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2005's Tallest Roller Coaster
MacBrave writes "MSNBC has a short story about a new roller coaster, named 'Kingda Ka' that is set to open at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey in the spring of 2005. This coaster will beat the current world record-holder, Top-thrill Dragster at Cedar Point."
we call it 'great adventure', *not* 'six flags' like the rest of the world.
Why? Because we freaken like it like that... got it?
Worlds highest ride is Taipei 101 (also known as Taipei Financial Center), but you only get the ride when an eartquake hits Taiwan.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A tall story indeed...
Kingda Ka? When did they start using pig latin to name rollercoasters?
That's nothing compared to my 50 pull-chain 75-inversions monster creation in Roller Coaster Tycoon. I have one ride in my park...that's all the real-estate would allow. Too bad nobody would ride it.
But my park map has really good value.
Take a look at the "Virtual Tour". Certainly it appears to be a high peak. The faux clouds are a nice touch. But the ride amounts to one climb, a twist as you come down and a small hill as you return to the station. Might be less than 25 seconds once you sit in the car.
How does that compare to other high rides?
Kingda Ka is Hyperborean for "Spine snapper."
Or, if pronounced with emphasis on the "da," its Lemurean for "Flinger of Unrestrained Toddlers."
Help me out here somebody. Why is this a /. story?
Insert witty sig here.
You get it on with your partner. There is anxious anticipation as you start. You start slowly, climbing your way to the top.
There are smiles exchanged, and giggles, maybe even caressing or hand holding. The excitement builds and builds. It nears the top. The expressions on faces become wondrous and excited. Then as it hits the pinnacle, things move very fast. There's a quick motion, the heart races with complete excitement; faces are all in total pleasure. Arms are flailing, heads are bouncing, and there is some noticeable screaming going on.
The rest of the ride is up and down, twisting and turning, lots of bumping, sometimes in the light, sometimes in the dark, sometimes there's a surprise, and sometimes it becomes all too familiar but always...always...at the end, there's a big smile on the face, hair is all messed up and everyone is talking about how great it is while some of them say, "I wanna go again"...
What am I? The Kingda Ka Roller Coaster of course! Sheesh... You pervert.
Gee, lets see how unoriginal we can get. While I applauded Cedar Point for their interpetation of a "RollerCoaster" I don't think the term fits these beasts.
To me a Rollercoaster involves more than going up one incline, no matter how tall. It is all about the flow of the machine. Some wild machines are just a royal pain to ride as they thrash or feel disjointed from seemingly "just thrown in" hills and curves.
The Great American Scream machine in Six Flags over Georgia is representative of a classic rollercoaster. CedarPoint has many REAL roller coasters. These new things remind me of railed free fall machines. Boring...
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
That would be on Space Ship One! Wheeeeee!!!
If I owned a park I'd have that as a ride. *sarcasm alert* There's only minor logistical issues involved in that, honest. *sarcasm alert*
Oops, how did this get here?
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What about that new 102 km ride that's opening up? I hear that the spin on the way up is pretty cool.
I was at cedar point this past Sept. And I can tell you the millenium force is much more fun. Sure, the Top Thrill Gradster is fun too, but it's too fast and it's over too quickly, (sorta like you cum too quickly)
"First I'm going to throw up, then I'm going to die."
If you go on this thing, look around at the other people, and choose somewhere smart to sit. See video here while it lasts.
yo.
Since I don't like to go outside, I will just build a replica with the new Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 demo.
anyone else do the virtual tour on their website? even for a little video on the internet that was damn short. i can't imagin waiting in line for hours and hours for that. gimmie a beer over that anytime.
I guess MSNBC isn't reporting what they did in vegas... The Stratosphere coaster(s) is 900+ft up. (ok by a technicality, considering it runs at a mere 35mph and cost more to ride!). Then again, the X-scream was a better ride.
It's over in about 50 seconds. Wow! It really is just like sex!
