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Cedar Point | Rougarou | Mantis Floorless Conversion

Rougarou sounds like some kind of bolognese sauce..

Just throwing this out there - is this Ragu rebranding / update truly necessary? Was the experience that awful being a standup coaster?
 
^^ Imagine all of your bodyweight being pushed into your legs. That's what it was like. It wasn't rough by any means, it was just all of those pos. G's. The floorless conversion will really make the ride a lot better. It also means that more people will go to Rougarou before Millennium Force, causing less lines for MF. :)

Sent from my VS840 4G using Tapatalk
 
Here are a few photos I grabbed of Mantis during a quick visit last weekend:

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Paint still being applied in the station, with a few glimpses of Mantis yellow still shown.
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Looking good! I just hope it doesn't pull an Infusion on us in a few years time... (In regards to the paint peeling off revealing the original colours!)
 
No I wasn't able to catch sight of the trim.

I know this will be a point of interest with the revamp, if Rougarou will go untrimmed. While I join everyone else in hoping that the trim will join Mantis as a thing of the past, I am not holding my breath on it. If anything, I could foresee the trim being left on the drop regardless, and simply not activated as the train passes (similar to Raptor's MCBR not activating).

If I were a betting man, I would bet that the trim will remain operational for Rougarou. But I would love to be proven wrong.
 
New update video: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtHO64PBgxQ[/youtube]

The painting is almost if not completely done, station/brake conversion is underway, and a few other things.

Yes, the trim is still currently there. So I think it'll either be disabled, or soon removed.
 
I quite like the color scheme, the ride looks good.

It's interesting how much work they have to do for the new trains. I never realized that the floorless trains were wider than the standups. Anyone have any idea how big the difference is? I never noticed a difference in width between the two.
 
I anticipated the need to refurb the station to fit the sliding floor, but it is interesting that they also need to rework ride motors and the likes.

It doesn't surprise me that the trains are of different widths, but it would be interesting to know what magnitude we are talking.
 
It's quite a few inches actually, it shouldn't be enough to drastically affect G-forces on riders.

Also the drive tires shouldn't be changed that much since it's still the same single drive tire system that is used on the floorless coasters, but the stingers on each end of the station to lock and unlock the restraints will be completely gone when Rougarou opens (they'll be attached to the retractable floors on Rougarou).
 
I agree with Snoo. I can only imagine two reasons why the chassis' spine dimensions would be different: either they change materials resulting in a stronger, but smaller spine or they ran into a strength issue sometime in the past 18 years and they needed to increase the size. I also cannot imagine a bare bones chassis of any of their models being any different from another aside from a dive machine chassis. Having a different base for each model would simply not be smart engineering and we all know that Walter and Claude are pretty darn smart.
 
bmac said:
Also the drive tires shouldn't be changed that much since it's still the same single drive tire system that is used on the floorless coasters, but the stingers on each end of the station to lock and unlock the restraints will be completely gone when Rougarou opens (they'll be attached to the retractable floors on Rougarou).
Click to expand...

Well, they kind of will be changed a lot considering they will have to get completely new ones and install them in a different position.
B&M floorless coasters such as Rougarou, Hydra, Medusa etc have the horizontal, flat drive wheels as opposed to the the single vertical drive wheels Mantis had.
Dive Machines such as Griffon and Sheikra are the exception, but those trains are pretty different anyway.

On a side note, I think some of the reasoning for replacing the brakes is that they'll want to include the combination of magnetic and friction brakes (especially now that they'll be running three trains).
Mantis' brakes were also getting kinda janky.

Edit: it seems we are both kinda wrong as some of the different B&M floorless coasters have either the vertical or horizontal drive wheels.
I had myself noticed on most of the B&M floorless coasters I had been on that they had horizontal drive wheels so I assumed it was the same for the rest.
 
D1993 said:
Edit: it seems we are both kinda wrong as some of the different B&M floorless coasters have either the vertical or horizontal drive wheels.
I had myself noticed on most of the B&M floorless coasters I had been on that they had horizontal drive wheels so I assumed it was the same for the rest.
Click to expand...

I looked at most of the floorless coasters built and it seems that only Bizarro and Kracken use vertical drive tires for the standard floorless coasters. There were 5 built between 1999 and 2000 and only those two have the vertical drive tires, every other one that had a video used the horizontal drive tires.

I'm not sure exactly what caused that sort of change in 2000 but it might have something to do with B&Ms faster floors that are present on Dominator and Hydra compared to Bizarro. Hydra only took 15 seconds to send the first train out and the second train in and released where as Bizarro takes 26 seconds.

My mistake for making the general assumption, should've researched that beforehand.

Also in regards to Hyde's comments on the trims, if B&M is still using the simple "key on and off" method that Bizarro has the trim brake will likely still be there but turned on or off as the situation is needed. Since Six Flags has different operating procedures compared to Cedar Fair and it's been 15 years since Bizarro was built I am not sure if this kind of measure is still used.
 
I do find it strange though that Kraken and Bizarro are the only ones with the vertical drive wheels.
And I actually don't think there's any correlation between the age of the ride and how fast/slow the floors are, considering Insane Speed was built in 2001 and has floors that are so fast it's crazy. It just seems to be programming the park decides on, perhaps?
I'm also going to go out on a limb and say that Mantis will have the horizontal drive wheels, I feel like that is a safe assumption.
 
^It could simply be the default pressure to which they charge their compressed air tank(s) is higher than the rest, your theory is plausible.
 
Since this is a large capital investment into the ride, I'm sure even if the brake hardware will be the same, it is the easiest time to consider installation as the roller coaster is already being taken apart for the new trains. Would be nice to have magnetic brakes installed on the first brake run before the turn into the station run.

Anyways, the real driving question for all is if the first hill trims will be removed. :wink:
 
I would have to assume the new magnetic brakes will be included. Like you basically said, they are getting brand new trains anyways and doing a lot of work to the ride.
Honestly, the trim on the drop doesn't bother me much. Even if it does still stay there and is used, that doesn't mean it will be used all the time.
I've had plenty of rides on Mantis without the trim on the first drop despite the fact that they still used it at times. So either way I don't doubt Rougarou will be excellent.
 
But the notion of having a trimmed first hill is just so... Un-American.
 
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