Go to Wisconsin Dells and ride Zeus and Cyclops at Big Chief's Carts and Coasters. They're two relatively small wooden coasters, but they're some of the best in the country ;)

Then, go to Great America and ride Viper and Raging Bull, two more of the best.

Hey I did ride those, and I loved those. The one's at the wisconsin dells. They were so great. But I am really scared to go upside down. Everyone keeps telling me, oh that is the best part, but I am still scared.

Katelyn

go on an upside-down roller coaster, and you won't even realize your upside-down until the train is through the loop. then you say, wow this is awesome! and you go on again and again and again and...

He he...LOL Thanks I think I will, cuz i definately want to.

Katelyn

Oh, going upside down is for wimps.

It's all about the AIRTIME baby!

You know the airtime is good when your seat becomes an added safety feature and only gets used when the train stops :)

cedar point is the place to go for rollar coasters mmmmm....:) rollar coasters so many rollar coasters :p
btw i liket to read but don't ask me what

isn't six flags great adventure coming closer to the number of roller coasters that cedar point has?

oh well, cedar point is awesome, wish i could go back sometime soon...

Cedar Point is THE place to go. Beats any other park I've been to hands down. (PS don't pay the gate fee, it's ridiculous. Get your tickets at your local Parks & Rec service for $31.) And as for LAN games, you've gotta try Unreal Tournament. Other than that I like to mess around with programming. Oh yeah, my absolute favorite thing to do is hand wash dishes at a local pizzeria for minimum wage. jk of course...

LOL...don't we all love doing dishes...

Katelyn

Roller Coasters are amazingly designed!!!
 

Me and my friend jason got stuck on a roller coaster in SF Great Adventure, so while at almost the vertex of the first hill, we're talking to the attendent (I love you Jeff, he is a god among men) we were discussing the physics and fail safe's of the coasters. They are amazing. I always thought that the coasters had some sort of power within them, but they rely fully on PEg=mgh turning into KE=1/2mv^2. All of the brakes are pneumatic/Hydralic. We got stuck because the power went out and Jeff told us that the cylinders would automatically activate to stop the car at the end of the ride. Also, since the cars rely on gravity, if power went out in the middle of the ride, it wouldn't matter for us because of gravity!!! I soooo want to work for the people that design the roller coasters.

PS
If anyone goes to SF Great Adventure, take a look at Batman and Robin, The Chiller, it is powered by linear induction, so what me and jason were thinking is, 'what would happen if the power went out while the car was gaining speed, (the roller coaster doesnt have a hill, it goes from 0-60 in like 2 seconds), but if the power went out, wouldnt the car not have enough power to finish the ride and get stuck somewhere, wheres the fail safe of that???


Shrey and Jason (Ulibrium)
Team 920

Oh great, people are trying to convince me to go on roller coasters cuz they are so fun. Now you come and scare me with... well what if it gets stuck...ahhhhhh....LOL...J/K

Katelyn

well, there's the brakes that stop the car when it's coming back. and those can't be all magnets, because then if the power goes out, someone gets really hurt. so, i'd assume that if the power goes out and you're on the acceloration part, some sort of pneumatic brake clamps on and stops the train quite fast. if you're up in the air, uh, i guess that they could somehow stop the train (maybe on the uphill) with something not dependent on electricity, and then come up and make you walk down.

what roller coaster did you guys get stuck on at great adventure? when i went last year, nitro was having major computer problems (they fixed that eventually) so the train kept stopping at the top of the hill. then i went opening day this year, and stupidly went on the great american scream machine. new operators and old roller coasters DO NOT mix. it's worse than oil and water. me and my brother get on the train. we go up the hill, down the drop. we make our way to the first brakes (before the heart loop thingy), and those brakes didn't even fire, so we rocketed through there, and that really hurt my back/neck. then, we get to the final brakes (before the station) and the train came to almost an immediate stop. then we sat there for about 15 minutes while they got people who knew what they were doing to fix it. it was kind of interesting though, because the person behind me was trying to squeeze out of her harness, and then a guy came over and yelled at her. then she was like, stuck in it for a while :p.