I've been to Six Flags New Jersey many, many times. Probably more then most people that live in New Jersey. And nobody called it "Great Adventure." Everyone calls it "Six Flags."
Deal with it. You're not special.
On the topic however, SFNJ is an awesome park. They've got a shit load of coasters - they've pretty much ditched everything else for them. And that's fine by me, coasters are the best.
Few years ago they put up the "Nitro" which was the damned best roller coaster I've ever been on. The cars are open, you sit on a seat with a lap restraint. It's so fast and awesome, and you have nothing boxing you in. It's just you and the track.
And now they're putting this one there - the park is going to be just unbelievable.
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I got nauseous just watching the crappy demo movie. erghh I need to lie down.
with a slight emphasis on the member. Seriously, how is this not a bigger penis situation with really big pen...err nevermind.
Somebody at Cedar Point is giving himself an aneurysm trying to fit an even taller ride in that park.
MMS stands for Microsoft Multimedia Streamer.
If your browser chokes on the mms mime-type just feed the address into xine or whatever you use and it should play.
Direct away from face when opening.
I've riden a ride like the one buing built. It's the kind that uses a horizontal track to send the train into the first incline. Believe me, there's nothing like it. One I rode (StormRunner (?), Hershey Park, PA) went from a near dead stop to 70+ MPH in under 3 seconds, into a 90 degree first climb 12 stories high. You move so fast your eyes water from all the wind whipping past you. So fast the forces throw your head back against the headrest. So fast, it's all done with in about 27 seconds.
One big word of advice if you ride something like this: Before the ride starts, keep your head against the headrest. Your neck will thank you.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
I don't think we need a repeat of A Phule and His Money.
It will be so much fun waiting in line 6 hours! Not!
"look, Ma! No hands!"
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Top Thrill Dragster had an unfortunately large amount of down-time (mostly due to the cables and hydraulic system). Last year, when it premiered, it was down for nearly an entire month. It actually became prevalent enough that the ride's running status was put online. TTD is an amazing ride, though, and downtime was to be expected on a ride whose design was revolutionary.
It'll be interesting to see if Intamin has worked the bugs out of this one; I'm sure they've learned much from Dragster.
At any rate, it's very exciting to see the 500 mark being approached so rapidly!
What?!?! Did you miss the story of Richard Branson of Virgin buying into Spaceship One? Virgin Galactic is what they've tentatively named it. Only £100,000 for a sub orbital flight, but I imagine the line will be pretty exclusive.
Wheeeee! Indeed.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This ride is completely weak in that it is almost an exact copy of Cedar Point's ride. only 8 mph faster (ooohh) and 30 odd feet higher (aahh). I went to Cedar Point a few weeks back and passed on the dragster. You are literally on the ride for 30 seconds, if that. And this is what you get for standing in line for an hour? two? I think not. We opted to go on Millenium Force and that was much more of a ride, it topped out at a "lousy" 390 feet, but the ride lasted for nearly 2 minutes. No thanks 6 flags, I'm gonna pass.
It's sometimes great living in the Northern Ohio area. Cedar Point is the greatest park EVER. With great, world-record rides like the Magnum XL200 (puny by today's standards), Millenium Force, and the Top-Thrill Dragster, how can anyone really do better here in the U.S.?
I do have a concern though. With the Dragster, the ride uses a cable driven mechanism to pull the car at 120 MPH. There was an incident this past summer where the cable shredded and shards of cable covered in hot oil injured a many of the riders. The local news coverage showed people having first-degree burns and embedded wire pieces on their face and arms (yikes!). I agree that this is an isolated incident, but this ride has been closed a lot because of the high winds from Lake Erie. Being 420-something feet, I would not like to be stuck on top of the hill for any reason. So, I hope the designers are prepared for this new ride.
Coderz 4 Life
These rides are more like "quick thrills" than a traditional roller coaster.
