Mick Doohan Motocoaster construction discussion

[stardust]

I feel that it won't be very thrilling, but I'm keeping an open mind. I'll be riding it Friday, and however "slow" it looks, I'll still be looking forward to it. Siting forward like that on the bikes will still be thrilling in itself.

Yeah! How come you get to go on friday? Darn I wanted it to be only open on sunday so we could be first

[BNErider]

The media launch. I'm sure Richard will be able to go and take some photos and tell everyone on here how thrilling it is.

[Gazza]

Stop me if I'm wrong, but often the parks open a ride to the public in the arvo after the media launch, If you felt like travelling down with the off chance the ride could open then you could go for it.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

Alex, to be frank, your wrong and my data is accurate. You don't know who I am or who I know or what I know. I was simply answering a question Gazza asked. Also it was pretty blatantly described that i was going to be a family thrill ride. Superman escape is not a family thrill ride. It is a thrill ride.

Firstly - congratulations on the blatant description of you as a family thrill ride. I wish you all the best in your new career as a theme park amusement. Moving along now, you can't just say that I am blanket-wrong... so what am I wrong about? the demographic? I doubt it. My 8 year old niece rides SE, me and my fiance ride SE, my Aunty, who is 51 rides SE, my sister in law is 36 and rides SE, my step father is 62 and rides se..... And I have been in the queue line enough, i've seen those people who are riding... the teenage demographic is totally off the mark. as far as your figures, I was just saying that they seemed a bit convenient and "even". Funny that those results perfectly suited your argument as far as riders go that SE was "about" half that of scooby or WWF. Were you saying I was wrong about the capacities? because thats not right.... lets say WWF runs just 10 boats. each boat seats 11 people - thats 110 per cycle. Each ride takes about 5 minutes, or 12 cycles per hour (there is no downtime because the boats don't stop) so you've got 1320 per hour. Now please remember that I am only working on a hypothetical of 10 boats here. SE holds 20 riders per train. Let's assume MW is running both trains here, and from load to load it takes 4 minutes to cycle one train. thats 40 people per cycle, at 7.5 cycles per hour, or 300 per hour. So of course WWF is going to have a higher ride count - it can PHYSICALLY FIT that many. SE cannot, so it won't ever have the riders that WWF has. Its nothing to do with demographic. If you want to take a look at scooby (and please remember everyone i'm working on rough, hypothetical, rounded figures here) - scooby despatches two cars of 4 people every 40 seconds. thats 12 people per minute or 720 per hour. Capacities on each ride are very different because of the operation of the rides. SE operates a continuous circuit coaster. Scooby is a block sectioned multi-car coaster, WWF is a block sectioned water flume. Apples and oranges.

AlexB has a point, Whenever I have been at parks there never seems to be any rhyme or reason to the sorts of people going on rides, Once you get beyond the stuff aimed squarely at children it just seems like open slather as to who goes on what and comes down to what people are comfortable with. I always find it a bit funny how enthusiasts see themselves as good observers of different demographics, and put everyone into boxes (Eg teenagers only ride thrill rides, only people under the age of 10 would go on road runner etc etc) Thanks for the figures by the way, though I cant help but feel they seem a bit pulled out of the air.

I agree with the pull out of the air. if you were privy to the figures, why would you round them? you'd almost definitely have the exact results if you had access to them at all. P.S. my whole family rides road runner, and reptar, and LT river ride... we also ride SE, Batwing, scooby, wwf, LW, cyclone, claw, wipeout, tot, gd, vintage cars.... in other words we all ride it all. My family ranges in age from 8 to 61 (the 8 year old was riding thrill rides much earlier than that.) Saberon, if you think we're wrong, give me some intelligent answers as to why, instead of saying "you're wrong because you don't know me" - put up or shut up. prove the figures are real... Otherwise stop posting crap - or people will start calling you nightshifter Edited September 26, 2007 by AlexB

[MickeyD]

Right! I think we're a bit off topic but not a worry - We'll all be looking at the Motocoaster in operating action in a day or two now so lets get back on topic hey? Surely someones got something constructive to add on the ride? If not, put up, shut up and watch the show... PS AlexB nice speech

Edited September 26, 2007 by MickeyD

[Gold Coaster]

yeah, spot on, AlexB.

