What is a Hypercoaster?

[Naazon]

Just now, Santa07 said:

Here's the thing though - if Arrow were not based in the US, the chance of them calling a "hypercoaster" being a 60m or higher coaster is pretty slim (why 60m?). More realistically, it would be 50 or 100m, or the term wouldn't have been invented at all.

I disagree. If they were based anywhere else they would have called their new "really tall, airtime hill and speed coaster" a hyper and set the limit at that new coasters height. In this case it happened to be 200ft. If the new coaster turned out was going to be 250ft they probs would have gone with that.

[Santa07]

3 minutes ago, Naazon said:

I disagree. If they were based anywhere else they would have called their new "really tall, airtime hill and speed coaster" a hyper and set the limit at that new coasters height. In this case it happened to be 200ft. If the new coaster turned out was going to be 250ft they probs would have gone with that.

Actually - the original plans for Magnum were to have the ride at 187 feet - but the plans were changed to bring it above 200ft because they wanted to market it differently, hence the term "hypercoaster" was created. If they had stayed with 187ft it wouldn't have been marketed the same and the term probably wouldn't have been invented, at that time anyway.

Edited April 7, 2017 by Santa07

[Richard]

Do we call this #hypergate yet?

Interesting to see that ~80% of this community is the equivalent of a dodgy ride attendant who looks both ways to see if anyone's looking, then lets the kid on despite being an inch 2.5cm too short.

The definition of hypercoaster is black and white: 200ft in height or drop. If it's under then it's not. As noted in the original (largely tongue-in-cheek) article, RCDB sometimes gets it wrong with early stats like this. Lewa Adventure's Flash was first listed at this same 60m/196ft figure (Dec 2014) beore the page was edited to 61m/200ft (Apr 2015).

As for Space World's Titan Max (and this is where it starts to get needlessly pedantic), RCDB is listing the Arrow ride model -- Hyper Coaster -- not a classification of hypercoaster. 

The marketing could (and should) simply avoid the term if Movie World's coaster falls short. The term has no bearing on the quality of the ride and there's plenty of ways to market the largest ride ever built in Australia without introducing a term that no one's ever heard.

[Naazon]

4 minutes ago, Santa07 said:

Actually - the original plans for Magnum were to have the ride at 187 feet - but the plans were changed to bring it above 200ft because they wanted to market it differently, hence the term "hypercoaster" was created. If they had stayed with 187ft it wouldn't have been marketed the same and the term probably wouldn't have been invented, at that time anyway.

Man you're spot on in it being all for marketing it differently. I honestly don't know much about the history of it all (apart from that 1 doco I saw on youtube) but I wouldn't be surprised if Arrow fronted the costs to increase the ride to over 200 to coin the term hyper, and create sales demand for this new "style" of ride. But I stand by them calling Hyper at 200 because it was a convenient number near to what they were building and rounded off nicely.

[jack.c]

Do we have actual confirmation on the height of our coaster though? 

[New display name]

24 minutes ago, Richard said:

Interesting to see that ~80% of this community is the equivalent of a dodgy ride attendant who looks both ways to see if anyone's looking, then lets the kid on despite being an inch 2.5cm too short.

The other 20% are like a theme park that like to round all transactions up.  Why not call it 60.96m instead of 61m?  Why if you are anywhere else in the world you have to go 4mm higher to be classed as a hyper?

Edited April 7, 2017 by Skeeta

[Santa07]

19 minutes ago, jack.c said:

Do we have actual confirmation on the height of our coaster though? 

Nope, apart from RCDB which is possibly wrong

14 minutes ago, Skeeta said:

The other 20% are like a theme park that like to round all transactions up.  Why not call it 60.96m instead of 61m?  Why if you are anywhere else in the world you have to go 4mm higher to be classed as a hyper?

Say you sat an exam, and got 49%. You still fail.

America created the term "hypercoaster" and unfortunately that's how it's accepted all around the world now. If anyone wants to create a term called "Parkzcoaster" where it only has to be 60m or higher, go for it.