Re: Roller Coasters are amazingly designed!!!
 

Cedar Point is overrated. Their coasters, while many in number, are lackluster in performance. The only thing worth riding at Cedar Point, I think, is Magnum XL-200 (Airtime!).

If you want a really good coaster park with high caliber rides, Great Adventure, Busch Gardens Williamsburg, and Six Flags Worlds of Adventure can't be beat.

Nearly all roller coaster braking systems default to an 'activated' position if power is lost. This is usually achieved by a spring-loaded mechanism that brings the brakes into place, whether they be skid, pinch, or magnetic brakes. If you were riding a coaster with a midcourse brake run (MCBR), and power went out, the train would stop on the MCBR and you'd have to be evacuated from the train at that point.


The Chiller has a set of pinch brakes along the launch track that are closed immediately after the train is launched from the station. They open again when it returns, but act as a failsafe in case of a power outage or misfire.

Should the train gain enough momentum to complete the Tophat (on Batman) or Cobra Roll (on Robin), and there's no power for the Linear Induction Motors atop each spike to accelerate the trains backward, they will each come to a stop (after a lot of rocking) at the lowest point of the ride, which is located between the zero-g rolls and the tower.

That's called valleying. If though the train is launched, it still relies on its kinetic energy and all that jazz to complete the course.

Here again, you'd be evacuated from the train. However, to fix that problem, the train must be disassembled and moved via crane onto a truck, and then moved again via crane onto the storage track located behind the station.

This happens more often than you might expect.

As a final note; getting a job with a roller coaster manufacturer is exceptionally difficult. They're very, very small companies who usually employ no more than a dozen people of varying trades. Some of 'em are family run, too, which makes it even harded to get a job with them.

The big ones are:
Arrow Dynamics - currently in bankruptcy protection
Bolliger and Mabillard - of Monthey, Switzerland
Custom Coasters International - in Pa.
Giavanola - also of Switzerland
Vekoma - of the Netherlands
Intamin - of, erm, the Netherlands, I think.
Premier - of Maryland.
S&S - of Utah
Setpoint - also of Utah
Chance Morgan - of Wichita, Kansas, I think

There are other, smaller manufacturers, and many, many companies that manufacturer flat rides, as well. That's just a sample :)

Ian - Most roller coaster braking systems aren't magnetically driven. However, all Intamin coasters (Superman: Ride of Steel, Millennium Force, Xcelerator, California Screamin', etc.) are magnetically braked. Similarly, Intamin's drop rides (Drop Zone, Acrophobia, Giant Drop, Tower of Doom) all rely exclusively on permanent magnets as a powerless, failsafe braking system.
Nitro's computer system is very finicky. It loves to trip sensors for no good reason. The train stopping at the top of the lift is just to prevent block incursions, which are bad, bad, bad things ;) Finally, consider yourself lucky for getting a ride on the Great American Scream Machine with the brakes off! Quit yet whinin'!!

Hey, your Sun Catcher photo is really cool. What's your camera? Over the past year I've really gotten into photography. Here's a few of my favorites (I'm just a beginner too, and I don't have these on my web site, I just posted them on a digital camera forum):



Sneakers

Wish

Web

Other than my interest in photography I do a lot of writing and reading (bookstores are better than chocolate). I tend to do too much of everything and not enough of one thing (I make jewelry and dream catchers and other arts and crafts things, and I've bought way to many musical instruments that I know I will never teach myself to play... I get bored too easily).

MissInformation

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If a picture's worth a thousand words, what genre would your photo fall under?

but michael, you forget how much it hurts to be pushed into the seat, and then thrown around like a rag doll. true, it was one of the best roller coasters 25 years ago. now, i think it's almost time for it to be taken apart. metal coasters don't age as well as wooden, because there's no coolness factor of an old steel coaster, as opposed to a wooden one. you go on a wooden one because of the legacy and history and most of all, crazy airtime, where as steel ones just aren't that good. or that's how i see it at least :D.