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CWOA | Mandrill Mayhem (World of Jumanji) | B&M Wing Coaster | 2023

On further reflection (and if this is truly a B&M), what's interesting about this is it sort of messes up my general perception of how these sort of projects are developed.

I sort of assume that parks put their invitation to tender out with a general brief for the ride (e.g. family coaster with 20m height limit and fitting roughly into this footprint), and the manufacturers then put together a proposal. My assumption is that companies like B&M politely decline to tender on things like this - why would they? It's the same way that I assume GCI didn't tender for Shambhala. Why would B&M have bothered doing a tender for this - family coaster (not usually their bag), launched (not usually their bag), shuttle (not usually their bag) - it all feels like they'd have just decided it wasn't for them. Perhaps there really are lots of really wacky concepts pushed round in the tenders from manufacturers that we never get to see.

Of course, that doesn't rule out Chessington approaching B&M directly, but that then flips the question the other way - if you were after a coaster like that why would you approach B&M?

It's kinda fascinating really...
 
Crazycoaster said:
I’d say it depended on the actual project itself. Sometimes a park will want a specific ride model, or like in the case with Alton/B&M, work together to design a ride from the ground up with it’s Dive Coaster/Flying Coaster.
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I'm sure it does - but then that brings up the second question: Why would you ever go to B&M for something like this? Besides the "wing" bit (which, let's face it plenty of other manufacturers do/could offer in one form or another), it's totally out of B&M's wheelhouse. It's so peculiar. :p
 
Hixee said:
I'm sure it does - but then that brings up the second question: Why would you ever go to B&M for something like this? Besides the "wing" bit (which, let's face it plenty of other manufacturers do/could offer in one form or another), it's totally out of B&M's wheelhouse. It's so peculiar. :p
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Could be that B&M are changing or expanding their wheelhouse, as I said earlier. Essentially, they exclusively manufacture "luxury" coasters, and even the smallest of their creations are way out of the price range for most parks. Meanwhile, the parks that can afford B&M's biggest-box coasters tend to have the full set already. Except the parks in China, of course, but as I said earlier, only two Chinese parks have ever bought a B&M after their opening year. Effectively, B&M are running out of customers for their existing products, so it makes sense that they'd start expanding into the slightly-smaller-budget segment.
 
Part of me is thinking "oh wow it's great that they're finally getting a new coaster!" < - I want to be this guy.

but most of me is thinking "here comes another mediocre gimmick of a coaster that meanders around an elaborately themed structure whilst they desperately clamber for a reason to call it a worlds first instead of just, you know, building something good". < - Merlin have made me this guy.
 
I’m intrigued but mostly disappointed. There is such limited thrill from ‘doing the same track backwards’ or doing any track backwards. I find all of those junior boomerangs a bit tedious. If it has a bit where it goes backwards, it’s either got to be an artefact of an impressive thrill gimmick (superman the escape) or be part of a wider package (Thirteen, Hargrids) for me to be excited.

If I wanted the excitement of not seeing where I was going, I could do that on any ride by closing my eyes.

I don’t even like sitting facing backwards on a train.

I hope the delivery of the product is sublime but the fun factor feels limited from the get go.
 
CrashCoaster said:
Thunderbird's launch was built by InTraSys. Not sure why everyone seems to think they built it themselves but like Hulk, it wasn't.
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I could very well be mistaken, but don't InTraSys provide launch systems for other manufacturers too, such as Gerstlauer and Mack? And, more broadly speaking, manufacturers do use other companies to do certain aspects of certain rides too? More specifically in this case, the launch aspect of Hulk was, I believe, significantly less to do with B&M than Thunderbird's launch.

Arguably this is a splitting hairs point though. If a park want a B&M ride with a launch, there's ways it can happen, even if on paper it sounds like a strange idea.
 
JoshC. said:
I could very well be mistaken, but don't InTraSys provide launch systems for other manufacturers too, such as Gerstlauer and Mack? And, more broadly speaking, manufacturers do use other companies to do certain aspects of certain rides too? More specifically in this case, the launch aspect of Hulk was, I believe, significantly less to do with B&M than Thunderbird's launch.

Arguably this is a splitting hairs point though. If a park want a B&M ride with a launch, there's ways it can happen, even if on paper it sounds like a strange idea.
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Yes. About 99% of coasters that have LSMs have them produced by either Indrivetec or InTraSys. Indrivetec only make the systems for Intamin, while InTraSys make them for literally everyone else; Vekoma, Mack, Gerstlauer, Premier, Maurer, etc. Then you have the occasional different one, such as Lightning Rod, built by Velocity Magnetics (who should probably stick to making mag brakes). InTraSys are well used since they are very reliable and can provide an insane acceleration (see Gerstlauer's LSM portfolio).
 
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Yes, the launch system on Thunderbird was done by someone else, but that’s not the reason for hesitancy by B&M. They were worried it wouldn’t be reliable as they didn’t have the time to develop their own system. They want reliable, extremely well engineered rides. Have you ever heard of a major failure on the part of a B&M coaster? I haven’t. There’s a reason for that.

It wasn’t that they hadn’t been approached about it, but merely that it wasn’t something at the time they felt they could do reliably. Now, they’ve obviously got a tried and tested system in place.
 
Jared said:
Yes, the launch system on Thunderbird was done by someone else, but that’s not the reason for hesitancy by B&M. They were worried it wouldn’t be reliable as they didn’t have the time to develop their own system. They want reliable, extremely well engineered rides. Have you ever heard of a major failure on the part of a B&M coaster? I haven’t. There’s a reason for that.

It wasn’t that they hadn’t been approached about it, but merely that it wasn’t something at the time they felt they could do reliably. Now, they’ve obviously got a tried and tested system in place.
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Lightning Rod being case in point. RMC didn't initially go with IntraSys, I believe, so they ended up with a major technical nightmare.

I guess B&M didn't want to be put in that position. Parks go to the them because their rides actually work, are easy to operate and, most of all, are capacity monsters (or at least can pull bigger numbers than other manufacturers).
 
Really great knowledge and discussions in this thread!

I don’t have loads to add on the layout and suitability for Chessington - particularly capacity since this is limited to one train. I do think it’s great to have an inversion for younger guests, but because of how big Wing rider trains are with the cars so far from the track, they take up so much space doing their zero-g rolls that perhaps they look a bit more intimidating than a smaller car making the same inversion, even if they do it slower and more gracefully.

My main issue with the layout is probably how the spike at the end ends up at a full 90 degree angle - i.e. as you slow down to a full stop, then switch to slowly move backwards, your full weight will be pressing on the left side of the seats/restraints, with none of that being relieved by weightlessness or positive Gs against the base of the seat itself, as would be the case on all other inversions. Other shuttle spikes have always stayed within the vertical axis, even if they go beyond vertical like Cobra at Connyland. At least even with Cobra, your weight on the restraints at the top of the spike is equal on both shoulders, not all on one side as Chessington’s looks designed to be.

This isn’t a coaster that would drag me back to the park given the multitude of operating issues/poor capacity/tired aesthetics the park has, but I’m glad to see proper investment in a coaster.
 
Crazycoaster said:
That’s not a massive issue with B&M vest restraints, they’re designed to keep you held comfortably at any angle. It’s why you see slower rolls added to the Wing Coasters/Banshee.
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Perhaps that's also why Monster's barrel roll was removed from the plans; they knew they didn't have enough room to have the wider vest trains, and because the slow roll may not have been comfortable to traverse with the necessary OTSR trains, it was cut.
 
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