[New display name]

5 minutes ago, Santa07 said:

America created the term "hypercoaster" and unfortunately that's how it's accepted all around the world now. If anyone wants to create a term called "Parkzcoaster" where it only has to be 60m or higher, go for it.

As you can see for yourself 80% of dodgy people don't accept it.  If you go by your idea “if most places around the world accept it” you should be driving on the right side of the road.  You can tell the police it's ok because most countries in the world drive this way.

 

As I have said before the name of Hypercoaster is only used to put an image into your head.   If you don’t get that same image if it’s 60m and not 61 metres I’m not going to try and change what you see.   If you had a coaster that was 61m in the air with only 4 right turns and never went over 5km/hr would you call it a Hypercoaster?  By the definition of a Hypercoaster the answer would be yes.  Do you believe that is what most people picture in their mind when they hear the word Hypercoaster?

[rac2703]

Evidence so far shows that Movie World will be classing it as a hypercoaster so that's good enough for me 😜

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

2 hours ago, Santa07 said:

What if they were based in Burma?  

Ok now you're just being argumentative for the sake of being so.

Note I said the following words:

2 hours ago, AlexB said:

America is ALMOST the only country in the world that still measures in feet.

Now - as you can see - most of the world is green - this is the Metric system.

So here's the thing - if Arrow had been based pretty much ANYWHERE except the USA,

You are entitled to your opinion, so i'm not about to tell you that you can't take the position that you are, but it seems the majority here don't agree with your purist views. Might I suggest TPR.com?

1 hour ago, Santa07 said:

Here's the thing though - if Arrow were not based in the US, the chance of them calling a "hypercoaster" being a 60m or higher coaster is pretty slim (why 60m?). More realistically, it would be 50 or 100m, or the term wouldn't have been invented at all.

it would depend on a number of factors - most of which i'm not about to research, but given Magnum was the first coaster in the world to top out at 62 metres, its pretty fair to say that it was the first one to cross the 60 metre barrier as well - although it would seem, again given the different status \ classifications, that there were likely coasters that HAD exceeded 50m.

If you're going to blow your horn as the 'first' anything, it wouldn't really matter what the number was - first to cross 200 feet? sure. first to cross 60 metres? why not.

I honestly would not have thought this sort of pettyness would come from you @Santa07 and i'll admit i'm disappointed that you're on the drum as hard as you are - its not what i expected.

59 minutes ago, Santa07 said:

Say you sat an exam, and got 49%. You still fail.

Except to reach the status (which would be 100% hypercoaster) you need to reach 200ft or 60.96 metres. At 60 metres, which is a blazing 98.42% hyper, you haven't failed.

it just depends on how you look at it, see?

[Santa07]

Ok - we obviously all have different opinions on what a hypercoaster is - but it's not going to change the ride experience and while it may not appear so from my recent posts - I don't really care if it's over or under 200ft.

[New display name]

I agree with on that one @Santa07

2 minutes ago, Santa07 said:

it's not going to change the ride experience and while it may not appear so from my recent posts - I don't really care if it's over or under 200ft.

 

[Gazza]

I tend to think of Hypercoasters as a style of ride with big drops and airtime.....It seems wierd to me to not call rides like Expedition GeForce and Goliath (SF over Georgia) Hypercoasters because they aren't 200ft.

[Theme Park Girl]

^ that's how I see it as well.

I assume that when most people label a rollercoaster being a specific type, they generally go by what they see in front of them... typical trademark traits such as the style of the track, inversions, general height and length etc. which it visually appear as a classification of rollercoaster, without taking nitty gritty specifics like *exact* measurements into account. I consider the latter more the actions of passionate rollercoaster enthusiasts, many of which I realise are on this site and of course doing exactly that lol. 

So yes, if it does fall just short of what is technically classified, there will no doubt be disgruntled enthusiasts crying foul over it. But tbh, I think the general public is going to be satisfied labelling it just on what they see at the park itself and on photos etc, without the need to do homework into it. So it will continue to be classified as a Hyper either way if that's what the majority say. 

