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How long is Formula Rossa, really?

Pokemaniac

Mountain monkey
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This question has been churning in my head since I brought it up in the "highest-stat-ed coasters you've ridden" thread, and I figured I might ask here in case anybody knows.

So, Formula Rossa. Fastest coaster in the world, and also a very long one - the sixth longest in the world, actually. RCDB lists its length as 6 561.7 ft., which sounds fairly sensible and accurate if you use silly units. But the thing is, in more sensible units, it translates to exactly 2000.0 meters. That number screams "rounded off" to me. It's hard to manufacture something that big, and get the length down to round numbers, so I suspect there is some substantial rounding off in play here.

Parks and manufacturers may round the stats off to the nearest meter, or even to the closest ten meters or closest 100 feet (case in point: Mamba and Steel Force, both listed on RCDB as exactly 5,600 footsies long, although they aren't clones), but rounding it off to the closest kilometer seems excessively imprecise.

Are there any indications of a more precise length stat for the coaster out there? Although the number could be quite close to 2000 meters, it would be interesting to know how much it has been rounded off - particularly since it's very close to other coasters on the "top 10 longest coasters" list. Millennium Force, for instance, is 2010.2 meters (6595 ft.), while Fury 325 clocks in at 2012.3 meters (6602 ft.). Voyage is 1963.5 meters (6442 ft.). If Formula Rossa's length is rounded off more than a few dozen meters, it could move up or down on the list - heck, theoretically, third place is up for grabs, with Fujiyama being listed as 2044 meters long.

This is a quite obscurely difficult question to answer, though, since I guess it would either require access to the manufacturer's specifications (@roomraider, do you have the right connections?) or doing something silly like counting the number of cross ties on the coaster. But in the vain hope that someone out there has seen something, I ask the question anyway.


Oh, and finally, a small anecdote: A few years ago, someone rushed to the News section of this forum claiming that some park was getting a Formula Rossa clone. The reason was that the new coaster was listed on RCDB with a length of 6561.7 ft., which was too exactly identical to Formula Rossa to be a coincidence. Turns out that they were getting an Alpine coaster which was approximately 2 km long, and the user in question hadn't bothered to check the Metric conversions. This is why we'd rather have precise measurements.
 

Matt N

CF Legend
It’s not unheard of, I don’t think; I seem to remember seeing quite a few coasters of exactly 1km in length, and a few others of exactly 1.5km in length, to the nearest kilometre or whatever.
 

Niles

Giga Poster
I had a quick look online, everything says 2000m, then I thought I wonder if its on Intamins website, found this:
1642605491485.png
So yea, if this is true its off by quite a bit and 3rd longest on earth for operating coasters at 6955ft 😅. Looking at other coasters on the site there stats match what's on RCDB and the general consensus so yea I think your right @Pokemaniac

Source: https://www.intamin.com/project/formula-rosso/
 
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Pokemaniac

Mountain monkey
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It’s not unheard of, I don’t think; I seem to remember seeing quite a few coasters of exactly 1km in length, and a few others of exactly 1.5km in length, to the nearest kilometre or whatever.
Interestingly, it seems like Ferrari World has an affinity for this. Flying Aces is listed as 1,500 meters, while both tracks of Fiorano GT Challenge are quoted as 1000 meters long. Formula Rossa Junior is listed as 200 meters.

Meanwhile overseas, DC Rivals Hypercoaster is listed as 1399.9 meters long, which sounds like somebody started at a figure of 1400 meters, converted it to Imperial, and put that into RCDB causing its automatic conversion to nudge the listed length off the round number.

Rounding off to the nearest 100 meters appears to be more common than I had expected. Katun, Orochi/Monster, Kondaa, Steel Taipan, Choco Chip Creek, SFDK Medusa, and Hollywood Dream are all among the coasters listed as exactly 1200 meters long on RCDB. Strangely, rounding off to 1100 or 1300 meters is way less common than 1200 meters, perhaps because 1200 feels like a "rounder" number.

You are right about the 1000 meter thing too. RCDB lists 24 coasters of that exact length, some of which are fairly well known: The aforementioned Fiorano GT Challenge, OzIris, Yukon Quad, Leviathan (SeaWorld), Sierra Tonante, Phaethon, Takabisha, Juvelen, and TMNT Shellraiser are all quoted with that length stat. I was surprised to see quite a few coasters stated to be 1005.8 meters long too, until I realized that it converts to 3,300 feet. A handful of well-known coasters also claim to be exactly 4000 feet long, such as West Coast Racers, Wild One, and Steel Curtain.

Still, with Formula Rossa it feels a bit more egregious to round off so haphazardly, seeing as there is a top 10 placement up for grabs. If either of the listed figures of 2120 or 2150 meters are correct, Formula Rossa is the third longest coaster in operation (behind SD2K and Beast) and the sixth longest ever built. Kinda strange that the park passes up the opportunity to market that.
 

Hixee

Flojector
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To answer Poke's question with a different question...

How do you define track length? Is it the running rail surface (which side, left or right?), upstop wheel surface, main spine, 'centroid' of the entire track? Should you include storage (I say no, but who knows if the official figures would include that as they still had to build and weld that much track)? It's a mess.

Strikes me that some of those discrepancies could just be as simple as who's counting what. E.g. 2150m vs 2120m as the circumference of a circle is only 10m different in diameter (~1%).

Alternatively, say that Formula Rossa's first corner is 150m in diameter at the main running rails and turns through 180° (at 90° banking), and that the track is 1m in thickness to the bottom edge of the track spine - the track main running surface is 236m, but the spine outside is 239m. I've got three meters difference in the first corner alone.
 

JoshC.

Strata Poster

How can they define a "maximum" length? Like, this is a closed circuit roller coaster which travels in one continuous direction - the length of the ride doesn't change!
Perhaps I'm overthinking or overcomplicating that. The other 'maximums' make sense (the speed may vary about a km/h or two, the throughput varies, the maximum height is the height point it reaches), but a maximum length less so. Probably it's just done for comparative purposes, to fit in with the other categories? Just a bugbear of mine whilst looking at that though!

But yeah, this is an interesting question, and one that I'd never though of for any coaster before.


I wonder if any parks also try and hit round numbers by considering the length of track you 'roller coaster' for, as opposed to the full length? ie take away station, breaks, boring sections in between those bits, etc. I imagine it's trickier to do, and also pretty pointless, but something which has just come to mind.
 

Indy

Hyper Poster
How can they define a "maximum" length? Like, this is a closed circuit roller coaster which travels in one continuous direction - the length of the ride doesn't change!

Oh, but it does! Now first, I agree that it's an odd way to phrase the length of the ride. Nevertheless, the length of a coaster does technically change with temperature. And when a ride is this long, it can change in length by a magnitude of feet depending on whether or not it is cold or really hot.
 
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