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Janusz

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  • Birthday October 28

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  1. ^^ They couldn't use the old system with the new train since Intamin had made some adjustments to the onboard systems. It wouldn't be hard to fix, just SF owned the code that was used so they couldn't change it without getting into property issues. They opted for the standard Intamin restraint monitoring system because of a lack of resources and to essentially place any liability as a result of software failure with the new train on Intamin. It still has the prox. sensors in the same place as when it was built so don't expect changes in flag positions or anything of the sorts. I just wish they were able to install frequency drives for the kick wheels like maintenance wanted to... This would make parking the train more reliable and reduce downtime for something that is nearly 100% preventable with the right equipment.
  2. Advantages of the six flags takeover would be that the park will have access to the engineers and programmers of SF which might bring an updated version of the old computer system on ROS, instead of Intamins standard shitty program. @thrillrider Parent swaps are pretty easy, one parent waits in the queue as normal while the other waits in the exit; this works best if you both have cell phones and communicate when you're 2nd in line so the flow of traffic isn't slowed for more than a couple cycles. You can then tell the attendants and even inform the guests behind you in line so everyone is aware. The parent in line rides alone or with a child tall enough, then the other parent rides. If you only have one child who wants to ride, they can ride with both parents. Just talk to the attendants and they'll hook you up, I'd suggest riding anywhere except row 1 since people will get pissed if you do. Attendants don't mind but I have had an incident where a confrontational guest had to be removed from line after the parents swapping didn't inform them. Just trying to save you from dealing with stupid people. Have fun!
  3. You act like weather played absolutely no role this season... We had over an inch of snow a little over a week ago for Christ's sake. It's hard to do some of the restorations and refurbishing necessary to get these rides up when the ownership isn't willing to pony up and pay. Especially when they're over budget on their biggest project in 10 years, they'll try and make things work by getting by on bare minimum. Same story different year. Try building a ride on schedule to open May 28th when the track shipments start showing up the last day of March, or the ground starts moving as it thaws out. Sure seems to leave a lot of wiggle room for the typical Gerstlauer breaking in phase of new rides. As for Predator, they aren't going to run the ride if they don't feel it's safe to do so. Ya'll bitch about downtime but disregard that winter absolutely destroys wooden coasters. They're a complete and total nightmare and it doesn't help when mother nature gives you 68°F and sunny one day, then 25°F and flurries the next day. Wood expands, contracts, twists, turns, and does all sorts of crazy things. It's even harder to solve all these issues in a week after a full on freeze hits the reigon. The PTC trains they have from The Voyage are a bit heavier than the originals so it takes an extra toll on the track every year. Seriously, get over it already. I swear, this time of year is just a complete and total shit show in this thread no matter what happens. All the armchair mechanics/engineers in WNY come out in force and moan about the park. If it's so awful, buy a season pass to a different park... If you think there's an obvious way to solve all these problems feel free to keep it to yourself. It's just beating a dead horse at this point. I'm not suggesting that all negative aspects of the park be silenced, but just look through the past opening day complaint posts... You can't even call most of them reviews to be entirely honest. Rant over.
  4. Yeah there is absolutely no way that they had over 1 million guests in 2016 or 2017, I'd be willing to believe 600-900k but nothing more than that for either season.
  5. I love how after a coaster draught like DL has had, when they announce that they're putting in a coaster, you guys freak out about losing a 30 year old Arrow Flume Ride... Idk if you guys are aware, but that's right around the lifetime of an flume. The rumor of TR getting removed had been swirling around the park for a few years now simply because of how much of a nightmare the ride had become to maintain. Odds are it was one of the things Premier had heard a ton about from DL maintenance and the new owner ended up giving them the freedom to do it. I'm also willing to bet that the bad publicity from a possible lawsuit against Knotts over their Arrow log flume wouldn't help much in the decision to keep it, not to mention the fact that Log Jammer at Kennywood (another Arrow flume) is being ripped out this season as well. Since they said it was a custom layout, I don't imagine it would be too much larger than any of Gerstlauer's 320 models when looking at the price. Given that it's a Euro-Fighter and not an Infinity, it'll probably keep the normal train design and have otsr to my dismay. This is still a huge step for Darien Lake and I'm really looking forward to seeing what dreams Premier has, and what EPR is willing to approve during their period of ownership. Y'all need to get hyped! This is great for DL!!!
  6. ^ROS was open nearly all day yesterday, it closed early in the day but it seems they've isolated the issue and can solve it quite quickly. They pulled the cover off a restraint and lubed the sensor that tells the train how far down the lapbar is, so it seems to be an issue related to that. You should be good to go today!
