Zonga Vs. Texas Tornado?

oh, and Jokers Revenge was a crap coaster...I dont think anyone will/does miss it...

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tricktrack said:
Alledgedly the texas heat caused the train to slide back down on the curved lift. Its hard to say anything against that...

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Aren't there anti-rollbacks? I know on the straight section above the the curve, they're loud as all heck.

Also, SFMW is pretty cool throughout the summer. I live about 4 miles away (takes me 30 min. to walk to the park), and the breeze from the bay keeps it nice and temperate all summer. Even when 10 mi. inland gets above 90, we rarely get above 80.

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slowmotion said:

Yes, but they laid supports for a more permanent installation

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No they didn't. They poured a pad of concrete and set the supports on top of it.

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...plus, just because the thing was originally portable doesn't mean that it moved itself. My guess on the cost to transport that thing...say using 10 trucks would be somewhere in the ballpark of 6000 dollars. They could have used that to repair the coaster, no?

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No. Do you honestly think they could have completely repaired it for $6,000? Look at everything they did to it! It got new restraints and several reprofiles. The reason they moved it was because of the heat. The only way to fix heat issues would be to enclose it (again, costing far more than $6,000)

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Anyway, pretty useless topic at this point...apparantly if a coaster causes too many problems at a particular park (in Six Flags eyes) they just move it instead of using the money to fix the problems.

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As has been said before, the issues were with the Texas heat. The only way to fix that was to take it OUT of Texas.

-Nate

They could've just moved Texas.

I heard the problem was with the Texas heat and the lift hill. Since the lift hill uses rubber advancing tires all the way up the entire lift, the weather caused the tires to get too hot and the train would slip going up the lift hill. The train couldn't roll back down the entire hill because of the anti rollbacks but it still wasn't very reliable that way. Also I dont know the exact number of motors they have on the lift hill for the advancing tires but that has to be a maintenance nightmare for the motors and the tires.

Good GOD you walk a fast 4 miles apolloandy, I RUN three miles in 20 minutes. :)

Anyway, I think the ride never should have left Germany. Its a darn shame Six Flags put a great Shwarczkopf coaster that was unrestricted by American lawsuits into the ride trade system. *** Edited 11/27/2003 5:11:25 AM UTC by Stan***

Well the heat had a lot to do with it but it was more than that. SFAW bought a used coaster. Like some used cars, some used coasters have more problems then others. A lot of these problems were caused by operational changes from the way it ran in Germany and the way it ran under Six Flags. SFAW put a lot of time and money into fixing the ride and it could have re-opened at SFAW. Instead of re-opening a ride that the public already viewed as flawed and un-reliable, it was decided to give it a fresh start at SFMW. Personally, I loved the ride.

@ Mojo
There is actually just one strong motor that powers all of the tires. All tires are connected by a rotating pole (sorry, don´t know the english word for it).

There would have been a chance to get rid of the tire drive. Take a look at Jetline at Gröna Lund, it uses a chain lift on a curvesd lifthill! This would have required a complete new lift hill, though.

@Apollo Andy
When it ran in Germany it didn´t have any rollback and it didn´t need to. Even in pouring rain, a train would sit perfectly still on the lifthill. The tires were strong enough to hold a full train in place.
I think they put in an anti-rollback in Texas. But when the tires lose their grip due to heat, even a chaindog will not be able to lift the train any further.

@ Mike R
Can you get more specific how SF changed the operation of the coaster?
I know that they added a permanent stairway and bigger stages at the blockbrakes for better access.
Although, I don´t want to sound like a defender of german showmen (far from it) but Thriller was running great and had very little downtime.
About 6 months before the ride was sold, it was completely overhauled and looked like new.
Did you know that when Mr. Barth sold his "Triple Loop" he got more noney for it than he paid for 12 years ealier?!

I don´t know how much Mr Bruch got for the Thriller, but he is a very good businessman and many showmen were full of envy when they heard the sum he was getting for it. (This is still no proof for the ride´s condition, though.)

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kRaXLeRidAh said:
The ride had problems with the heat over at the Texas park. I believe it had to do with either the wheels or the tire-lifts. The move to Northern California was a good one. The cooler weather allowed for it to operate more consistantly and it was a good trade-off for both SFMW and SFAW (which debuted two new rides in place of Texas Tornado).

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I once saw on a tv show... These guys in Arizona build combat robots and said that heat isn't good for the wires and control stuff. (stuff melts)

Those guys in Arizona probably had very little idea what they're talking about.

was it battlebots? theyre cool

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Stan said:
Good GOD you walk a fast 4 miles apolloandy, I RUN three miles in 20 minutes.

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Well, it's 4mi. by cars along roads. I take some shortcuts through neighborhoods and parks, and I do walk a pretty darn brisk pace.

Just to add to the lift issue, the ride didn't have anti-rollbacks when it first opened in Houston. The tires on the lift are designed to only be able to go in one direction, which would stop a rollback in normal conditions. In the heat, the tires lost all grip and the train rolled back down the hill, injuring something like 12 or 13 people. That's when the extremely loud anti-rollbacks were added.