;)
I had a season pass to Cedar Point last year and went quite a few times, and while the Top Thrill Dragster was fun, it doesn't compare to their other tall coasters, Millennium Force and Magnum.
Reason being, as you ride to the top of the MF or the Magnum, you anticipate dropping straight down 300/200 feet and there's more suspense.
With Top Thrill Dragster, the ride is seriously over before you know it. It's much harder to enjoy because it goes so fast. Don't get me wrong, it is fun, but calling these the fastest/tallest coasters is like saying the Ripcord (bungee/slingshot type ride) is the highest ride ever made. Yeah, technically it is, but it shouldn't count.
I'd much rather ride to the top of a 400/500 foot hill while anticipating the drop back down - seems much more thrilling.
It also sucks waiting 2/3 hours in line for a 10 second ride
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I had an opportunity to go to Cedar Point over the summer and ride TTD, and to be honest, the fact that it shuts down on occasion worked to our advantage. First, we waited in line for about an hour before it broke down. They said it would be a long wait and encouraged us to visit the rest of the park. We did, but once we saw it was back up, we came back. When we got back in line, it looked long as hell; however, since they were obviously expecting more problems, they intentionally kept the line short, but made it look long (the snake line is actually hidden on the other side of the coaster, so when you get in line, the most rationale thought is to assume that if you are one one side of the coaster, the other side must be full). Needless to say, we waited less than an hour the first time, and less than 45 minutes the second time. Both times, well worth the wait. It is a short ride, but when you get shot off the first time, the thrill is amazing. Also, definitely a lot less scary the second time!
Well, actually, I like modern coasters.
Well, before I started getting headaches and neck pain after each ride.
Anyway.
Any of you out there living in Pittsburgh owe yourselves a trip to Kennywood, an old-fashioned amusement park on the Mongahela (sp?) SE of downtown.
My grad program went there for a summer picnic about eight years back.
It has a modern necksnapper or two, plus some wonderful old-fashioned wooden coasters. Some of these are good for kids. Others are kind of exotic, like one that has tracks running in each direction that kind of cross over. Hard to describe, but fun.
Then there's . . . well, I forget the name, but it's a wooden coaster that delivered the roughest, most violent ride I've experienced. Ignoring a sign at the entrance, I sat to the left of a college friend who was bigger and heavier then me. The violent right turns repeatedly slammed Tobin against me. Real rib-crushing stuff.
Stefan
It's quite amusing that anyone in Las Vegas who lives near The Strip could make such a claim, what a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
There was some plan when the Stratosphere was originally designed to do something more outrageous with the ride, but they ran out of money, IIRC.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
or does the picture of the dragster look like someone (or something) is flying off the rear end of it? at first glimpse i thought it was a person that was flung from the back seat...some shit that would be... on closer look it appears to be a flag or something.
take a look for yourself.
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the needed velocity to put the cart over the top of the hump - say if something goes wrong during the 'launch' of the vehicle? What type of safeguards are there to prevent a catastrophe?
Lets say the vehicle must achieve 115 mph to reach the summit but during the 'launch' the hydraulic mechanism fails and the vehicle hits only 110 mph - the vehicle will go near the top of the summit but then WILL START GOING BACKWARDS - and then what? Do they have some kind of track they can run off onto (remember that the seats are not meant for this).
Any ideas on how best to deal with this?
Everyone's always out to get Cedar Point, man. But the thing is they'll always be the biggest and best. Something like 10 of their current roller coasters are or at one time were world record holders. I went there every summer growing up. Trust me, no Six Flags will EVER EVER compare to those childhood memories :)
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What's Cedar Point's answer to X?? X is 100x better than anything Cedar Point has... Yeah, Top Thrill Dragster is kind of fun, but it can't compare with dropping 200 feet face down at 80 degrees and then pulling back up 150 feet with you still facing down.
Skyscrapers are tall because the land they sit on is valuable and the owners want to get the best possible financial return on the land... or because someone has a yen to own the biggest cement, steel and glass phallus.
