General Chat / LOL @ SFGAdv !

Hello.


In my last exciting report I had let the world know what a true piece of shit Kingda Ka was. I mean come on, what fucking ride breaks down 3 times while waiting in a half-hour queue, turning it into a 3-hour line without going on the ride?

Anyway...

I was planning a trip early for this coming Thursday to bring my friend to SFGAdv to get him to ride some rides and MAYBE get to go on Kingda Ka if it was working properly.

I checked the official website and was greated by this...
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How Hilarious...
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What a fucking joke...

They put millions into advertising this piece of garbage, and it's closed for the summer.
That's an awesome way to get business if you ask me.

For Great Adventure's 80% of their customers who aren't as smart as most people, they will come to realize the next time they go there, the ride will be closed. The backlash to their friends and relatives from word of mouth will most likely cripple ticket sales this season.

I expect their figures to probably be in the hard red this year. Such a pity...
Next time SF plans something like this, they should get the retards who develop these rides to put more time and effort into the horrifically faulty hydraulics systems their launch coasters have (COUGH Intamin COUGH).

SF should have also learned from TTD's ongoing problems. My advice would have been to spend an extra $10-15 million and buiilt a monstrous chain lift coaster. You bastards have all that room behind the lake, you can afford to terraform the bad land and build a monster ride. Now you are stuck with a SBNO failure.

Serves you fucking right.

Maybe this pile of dogshit will be operational for the end of Fright Fest...
To everyone planning a trip there, go to Dorney and go on Hydra. It's an awesome little ride and is probably eons of times better than KK could ever hope to be.

To the select 20-40 people that have ridden Kingda Ka without it breaking down, congratulations I guess.


Raven-SDI
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Six Flags has had giant paperweights before. X ring a bell?

I don't blame Intamin as much as I blame Six Flags (and Cedar Fair for TTD last year). You rush the manufacturer and they can only give you what they have within the limited time.

Six Flags, however, should have learned from X and TTD. But I guess not.

It's not the hydraulic launch that's really bad, it's the speed. Launch it at a more "reasonable" speed (i.e. closer to 60-80) and it won't breakd own thrice in thirty minutes. Launch it at nearly 130 mph... well, it gets hot.

X Runs fine now, somewhat.

Its the Deja Vu's that are SBNO Failures.

Broken records = broken coasters?

I mean, from what I hear, Intamin's other launch coasters run fine, besides these monsterous things they keep building. But hey, whatever you do to get good publicity in the offseason and bad pub when the park is actually open and making money.

I don't blame Intamin as much as I blame Six Flags (and Cedar Fair for TTD last year).  You rush the manufacturer and they can only give you what they have within the limited time.

I really don't agree...I mean, the parks don't make the coasters, they have them built. They push for the best and newest, because they don't have an official view as to how "far" a new coaster can go.

It's the coaster companies who need to step in and say "We need more time to get this right", seeing as how they are the ones with the actual knowledge about how feasable it is to pull it off safely and consistantly. Sure, you might get suprised with some consistancy issues with X and TTD, but a second coaster with the same problems shouldn't happen. That's the coaster companies fault...so yeah, I blame Intamin completely.

Six Flags does get a little kick in the ass for risking it, knowing how unstable TTD was...it makes me wonder if Intamin was all "yeah, we've figured it out and fixed it".

TTD works great now... but I think that has a lot to do with Cedar Fair maintanance. This is Six Flags we're talking about... I think Intamin also did a bit more things they probably shouldn't have with this one. Such as double support the launch. It provides a much shakier launch the TTD. TTD is still the better coaster IMO. But KK is probably just having new coaster issues like most highly technical rides have. Give it a year or two.

The coaster company will guarantee that the coaster will work by opening day, but it can't guarantee that it'll run consistently. For that, you need more time, but Six Flags rarely cooperates.

Six Flags won't give more time "just to make sure it run consistently." Their motto, as demonstrated by their actions, has always been to make sure it's open on opening day, then see what happens. They did the same thing with Arrow and X... pushing them to develop the model but not giving them a chance to test prototypes, etc...

Six Flags demands these things. Well, Intamin as a company CAN build a coaster, and it'll work, and that's all Six Flags wants. If Intamin asks for more time, SF ain't gonna really grant it. And Intamin's not gonna refuse a contract just cuz it might break down. Heck, if anything, breaking down nets them MORE money.

Look at how the business works and you'll see that Intamin should shoulder little if any blame. It's Six Flags that sets up these sorts of things by laying the conditions that lead to it.

Cedar Fair not as much, altho TTD was definitely an exception, and CF deserves blame for TTD's disastrous first summer too.

I am going to Great Adventure next Friday. Stupid Six Flags. Well, I probably would not have waited the four hours just to ride it anyways...