  7. TR isn't down for staffing right now, it's the time and budget made available to the maintenance dept. that has been keeping rides down for longer than usual. Last I knew, they were working on internal components of the GW's drive tires, probably a significant mechanical component based on the downtime. Moto has been having issues all year with random crap, which for a Zamperla prototype, is nothing new. I see all the $#it that everyone is giving the maintenance department and it's just blowing me away... If you guys seriously think that a trained mechanic would opt for a fix that will need to be replaced within the next few weeks, you're crazy. This is a park that is choosing not to install anything new this year and leave the viper station house in severe disrepair despite a huge anniversary... When you're limited in staff and budget, there's not much else to do than patch things up if you're in the position of the DL mechanics. You don't see these issues at big parks that are well staffed and have a reasonable budgets because the understand the importance of preventative maintenance. What makes you think it's the staff's fault? All issues should be raised with the upper management of the park, in addition to the individuals in charge of the budget for the maintenance department, not the grunts doing the work. This is like being mad at a store clerk when his computer dies, even though he's been telling his managers and IT department there's an issue for weeks. Go after the people giving maintenance their budget, find new people for these positions, take notes from all the mechanics and find a way to prevent major downtime during the season. If a ride has to open a week late to prevent a month of downtime, isn't that the cheaper more practical option? Hire extra mechanics for peak seasons so that you can fix these minor issues and maybe refurbish the viper station house. Rant over.
  8. @SbSteveZ They were working on a kick wheel by the lift shortly after the park opened on that day so yes, there were mechanical issues. I can assure you though that this year ROS will not be running in the rain much, maybe when it's sprinkling but other than that it won't. The train gets wet on the underside which causes it to park too far forward in the station (you can hear it slide when trying to park). This causes the restraints to remain locked despite the operator attempting to open them, closing the ride until maintenance comes and backs up the train to let everyone off. Its just easier to close it than repeat this process for the duration of a storm. When they don't have enough guests in the park to fill a train, run times become an issue... When you add cold weather and low ridership you make the perfect storm for ROS to valley. I'd rather have it be closed for 4 hours to prevent this than have a 2 week period without ROS because there was one guy who wanted to ride.
  9. You guys should remember that ROS didn't run in the rain last year so don't complain about it being closed when you go on days with thunderstorms! @nhman93 How many people were on the train? I remember the ops saying something about needing more than half a train to run it last year. The cold really kills the ride but it'll get crazy fast by July!
  10. I'm wondering if they're going to be taking something out at some point, say TR since it's been showing age quite a bit these last couple years... It's the type of ride that has a ton of ops running it so it'd be a big help during september if they replaced it with something that only needs 3 ops. Call me crazy but it is old as hell...
  11. ^^^^ I get that some simple math can be used to determine a general amount of paint needed to cover a structure, but without access to the blueprints for the ride as well as Intamin specs a guess like this will only infuriate forum goers who are informed about these things. There's many many more variables that go into repainting a coaster. You're going to loose quite a bit of paint Due to wind and other variables such as the thickness of the coat of paint. Given that a gallon will cover about 400sq ft in a home, I can't imagine that translates very well onto a steel structure with miles of round surfaces. Then comes the man hours, the equipment, and the fact that 1/4 of the ride is over water by a significant amount. I promise that if it was this cheap every park would be putting a new paint job on all of their rides as soon as signs of wear began to show...
  12. @ jconsolmagno and everyone else They only have one functioning train at the moment, they purchased a new train from Intamin for this past season which led to the installation of a "new" program that led to the removal of the op-booth monitor and the addition of one button on either side of the platform that ops use to confirm all restraints have been checked. I say new very conservatively as it is Intamin's base program that requires all restraints to be opened and closed as opposed to being able to open individual cars, which is a rather large pain in the a** for the ops. In total they actually have 3 trains for ROS right now but only one functional, albeit useable train as a result of the new program. I'm making an educated guess that they're stripping the functional and compatable components off the other two older trains (they both ran for at least 14 seasons) to organize these parts and have plenty of spares for the new train, as the original trains will be scrapped. From what I've been told by the ops of ROS this past season and was quite clear early in the season, the new train weighs much less than the older 1st gen trains so as a result, suffers from unreliable run times on days when the wind is coming from the North West with the cold temps that are quite frequent in the spring. These effects are amplified when the trains aren't full leading to faults that will close the ride until the weather passes, or for the remainder of the day if these faults persist. This may not seem like a big deal but trying to run two trains on a day that has very little attendance will result in an empty station house and trains that are only 1/2 or 1/4 full leading to unreliable run times, more faults and more down time. One may say, "Then don't run both daggone trains on dead days!" and you'd be absolutely right. I'll tell you an even more correct answer though because I'm like that AP exam you took in high school, and I'm sure a select few will roll their eyes at my response so for your own sake just stop reading here. Close the comment box you're prepping in the new tab and just move on over to the Cedar Point thread to cool off and talk about Christmas ornaments from the China shop. Pt. 1 - Paperwork and Daily Inspections All our lovely thrill seeking devices are thoroughly inspected for specific things daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and seasonally. It's all thoroughly documented and such as any self respecting bureaucratic company would do. Anyway, there's usually going