Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
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.
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!
That's strange, because when I was at Rutgers (about an hour away from Jacksonville where the park is), everybody I know of called it nothing but Great Adventure. Plus it a number of students just called it GA (as in 'Gee Ay') for short and everybody knew what they were talking about.
Of course, every summer a number of students would buy a season pass and go everyday untill they were bored to tears of it.
It looks like GA is getting some new rides, which is good, especially since rides like Robin was kind of short (as in 10 seconds!! WTF). Too bad longer rides are not able to justify the price it costs to build for profit. *sigh*
It's been a number of years since I've been to GA, but I seem to recall they had a little paintball field nearby (which a number of us geeks also used to frequent), but that's getting offtopic. :-)
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
At cedar point i've seen the car not make it all the way up... it just rolls back and tries again... They have a sign in the line that says that it's normal and just happens sometimes. I believe they actually changed the cars to hold 4 less people than originally because it had problems making it up the hill at first. There are no hydroulics to aid it up the hill after the launch... it goes from 0-120 mph in like 2 seconds. You sit still, the car rolls back a little, and POW!!! You're 420 feet up in the air, and it's a smooooth ride. Doesn't last long enough, but it's wild. Going that fast is actually cooler than going up in the air. Now if they just used the same technology to build a flat ride around the perimeter of the park that let you go 200 mph around cedar point in a minute and a half... now THAT would be cool. No hills or anything, just a smooth, fast ride.