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Cedar Point | Top Thrill 2 | Triple Launch Renovation | 2024

roomraider said:
My main thought was that the station and the launch track are directly aligned. so in order to have a spike you'd either have to move the station out of that allignment or have an sbend out of the station around any new spike and then some kind of switch track or transfer track to get the train into the launch track. Either way it's a bit of work.
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roomraider said:
Here's something that will never happen but makes a nice thought experiment.
Is there any reasons apart from having to change our all the brakes and wiring that you couldn't run the ride the other way round?
Train comes out of the station and turns 180 degrees to the right through a switch track into the new swing launch track, then launches up the side with the spiral and drops into brakes where the launch used to be.

Would negate the issue with having to add an sbend or move the station.😂
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Retsgard Llirht Pot!

I love it!
 
Could something like this work?
Existing transfer track is altered to have a curved, banked and inclining bit of track as well as the usual straight.

Train leaves the station, goes across the straight bit of transfer track and accelerates forwards, as the train is heading forward, the switch track changes behind it like it does on Hagrids Motorbike Coaster. Train comes backwards, through the curved transfer track piece and up a spike built off to the side.
Then goes forwards down the spike, through transfer track, down the launch and up the tophat.

Once its over the tophat, transfer track goes back.

This is assuming that an LSM wouldnt be enough.
 

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Bit gutted to see this, especially as I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to CP, but intrigued what will happen. The best launch I’ve ever been on and a world better than its successor at SFGA.

roomraider said:
Here's something that will never happen but makes a nice thought experiment.
Is there any reasons apart from having to change our all the brakes and wiring that you couldn't run the ride the other way round?
Train comes out of the station and turns 180 degrees to the right through a switch track into the new swing launch track, then launches up the side with the spiral and drops into brakes where the launch used to be.
Click to expand...
I’ve always thought that this is due to the speed you would hit the spiral. With the current layout you gently ease into it after coasting slowly over the top hat, almost coming to a stop, so it’s not too much laterals to experience as you do the spin. If you were to launch with enough speed to make it over the top hat in the reverse direction, the spiral could be that much more intense so as to be too much. I know that as you drop through the spiral in the normal direction you accelerate but you’ve lost energy from doing half the layout so imagine it’s less forceful than launching straight into the spiral. Hopefully that makes sense!

AidanCKY said:
Existing transfer track is altered to have a curved, banked and inclining bit of track as well as the usual straight.

Train leaves the station, goes across the straight bit of transfer track and accelerates forwards, as the train is heading forward, the switch track changes behind it like it does on Hagrids Motorbike Coaster. Train comes backwards, through the curved transfer track piece and up a spike built off to the side.
Then goes forwards down the spike, through transfer track, down the launch and up the tophat.

Once its over the tophat, transfer track goes back.
Click to expand...
I think this works well. As long as you put the switch track for the spike after the switch track join from the two stations, it shouldn’t need to affect the station design. It just might need to be a very long curved transfer track piece to allow enough banking to deal with the needed speeds, which hopefully could be done without impacting/blocking the midway too much.
 
Trax said:
That is really good to know, thanks for that!

I just did some professional measuring using Google Maps and might have an interesting perspective here: Red Force (3 car trains, 180 km/h) has a launch track of ~155m. TTD has an overall launch track of 175m (I measured after the transfer track until the track passes over the building with the launch technic.). TTD launched to 193 km/h. So actually, updating TTDs trains to the new ones and using all of that track for an LSM launch, could actually do the trick. No fancy double-LSMs required.
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To avoid confusion: the 175m launch track on TTD also feature the brakes for the catchcar, the launch itself ends much earlier.
Just as an update, after watching ElToro Ryan’s Video on that topic:

TTD Features s piece of straight track after the catchcar brakes, which could easily be transformed into LSM track as well.
In addition, he claims that TTD did not launch to the advertised speed with guest as the train was heavy enough to make it through with a (slightly) lower speed.

So what does this tell us? Well, we have more track to work with, even before the start of the top hat. This itself might be enough to launch 4 car trains up to the full height, instead of the 3 car ones used on red force.
In addition, the speed necessary to clear the top hat is lower than I estimated as the train needed less speed in the first place and travels less distance without any propulsion.

Everything combined, it might actually be in the realm of possibility to keep the 5 car trains.

Quick note: LSMs loose a lot of efficiency when ran at a very high current, so while a longer train requires them to be active for a longer period of time, the overall reduction in performance is way lower than the 67% (5 cars vs 3 cars) you might expect.
 
Stick LSMs on the main launch track and on the top hat.
Make the top hat 80ft bigger.
Boom, world's first 500ft coaster.
Call it Top Thrill Dragster 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Turn the last car backwards whilst they're at it.
 
AidanCKY said:
Could something like this work?
Existing transfer track is altered to have a curved, banked and inclining bit of track as well as the usual straight.

Train leaves the station, goes across the straight bit of transfer track and accelerates forwards, as the train is heading forward, the switch track changes behind it like it does on Hagrids Motorbike Coaster. Train comes backwards, through the curved transfer track piece and up a spike built off to the side.
Then goes forwards down the spike, through transfer track, down the launch and up the tophat.

Once its over the tophat, transfer track goes back.

This is assuming that an LSM wouldnt be enough.
Click to expand...
Been thinking about this as well.
Might even be able to do something funky like the spike on Star Trek: Operation Enterprise.
 
Trax said:
, he claims that TTD did not launch to the advertised speed with guest as the train was heavy enough to make it through with a (slightly) lower speed.
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Hmm, but for the first (idk, 5-6?) seasons they had the speed of each launch displayed on a digital reader near the queue entrance and you could see it showing the speed...sometimes even higher than the advertised 120.
this...thing. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PrflFOpeG5k/maxresdefault.jpg that was oddly hard to find a photo of, haha
 
Perhaps they were able to run it slower after they modified the trains to remove the spoiler and giant tires. Or perhaps the digital speed reader was accidentally calibrated incorrectly to show a higher speed than what was actually occurring (Who would do such a thing!) Or perhaps the sensor that reports a launch speed on the ride computer records the speed at a different location than the digital sign, and both accurately reported different speeds from different parts of the launch. Or there's some other explanation, or it's all lies. 🤷‍♂️
 
Hyde said:
https://coasterforce.com/forums/thr...mc-i-box-hurler-conversion.40488/post-1023548

Twisted Timbers had a track alignment issue during opening for the transfer track, resulting in the literal angle grinding of track to make things fit. 😅

Surely this and a good soldering iron would be all that’s needed for modifications!
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Thats crazy to see a new ride having something like that done!
I know its fine and safe and everything but you'd think these days they'd have to do so much paperwork for such a "modification" lol
 
While we are talking fantasy, put trims after the top hat down to about 120kmh, and then glue on something like that Mack launcher at Suzhou....A narrow layout using space in the current footprint.
 
Ignoring the many issues with that design and even ignoring the weird ride to happiness and raptor style rides that are for some reason next to it.
That's a great great backing tune for a video 😊
 
roomraider said:
Ignoring the many issues with that design and even ignoring the weird ride to happiness and raptor style rides that are for some reason next to it.
That's a great great backing tune for a video 😊
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I beg you to read the literal first line of the description 😂 it's clearly not meant to be *realistic* but most problems were thought of when I was making it... still a 0% chance of it ever happening lol!!!
 
Its pretty safe to say the main tower structure will remain as the cost to remove or as some silly people seem to think, increase will be huge. We are most likely looking at a overhaul of the launch system be that, LSM or multi pass swing launch but the main structure will almost certainly be left untouched aside from paint
 
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