Marshall <***@gmail.com> wrote:
: ...except for the vertical loops, the Vekoma Dutchmen
: models already felt like flying, just with god-awful trains. I just dont
: see the love for the B&M flyers. That pretzel loop is just painful and
: nauseating. Loading the trains is much easier tho.
Honestly, I think both Vekoma and B&M blew it with the 'flying' bit. B&M
has a better train design, but I think they made it too complicated; I
think it should have been possible to set it up so that as the train comes
into the final brakes the pins can release and the cars fall down to the
vertical position...use gravity to lower the cars and a hydraulic cylinder
to limit the rate of travel. But both B&M and Vekoma don't put the rider
into a 'flying' position by any means. In both cases it's a sitting
position but biased to a face-up or face-down orientation.
The only manufacturer who got the position right also built the worst ride,
and that would be Zamperla. The Volare design really was moving in the
right direction. Then they goofed it up in several ways, and used the
concept on a terrible ride.
I think Vekoma's design would have been a lot better if they had figured
out how to make it work as originally intended, with the seats upright
through the station, reclining on the lift and standing up again on the
final brake. Instead their design actually puts the rider into an
unpleasant head-down position at points where the ride isn't doing
anything. If the cars were to recline on the lift, you might not even
notice it happening as you shift from upright and approaching the lift to
ascending the lift at about the same angle. Then at the top you flip over
and start flying, and it would have been pretty neat.
All three designs suffer from an apparent need to keep flipping riders
over. What does it mean to do an inversion when you are in a prone or
supine position? This is a riding position where inversions are pretty
meaningless because there is nothing novel about them. And which way is
"up" anyway? In a traditional sense the only "inversion" on these rides is
when you dive off the lift hill. The rides really need to do more flying
and less flipping. Especially the Zamperla version. That's the reason that
Tatsu and Manta are the best versions of these rides; because they maximize
the flying...and Tatsu becuase it maximizes its location at the top of the
Mountain.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
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