SOB - the last of its kind?

I sometimes wonder why Son Of The Beast was actually built - okay, it is a record-breaking coaster and features a unique loop, it looks like a crazy dizzying-height madness, but it rides really bad.

Couldn't the engineers have foreseen that it would ride that bad?
I sometimes wonder why they would actually build a ride this way - with all the talents that were involved in designing the ride.

I wonder the same thing. PKI got what they asked for with that one. Any research on past megawoodies would have advised them not too build one. Obviously they didnt care and built one anyways.

But obviously there is a way to build mega woodies and Intamin has done it.

I did ride SOB sunday and did find the *new technology helpfull in the first half of the rose bowl. Problem is the whole ride needs it.

Chuck, who is just wondering with all the alterations and fixes if this isn't the most expensive coaster ever made (Coaster only)

PKI just didn't want a looping woodie, they wanted the TALLEST, FASTEST, looping woodie. Combine that with what I understand to be design and construction problems and you end up with a ride that the GP generally loves but that enthusiasts generally do not.

Last of its kind? Gawd, I hope so.

I think that SOB is an awesome coaster and should not be the last of its kind. That coaster, IMO, is not much rougher than the Beast. Also, the first time I ever rode the Beast, I had to take an asprin to get rid of the ensuing headache. I have never had that problem with SOB.

It may not be the last looping woodie, but I'm sure it will be the last of it's kind. I would bet serious money that there will never be a woodie built on that scale with traditional wooden coaster building techniques and materials. PKI was hoping for the "Magnum" of woodies, and while they did get a ride that draws decent ridership, they did not get the ride they hoped for.

We may see another big woodie (Intamin) built, and perhaps another woodie with an inversion, but no more SOBs I'm sure!

How does intamin build woodies differently? The only one I have been on is that one at SFGAm.

They've built two in Europe with a new, prefabricated milled wood design. Completely different than anything in the States, and according to some, it's too smooth.

Adding to P's post, that particular type of Intamin wood coaster track comes in prefabricated sections, just like a steel coaster. It intended to make maintenance easier, as you merely remove the damaged section and replace it with a new one.

Okay, I get how that makes them easier to maintain. How does that make them smoother and able to build a decent hyper?

Take a look at this picture. http://www.rcdb.com/installationgallery1562.htm?Picture=23

The track is put together much differently.

Raven, it's a single piece of wood rather than 7 laminated layers, and then they run trains which are VERY similar to Millennium Force/SROS trains with the same wheels, etc. Some people say that it doens't even feel like a wood coaster.

I have seen that and I am familar with Balder and Colossos. I just don't understand why one manufacuter's woodies are so smooth and all the other ones need so much maintainance. It almost looks like Intamin uses less wood than CCI did.

edit: I did not see peabody's last post when I posted this *** Edited 4/13/2004 5:40:15 PM UTC by RavenTTD***

In all fairness, SOB isn't that horrible, at least not anymore. I'm still not a big fan of the trains, but it's better than it was. The real nightmare now I suspect is the maintenance of the ride, for which I'd hate to budget for.

I'd be curious to know how many carpenters walk that ride every morning. I'm sure that, in terms of what ride mechanics have to deal with, there isn't much more work to SOB than any other larger coaster. But the time and labor required from the carpentry department must be rediculous!

Because of the *exceptional* height/speeds and the extreme forcefulness of the helices, I am QUITE sure that Sonny requires a LOT more maintenance than "other large woodies". The last time I rode it, Sonny was much much better than I had previously remembered, but sa Jeff said, paying for the maintenance of the ride must be out of this world. I suspect PKI has regretted the decision to build the monster more than once or twice...but I continue to applaud them for taking on such an enormous project.

I am not 100% sure of this, but I keep remembering that Stengel, who did the design for SOB and who has the patent for the Intamin new-gen track tried to talk Paramount into using that technology for SOB.
Of course this would have increased the bill for Sonny quite a bit.
Maybe Paramount was not too keen to work with Intamin again after the Volcano debacle. Who knows?!
But I am convinced that the Intamin track would have saved PKI a lot of frustration and money in the long run.

Peabody,

As far as I understand, the track on the new Intamin "plug-and-play" mega-woodies use a bunch of thin layers of wood "glued" together with some kind of heat-resistant adhesive. It's not one single piece of wood, but rather several (many more than 7) layers glued together.

That's cool....I could be wrong, but was fairly certain it was solid milled pieces.

Do they carve each piece to the angle of the track or to they bend them and nail them in place? The ones in America don't seem to be specially made.