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Vekoma ripoffs


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Chinese companies CONSTANTLY rip off Vekoma. Like this-

Flare Meteor @ Fantawild Adventure Golden Horse made it.

Is it a bird? A plane? An SLC? No, a rip-off!

To make the Chinese barf up their lo mein noodles, the 4 inversions are in quick succession.

The back car is even a rip off of Vekoma's restraint system. We can only hope that it won't bang your skull to pudding.

 

Some inclined-loop-helix thingamajig with the 1st drop in the background.

 

The riders anxiously wait to get their heads beaten up by a vekom... er, Golden horse ride.

 

As far as I know, the ride-

 

-Goes up the lift

 

-Drops down and turns 270 degrees under the lift

 

-Loop, cobra roll, and twist

 

-Inclined-loop-helix thingamajig

 

-Brakes

 

Have any of you rode a vekoma ripoff? I've only been on a genuine Vekoma (Thunderhawk @ Michigans Adventure), which is actually a (gasp!) decent ride!

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Interesting coaster. I've never seen a Vekoma with that layout, hope they ran simulations instead of relying on it looking similar to other coasters ... It is a 2-wide inverted coaster (10 rows though) with "C" section type tracking. The seats do look styled similarly. The corkscrew looks more like Intamin or Premier.

 

As to your comments re: SLCs, I like them. Not new though.

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In China, reverse-engineering is completely legal.

 

The first real Shenlin SLC built in China was the Snow Mountain Flying Dragon at Happy Valley Shenzen. While there are several new true SLCs built over there, Golden Horse reverse-engineered the SLCs and built their own, while most likely charging less than Vekoma does. Vekoma can't do anything about it!

 

I'm not sure what they did to reverse-engineer the Maurer spinners, since there aren't any of those in China. Maybe they looked at pictures and guesstimated?

 

This kind of thing is nothing new. Automakers that sell vehicles in China such as General Motors must be partnered with a Chinese manufacturer to "share" technology with or they're not allowed to sell, and by "share" I mean "Do whatever the parent Chinese company wants them to do".

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Found this-

 

 

Well, it is a genuine Vekoma. A genuine Shenlin w/ helix. It has an almost identical layout, with a helix at the end.

 

 

Another golden horse, which answers the question "Where did the Inverted Hairpin coaster in Rollercoaster tycoon 2 get inspired?"

 

 

RIPOFFS-

 

 

From Beijing Shibaolai Amusement Equipment, comes more ripoffs. This one is the Shenzou Coaster. The model is Hanging Coaster

 

 

the "Hand roller coaster".

 

Has anybody ridden one of these.

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So basically if you do anything in China they reserve the right to utilize your technology and produce it themselves

Yes. Some of the video game companies I worked for would sell their games to a knock-off China black market pirating company for almost nothing. They figured they would just rip off the game anyway, translate it into Chinese, and then sell it on the black market. So it was better to make "some" money to partner with them, than make no money in that market at all.

 

--Robb

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Well its not limited to companies from outside China.

 

Check this out

 

Source: http://www.rcdb.com/2906.htm?p=0

Hand Coaster at Harbin Amusement Park is built by Beijing Shibaolai Amusement Equipment

 

Source: http://www.rcdb.com/8627.htm?p=0

Dragon Rider at Flora Land built by Beijing Jiuhua Amusement Rides Manufacturing Co., Ltd.

 

BSA built their first one in 2005 at Beijing Shijingshan Amusement Park and BJA cloned it this year at Floraland. Same Layout and all.

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Did you run across this one on RCDB rcdb.com/8627.htm So it's 3 companies so far, and it looks like Golden Horse might be the only one that got it right I want to see them try to rip-off a B&M, but I'd imagine with the same amount of effort, they would have just been better off innovating something of their own

 

That same company also makes Wild Mouse rip offs, but theirs do have slightly different layouts than the real things.

 

 

http://rcdb.com/8766.htm?p=24146

 

 

http://rcdb.com/3680.htm?p=24702

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I'm not sure I would really call the Golden Horse Wild Mouse models a "rip-off" per se, there are already at least six companies (besides Golden Horse) that make Wild Mouse-like coasters, and that's just from this page. There are surely others that are not called "Wild Mouse", like Reverchon and Fabbri. So that's eight. Unless they're all ripping off each other, I don't think it's fair to single out Golden Horse and accuse them on this one. The SLC lookalikes, though, that's pretty idiosyncratic.

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OK, in further consideration, yeah they are copies. In the sense of they could have redesigned them, but found it too difficult and unnecessary. Probably not a lot of pressure to build better coasters there quite yet, plus issues of having access to copy and using more advanced manufacturing techniques. Some of them look old already too in close up ... but actually, here in the off-season, looks sweet let's ride

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I thought I'd add this thought here. The following is all according to RCDB. Canada's Wonderland has a custom Arrow ride called Dragon Fire built in 1981. Heide Park has a coaster Big Loop built by Vekoma in 1983 which is an exact clone of Dragon Fire. Now Big Loop did use Arrow trains until this year when they got the trains from the Alton Towers Corkscrew. That says to me that they must have had some kind of deal there. So Vekoma has used an other manufacturer's idea in the past, although in this case it doesn't look like Vekoma "ripped off" Arrow. Nonetheless, I thought that would be interesting to share here.

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Vekoma, I believe, leased the track and train designs from Arrow for a long time, and purchased some of the assets of Arrow back in 2002... Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

If a Chinese company can rip-off your product, and do it better than you, then you must know something is wrong with your coaster. Notice none of them attempt to rip off B&M or Shwarz, mostly because it's too difficult, and they both make or have made QUALITY products.

 

It's not about "ripping off and doing it better than you," because no one is claiming that these coasters are better, but more-so that they are cheaper, because they are a knock off.

 

I've seen plenty of these knock off iPhones from China that look the same, and have the "same" functionality, but in all actually are a huge POS that don't do pretty much anything that an iPhone does. Sure it looks the same, and has a similar GUI, but that doesn't mean it works the same, or in this case, is smoother, or less painful than a traditional Vekoma, or any other model they are ripping off.

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