The X???

What happened to The X???

I keep hearing that they dont even know when they will open it again or mayb it was just an old trip report.

X is fine...you must have read an old trip report. The only thing wrong with it now is that it will never have any kind of capacity. But, that can't be fixed it would seem.

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- "I used to be in the audio/visual club, but I was kicked out because of my views on Vietnam........and I was stealing projectors" - Homer Simpson

What's wrong with the cap.? (When I went it was a two train wait). It has separate load/unload and they were beating stack about 25% of the time on two train op. (which could just be a function of slow unload), but with three trains, it seems like the load station, (guessing this is the bottleneck) isn't much slower than any other 28 passenger vehicle.

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Be polite and ignore the idiots. - rollergator
"It's not a Toomer" - Arnold Schwartzenkoph

There has also been mention that it is not opening on Wednesdays due to staffing and/or maintenance issues. I took it as a dumb rumor at first, however it was closed this past Wednesday but open Thursday and Friday. Take it for what it's worth.

I agree, there are issues with the capacity and probably always will be. Three train operation would be a dream on that ride, but I hear that it is next to impossible.

-Adam

Good to know about Wednesdays, I'll have to keep my eyes open for that and myself away from there if that turns out to be the case.

I'm shocked to hear that you had a 2 train wait, Andy, what day did you go? I've only ever seen that happen once, and the park was almost completely empty. They were still stacking up about 90% of the time though.

Capacity won't go down as long as they do the double restraint checks, and unless 4-D style restraint systems become commonplace, they'll have to keep doing that. They check/help everyone when the train first shows up, then rotate the seats, then do checks again. Because of the design, you can't just walk along one edge of the train pulling on a restraint, they have to walk in and out of each row, and all of that adds up to a lot of time waiting. I doubt it'll ever get really high capacity, and that's too bad...

I went on a Sun. in January. Everything was a walk-on pretty much. 20 minutes for DV, 10ish for X (depending on the time of day. It was really long early in the day).

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Be polite and ignore the idiots. - rollergator
"It's not a Toomer" - Arnold Schwartzenkoph

If the new B&M 4d coasters will in fact happen, they will probably come up with some way to fix capacity issues, just look what they did for Flying coasters.

As I have read previous to going there, one train operation on X is simply brutal. On a day when EVERYTHING (and I do mean everything) was a virtual walk-on (including Scream!, Superman, Goliath etc), X was a solid two hour wait due to the one train operation.

When we asked one of the crew why they had the other two trains sitting in the shed, they said it was due to "lack of need" of using any more than one.

While X was awesome, I was really amazed that whomever makes such decisions would decide to keep it to a one train operation. I'm just suprised that they would aggravate guests like that (on an otherwise excellent day) to save putting another train on the tracks. X had a line ALL day....so I have no doubt there would have still been a wait ALL day.....but complaints would have been much less if that wait time would have been cut in half. With "the" train leaving the station no quicker than every 5-7 minutes, I can tell you that there were some pretty upset people that claimed they were going right to Guest Relations.

Perhaps they have a formula (based on how many people have come thru the gates) for "when" to put a second train on the tracks OR perhaps it's a lot more costly to do so....but, in either case, I just didn't get it. While the park was not packed, it was not empty either.

I'm going to assume that they put a second train on for Saturday/Sunday....or, at least I hope they do! The waits Friday were pretty long with one train, I can't imagine if they did that on a Saturday or Sunday.

AdamFrank said:

Three train operation would be a dream on that ride, but I hear that it is next to impossible.

Next to impossible? I've experienced it! They decided to do AN ENETIRE TEN MINUTE transfer during operating hours.

Next to impossible? Yeah right.

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120+420=TTD

Not impossible, just not going to happen, end of story.

If you new the maintainance it takes just to run two trains daily....

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Tease Alert!

*Something* wicked this way comes...to the west coast in 2004!

The B&M take on the Arrow 4D is a rumor, not factual.

I'm kinda glad that B&M isn't gonna make a 4D. It would just lead to clones of the same 4D for every SF park in the world! And it wouldn't be a unique ride anymore.
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"If it's just us...seems like an awful waste of space." -Contact

No, no one knows what B&M is doing, leave the rumours to screamscape. Back on topic, i though that only 2 of the X trains had been 'retrofitted' to run without ripping themselves apart? How would they do 3 train op with only 2 trains?