Elysburg, Pennsylvania – Friday, July 13th, 2012
$1.50 in tickets to ride a Giant Wheel? I must be back at Knoebels!
However today I'm here for a very different reason, and it's not to ride the Giant Wheel...
Well, okay, maybe I do have to ride the Downdraft at least once, while it's there and while we're waiting for everyone else to arrive.
Downdraft = Some intense lateral airtime.
Okay, now that I've got that done, it's time to join this gathering of individuals who are here for the first annual FREDxGCII event. "FRED" stands for "Future Ride Engineers and Designers", and it was hosted at Great Coasters International's plant in Sunbury, just a short drive from Knoebels. If you know your wooden coaster design firms you may recognize some faces on the far right.
The first part of the event consisted of an informational tour of GCI's plant, which unfortunately I couldn't get take any pictures from due to a non-disclosure contract we had to sign. The second part of the event was hosted at Knoebels, where we would get an exclusive backstage look at the park by Jim Martini, one of Knoebel's lead technicians. The best part, besides being able to take photos during the Knoebels tour, was that it was all free for anyone interested in a career in roller coaster or theme park design.
After learning some basics about park operations and ride design that goes into Knoebels, we were on our way to the back of the park for the tour's highlight.
Yes, that's right, we would be walking the Flying Turns...
...With none other than Mike Boodley as our tour guide. Having retired from GCI, Mike has made getting the Flying Turns open his personal project.
When told that Knoebels was trying to recreate a wooden-trough Flying Turns coaster, Mack Rides, who've made their own steel-trough bobsled coasters for decades, said that it couldn't be done with today's safety standards. It's still too early to say who's going to be right, but Mike Boodley and the Knoebels team are determined to make it happen, even if it's taken much longer than everyone wanted. Here's the chassis and wheel assemblies for the latest car prototype, which I believe has finally shown promising initial results this year.
Lots of technical explanations going on here which I can barely get into. One detail I recall is that the first prototype cars had their chain dog positioned in a way that could cause the cars (lacking upstop wheels) to actually lift up off the track on the back wheels. They somehow inverted/reversed the design on this new version such that the physics would now keep it grounded on the track at all times.
Part of the problem with re-creating the Flying Turns is that the new cars have to be a lot heavier and more rigid than their predecessors. If you look at photos of the old Flying Turns, you'll notice that many of the people rode them with their arms crossed over their chest. Mike offered a theory that this was because the original cars would flex in a way that the slats between the wood planks on the seat and floor would open and close in a way that your fingers could easily get jammed, .
Finishing our presentation of the new car prototype, we next headed for the Turns itself.
At this time they were rebuilding the transfer track and station area, so we couldn't get to the ride this way.
Crossing beneath the Flying Turns.
Gathered around to start the most exciting part of the tour.
Looking at the backside of one of the ground-level turns, a perspective I've never seen before.
Boodley and crew posing for more photographs.
The inner lining of the trough was originally Cyprus, but it had to be replaced with southern yellow pine.
The Flying Turns in her as-yet unfinished glory. Construction started in late 2005 to early 2006. In a weird way it's becoming the roller coaster equivalent of the Sagrada Família.
I believe part of the problem with the Cyprus was that it warped and decayed too easily after getting wet, and it kept moisture trapped underneath causing mold and rot (or something like that, don't quote me). Even the southern yellow pine has already distorted to the point that you can see cracks between the pieces, even when they had been nailed in with Inca-level precision less than a year earlier.
Another somewhat recent feature are these sensors, which will kept track of the cars, since the troughs are so big it can be hard to spot from off-ride if anything is amiss.
I believe these larger cameras were installed so the operator can check for hats or other items lost in the trough.
Climbing up into the trough to walk the Flying Turns for ourselves.
Drain for after periods of heavy rain... another miscalculation of the original design.
The Walking Turns
At this point we could mostly just ask questions on a one-on-one basis and explore the track for ourselves, which is what we did.
Turning through the trees. There are always trees nearby at Knoebels.
This sounds like such a fantastic event. So many parks feel they need to hide the guts of a ride due to keeping the theme alive or just plain hiding secrets from other companies, so Knoebel’s openness is just awe-inspiring. As well as seeing a group of highly motivated and passionate people come together to learn a bit about the art of amusement. Perhaps, (fingers crossed) we can see something like that happen out here in SoCal someday.
Btw, you’ve mentioned it a couple times, and it bugs me. The term is “centripetal force.” “Centrifugal force” is an imaginary force. That is all.
The windsock seems to be both functional and aesthetic; Flags have been used on roller coasters to provide a visual indicator of wind speed and direction. Excessive wind can be a precursor to an inclement weather shut down. Even if there isn’t an electrical storm, the wind alone could be an issue for some rides; I’ve heard a story that Raptor once valleyed due to high winds.
I don’t get it… They are building a Flying Turns, which is the where steel bobsled coaster originated from, but they aren’t building the bobsled coasters. As a matter of fact, they torn down Disaster Transport at Cedar Point. One of the four steel bobsled coasters left in the world. But, now there is only three… But correct me if I am wrong. I don’t remember if Disaster Transport was the third or fourth.
The Flying Turns rides were always reputed to be more thrilling than the steel coasters that came after. Dick Knoebel is the sort of crazy guy who thinks making ride purchase decisions based on hearsay of that sort is a solid move, so he asked John Fetterman (his in house engineer) to build him a Flying Turns. Fetterman got the blueprints for the one in Coney Island and the Euclid Beach one and went from there. I heard about this potentially starting, no joke, 10 years ago. Here we are now, with it finally coming close to opening.
There’s a lot of back story here that’s not clear to everyone now that it has been so long since this started. Back when the plans for the Flying Turns were first announced, part of it was that the forces would be tuned down a bit (and ergo, the wildness) for this, the prototype. In the future, perhaps they would turn the wick up in future designs. At this point, it is hard to imagine there being future designs of the ride at Knoebels or anywhere else on earth, for that matter.
Finally, re: the steel bobsled coasters. Intamin and Mack both produced them, going in different directions on design. Mack’s design clearly, CLEARLY comes closer to matching what the old Flying Turns rides did, how they sat riders, and so on. And actually, they’re all pretty good rides. Avalanche is secret awesomeness at Kings Dominion, the bobsled in Blackpool is quite forceful, and the rides at Heide Park and Parc Asterix I think are really quite good too. Intamin’s rides, with their single car design, are pretty craptacular. All of them. There just isn’t a huge market for them, but Mack built one at Parc Asterix within living memory, so it comes down to market forces more than anything.
Wait, my bad there are only eight bobsled coasters still operating in the world. (They’re all steel too!) But, when Flying Turns opens there will be nine!! 😀