Top Spin programs

What!!.. wouldn't you pass out? Hell I can't count when I'm rolling.. Now that would be way to hard core!

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phoenixphan :-) said:
As far as Top Spins, the best one I have been on is Kings Dominion's Firefall/Crypt. The cycle is fun, but not too intense. The fire and water effects are great, and the soundtrack just makes it complete. It also helps that Volcano:The Blast Coaster is just steps away!

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No doubt. I rode it on Tuesday, and this Suspended Top Spin rules! It's still not a heavily ridden ride due to people's fear of it, but no complaints from me.

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Unfortunately if you hit the Bloomsburg fair these days you will not find "Flippin' Out"... unless you see my reaction of the midway. Reitoffers used to bring their one-of-a-kind "european" fair rides. The big dissapointment was a couple years ago when they stopped bringing the Chance "Gentle Giant" wheen in favor of the Century Wheel. The giant wheel was a fair icon, and was the signal for the midway to begin and end operations for the day. Now there are more "family" rides, nothing like the days of Flippin Out, See Sturm Bahn, and Tango.

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Ahh, not true at all. Perhaps the Bloomsburg Fair doesn't want to pony up the money to bring those rides out anymore, or they're getting a lower price for going with the Orange Unit instead. Reithoffer has a survey on their newly designed webpage. Tell them what you think.

Reithoffer has been around Maryland as of recent, and I saw the Orange unit that included the Huss Flipper (called Tornado)--which is very intense--and the KMG Freak Out among other rides.

Flip N' Out is still available in their catalog, but I have yet to ride it. Unfortunately, the day I was at The York (PA) Interstate Fair in 01', they were performing maintenance on it and had it torn apart. According to their website, the Chance Gentle Giant still travels with them, but only with the Blue Unit.

Then my friend alerted me the other day to another Reithoffer setup that he came across in a Maryland suburb of D.C. that has the Tango. He didn't get to check out the fair however, so I'm not sure what else they had. There's a trend going on right now since it's early in the season of setting up small fairs in parking lots for short tuns.

Shaw & Sons, an Annapolis, MD-based company recently setup a fair ten-minutes from my house at a shopping mall. They had the Technical Park Street Fighter, currently one of my favorite traveling pendulum-based flats.

The Blue unit picked up several rides this year which I hope to see at The York Interstate Fair including a Zamperla spinning Wild Mouse, Wisdom Storm, and the A.R.M Full Tilt, which is a conversion kit for the Chance Inverters to change them into Rainbow/Falling Star-type rides.

TOPSPIN conversation my two-cents
Okay, so I took us off-topic just a little bit. I thought the program on King Kahuna at Kennywood was too intense the first year I rode it. It did something like seven flips in a row, and then another one right after it for good measure. Since this came down from Lake Compounce, how was it there?

The best one I've been on I think no longer travels, and I don't know if still exists. That was owned by Strates and it traveled with their train-based carnival, the only one in the States to do so. I think I counted a total of 22 flips. It started out in some kind of program, but then the guy switched over to manual mode. It was crazy. *** Edited 6/5/2008 6:20:30 AM UTC by Intamin Fan*** *** Edited 6/5/2008 6:21:38 AM UTC by Intamin Fan***

Next time any of you are at Great Adventure, pay attention to their Top Spin. It doesn't flip, it just "swings". It's really quite pathetic.

Knott's and Astrolands might be my 2 favorites.

I operated the Huss Top Spin at Riverside a couple years before it was branded SFNE. There was a dial on the operator panel that had 9 settings. The dial was set at number 4 and and it looks like the exact same one that Voodoo at SFDK is running in the video.

Each number on the dial was a different program, and supposedly increased in duration or length the higher up on the dial. We were told that if we moved the dial off of the selected program we could be fired. So while curious, never screwed with it and just pushed the green button as I was told!

