Windjammer Surf Racers

Lets Build Dueling hypers or gigas or maybe even a Dueling Rocket Coaster. Dueling Flying coaster would be cooler then all get out and let not forget about the dueling log flumes.

Alright but really all the others would be cool minus the log flumes only thow because they arent roller coasters.

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SFGAMDie HARD said:
http://www.rcdb.com/installationdetail970.htm A dueling Intamin steel "above the track" coaster in Germany..

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That ride looks wicked awesome! That would have been a cool concept for the Italian Job rides..have a second track that chases the mini coopers...maybe have a vekoma motorbike style ride on the other track. They could twist around each other through the tunnels :)

it was one of the neatest ideas but togo messed it up.

Another "Zombie" thread? Man these things are showing up pretty regularly now.

Yeah, pretty soon someone is going to ask what they should study in college to become a coaster engineer. Oh wait, no. They'll start a new thread instead. ;)

If anybody knows more than Windjammer Surf Racers, I'd like to meet him! This was the ride that got me hooked on coasters, no matter how ironic that sounds considering it was one of the most despised rides at its time. But it's funny to know that the ride was popular among guests, but did not do much to bring attendance up by a large margin like the park expected it during the '97 season.

The park reported that it had spent upwards of $2,000,000 USD in repairs and maintenance alone. The ride had misaligned tracks in some sections, wrinkles in the train mainframes, and vehicles were reported to stall in winds as low as 3-5 miles per hour. The ride's computer would also have problems, causing for the ride's closure days at a time.

Into only its second of week of operation in '97, the park had to temporarily close the yellow track to modify a track area that was excessively problematic - paired with the faulty wheel assemblies on the trains that would have difficulty navigating the rails in some areas. The over-the-shoulder harness restraints were also switched out and changed within the first month. The ride's "spiral cone" mechanism at the center of the helix finale was another non-coaster component of the ride that was faulty, that stood dormant since the first few weeks the ride was open til the ride's demolition only a few years later.

Later on the yellow track was permanently shut-down, leaving the red side operating by itself. And the entire attraction was officially closed in 2000 and stood "standing but not operating" for more than whole year while Knott's was in a legal tango with Togo.

Got to see the ride standing idle, it really didn't *look* any more painful than any other ill-designed Pinfari or what-have-you.

Even though I never rode WindJammer, I'm really more disappointed they took out Tumbler...I loved that ride... *sniff*...but Knott's certainly has made good use of the space (if you take into account that PP takes up so little space)... ;)

might add they did not win that tango they should have tho that was a great ride that togo messed up as i said befor if they hade some one else build it it would have been diffrent

/\ What's funny about that is that Zierier GmBH was originally contracted to build the Windjammer coaster concept, but for some reason, Togo took over the project in the end and as a result, built Knott's a self-destructing coaster that beforehand, was a promising concept in rollercoaster design and theming.

A rundown of why Windjammer Surf Racers met the ill fate it did! A lot of people probably didn't know these trivial facts, but once you do, you'll really get an idea as to what Knott's went through with this ride - RIP WJ! http://www.coasterbuzz.com/forum.aspx?mode=thread&TopicID=11421

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kRaXLeRidAh said:... This was the ride that got me hooked on coasters, no matter how ironic that sounds considering it was one of the most despised rides at its time.

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Hail Coaster Addict!

I took my kids to KBF a few years before, and put the tallest on Monte.

They would NOT reride.

My yougest son, rode his VERY FIRST "upside down" coaster on WindJammer.

We ALL liked the ride.

We came back later and found it closed. We never knew why.

My son's first inversion credit is WindJammer.

well now you know that wasnt the best ride replacing safty restants in the first week :/ scarry

any one know what happend to the cars of the ride?

/\ Sent to the scrapyard and have been long non-existent for many years now.

Though I would like to have tried Windjammer, I was very, very pleased with the replacement.

Hey im new here and was wondering why this was such a bad ride? i was on it many times i was a seson pass holder to knotts in 98-99 and it was closed a bit but why? what happend? is their going to be another one like it somewhere? thanks :D

p.s. the desighn of the coaster racers was the coolest coaster desighn now duel rides like the excellerator god lines would go fast!

/\ Uh. Everything you want to know is in this thread already...

but is their any more duel coasters comin?

/\ We don't know and we already have plenty of "dueling/racing" coasters presently operating. A few examples include Dueling Dragons (Universal Studios Islands of Adventure), Gwazi (Busch Gardens Tampa Bay), and The Lightning Racer (Hersheypark).

There are unique problems to dueling coasters.. do you make them separate systems (like Gemini) that are capable of running just one track so that the whole ride isn't down if one side is down? Then you have people complain that it's not really racing because only one side is running (instead of being glad they can get on at all!)

Also, it's much harder to design since you not only have to take into account the forces, transitions, etc. of designing a coaster that people will want to [re-]ride, but you also have to calculate the precise speeds, distances, etc. to make the ride length the same down to the second (not to mention those interesting features like criss-crossing tracks on Lightning Racer). It's not like RCT where you can just delete a couple track pieces and try again. :)

Are we going to see any more in the future? Most likely yes.. although I wouldn't expect them to be the latest-greatest thing to hit coasterland. I mean, the future is a long time. I'd say the odds are greater of having another dueler built than that of not being built. Just look at B&M drop coasters - or even the more recent wooden Flying Turns coasters.