(Answer: it's in Toronto)
Cheers,
Richard
Hey -
:)
If you are talking about "open loop" roller coasters (rides that travel over the same piece of track more than once during a ride cycle), than Top Thrill Dragster and now Kingda Ka hold THAT world record.
However, if you are talking about "closed loop" roller coasters (rides that DO NOT travel over the same piece of track more than once during a ride cycle), than the current world record holder is Steel Dragon 2000 at Nagashima Spaland Mie, Japan.
With an overall height of 318ft, a first drop of 308ft, a top speed of 95mph and an overall length of 8133ft, it is currently the top dog in free-falling (non-accelerated) "closed loop" roller coasters. I've been waiting several years for these world records to be broken... and noone has risen to the challenge yet. And, yes, I am proud to have helped design and draw a very small portion of Steel Dragon 2000.
peace, spudwrench
Hands down. We were just there a few weeks ago, and I have to say it's really improved since when I used to live there (about when the Great American Scream Machine opened...)
Busch Gardens (Florida / Williamsburg) may have more charm, Disney World has more attractions, Coney Islands has the most history, but SF:GA has the best rides.
Oh, and we used Six Flags and Great Adventure interchangably. Six Flags because at the time, there were no other Six Flags parks in the area. Great Adventure because that was a specific moniker.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Have you seen GA from the air? It's huge, and there's all sorts of nothing around it. They can expand along the lake front to add a whole assload of themed areas.
And the recently added _huge_ Nitro ride sort of makes that moot.
I think it's because thats as large a ride as they could afford for that engineering firm to build for them at this time; while still getting that height/speed record.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Spongebob Squarepants, motherfucker.
Here are some renderings from Great Adventure's website:e n_kingdom/media.html
http://www.sixflags.com/parks/greatadventure/gold
Top-thrill Dragster version 1.0.0.01
Seriously folks, both coasters follow the exact same pattern.
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Seriously, I can't stand "amusement" parks anymore for this very reason. I mean, waiting all those hours for 30 seconds of fun? Now I know how a lot of women must feel every night...
Cedar Point's Top Thrill Dragster is only 38 feet shorter (420ft) and 8mph slower. I'm willing to live with that just to be able to go on all their other awesome rides in the same day. I went about a month ago and *LOVED* the Millennium Force, The Raptor (hanging from the tracks), their stand-up coaster, The Magnum 200 XL, The Gemini, and a bunch of others. Can't beat it for the sheer volume of coasters. I also like that they called TTD a "Dragster", which is closer to what it is than "Rollercoaster".
geeks are cats who dig a certain kind of cool
Don't ride these things. They can cause concusions or worse strokes by tearing blood vessels in the neck and head!
Is the two whole minutes under water...
We just call it Six Flags here in New England, atleast as far as I know.
Tallest/Fastest here is Superman - Ride of Steel and it is only 1/2 as tall and a little over 1/2 the speed of this new monstrosity. Of course, before the new restraints, it felt like you were going to fly out of the damn thing (or like you WERE flying out of it for one poor soul...). I screamed like a little girl on Superman. I don't think I want to know what I would do on Kingda Ka, but I am pretty sure most of my friends and my wife would love to know....
I am sorry to break the news, but there is no roller coaster out there that will beat the world's biggest entertainment complex: Dubailand!
Check it out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubailand
You can also get a video that previews dubailand at http://www.dubailand.ae/
It will have the world's largest shopping mall, Mall of Arabia.
The movies on that site don't work.
top thrill will just have to do. Its a freak'n amazing ride. Along with that you cant beat the millenium force! Cedar Point is much better than all other parks out there.
See Sig! See Sig Zig! Zig Sig Zig!!!!!
Having been to lots of parks, I can say that Cedar Point is the king of coaster parks. Sometimes others aren't bad - they just aren't quite up to Cedar Point.
