Steel Vengeance closed for minor accident

It's a combination of drive wheels and brakes for Steel Vengeance, with the exception of the mid course and final brake run, those are gravity driven with no drive wheels and only brakes.

I believe they only ran one train. Due to the principles of a point following a one-dimensional Mobius strip, that one train should never collide with another train.

Was at CP this past weekend. They ran Chess Friday, Digger ran on Saturday and Chess was back on for Sunday while the 3rd train sat on the transfer all weekend. Now I have to tell you, it was cold and rainy all weekend and the crowds were low so they were not handing out tickets to ride. Ride to seemed to run pretty consistent except for a couple minor down times. The crew was doing the best they could and doing it pretty darn good. The longest we wait was an hour 20, seemed to average about an hour.

Hoping they get everything resolved before I am there in 2 weeks. An hour isn't terrible though.

Went down for the day around 4 or 5 today. Haven’t seen any indications as to what happened yet.

I have a few more commitments than usual the next couple weeks so I decided to go today. I checked the weather and saw a guaranteed threat of rain but I went anyway. Sometimes that works out. Today, however, no. On the way up I came across a train blocking routes 4 and it sat there a good 15 minutes. That put me in late even though I left the house at 6:30. I parked in the back and on my way I saw SV was open with early riders in line. Yay! But as soon as I got inside the gate the sky opened up and dumped really cold rain on me. My clothes were soaked through. Then came thunder and lightning so I went back out to the truck, put on the spare clothes I had taken and left.
I went west to Port Clinton area (Cheese Barn anyone? Frisch’s?) and went back to the park in the afternoon. Low and behold Steel Vengeance was down due to mechanical for the best of the day. Dammit.
I talked to a really nice ride op who’s main job today was to stand on the park side of the closed crossing gate and turn people away. I got a kick out of some of the questions he fielded.
“So what’s up here? Did it crash again or are they just working on the racing thing?” Was my favorite.

Went to CP Sunday afternoon for a short 3 hour visit, and it was a pretty poor experience.

First, the good. As we drove around to the Soak City lot around 1pm we saw that everything was a walk on. We headed to Steel Vengeance and to our surprise the line was very short and we got on in less than 40 minutes. We chose the back row and what can I say, it's amazing! This was our 2nd ride, after a middle ride at the Hoedown. When we got off, we could see the line had grown behind us and was easily over an hour. So we decided to take advantage of an otherwise empty park.

Headed over to MF. 5 minute wait, broke down when we were next in line to get on. 2 train ops, and the inbound train was stuck on the first brake run, outside of the unloading station, and would not move. We left.

Walked on to WT, GK and Blue Streak,and the Bumper Cars, which seem to be even slower and more lethargic than last year, which I didn't think was possible.

Valravn was also down. Had an empty train in the station and a train full of people behind them in the brake run and nothing was happening.

Dragster broke down as we were sitting in the train,still in the station. They let everyone back in the gates, but at this point we had to leave.

On the way out, saw that MF and VR were still down.

I can't complain too much, as it's rare to get such a dead day at CP, and honestly, we were ecstatic to get a back seat ride on SV in only 40 minutes. But we were denied rides on 3 different major coasters, which was pretty bad. (Okay, I'll accept Dragster, because, well, it's Dragster.)

Open again with one train this morning. Someone claims that they were cycling last night well after park close.

Running multiple trains on a coaster is not a new concept. Did the park try to save money by hiring an unproven company to do the brakes and programming, like dollywood did with the launch system for lightning rod?

Dollywood did no such thing. They hired RMC, as did Cedar Point.

PhantomTails said:

Open again with one train this morning.

Which is absolutely better than none - and "none" is one of the rumors that someone who claimed to be "in the know" was spreading last night on Facebook - "I can't say what happened, but I can tell you for certain it won't be open tomorrow morning", was his exact quote, everywhere he posted.

You know what they say about those who know/those who don't...

Those people suck.

Jeff said:
Dollywood did no such thing. They hired RMC, as did Cedar Point.

I do know that premier gave dollywood a price to do the launch system and they went with an unproven company to cut costs. Its hard to believe rmc did the operating system on SV if they can't get multiple trains running like they did for every coaster that six flags converted. Wicked cyclone is never down and always runs both trains unless the park is dead.

Did you see an offer from Premier?

IOE did the SV control system, an extremely experienced and respected company.

I had the pleasure of riding SV this past weekend and IMO, it does live up to all the hype. It's phenomenal.

What I'm wondering now, since the park is open for daily ops, how are they going to go about solving the issue? I highly doubt that the park operates the ride all season with one train, so in order to verify that they found the source of the issue, the only time that they will do testing is after close/before open, or do you think they will start doing testing during the day and opening the ride up mid-day?

If closing the ride is what they need to fix it they need to do that soon. One train may seem acceptable when it is cold, wet, and not crowded, but soon that will change.

I wonder if the GP notices how lethargic the new bumper cars are or if that's something only weirdos like us notice. They are pretty awful, almost to the point that I don't really enjoy the ride anymore. Were we just spoiled by unusually fast cars in the past compared to other parks? Back when there were wto Dodgems in the park those cars they just replaced were the faster ones.

They sure are slow. Safety first! Whatever...

Get ye to Knoebels for the old, but still very fast, Lusse bumper car experience. It has a long, oval, one-way track with a nice slippery floor. It’s like riding a Whip that you drive, and those preserved, high front, hard bumper cars provide excellent, hard hitting fun.

Dodgem 1, when it was at the front of the park was a similar experience. I believe it was CP’s original ride and it was near Centennial theatre in the spot where the photo booth is now. The larger free-for-all Dodgem 2 was added in 1970. Then Dodgem 1 moved back near Witches’ Wheel with new cars and a larger floor. It was more of a new-build replacement. I don’t know what happened to it’s original cars, which I believe were from the Dodgem Company. When TTD was built Dodgem 1 was retired and the cars moved to Dodgem 2 and it’s original cars were shipped to Valleyfair. Finally, it was moved to where it is now and these new, “improved” cars (Bertazzon Ninjas? Cobras?) were added. Ugh. Unless it’s a really slow day I don’t bother with them anymore. The sign is still groovy, tho.
Seriously. Knoebels.

There’s a side bar. We now return to the discussion about Steel Vengeance’s horrific accident.

Cedar Point Still has hard hitting bumper cars. It's called Steel Vengeance.