[GoGoBoy]

Why is it that in almost every thread where AlexB has a post a big disagreement breaks out that goes on forever and ends up with AlexB writing out a monologue defending himself. Just an observation. Yeah I agree let's get back on topic and discuss Dreamworld's disappointing new attraction

[saberon]

OK FIRSTLY, superman escape has been running single train as one train is currently pulled appart undergoing maintenance so it's running at reduced capacity, at least 4 minutes per cycle. meaning there is 0% chance of getting over 1000 riders an hour until second train is operational. Secondly my information regarding stats of riders comes from maintenance staff be cause i know some staff who work for WVTP and this sorta stuff interests me so I ask them. The reason SE doesn't attract as many people is alot of people tend to be intimidated by the ride where as with WWF it looks relatively tame and you can't actually see the scooby doo spooky coaster so it doesn't tend to freak people out. Altthough i have been told vomitt on scooby is quite common, more common than what I was expecting. Superman escape is a tall very fast high intensity thrill ride that a significant amount of riders get freaked out by looking at it. It truly is a beast and a great ride, but many people are intimidated by it so it effects the attendance on the ride. you may have some people 50+ but the median average would be around 15-30ish. Anyway enough of this.. it's about the motocoaster. NB i truly hope i'm not going to be dissapointed by the motocoaster, because first impressions... well not great.

Edited September 26, 2007 by saberon

[GoGoBoy]

Oh my god I just watched the video again. I counted the ride time from start to finish as around 40 seconds and that is with the coaster CRAWLING around the last few corners. Imagine if it gets sped up = we'll be looking at a 30 second ride. This is a disgrace! Add more track for goodness sake Dreamworld! How cheap are they!

[BNErider]

Wow, I was hoping they were just testing it on that lower speed. This is bad, but there's nothing we can do about it.After all, Superman Escape didn't look as fast as it really is until I rode it for myself. - I just watched it again, and I do agree it's very slow. I didn't really look too hard when I watched it a few days ago until others commented on the slow speed on the last few turns.There's not much we can do. It's better then nothing I guess...

Edited September 26, 2007 by ash.1111

[WalleyWorld]

SE's ride cycle time with one train was around 5 minutes minimum. For some reason, last week at Movieworld the line for Superman was over an hour all day!! It didn't decrease at all, not even when the parade and Police academy shows were on at the same time . So I only got one ride, cause we had family who had never been to Movieworld before (wanted to do the other stuff) . However, all the rides were packed to the brim on the day I went, and it wasn't even school holidays. I think I even waited around 30mins for Wild West Falls, WTF (every time I go it's a walk on). Anyway, back on topic. As I said in my previous post, I think they were testing it at a slower speed then what it is meant to be. And later in the day I saw it come into the brake-run faster then what the coaster did in the video. However, even if it wasn't going it's top speed, the length is really short! And I'm also wondering if Dreamworld will use two trains all the time or just on the busier days?? If they use two trains all the time and the lines are short, well I think that it will be a fun coaster to re-ride. *wink* re-ride *wink* LOL CoAsTeRbOy8

Edited September 26, 2007 by Coaster Boy 8

[Gazza]

Oh my god I just watched the video again. I counted the ride time from start to finish as around 40 seconds and that is with the coaster CRAWLING around the last few corners. Imagine if it gets sped up = we'll be looking at a 30 second ride. This is a disgrace! Add more track for goodness sake Dreamworld! How cheap are they!

But then you are back to square one, if you extend the track then the ride will just end up being slow at the end. Its a toss up really, you either have a quick ride with a fast finish like SE, or you flesh out the ride time, and end up with a dull as dishwater finale. I guess the only real solution is to have a faster launch, but then you run into the problem of lack of space. To be fair though, runaway reptar is 35 seconds from the top of the lift to the brakes. A short ride time is a consequence of having a launch. Still, its looking to be pretty dull, and it will rest pretty heavily on the launch and train design.

[dreamworld_rulz]

SE's ride cycle time with one train was around 5 minutes minimum. For some reason, last week at Movieworld the line for Superman was over an hour all day!! It didn't decrease at all, not even when the parade and Police academy shows were on at the same time . So I only got one ride, cause we had family who had never been to Movieworld before (wanted to do the other stuff) . However, all the rides were packed to the brim on the day I went, and it wasn't even school holidays. I think I even waited around 30mins for Wild West Falls, WTF (every time I go it's a walk on). Anyway, back on topic. As I said in my previous post, I think they were testing it at a slower speed then what it is meant to be. And later in the day I saw it come into the brake-run faster then what the coaster did in the video. However, even if it wasn't going it's top speed, the length is really short! And I'm also wondering if Dreamworld will use two trains all the time or just on the busier days?? If they use two trains all the time and the lines are short, well I think that it will be a fun coaster to re-ride. *wink* re-ride *wink* LOL CoAsTeRbOy8

Tasmania are on holidays (8 September - 23 September) before everyone else. And then of course you have the rest of Australia. Which finish on the 14th October. So as you can see the holidays start on 8th September and don't finish till 14th October. Term Dates here Edited September 27, 2007 by dreamworld_rulz

[GoGoBoy]

But then you are back to square one, if you extend the track then the ride will just end up being slow at the end.

