You guys see the video of this idiot yet?

i too thought going upside-down, laying sideways, etc. was the norm.

... as for "standing up"...

-- Alan Jacyszyn

Dave, Are you sure?

I remember rides where they've taken it up to full speed, Let you down, taken you back up several times.

I always thought they had control of how fast it spins.

Chuck

Think about it a moment, Chuck...

When you shut off the power to the motor, the ride coasts. It takes some time for it to come up to speed, and it takes time for it to spin down. It's generally at a near stop before the operator hits the brake. So a ride as you describe would be easy to do. Start the ride, shut it down, start it back up again before it stops.

I'm not completely sure about the controls, but reasonably so. Particularly knowing that a 'cheap' contactor operates the motor. :)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

OK :)

How many Gs does a Gravitron pull when it's in full speed?
6?

Nowhere near 6... more like 2. There used to be a carnie in the Northwest about 20 years ago that would ROUTINELY stand up and walk around the perimeter of the ride during the ride cycle to "put on a show" for the riders. This was done with the full knowledge of the other op running the ride as well as the carnival manager. My wife and I followed this guy around the Puget Sound region one summer... by the end of the summer he invited my wife and I to stay late and after they shut down the midway we went for a ride so that I could try to stand up. By this time I'd gotten to where I could sit up, turn sideways, etc...

Anyway, we were side by side next to the ride op running it and the ride starts up, he says "Hold the center rail to get your balance, then just step onto the slats." or whatever he called them. I lost my nerve though... I did manage to learn how to get on my knees and do a lotus position thing... that was kinda fun. But yeah, stupid? I guess... though I was only risking myself and the ride op. :)

Let's see...according to the web site, the Gravitron is 47' in diameter. As I noted, it turns at about 24 RPM. That's a radius of 23.5 feet, and a tangental velocity of about 59 feet per second. So if the outward force is v^2/r, then that's an acceleration of about 148 ft/sec/sec.

Divide by 32, and the maximum force, assuming a diameter of 47' and a maximum rotation rate of 24 RPM, is about 4.6 G.

I don't know if my math is right on that or not. 8-)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I slept through physics (yet made an A...), so I don't know how to do the math, but 4.6 g's sustained that long would probably be very detrimental to a normal person's health.

It is probably more around 2, just enough to stick you to the wall and hopefully keep you there.

---

RideMan said:
Let's see...according to the web site, the Gravitron is 47' in diameter. As I noted, it turns at about 24 RPM. That's a radius of 23.5 feet, and a tangental velocity of about 59 feet per second. So if the outward force is v^2/r, then that's an acceleration of about 148 ft/sec/sec.

Divide by 32, and the maximum force, assuming a diameter of 47' and a maximum rotation rate of 24 RPM, is about 4.6 G.

---

Thanks for the Science lesson Bill Nye! ;)

If you're not endangering any other riders, is there honestly anything wrong with doing what others are trying to do? So as the ride doesn't suddenly stop or slow down to lose the G's needed to glue yourself to the side... it doesn't appear that it would be really endangering anybody's life by doing that... unless you are not careful and try to make an absolute ass of yourself showing off.

*** Edited 2/7/2006 1:56:58 AM UTC by DawgByte II***

That's pretty funny. I wouldn't call it stupid. I've always thought that was one of the things that came along with riding a gravitron. Doing tricks/seeing people do tricks was always the reason I rode them.

-Josh

You know, on one of those "Science days" @ SFGAm the only experiment we actually *did* was calculate the acceleration of Cajun Cliffhanger (rotor). If I remember correctly, it was much more than 1.5 Gs by our crude accelerometer. But then again, that's a rotor *not* a Gravitron.

Just some useless information...

I remember back in 8th grade we went to a carnival and they had a sign outside of the Gravitron mentioning that it reached 4.5 g's.

As for it being harmful, I doubt it as rides of this nature have been around for so long. Additionally, like Rideman said, you are either speeding up or slowing down. So you dont really experience the full G-Force for that long.

My Gravitron experience is that you start to spin, you go up once for a while, come back down, then go up again. The ride never lasts longer than 2 minutes.

