People who are wetter than me ride Untamed

[mmcirvin]

Looks like Canobie Lake went ahead and had their grand coaster opening in spite of the pouring rain. Theme Park Review was there for the ribbon-cutting.

Comments

[eb-oesch.livejournal.com]

It took a moment to figure out why I reacted to the picture of the lift when the ride has not really started yet at that point. It has to be mostly about how, unlike on an angled lift, you are at least on the edge of relying on the restraints, rather than gravity, to keep you inside the coaster. A not entirely imaginary risk the restraints will fail is obviously part of the roller coaster scare factor.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I think you're way past the edge. The drop following that lift is beyond vertical; I don't think there is any doubt that without restraints you'd fall out.

Really, that's been true to some extent ever since people started building coasters with upstop wheels and airtime hills. The lapbars are doing at least some of the work of keeping the riders in under negative Gs.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...though, yeah, having that happen on the lift hill is a post-revival phenomenon. But stand-up and flying coasters, etc. are also in that category.

[spatch]

Oh man, I really gotta get up to Salem pronto.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Of course, on YouTube there are the usual jaded folk comparing this to something they'd hype at Six Flags. But this ain't Six Flags.

I'm also wondering about capacity, and how bad the lines will be on a nice weekend. They're using single 8-person cars. Based on the videos I think they're running two cars, and sending one up the lift as soon as the previous one gets to the station. That would give them a capacity in the vicinity of 480 people per hour, which is a lot better than the Yankee Cannonball post-accident (since they're only running one train on the Cannonball). I'm hoping it relieves the lines at the Cannonball, though I guess it might increase them by attracting coaster fans.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Gerstlauer lists the "theoretical capacity" as 850 pph, which I think you could only get by running three trains and treating the lift and the coaster run as separate blocks.