ty-D-Bowl.
New Ty-D-Bowl-- now with Splash Guard!

We should seriously be in advertising...