Re Combat Robots... If it's the guys in Arizona I think it is, they're team Raptor. They've been to Battlebots.

I also have been to Battlebots and I can tell you that while the heat isn't especially good for combat robots, it's certainly not an issue unless you are fighting someone with a FLAME THROWER or something shorts in your bot. We've run competitions in Las Vegas when it was 100 F outside and there were no problems with the bots - except that the battery packs tended to get too hot, but a coaster doesn't run on BATTERIES does it?

As far as the coaster goes, yeah, I imagine the heat would not be very kind to it... but it wouldn't "fry" the electronics all by itself - or else Georgia, Dallas, Vegas, Kansas City, St. Louis and a whole host of other cities wouldn't be able to run their coasters now would they? The heat was cooking something else, not the control system of the ride.

-Escher

^Nobody was talking about the heat frying the control systems. Read again: The trains used to slide through the tire driven lift. This feature was used on some of the huge Schwarzkopf mobile coasters to save space.

I think the only other curved tire driven lift on the american continent is found on Mindbender in Canada.

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pkidelirium said:
was it battlebots? theyre cool

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Yes, it was Team Raptor, and getting back to coasters, what I said refers to maybe the Texas heat could of caused problems with the control wires. Plus, if it really got red hot, those tires one of you guys mentioned could of had some sticking.

Moving to a quite cooler area is good for the coaster. Unfortunately, their move to CA makes it harder to get there since i'm in Illinois.

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tricktrack said:

@ Mike R
Can you get more specific how SF changed the operation of the coaster?
I know that they added a permanent stairway and bigger stages at the blockbrakes for better access.
Although, I don´t want to sound like a defender of german showmen (far from it) but Thriller was running great and had very little downtime.
About 6 months before the ride was sold, it was completely overhauled and looked like new.
Did you know that when Mr. Barth sold his "Triple Loop" he got more noney for it than he paid for 12 years ealier?!

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The biggest changes were in the restraint release. In Germany, a pull tab was used as the train entered the station and when that tab was pulled (By an employee standing next to the track...) the restraints would unlock. Six Flags changed it to an automatic unlock mechanism that never quite worked right and I believe was the cause of the ratcheting down of the shoulder restraints.

^Oh, I remember the carnies from hell that gave your pinned torso another punch to release the horrible restraint while the train was rolling into the station.

I am not sure, but I think I rememver that the OTSR could be opened simultaniously as well. But maybe my memory tricks me. (At least the lap bars opened automatically).

But the accordeons ratcheted down before as well. You could try as hard as possible but you couldn´t prevent it. If they didnt fall down on you at the bottom of the first loop they would come down after the second inversion. The problem was that the forces would crouch your body down and you could not sit straight up for the rest of the ride.

If you want more information on the history, go here.

Marine World had Zonga running great in September, really smooth. It went to crap for the last few weeks because they hit e-stop after a guy jumped under the ride trying to get a lost article back, and after that point they never seemed to really get it running again. I think the main difference between Texas and Norcal is the humidity, the tire lift doesn't work so great when it is damp (we also use a new type of tire now with more surface space.)

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GoliathKills said:
If you want more information on the history, go here.

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Thanks, that's a nice article about the history of the coaster.
However, it lacks some important info about the coaster's first years.

Thriller was in the news for some time during its first months of operation, because poeple turned to doctors having strange problems with their backs: It turns out they all have ridden the same coaster: Thriller.

After an investigation, a guilty section of the track was found (supposedly at the exit of the second loop) that was not manufactured according to the specification of the engineering plan. It had a vertical offset of the two steel tubes left and right of 10 cm.
After this was changed, the ride supposedly worked without further problems - at least people weren't able to trace their back problems to Thriller anymore.
To my knowledge, the OTSRs were actually added to PREVENT the backs of the riders from bending during the ride, so the torso remained more upright while carrying a head suddenly weighing 6.7 times as much as normally. Ironically, it seems to have had the opposite effect, as it crunched peoples spines instead of straightening them. I wonder though - maybe the fact that peoples spine were under tension actually prevented them from sitting there "loosely" and thereby "prepared" them for the 6.7 G-shocks.
BTW the last car was not roped off because of the restraint, but because the positive Gs were supposedly highest in the back.

I received my own injury on its very first week of operation, spring 1986 in Freiburg, Germany, and I have of course never ridden it ever after, so I can't say if the ride actually improved. To me however, the shocks I remember best are the entrances to the two small loops in front: My head was torn forward with massive force there so that I couldn't keep it upright and received my whiplash - or whatever you may call this in the U.S. From all the pictures I have seen, the parts containting the two small loops still look exactly the same as on the first day - so I wonder what has changed about this problem.

I'm sorry, this coaster was not a safe design, as much as I adore Anton Schwarzkopf and as cool as it looks - I think it was a coaster that transgressed the limits in a competitive market of coasters and German showmen.
Maybe they have it in a rideable shape now - I will certainly not ride it again.
*** Edited 11/30/2003 7:39:58 PM UTC by superman***