Screenshot / Knoebels Recreation - Twister Plaza
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14-September 17
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Knoebels Amusement Resort Recreation
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8 of 18
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- Comments 4
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Description
Plaza near Twister coaster, water play area for kids, high speed slides, and of course, the wooden behemoth itself, Twister!
From Wikipedia about Twister: "In 1998, Knoebels began a new wooden roller coaster project. Seeking to preserve another classic ride, the park looked into acquiring the defunct "Mister Twister", which had been abandoned when the entire Elitch Gardens amusement park was relocated in Denver, Colorado. This time, when space constraints made physically relocating the ride impossible, Knoebels purchased the blueprints and set out to rebuild the roller coaster from scratch, modifying the design to fit the space available.
For the new "Twister," ride designer John Fetterman created a modified mirror image of the original "Mister Twister" layout, compacting the ride but preserving the highlights of the old design and Allen's original mathematical model. These highlights included the large double helix, which now wraps around the ride's curved station, and a large swoop curve at the top of the lift hill. To keep the swoop curve in the new design, Fetterman created a split lift hill. To achieve this, the train climbs halfway up the structure on one lift hill, makes a 180-degree turn and finishes the climb on the second lift, stacked directly above the first one. While several roller coasters use more than one lift hill in their layout, Twister's zig-zag lift is unique."
The Twister recreation is pretty accurate as far as statistics go, and I think it looks pretty great in game compared to the real thing. I had to make a slight change, in that the double helix goes over the station rather than under the station on the way out of it, but other than that I tried to match things up as well as I could given the limitations of the game.
Stat - Real [In Game]
Height - 101.5 ft [110 ft]
Drop - 89.6 ft [88 ft]
Top Speed - 51 mph [57 mph]
Duration - 2:10 [2:07] -
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Here's an overall view of the coaster, along with the stats.
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This is pretty good. Though, a bit simple. I, however, do not like the lack of bushes/shrubs, and the seemingly overabundance of trees.
Otherwise, this is nice, and I assume it looks like real life Knoebels. Thumbs up from me!
I think the problem here is that some things in this re-creation are way oversized and other things are way too small... most likely because they're based on something that's not sized correctly.
Twister is way too small. The photo booth should be around the center of the helix. It doesn't have to be perfect but right now I think it's so far off that it really doesn't work and it makes the coaster look less imposing than it really is.
This is an easy coaster to elongate with some flat sections leading up to the lift hills or by having the first lift go higher and drop longer before connecting with the second lift. Also, don't bank the turnaround between lift 1 and lift 2. That turn isn't banked at all which is really surprising and kind of awesome.
On the other side, use more diagonals in the station to make the ride larger. It'll also make the entire thing flow much better so that's really a no brainer.
Also... that train line needs to extend basically as far as you can extend it on this map. I don't know if you've ever ridden the Knoebels train, but it goes on forever. Right now it turns around way too soon and you're missing that iconic tunnel under the bridge to the campground.
On the plus side, the small pool and slides are perfect, nice work there. The coaster itself is also nice but unfortunately it's just way too small to be Twister if you're going to make everything else so large.
You're improving for sure, but I feel like you spend a ton of time on some things and then rush others. The pool in the back is nice, but spend as much time on the other buildings as you did on that pool. That big grey building IS ugly in real life but try to add some details to spice it up a little, even if you need to embellish.
Coasterbill, as always, thanks for the Knoebels-specific comments! It's so nice to have someone watching this project develop who really knows the park. I'll consider most of them, I just want to clarify a few things.
I think elongating the helix a bit will help in both making the plaza seem better scaled, as well as solve the other issue I have now in that the helix goes over the station rather than under. The helix seems a little bit rectangular, so I think stretching it a bit will help. It will also help me to add at least one switchback on the exit ramp, which I filled in with trees (within the helix), which really aren't there IRL. Adding some diagonal track and elongating the station a bit will also help with all of that. The banked turn in the switchback lift hill is a mistake, I meant to change it to non-banked and totally forgot.
As far as the rest of the coaster, I really don't want to change much about it. I think it works really well the way it is. One thing that I may do (which I just realized after looking at Google Maps again), is shorten the green slides up, as they are currently a little too long. I think this will change the perception of Twister quite a bit. In other words, I think the slides are too large, and Twister is okay size (at least on that side, the helix does need to be a bit larger as I mentioned before).
The Pioneer train turnaround is a placeholder right now... I don't want to build it full size yet and have to demolish it later. I do have my parks open and peepable when I build them, so that turnaround will be replaced at some point when I build out that way (if you look at some of my past screens, the train keeps getting extended more and more as I build on that side of the park). I love that train IRL, and in the final version of this park I'll be sure to have the iconic squirrel feeders at the very end!
As for the pool changing building, I hate that building IRL. No amount of embellishing is going to make it look nice, but I'll try to fix it up as best I can. I also don't have any pictures of the actual entrance to the building, which you can see is missing from the park currently. Anybody out there have good pictures of this building for me to use?
As far as rushing things, I do agree. I guess I need to start seeing these screenshots as "finished products" rather than "works in progress" and only post when I'm absolutely sure I'm happy with everything in the screen. I haven't been doing this mainly because I want feedback as I go.