Ofcourse they could not extend the track with the ride in its current form and achieve a suitable outcome. The coaster can hardly finish the course as it is. As far as I'm concerned it goes back to what we were saying before - the track overall is just completely wrong. Although I was never overly excited about the idea of a motorbike coaster, the one thing I was looking forward to was some nice hills and the airtime or whatever comes with them. I had a look at some videos of other motorbike coasters overseas and most of them have that similar out and back track pattern with quite a few hills thrown in. This apprantley makes them quite an enjoyable ride. Unfortunately Dreamworld/Intamin chose to rewrite the standard and created this new track which is not only too short but lacks any airtime hills. Why would they take out the most fun part of a coaster for the sake of 'realism'? And even though the ride is ridiculously short, it STILL manages to loose momentum. And I feel this will be the case no matter what speed they set the launch on Edited September 27, 2007 by GoGoBoy

[Gazza]

Why would they take out the most fun part of a coaster for the sake of 'realism'?

To increase the feeling of speed...oh wait.

[Mousenator]

Oh my god I just watched the video again. I counted the ride time from start to finish as around 40 seconds and that is with the coaster CRAWLING around the last few corners. Imagine if it gets sped up = we'll be looking at a 30 second ride. This is a disgrace! Add more track for goodness sake Dreamworld! How cheap are they!

30 or so seconds doesn't sound like enough time to load and unload the other train. Therefore I think they should have desgined it to run two or more laps with a speed up at each pass of the launch area to keep it at a good speed. They could have still run two trains by designing a dual loading station with moving track that allows one train to be loaded and unloaded while the other completes the circuits. This would have solved the short ride time problem and would have also made it more realistic since when was the last time you saw a motorbike race that was one lap long. Plus it wouldn't have been much more expensive.

[BNErider]

They cannot run more then one lap because the two stations are inline. Meaning that there's no way of getting around the stations for the other train to travel around the track again. If they had one train, then they could run more then one lap. But I doubt they would, even though it would be cool.

[Mousenator]

They cannot run more then one lap because the two stations are inline. Meaning that there's no way of getting around the stations for the other train to travel around the track again. If they had one train, then they could run more then one lap. But I doubt they would, even though it would be cool.

I didn't explain it very well, but what I was trying to say was that they could have designed the station so that there were two station sized parallel tracks beside each other with one connected to the cirucuit and one not connected. The connected track would allow one train to complete the circuit a few times while the other track unloads and loads the next passengers off to the side. Then when the first train finishes it returns to the station and both of the parallel tracks move to the side connecting the other track to the circuit and unconnecting the first track from the circuit. Then the passengers who just competed the ride would unload off to the side while the other train runs and the cycle continues. This way they could run two trains. Edited September 27, 2007 by Mousenator

[BNErider]

Oh got you. I still feel it would be over kill and they should just do one lap to kill the lines.

[zane]

I didn't explain it very well, but what I was trying to say was that they could have designed the station so that there were two station sized parallel tracks beside each other with one connected to the circuit and one not connected. The connected track would allow one train to complete the circuit a few times while the other track unloads and loads the next passengers off to the side. Then when the first train finishes it returns to the station and both of the parallel tracks move to the side connecting the other track to the circuit and interconnecting the first track from the circuit. Then the passengers who just competed the ride would unload off to the side while the other train runs and the cycle continues. This way they could run two trains.

Its already been done on a shuttle coaster called MR Freeze, it works exactly how you said. "One train loads and unloads on either the right or left side of the station while the other train is launched out onto the main track. When this train returns to the station, it slides to the unused side of the room and unloads as the other train slides to the middle and launches" (taken from wikipedia)

[dreamworld_rulz]

That is sh*t hot. Esp when your gasbagging when all of a sudden your thrusted forward.

[zane]

I recon dreamworld would of been better going for a real "thrill ride" but still has that "fun" factor. to give you an example of what I mean I made my vision for what the motocoaster should of been. Motocoaster track page there is a helix that extends over the water where the paddelboat dose travel through, all it would have to do is not go around the complete river circuit or the helix could be raised/redesigned Zane.

Edited September 28, 2007 by zane

[Gazza]

Cool design, more thrilling than what they have come up withthough I have doubts about that helix over the water, I dont think I'd want to say goodbye to the paddlewheeler for that. Here are the two images from the previous post, but without such a ridiculous file size (I'm surprised people still persist with bmp.s, remember, when saving it wont work to type "jpg" at the end, you must pick jpg from the drop down menu)

Edited September 27, 2007 by Gazza

[BNErider]

Yep, Very Cool Design. Thanks Gazza for putting the smaller file size there. Does anyone know if the coaster will be open for Screamworld tomorrow night?

[saberon]

Dreamworld still has TONNES of unused room if they wanted to they could with no problem fit a mega or hypercoaster in. I like your design Gazza.