Gazza

Because Megladons don't exist anymore, and some species of Sharks and whales aren't practical to keep in captivity.

They're shit.

Well there is the S&S version for those that are all "Zacspin 1 is too intense for me".

Have you been to Disneyland in LA? With Epcot, get a Soarin FP first, test track via Single Rider, do Mission Space and Spaceship Earth via Standby. Eat somewhere in world showcase, the rides there are pretty forgettable.

Everything at Disney world is worth checking out. Just get a park hopper for the number of days you can spend there, and then see as much as you can. If you get one park done quickly then move on, and order your parks based on opening hours (Eg I did AK at 8am when they opened, then another park by lunchtime etc.

Yep, B&M heartline their rides, but you wouldn't say Arrow "focus on the chest" would you. Is there a difference between heart and chest, other than 10cm?

I'm not sure how familiar you are with Disney, but its more than just kiddy dark rides and Mickey Mouse. You have....Indiana Jones, Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean....To name a few. At California Adventure you have Radiator Springs Racers, California Screamin, Tower of Terror, Soarin Over California, Grizzly River Run, World of Colour etc. What type of rides do you like?

-The SoCal parks are a great starting point, as are the Orlando ones...Just those alone are a great starting point, and you'll get to try most types of rides. -Don't skip USH if you're just visiting SoCal....Harry Potter is opening in a few months. -Someone mentioned Knoebels, but I really wasn't taken by it. It basically is like a gravel showgrounds with lots of flats, and a couple of good coasters. There's better family parks out there. -Cedar Point is a long way from major cities, so if you're going that far, bundle it with Kings Island at least, which is 3h away. -Cedar Point allow two days, because the park shuts down during storms, and one always happens due to the location, so you need 2 days as "insurance". And pay the $90 for fast lane plus, makes for an awesome day. -And to that end, you can normally chain together several major parks that are reasonably close over a few days, and its up to you to figure how long you want the chain to be. -Use coast2coaster.com set the slider to 4<>19 coasters and that bascially removes all the jumble off the map and shows the parks worth traveling for. -I tend not to make stops for "credits", but if there's parks worth checking out on the way, I'll go. Eg I drove 440km from Niagara Falls to Cedar Point, but Darien Lake (Hypercoaster, Zamperla Motorbike) and Waldameer (Gravity Group Woodie) were on the way so obviously worth stops. -Full days aren't always needed for many parks. You'll find many have the same rides, so trust me, you might ride a top spin one day, but then won't be bothered to ride another one at another park the next day.

I think something got lost in translation there.

As far as I know, its a pretty common thing that a key is required for special functions (Eg if a ride is e-stopped a key is needed to reset) Though, nothing stopping a person with the authority to run the ride in manual from making a mistake.

It's not dramatic at all. What does car design and scale of the ride have to do with it? ​Both rides would share a lot of parts commonality for things like brakes, the vertical lift system, sensors etc. But of course, the main thing that would be similar between both models is the control system, and something obviously went wrong with that aspect for this accident to happen (Either by the people operating it, or something wrong within the design of the control system)

This forum is highly knowledgeable and understand rides well enough to know MDMC isn't on the same level as the other rides. But I think its pretty inconsequential in the scheme of things. Its not like the ride is noticeably less popular than the rest. The public go there, they ride it....Nobody analyses it in terms of marketing or positioning like we do. Same as Thirteen at Alton towers ain't going anywhere despite having over the top marketing.

So, how many members of the public could actually name the big 9 thrill rides?

A 2nd one? AlexB, as for the PTCs, presume the ones on Roar opened with the ride, and Wild One...no idea there.