'Kingda Ka' sounds a lot like part of a certain prayer that one might say shortly before engaging in an activity likely to cause one to meet one's maker.
Wait till they build the elevator to space! (I just hope nobody gets the idea of making a rollercoaster out of THAT!)
I'm from Jackson. I worked at Great Adventure when I was younger. (I'm not proud of either of these facts.) Almost no one refers to it as "Six Flags." It has always been "Great Adventure" to most anyone who lives within a 30 mile radius of the park.
There is nothing to deal with and, you are right, we are not special.
While thinking philosophically, we see problems in places where there are none. -Wittgenstein
Yeah, and they are also building a clinic with a large emergency room near by.
Simpy
Anyone rememberVertigo? It was one of those pay-to-ride deals that had you strapped into a harness on a bracked with 5 other people, and then by the use of steel wire and 3 towers, shot to the top, flipped around, and brought back down. Problem is one of the towers FELL OVER during the first winter it was up. I think it was ultimatly attributed to removing the bracket for the winter (the towers were designed to be under constant tension).
One of my friends got on a ride that did something similar, like 0-70 in 4 or something. The entire ride was about 10 seconds long (seriously). She doesn't remember any of it, because she BLACKED OUT due to the acceleration. Man was she pissed! Waiting in line for 3 1/2 hours just to ride something for 10 seconds AND HAVE NO MEMORY OF IT AT ALL.
Do the math yourself. 0-70 in 4 seconds works out to only 0.8 g's.
It's not even a full gee and she blacked out? You can experience more gees than that in almost any sports car. You can experience more gees than that in most *normal* cars, on sharp turns.. Admittedly, that's shorter duration forces on turns, but it's more than a full gee.
Anyway, she needs medical attention. That's not farkin' normal.
c'mon, how often do you get to dispute a town not existing with TWO! in the same state...
http://www.cedarpoint.com/public/inside_park/rides /thrill/ttd/video/index.cfm
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
It just sends you up to the top and over, then its all done in like 20 seconds. Sneeze and you'd miss it.
Hardly worth the hour+ long queues you already know it will have.
Fireball Mountain is the name of the Paintball place.
The one in Tivoli is scary because it rolls around in wooden channels, and has a guy who manually operates the brakes. No necksnapping, but scary noetheless.....
It may be the tallest and the fastest, but our Top-Thrill Dragster will still hold the record for most mechanical breakdowns!
You think that is red paint? Bah! That is REAL BLOOD!
The first year of operation at Cedar Point the "Top Thrill" was down most of the time. So if this one is going to be higher and more complex. Expect the first 2 years to basically be beta testing. Four hundred and thirty five feet is not a cool place to be a guinea pig.
There are several coasters that use linear induction motors. I think that's as close to a rail run as we'll get.
This is the latest big coaster in the Intaman product line. They have much more exotic ride products, like the Reverse Freefall Coaster and AquaTrax.
Eastern seaboard. As in, east of the Appalachians.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I'm from NY. Rode Superman - Ride of Steel many times before the new restraints. It's a great ride. Have been to Great Adventure in NJ (yes, that's what we've always called it) the Nitro is awesome. Just took a trip to Cedar Point OH, and rode all their coasters, including the Top Thrill Dragster. The new Kingda Ka will be very similar. It's made by the same company, Intamin. Great Adventure is already a great park, the new stuff will put it in a league with the best.
Any real coaster enthusiasts out there absolutely must visit Cedar Point.
peace,
Franco
when the cart is on top of that roller coaster, it gets my heart, but the rest part of the journal is... maybe a little...
too plain?
I was expecting some twist and turns..
also the track switch stuff looks weird.. it doesnot look very "safe" to me.
O Six Flags
O Great Adventure
O Tastes Great
O Less Filling
O cbreaker is CowboyNeal's bitch
FWIW: I grew up in NJ. It was always Great Adventure, or GA.
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you probably need a newer version quicktime or windows media player.