Don't put all the blame on Six Flags. If you want to blame it on something blame it on Intamin. This breakdown went really wrong and something in the design has gone wrong. The park is not saying things but people have said its very bad and mostly Intamin's fault.

I am going to Great Adventure next Friday. Stupid Six Flags.  Well, I probably would not have waited the four hours just to ride it anyways...

Don't waste your time. Go on something more interesting, at least.

Six Flags demands these things.  Well, Intamin as a company CAN build a coaster, and it'll work, and that's all Six Flags wants.  If Intamin asks for more time, SF ain't gonna really grant it.  And Intamin's not gonna refuse a contract just cuz it might break down.  Heck, if anything, breaking down nets them MORE money.

How do you figure? Arrow was nearly bankrupted over X (until the S&S buyout), and Vekoma was sent packing for bankruptcy protection over their malfunctional fiascos with Stealth, Batwing, X-Flight, and the Déjà Vus. Why would Intamin's situation be any different? Six Flags is going to bear the brunt of the negative publicity, but I doubt Intamin is walking away without feeling the burn, either. I would guess Intamin is fixing Kingda Ka at their own expense in order to avoid legal action that could cripple the company financially. The only difference between what happened with X versus Déjà Vu versus Kingda Ka being that Intamin has the resources to handle the problem, where Arrow and Vekoma did not.

That's just my speculation. Because between what happened with Dragster and now with Kingda Ka, I would think Intamin would be in a mess of legal trouble, but they don't seem to be hurting like their counterparts.

I don't see why parks just don't all start building B&M's... They're always fun and reliable.

They put millions into advertising this piece of garbage, and it's closed for the summer.

strange, i only see it saying a few weeks.

Six Flags won't give more time "just to make sure it run consistently."  Their motto, as demonstrated by their actions, has always been to make sure it's open on opening day, then see what happens.

kingda ka opened almost a month after the park's opening day

it seems from all the posts in this thread that no one here actually knows what happened. well i'll explain. the train was launched and either at the same time or seconds after the launch, the brake fins came up and the train ripped right through them. now, the problem is torn parts on the bottom of the train, fixing the broken brake fins, and finding out why it happened so it wont happen again. supposedly, the problem is neither six flags nor intamin's but a second hand company which creates the computer software for intamin. the problem wasnt structural, it was computer related. for some reason, the computer brought up the brakes when the train was launching.

dont get me wrong, i went to the park on june 10th, only two days after the accident happened and i knew nothing about it when i went. i bought a season pass and was expecting to get lots of rides on KK this season. im really pissed off about this too, its the only reason i bought the season pass. all we can do is hope they will fix it as soon as possible and get it back up and running.

Their is no OFFICIAL report to what happened.

Their are many sites saying different things. Like the metal covering part of the cable was loose and the train ripped it up causing serious track damage...

The only thing I have to say about this is, this serves all the little GADV fanboys right, thinking it wont have any problems like TTD, it will work great. If I remeber correctly it took TTD 1 month before it had a serious breakdown, KK 2 weeks. Now we will just see if SF can get it running again in a timely fashion and see how well it runs after that...

How do you figure?  Arrow was nearly bankrupted over X (until the S&S buyout), and Vekoma was sent packing for bankruptcy protection over their malfunctional fiascos with Stealth, Batwing, X-Flight, and the Déjà Vus.  Why would Intamin's situation be any different?  Six Flags is going to bear the brunt of the negative publicity, but I doubt Intamin is walking away without feeling the burn, either.  I would guess Intamin is fixing Kingda Ka at their own expense in order to avoid legal action that could cripple the company financially.  The only difference between what happened with X versus Déjà Vu versus Kingda Ka being that Intamin has the resources to handle the problem, where Arrow and Vekoma did not.

That's just my speculation.  Because between what happened with Dragster and now with Kingda Ka, I would think Intamin would be in a mess of legal trouble, but they don't seem to be hurting like their counterparts.

Arrow was in pretty bad shape before X anyway. X was their do-or-die coaster. And they died.


My point centers before the fact. All of your examples were post-operation stuff.

I didn't say that Intamin isn't gonna be screwed. I was defending the position that Intamin is not at fault for not testing it longer... because they basically couldn't.

Here's the thing. Intamin has a proven system. The Rocket Coaster works. The catch is that we dont' know how it works over such a high speed. We know that it CAN work at 120+ MPH. They've tested it so. But we don't know how it works consistently at that speed.