To be honest, I think its more arse covering. There is a tendency for parks anywhere to overstate the thrill rather than understate it to avoid inadvertley putting guests in an unpleasant situation. On the MW website http://movieworld.com.au/rides-and-attractions/thrill-rides/arkham-asylum.aspx Scooby Doo is listed as a Thrill Ride, as is WWF, so these rides are put in the same category as much more intense experiences such as Arkham and Superman. Or on the Alton Website http://www.altontowers.com/things-to-do/theme-park/#alton-towers-theme-park the Blade (A Pirate ship!) is listed as a thrill ride. Or on the Dorney website the River Rapids is a 5/5 black diamond agressive thrill: https://www.dorneypark.com/things-to-do/thrill-ride You probably don't need me to keep finding examples, but it's an industry wide thing, but partly comes down to how many categories a park decides to sort their rides into. In reality, theres a whole spectrum of how thrilling a ride is, at the very top you'd have the really physically demanding stuff...Skyrush, Voyage, TTD, heck I'd even be inclined to put certain SLCs in there. Step below might be your more run of the mill thrill coasters that every park has. Step below that might be stuff like Corkscrew at SW, or Surfrider. The absolute lowest step would be things like trains, or the big red boat ride. You could probably have 10-12 levels of thrills. But for practicality basically every park only has 3 categories: Kids, Family, Thrilling. Hence what might appear as misleading marketing is really just an attempt to categorise a ride one way or the other. But again, I ask "What marketing?", Motocoaster is not exactly a new ride any more, and several other attractions have opened since, so are there really guests that walk in and get all dissapointed by the marketing that was on TV in 2007? You can look at the ride before even boarding and know what youre in for. I get that is a poorly executed coaster, but at the same time, no park is going to ditch something after less than a decade unless it had insurmountable mechanical issues, and at the same time most "thrill seekers" visiting DW are going to have a go a Motocoaster anyway.

^Do any members of the genral public really give a shit about the initial marketing push from several years ago? Because the website states its a "moderate thrill ride​", and "Motocoaster comprises 14 custom-made motorbikes and two aero-dynamically profiled sidecars designed for small children and disabled guests.", which to me is entirley upfront to any potential visitor exactly what the nature of the ride is. http://www.dreamworld.com.au/Home/rides/thrill-rides/mick-doohans-motocoaster Yes it is marketed as a thrill ride, but so is Splash Mountain:

^Superspeed Cool Cool Bear?

Sensors tend to be those magnetic green coloured prox sensors, but light beams are used too;

Yeah, its a bit foamy to suggest MDMC is going anywhere. Plenty of waste of time coasters around the world still going strong.

You mean like on a railway? I don't think any coaster feeds signals through the track and wheels like on a railway, rather they tend to be fixed sensors on the track that the train passes near.

Comments by AW, or comments by page visitors?

​Not sure I really follow the logic. The smiler is a looping coaster with two lift hills. Looping coasters with two lift hills have existed for nearly 4 decades http://parkz.com.au//parks/US/Williamsburg/Busch_Gardens_Williamsburg/ride/2004-Loch_Ness_Monster Wether or not it does two loops or 14 is irrelevant, because that's not the critical part of the ride system. The thing that makes a coaster dangerous/safe is things like harnesses, trains, brakes, lift hills etc. Ride accidents can happen on any sized attraction. The Smiler incident seems like a clear case of human error to me. If it had just broken down chances are it was in maintenance mode, which lets you move/reverse trains at will, run the ride with harnesses up, override anything....And unfortunately someone has advanced the train when the track wasn't clear.

