The Mobius coaster.

I personally have never been on one and RCDB isn't listing Twisted Collossus as one (maybe didn't update).

Do these type of coasters give a different experience? Just curious. How is the capacity on these? It seems the train out on the circuit has to wait on the second lift until the other is ready to go.

No difference in experience – why would there be? It's just a coaster with two lift hills, that's all.

Twisted Colossus isn't a mobious coaster. It's simply a coaster that has two lift hills. Heck, the mine train at SFoG has three lifts.

As for ride experience, it's no different other than technically you're only riding half the coaster once you pull into the station (the first time).

My experience with a Mobius coaster is Racer at Kennywood. Both sides take the same amount of time, so there is no waiting for the other train, except in the station before both are dispatched at the same time. As far as I know, that is how every Mobius coasters have been designed.

A Mobius coaster is just a racing coaster in which the train ends up on the other side of the station, right?

As for the new coaster at Magic Mountain, I don't thing a Mobius racing coaster has been designed in such a way that the train travels both circuits before loading and unloading. It is unique.

So now my gears are turning. Will the train have to wait on some brakes for the other train to leave the station? Perhaps the lift hills will be designed in a way that will keep the trains moving, possibly at different speeds depending on the needs of racing the two trains.

It's kind of confusing and hard to explain/discuss, for me anyways, because I am not interested in/very good at math stuff.

Google wants Mobius to be capitalized, possibly because it is the name of the Germin who devised the Mobius strip. It's like the same rule for Ferris wheel. There is also supposed to be an umlaut over the ö. This photo I found online shows the idea behind a Mobius coaster.

...That's all I know about it. :)

Currently there is only one mobius coaster in the US, The Racer at Kennywood. They were once fairly common, one of John Miller's more popular designs. The chief difference is that they have to be raced, or you are going to have some serious problems, as it is a single track, not two. You leave on the right side, you come back in on the left. This is achieved coming out of the station, where the track does a 180 to the lift hill. I would surmise that RCDB is waiting for Twisted Colossus to be actually up and operating before listing it.

Twisted Colossus is not a Mobius coaster as you enter and exit at the same side of the station/track. The coaster will bypass the station before heading up the second lifthill

I will say that Twisted Colossus and Switchback are the more innovative concepts of 2015, even if Twisted Cyclone turns out to be the best ride.

Wikipedia say's the following about "Mobius loop coasters:"

A Möbius loop roller coaster can be either a racing roller coaster or a dueling roller coaster. Its unique feature is that there is one continuous track instead of two separate ones. As a result, the station that a train leaves is not the same one to which it will return.

I'd need to see the layout for Twisted Colossus before I could determine how close the ride is to a Mobius design. All it would probably need to be considered a Mobius coaster is another station before the second lift. But I do agree that it is definitely not a Mobius.

Think of the portion before the second lift as a station fly-by... It doesn't have 2 load/unload track portions in the station.

Here's my take on how Twisted Collosus will work, I may be wrong:

Train 1 loads & leaves the (only) station, climbs lift A, and travels the first half of the circuit (first ride of the day will actually see no duelling, train 1 will be solo the first half of the ride). Meanwhile train 2 is now in the station and loading. As train 1 comes back around past the station and approaches lift B, train 2 leaves the station and climbs lift A. These trains now duel, train 1 on the second half and train 2 on the first half. Train 3 is now in the station loading. As trains 1 & 2 come back around again, train 3 leaves the station and climbs lift A, train 1 enters the station to unload, and train 2 now climbs lift B. So now trains 2 & 3 are duelling, while train 1 is loading.

In essence, SFMM will have to run 3 trains to get the duelling effect for the full ride. If you and your buddies split up between trains to race each other (like on Gemini) you will only see each other on the course for 1/2 the ride. Travis, I agree (and we've debated this before) that dispatch timing will be a real issue. Curious to see how they will work that out.

Does this make sense? Does it sound right to anyone else?

Oh and no, it is not a Möbius loop coaster.

The only way to deal with any slow dispatches that may occur on this ride is by either stopping the second train from accessing the second lift until the first train is ready, or by computer control of the lift hill speeds. It could also be a combination of the two.

But slow dispatches may not normally occur on this ride. It will depend on staffing, ride time, and restraint design. It's possible that the train in the station will have to wait for the other train to catch up before dispatch.

This is pretty interesting stuff.

If a train A leaves the station travelling at...

If it had twin loading platforms before the lift hill, then I could see them racing it in the manner of the John Miller's rides. However with the flyby through the station, that negates one of the requirements of being a true Mobius coaster. From seeing how MM does coaster operations in the past, I would be surprised if they achieve 75% of the design capacity. Looking at some of the construction photos it appears that it has the possibility of being an airtime machine. The question is going to be how long will it be before the trim brakes appear.

Why would that be? RMC seems to get it right first try. I can't think of one of their rides that suffers from trims added after the fact.

This is SF Magic Mountain we're talking about........

And? Where are the trims added on Tatsu? Apocalypse? X2? Green Lantern?

Six Flags is obviously asking for aggressive coasters. Not trimmed coasters.

The easy answer would be to utilize a variable-speed lift a la Dueling Dragons.

I think they will use the lift speed to time the dueling- looks to me in the animations that the trains travel up the lift at different speeds, no? In fact after the first section of the ride the train travels well up the 2nd lift before it actually engages.

I really hope SFMM doesn't let dispatch issues ruin the awesome dueling feature of the ride. Maybe adding one more train would help if they just let them stack pre-lift? I'm thinking kind of along the lines of Maverick at CP- usually runs way more trains then needed but ensures capacity stays up. I'd happily sit and wait at the lift a couple mins to ensure I got the dueling ride experience.

"Why did the chicken cross the Möbius strip?
To get to the same side! BAZINGA!"

-Sheldon Cooper