Think about it... how do you test that in a lab? You're investing $25 million maybe to build something like that in a lab environment. That's prolly not going to happen. I doubt that any coaster company has that much lying around extra to spend on a prototype. Sure, coasters cost that much, but a ton of that goes to contractors, manufacturing, and construction companies and labor. So the overal profit for the coaster designers is prolly under $10 mil for this sort of project. And that furthermore has to be distributed into salaries and other costs. Because coasters are INVESTMENTS, not even the coaster designer will have cash lying around to build full scale models of every type of ride they have at different specifications. A long time ago, Intamin built an Xcelerator prototype at that scale (200 feet tall, launching at 80). But they're not going to build another type that launches at 128. Therefore, the "Intamin testing their own coasters in house" theory is flawed.

This is common sense... so you gotta build a coaster at a park. And what people who are placing the blame on Intamin seem to be implying is that they should have tested the coaster at SFGAdv more. Which makes sense...

Thing is that Six Flags is notorious for rushing things. Ultimately, once it's built, Six Flags has testing "control." They're not gonna run it for weeks to make sure it's stable. Not when they can open it and get lots of crowds.

So my point is that while Intamin SHOULD have tested it more, that's not really feasible. Ultimately, it's up to the park to test rides and make sure they work. I mean, Disney operates on a much wider schedule... they complete construction months before the official opening. Then they test it. They train staff. They have soft openings so that the public can test it. THEN they officially open it. And for the most part, this works.

Six Flags doesn't do that. Most parks don't. Most parks can't afford to, I suppose. Still, I think you'd agree that if Six Flags et. al. did a similar ride opening procedure to Disney's stuff, rides breaking down for the summer would be a LOT rarer. But Six Flags don't. Therefore, if you blame someone, you blame the park predominantly, not the manufacturer.

I'm not saying Intamin is completely devoid of blame, but frankly, they've gotten a lot of bad rap for a lot of things that aren't beyond their control. Their safety record hasn't been that great, but all the accidents have ultimately been the fault of guests, not the fault of Intamin. And the case is similar for coaster performance... the parks lack of maintanence has been rather poor.





Also, while B&M's are basically perfect, they've also been rather tame lately. So basically, you have your two elite coaster designers (for steel): B&M and Intamin. Choose B&M for the smooth, perfect, dependable coaster. Choose Intamin for that intense thrill that will pack a punch.

And what people who are placing the blame on Intamin seem to be implying is that they should have tested the coaster at SFGAdv more.  Which makes sense...

and what if they did test it more? what would that have done? the ride was a good to go when it opened. it was safe. if they would have tested it more, why would that have prevented what happened to it? there was some sort of malfunction either in the software, the train, or the launch. i think the accident was inevitable, it would have happened no matter how many times the would do test launches. hell, the accident WAS during a test launch.

and what if they did test it more?  what would that have done?  the ride was a good to go when it opened.  it was safe.  if they would have tested it more, why would that have prevented what happened to it?  there was some sort of malfunction either in the software, the train, or the launch.  i think the accident was inevitable, it would have happened no matter how many times the would do test launches.  hell, the accident WAS during a test launch.

I was saying that the idea of testing more is a logical one. But I agree with you that even then, you can't really predict what'll happen... except that it's better to find a problem before you open it than to have it happen afterwards, and then you gotta close it down for some unknown time. Fortunately, this accident was during a test launch... but what if it hadn't? You'd have TTD all over again (well, the riders getting injured part). Had they tested this before it officially opened, there'd have been no chance of danger to riders.

But really, we're both agreeing on the same thing. I'm just taking a focused stance here.

Hello.


Yeshli....

Great Adventure saying, "It's closed for a few weeks." interprets into two very patternistic and realistic things...

1. The ride will be open again roughly in late July or early August (if we are lucky).

2. it won't open at all until next year.

This happened to The Chiller. Great Adventure has a marvelous past with opening rides too soon and analy-fucking their entire season due to improper testing.

The Chiller stood SBNO the entire first year it was "supposed" to open. It operated for about 4 days before they realized it didn't work right.


Raven-SDI
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I don't see why parks just don't all start building B&M's... They're always fun and reliable.

This is true.

Its the Deja Vu's that are SBNO Failures.

Actully, SFGAm's Deja has been running quite well so far. I think since it was a prototype when it came out that there were tons of bugs that still needed to be worked out. It looks to me that they got most of them worked out. I've only seen Deja down 3 or 4 days this season.

As for KK, I'm gonna have to agree with Cork on this one. They definetly rushed this and didn't allow the proper time it needed to get done.
As for speed, I could see that contributing to the problem.

Somthing to think about: Does the selling of their parks and now this mean anything? It seems to me that SF is going down a dark road atm.

^Well GAdv already has a bunch of B&M's...off the top of my head...

Nitro
Superman: Ultimate Flight
Medusa
Batman the Ride

...I think that's it. That's a decent amount of their coasters.