I didn't see this first had but apparently the number 9 cycle was something like a looping star ship program. The arms would rock, and build up speed and circle over and over but with no carriage flips. The problem was that the cycle was something like 8 minutes which is a long time to spin people around in a circle. Management explained that the number 4 program was the most reliable and at a reasonable cycle time. Some of the longer and more complicated programs were apparently prone to computer errors that would cause ride downtime. Keep in mind that I never saw these these programs in action and the information could have been provided to discourage curiosity getting the best of us.

^That's pretty much right.

Top Spins have their cycles pre-programmed from Huss. The parks can't change them.

There are 9 cycles. 1-3 are about 45 seconds long. Way too short.

Cycles 6-8 are about 3 minutes long. Way too long.

Cycle 9 just turns the arms continually and never stops.

Cycles 4 and 5 are about 1:30-1:45, so that's what parks run. Cycle 4 is the only one of these two that does the "top spin" maneuver where the gondola brakes are released while the ride is in motion to give the thing a bunch of flips.

After that, it's all gravity and weight dispersement. On cycle 4 we almost always get 4 or 5 flips. I've seen as many as 11 and as few as 2, but 4 is the norm.

Cropsey, the Chance Chaos I operated at SFA had a second program option, and man did I want to try it out. There was only one problem--I didn't have that key to switch it over.

^I was only on it for a couple days but temptation was always there, I hear you! No key was required, just flipping a switch before pressing the green button.

Also another issue was that apparently loading it wrong would supposedly result in fewer flips. The idea was to load the back row first then fill in the rest of the front row. The GP always insisted and made a big stink about being in the front row, even after explaining that by loading up the back row it would make for a better ride...

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Intamin Fan said:
Cropsey, the Chance Chaos I operated at SFA had a second program option, and man did I want to try it out. There was only one problem--I didn't have that key to switch it over.

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It just changed the ride time, nothing really cool.

Bummer that the fair doesn't have Flip'n Out anymore. You see a lot of that these days though when fairs and carnivals get less and less in terms of "thrilling" rides. I'm a HUGE fan of the Zipper (probably honestly my favorite ride for hurl-inducing disorientation), and many of the places I used to go to ride it no longer have the Zipper in their repertoire. *sigh* Allentown Fair is the only local fair type event for me that still has the Zip. I have a feeling the money just isn't there for the heavy duty hitters. People are AFRAID of half these rickety lookin rides. :)

I remember reading something about Huss getting very upset at German operators for controlling the ride manually and not using the programs.

Eventually, they worked out a solution to allow it. I'm suprised more smaller parks, like Astroland, don't use the manual operation technique.

I used to operate Texas Twister at Geauga Lake years ago. It rarely had long lines and I was able to run whatever programs I wanted. Yeah #4 was the most popular and when it was busy we were told to use 4 or 5 only. When it wasn't busy, we could run any program but #9. During Hallowscream (it was called that back in the day) I often used #9 and stopped it manually. No problems. During those slow times, people would just get back in line and ride again or stay on. We allowed rerides if there was no line at all. It got so boring at times, we would run 3 rides in a row then open the bars to let people in/out. They loved it for the most part. I had one or two complain it was too long but oh well!

Rollski

Now that the old Texas Twister is Firefall at CGA, I wonder if changing the program to anything but 4 would mess up the fire and water effects (things that I'm sure the park wants functioning).

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Rollski said:
I used to operate Texas Twister at Geauga Lake years ago... We allowed rerides if there was no line at all... We would run 3 rides in a row then open the bars to let people in/out.

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That's a nice feature of the Top Spins -- the bars don't raise automatically. If your fingers are quick enough, you can switch cycles and hit start right as it's parking, and the riders won't even know they got a double (or triple) ride. They'll just think it's a really long cycle. I used to do 4 and 8 back to back. It gives you all the elements of the ride and about a 4-1/2 minute cycle time.

While we're mostly talking about Huss Top Spins, there is the Mondial version as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G6VAzoYjzY

Get's 4-6 flips each cycle.