The Best/Worst Engineered Coasters
I don't think any of you have already said this coaster. But the only coaster I've been on that I think was close to perfection was Ghostrider.
Ghostie has the perfect mix of laterals and airtime. I'm more of an airtime whore, but with an occasional lateral, and Ghostie very well proved to me what a good coaster is. It has that rough and out of control feeling, but it's actually very smooth. It's the only coaster that has had my jaw dropped the entire time (back at night baby!!.)
Although you'll still see MF above Ghostie in my top 5, Ghostrider is closer to perfect. Most of MF is boring other than all of the hills it has. But for those hills, it edges out anything I've ever ridden. Still, no woody has even got close to matching Ghostie IMO.
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Top 5:
5)Raptor 4) Goliath 3) Sros @Sfdl 2) Ghostrider 1) Millennium Force
Check Out My Site: CoastingOhio....And The Rest Of The Country
Antuan said:
"What exactly is a "dill-hole" [ref: Hostyl's post]. Is that some Chicago slang or somehting?"
Dill-hole (along with butt-nugget and ass-munch) are insults taken directly from the MTV cartoon Beavis and Butt-Head
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"To get inside this head of mine, would take a monkey-wrench, and a lot of wine" Res How I Do
GreatAdventureAddict said:
Raptor and Batman are the only flawless inverts. Montu had the trim added before the batwing, and alpengeist has the one right at the top of the lift.
So far, Talon seems to be a winner, minus the capacity issue. I havn't ridden Top Gun at Paramounts Carowinds or PGA, but PGA's looks well done.
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How much more floorless can they get?
Raptor is one of my favorite rides in the world, but it is not flawless. The transition into the final brakes is horrible. B:TR is far from flawless, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe the only one I've ridden (SFOG) was maintained poorly, but I felt a lot of the transitions were poorly designed. As for Montu and Alpengeist, the trims are not a sign of bad engineering. It's a sign that the park wants less lawsuits. Both rides ran fine without them, but they were intense enough to bring a few lawsuits. Alpengeist's pacing is just not good enough at all to consider it flawless however; thus, Montu is the only one of those two that was flawless.
Does Talon have a capacity issue? I'm sure it puts through well over 1,000 people per hour and at a park the size of Dorney, that is a huge number. I've never ridden Top Gun at PC, but PGA's is well done. Honestly, I would consider that flawless but it has been a very long time since I've ridden it.
Trims arn't always added for prevention of lawsuits. Stress Cracks and other occurances (payload intensity, etc.) are usually the major issue. Wasn't it in 99' when Montu (or was it Raptor?) had an issue with cracks, and the park slowed the mcb to a near hault.
This case is shown by almost all Arrows. Gasm, Viper, Shockwave, LNM, Drachen Fire, BBW, and even X had trims installed because of the issue dealing with train speed. This goes back to the lawsuits, cracks, etc.
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How much more floorless can they get?
How is it that jeremy can quote Beavis and Butthead and STILL sound intelligent.....while I quote Thoreau and sound like an idiot.....;)
So sorry we missed you at HP, we'll catch you and T sooner or later.....
I dont know where some of you get the idea that B&M's are the only good designed rides, because theyre not. I give credit to them for bringing in B:TR with little problems, but i dont give as much credit on medusa.
When B&M can give a successful launch coaster, of their own design, ill give them more credit. Since the launch on incredible hulk was not their idea, nor their design.
As far as some of the capacity issues go, a park with a good crew could run an arrow mega looper better than a park with a poor crew could run a B&M. many times, the reason for good capacity is a good crew. Cedar Point runs Wicked Twister better than my home park, PKD, runs volcano.
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#1-MF #2-S:RoS #3-WT
GreatAdventureAddict said:
Trims arn't always added for prevention of lawsuits. Stress Cracks and other occurances (payload intensity, etc.) are usually the major issue. Wasn't it in 99' when Montu (or was it Raptor?) had an issue with cracks, and the park slowed the mcb to a near hault.
This case is shown by almost all Arrows. Gasm, Viper, Shockwave, LNM, Drachen Fire, BBW, and even X had trims installed because of the issue dealing with train speed. This goes back to the lawsuits, cracks, etc.
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How much more floorless can they get?
I believe Raptor had a minor cracking issue in the cobra roll during the 1999 season. From what I've heard, it was replaced and has since been no problem. Regardless, there are no trims before the cobra roll. Montu did not have any cracking issues as far as I know, and was only slowed down to please the more light-hearted crowd BGT attracts. The G forces going into the second vertical loop were super strong without the brakes; even with them, it is pretty intense.
I don't think its fair to compare the roughness of Arrows to Intamin/B&M. Your Arrows which are reaching the decade marks have an upstop wheel system which is, to be nice, primative. The upstop wheels on the bottom do not touch the rails unless you have negative G-Forces which creates that "out-of-control" feeling making the ride feel a little rough
The Intamin/B&M rides however, use a wheel system which is nearly perfect. The Up-stop wheels are always touching the rails using a spring mechanism. The spring is coiled up when traveling normal and spread out when experiencing negative g's. This creates one of the smoothest rides known to man.
When I expressed skepticism, my friend reminded me that most of the coasters built in the last 20 years have been retrofitted to slow the trains down, whereas if the original design had been correct, that would not have been necessary. He says if you want a slower speed, you either reduce the size of the lift hill or the gradient on the drop or build a curve, steeper uphill, or helix to absorb the speed. He says parks are wasting money and increasing maintenance costs to build the high hills and steep drops to pick up speed, then add brakes and maintain them to bleed off that speed.
If the majority of engineers agree with him, it would mean we are building bigger but our best engineering occurred before the modern CADCAM era.
I'll bring up my beloved SFH Goliath again as best engineerd ride i rode... Trekker Park, according to the criteria of your friend, it certainly lives up to the purpose it was created for. Holland has always lacked a speed and airtime coaster, everything being Vekoma looping stuff here. So what did they create? A wonderfull combination of speed and airtime. An 'out-of-your-seats-till-bottom' drop, folowed by a huge camelback to again give airtime and accentuate the height of the ride. Then a slight bend into the stengeldive, the last one giving the most excellent floating experience added with an extra thrill: floating upside down. The caroussel to deliver those extended g-forces. The inverted corkscrew for the laterals. Another g-pulling caroussel with headchoppers, followed by another inverted corkscrew. Three rapid fire bunnyhops to deliver the unexpected and forcefull ejectors topped of with that tiny radius, high banked curve into the brakerun, just to show how forcefull an slowed down train can be. All of these elements being buttersmooth.
I just feel that this coaster combines all the good properties of different designs into one masterpiece, with no dead track or trims!
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Stengel quote: Ich sprich, denke und traüme Achterbahn!
*** This post was edited by Helios on 8/14/2002. ***
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