Now Round Ups are a different story, Ive had one op give us a ride that lasted nearly 10 minutes as he left the ride to go talk to someone. They seem not to have as powerful of a g-force and acutally give a little floating sensation at the top.

I know of people (who shall remain nameless) who would turn upside down while a Rotor was in motion. The trick was to make sure you were rightside up by the time the ride cycle was over or...ouch.

As a teen in the 80's the Rotor was a great ride to operate. Half shirts for women were "in" and the experienced operator could put on a show for everyone...not that I have any PERSONAL knowledge of said incidents.

Just figured I'd tell my experience of the first and last time I rode a gravitron....

Oswego, NY has a festival called Harborfest every year. I think it was 1992, they had a carnival going on, some friends and I stopped and went on the ride.

There was one of the ride ops in the middle of the ride standing balanced on the bar, not on the wall, for the duration of the ride.

I don't know anything about the ride program, but we were in there for what felt like five or more minutes.

I struggled not to black out and felt like I was on a horribly bad acid trip to the point where I didn't know where I was or what was going on.

Never Again.

^Sweet!

Just kidding. ;-) Carni rides can do that, although I had a similar experience on Coney (Cinci) Island's Round-Up. The thing was on crack mode, and I could of sworn we were on that thing for a good five minutes. Now I have a high tolerance for flats, but that was the first time that I actually felt like I was going to hurl. I don't really like Round-Ups anyway. ;-)

I actually haven't rode a Gravitron in years. Myrtle Beach's was probably the last one. I remember it being intense but then again I was MUCH younger. It would probably take me a few more minutes to "come to" and realize what just happened. :-P

-Tina

*** Edited 2/8/2006 8:59:13 PM UTC by coasterqueenTRN***

Certain rides ARE fun on an extended manual run...

...but complete spin-n-puke rides, are not.

Gravitron, Rotors... no thanks! A normal ride-cycle is long enough.

Yo-Yo Swings? Flying Bobs? Huss Ranger or Rainbows? Oh hell yea... they certainly won't make one as dizzy.

However, if you set ANY of those rides to 11... then I think it'll make anyone sick.

^^^my gravitron experience back in the day (must have been 1985 or something) was just like that!
It really didn't feel healthy at all.

I was on the Gravitron at Dreamworld Australia in 2004 and that wasn't as bad - and yes, I did turn around to go upside down again.

I really think different Gravitrons operate at different speeds . but in case of my old experience, the ride-cycle was definitely much too long also.

I hardly go on carnierides anymore these days -
too many bad experiences.
Since about 3 years or so, I haven't been on a single one that I actually enjoyed - they all seem like elaborate torture devices, not like fun.

*** Edited 2/9/2006 2:30:35 PM UTC by superman***

While I can't compare the two rides in terms of speed, the Tivoli Orbiter is crazy fast (well at least when it isn't at Busch Gardens Williamsburg). According to specs I found, the center moves at 20rpms and the vehicles move at 26rpms. *** Edited 2/10/2006 5:09:44 PM UTC by Intamin Fan***

The flip upside-down/sideways thing is very common and almost any op I've ever seen has allowed it. It's a fun thing to do. Now the handrail thing was a pretty stupid thing to do. I have seen people walk the whole thing and I've had buddies of mine that were ops that let me in after hours just to mess around. You can pull off some cool stuff in those, but holding onto a handrail then letting go when you're pulling that much force isn't the best idea.

Also, whoever mentioned the Coney RoundUp: Try out the breakdance or the top spin there. The breakdance sometimes doesn't revolve, the operator just has it spin manually. That is extremely nauseating. The top spin, when controlled by the right guy, does 10 consecutive flips, some forwards, some backwards, and then it locks, lowers, and soaks you with water jets. Talk about intense. As for an intense round-up? Sometimes when I'm at Knoebels I've been given some pretty nauseatingly long rides :)

---

coasterqueenTRN said:

I actually haven't rode a Gravitron in years. Myrtle Beach's was probably the last one. I remember it being intense but then again I was MUCH younger. It would probably take me a few more minutes to "come to" and realize what just happened. :-P

---

Tina, didn't you ride the gravitron with us at Scandia in March? (after we waited a few minutes for the ride op to finish cleaning up the protein spill at the exit :) )