The next park on my itinerary wasn’t in my original plans. Because I was visiting in May, parks are only open on weekends..But as parks progressively released their 2015 schedules it turned out many were open on Fridays. This meant I could do BGW on the Friday, KD on a Saturday, and Six Flags America on a Sunday. As for the park, it does get a bad rap for being a bit neglected among the SF parks (Which themselves can be pretty neglected to begin with), but to be honest I did think it was OK. The grounds and buildings do look a bit run down in parts, and it probably has the biggest overload of advertising of any SF park, it also suffers from a weird layout with lots of long dead ends . The coaster line-up was on par with most other regional US parks of similar size, and I was surprised to find there were even a couple of consistent themed areas. And the staff were fine too. The best way to think of it is say what Dreamworld was like before they started fixing the place up over the past couple of years, but just a bit bigger, and with better rides. I could only stay in the park for about 4 hours due to a bit of stupidity on my part which meant I had to cut my day short, but that was enough time to do virtually everything I wanted. Nice sunny weather too. Upon arrival you are STUNG for parking, $25. Mate, I’ll pay that for an undercover multi deck car park, but at SFA its shite, with worn bitumen with weeds growing through the cracks. I purchased my season pass there prior to opening, and they don’t refund the parking fee for some reason. Anyway, I headed in and went straight to Superman: Ride of Steel. As far as hyper coasters go it’s pretty good. Decent air on the first couple of hills, and some strong air on the final three. Runs a bit better than the one at Darien Lake I reckon. I do think the two massive helices and long straightaways are overkill, though I guess this was before Intamin invented the overbanked turn to mix things up. I did a few laps because there was no queue. Next up was Batwing, a Vekoma flying coaster. These are great rides (I liked Firehawk!) once you overlook the fact you have to squint the whole way up the lift hill due to the sun in your eyes. Also, bit of a geek moment…Didn’t realise this one still used the original hydraulic seat tilting system (The ones at the CF parks were converted to use a mechanical lifting system) The layout is a bunch of swooping overbanks, with an inside loop halfway through (Which isn’t as intense as the B&M pretzel loop despite being tighter). There’s a double inline twist and a helix for good measure. Did a couple of laps here too before moving on. I then took a ride on Jokers Jinx, a Premier Spaghetti Bowl where you are launched into a tangle of track with 4 inversions. The inversions are good, but the twists and turns are a bit like riding a Galaxi really. I preferred this one to the one at KD I had ridden the day before….Maybe it’s the sheer scale of the structure and the visuals (The semi lit indoor track of Flight of Fear is neither fish nor fowl) Also, it doesn’t have an MCBR that slows the train down early, instead it’s just a straight bit of track you cruise through. Oh, and the Joker painting in the station is laughably bad. While I was in the area I tried out Penguins Blizzard River, which is my first encounter with one of those Whitewater West family spinning rapids slides. Basically it’s a budget version of a normal river rapids. You ride in circular rafts down a course with several spirals. Theres rubber pads on the slide that the bottom of the raft grips on, causing it to keep spinning in one direction till everything is just a blur….So basically instead of riding up on the walls like a normal family raft, it just aims to make a certain percentage of guests spew. It’s mostly a dry slide, save for a small overhead mister at the end, and some drips from when you pass under higher sections of the slide. Next up was Apocalypse. This is the first B&M (Excuse the pun) I haven’t wanted to ride again. Runs as badly as a typical SLC, particularly in the latter half where all the twists and turns are. For those who don’t know, it’s a stand up coaster with a single loop and a single corkscrew. The theming looks cool, basically like a warzone with crashed planes and car shells, and a section where you walk through a shipping container. Nearby was Roar, an older GCI running PTC trains. I was expecting to get beaten up on this one like you do on Gwazi, but it actually ran pretty well! A typically GCI confusing layout, but with a couple of airtime hills thrown in too. Would have come back for a re-ride if I had more time. Continuing around I went to Mind Eraser, a suspended looping coaster. Got as far as sitting in the seats with harnesses checked, then the ride broke down, so I left. Nearby was Renegade Rapids, which was pretty fun. Good rough water sections, but it didn’t have those stupid waves that saturate you. Thankfully, nobody was manning the coin operated water geysers either….There was one guy hanging around them looking suss, but he turned out to be just using the area as a quiet corner to talk on his phone. Mind eraser was still broken, so I set about getting on the remaining coasters. First up was the Great Chase, a Zamperla kiddy coaster…tick. Next was the longest wait of the day, Ragin’ Cajun, a Zamperla Spinning coaster. I got seated by myself, and it just spun like crazy! I wouldn’t have minded having a go at the Voodoo Drop, a small intamin drop tower similar in size to the one at Rainbows end (Which I missed too!), but time was too limited. So, it was straight onto the Wild One. Again, the combination of being an old woodie, and PTC trains meant I was expecting a rough ride, but again, not too bad, and a few pops of air on the way through with all the hills. I headed back to Mind Eraser, took the first available row, wedged my head into a corner of the seat, put up with the ride for the couple of minutes that it goes for, and headed for the exit. Pics are here: http://parkz.com.au/parks/US/Upper_Marlboro/Six_Flags_America/photos

Richo they've since put a pic of the CGI Scooby from the live film in the ticket booth.

Google reverse image search says "Sigmund the Sea Monster".