Who knows, maybe this coaster will be the pioneer of a new type/hybrid of Hyper, given its the first in Australia it may be setting some brand new standards in that sense? Wasn't Green Lantern the very first of its kind with having 8 seat trains? This could very well be something similar? ☺️

Just my 2c anyway 👍

[Tim Dasco]

If a hyper coaster is about air time speed and drops what's a giga coaster about?

[Gazza]

Big drops, but no airtime 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

17 minutes ago, Tim Dasco said:

If a hyper coaster is about air time speed and drops what's a giga coaster about?

Its all about the pentiums...

Quote

3.4 Gigahertz processor, supporting Hyper-threading technology

 

[New display name]

I don't really want to ask after @AlexB last answer.   If a Giga is about drops what is a strata coaster about?

[Richard]

7 hours ago, Skeeta said:

Why not call it 60.96m instead of 61m?  Why if you are anywhere else in the world you have to go 4mm higher to be classed as a hyper?

Sure, let's call it 60.96m. (But if we're at that level of pedantry then it's 40mm, not 4mm.)

If this coaster turned out to be below 200ft tall then it's an amusing example of scope gap between Movie World and Mack Rides. It's not a hypercoaster, but this in no way affects the end product. It certainly isn't worth pages and pages of debate, particularly for a term that has a pretty clear-cut definition, and for a ride that has no real confirmed stats beyond @Skeeta's length discovery. Remember the preliminary figures on RCDB were wrong for the only other example of a Mack hypercoaster and manufacturers like to reuse designs and concepts wherever possible. Mack ended up getting the height right on their first hypercoaster; would they miss the mark for their second? That probably says everything you need to know about where we'll land on the height of this thing.

What we really need is to take ownership of the term megacoaster which is thrown around loosely in a lot of different contexts. Megacoaster: any *big* coaster that's free from gimmicks. Big, fast, long and does interesting things.

Edited April 7, 2017 by Richard
millimetres

[themagician]

Most of the general public don't know what a hypercoaster is, so I don't think MW would market it as one, even if it is one. The general public will just see a  big add, bright coloured awesome coaster out the front of the park, that you'll drive along as you head into MW. MW could just say it is over 60 metres tall, and we wouldn't know exactly what it is, so we could class it as a hyper coaster. Hyper coaster or not, it's going to be awesome, and provide a coaster experience that's never been had in Australia before 

[Naazon]

14 minutes ago, themagician said:

Most of the general public don't know what a hypercoaster is, so I don't think MW would market it as one, even if it is one. The general public will just see a  big add, bright coloured awesome coaster out the front of the park, that you'll drive along as you head into MW. MW could just say it is over 60 metres tall, and we wouldn't know exactly what it is, so we could class it as a hyper coaster. Hyper coaster or not, it's going to be awesome, and provide a coaster experience that's never been had in Australia before 

General public may not know what a hypercoaster is but its definitely a term MW should use to market it by (if it is). Would you want to go on this Rollercoaster or would you want to go on this brand new Hypercoaster. One of those just sounds a lot more exciting than the other...

[Richard]

It's worth pointing out that in the official blurbs, none of the launched coasters here use the word "launch", Arkham Asylum doesn't use "suspended", Storm doesn't use "water coaster". Is "Australia's first hypercoaster" as strong a selling point as "Australia's biggest ever roller coaster/ride/attraction"? Does this relatively obscure term add anything to the marketability of the ride that you don't get from just selling the sheer scale visually and with top line stats.

At any rate, everyone knows that you can only advertise the length of big things in football fields, the height in Statues of Liberty, the cost in cups of coffee and the weight in African elephants.

[Tim Dasco]

They measured these goth of the Antonuv in pencil lengths.

[mission]

For sure they should refer to it as a 'Hyper' - it's a buzz word that people associate with speed.  Even if they have no idea it means 200ft plus - it just sounds big and fast.

 

"Chewy, put the Millennium Falcon into Hyperspace.... "

 

Edited April 7, 2017 by mission

[Reanimated35]

52 minutes ago, Skeeta said:

I don't really want to ask after @AlexB last answer.   If a Giga is about drops what is a strata coaster about?

It's big enough to have its own body corporate.