to be a documented attendance count somewhere that will dictate when a second train will be used on a ride, as little or large as it may be. A small park with very little capital set aside for maintenance is going to set that number quite high to minimize the labor, maintenance, and operating costs associated with these almost always death defying contraptions. So this big number; whatever it may be, is going to greatly reduce the number of operating days that will qualify for use of a second train, for simplicity let's say 14 days. Now that's going to be a very small part of the season and based on overall attendance to the park, less than 1% of all guests from a given season will be effected by a longer than usual wait time at this specific ride. What kind of company on a tight budget would spend another 1.5 million dollars on something they'll use maybe two weeks a year? Now, all of you that have made it this far and didn't stop reading when prompted to do so before are probably fuming right now, "Who does he think he is, I'm paying to go to a park and they're going to make me wait simply because I'm only a number on a clicker to them? My money isn't worth it to them?" You're right! It's silly! I totally agree with you and love the idea of a utopia world with no queue lines, that would be totally awesome! Unfortunately we live in a world where the purpose of a theme park is to make money, not satisfy coaster enthusiasts and their yearning for 24/7 walk ons. I will take yet another moment to warn those who are still skeptical of this information to kindly utilize the back button in the upper left corner of their browser, as to limit the amount of s*** posting that this thread is notorious for. Pt 2. - MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY... Queues Rihanna song As referenced previously, theme parks are in the money making business so they're going to do whatever makes the most sense financially for themselves, and the share holders. For the sake of my sleep pattern I will not be getting into the process of buying a park, how an REIT works, or any specifics into how the complexities of an economy create a hard business environment for a small theme park. That said, looking at the price tag of a second train alone is enough to send a shiver down the spine of Chris Thorpe when someone decides to bring up the idea of running his "ride baby" like the good ol' days. That one time investment is followed by daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and seasonal inspection and maintenance costs in itself. That's not even considering the labor required to maintain a 17 year old coaster PROTOTYPE from the most reliable of all manufacturers, INTAMIN (sarcasm). A shout out to the real MVP, the man who absolutely rocks the toilet bowl haircut, critically acclaimed amongst enthusiasts, hated by almost all mechanics, President of the US branch of Intamin, Sandor Kernacs! This guy makes it sooooooo easy to communicate any mechanical or computer issues to those with knowledge of the system, and is the absolute best at responding in a timely manner no matter what he's doing (meaning he does the exact opposite and should be a meme on here by now). Hey it's a new paragraph! Thought I lost the Enter button huh? Anyways, I should probably mention the time needed to take care of all of these daily Inspections and let you know that it takes 2x as long to do this when you add another train into the mix which is rather inconvenient when a park is on a tight budget. This would mean that not only would there need to be down time to put the second train on mid day, but you'd also need to know early enough in the day so the 2 hours needed to inspect the train can be set aside, along with the necessary time for daily test cycles from both maintenance and ops. I know how much we all love sifting through old attendance statistics and analyzing the trends for certain days so this would be without a doubt a completely logical use of time for an employee at a tight budget park (sarcasm). Pt. 3 - The Airtime Filled Finale I'm not a steel minded objector of a second train on ROS at DL, this is really just a quickly thrown together rather vague representation of why it isn't the most practical choice, and my knowledge of why we don't have 2 trains on ROS (along with the knowledge of several experience individuals who have worked at the park for some time). Could it happen in the future? Yes, I would love to see it happen just as much as the next enthusiast, all of us together couldn't compare to what Chris Thorpe would be doing though . I'd love to go into even more detail of all the things I've seen while at the park or been told by employees about the ride that further solidify these paragraphs of nonsense, and I'm sure a handful of you would love to read it. I'm probably just sick of writing though, just as most of you are trying to read this so I will finish this conglomeration of madness with a hint for the fastest most intense rise of ROS with the new train you can get. Find the cycle with as many large riders as possible at about 3pm on a crazy hot July or August day with little to no wind at all. The last 3 hills will be something to remember, I guarantee it!
  13. ^I think it's been pretty clear that they've had no interest in selling PROPERTIES as a package either This article definitely helps your point All in good taste though, because being butt hurt is all too regular here. Link to the article: www.businessden.com/2015/06/11/buyers-pay-140m-for-ticket-to-elitch-gardens/ "CNL has been paring down its portfolio lately, and for the most part, it has preferred to sell off blocks of similar holdings in multi-property mega sales. Last year CNL unloaded 48 golf courses for $320 million. In May, the company sold 37 of its 38 senior housing properties in a single $763 million deal. CNL has its 16 ski resort holdings, including Crested Butte in Colorado, on the market. The company owned 24 theme parks and was marketing them as a package sale, Duggan said, but split Elitch Gardens off for the Revesco deal. The Revesco offer presented the CNL with “a unique opportunity driven by the interest of investors in the Denver market,” the company said in a prepared statement."
  14. I think we may be yet to see another sale of the park before something good for DL happens... Sure, it's great that CNL is finally out and that EPR has an idea of the necessary investment to keep attendance at an amusement park, BUT it's another investment group who is going to be giving limited funds to Premier. Back to the initial point, I think that it'll be more likely for EPR to be willing to sell DL to Premier or other potential buyers looking to only purchase DL as opposed to the CNL strategy of selling 15 properties in a package (something that the smaller companies wouldn't be able to do). All together, this is a better scenario than CNL, just not by much in my opinion.
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