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The Bat Flies Again... This time for real!

NAPayne31

NAPayne31

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According to twitter, Kings Island is ditching the Flight Deck theme and going to the old Bat theme. Kinda comedic considering that the teaser on the site for Banshee was themed for The Bat and now it is real!
Source to come.
 
Yea.....Kings Island announced it. The track color will be red woth the supports being copper or something. Cars will be black.

I figured something was going to happen after that teaser page dropped and all the resulting hype it got.

I believe they (Kings Island) are crediting that (the hype over the splash page) for the retheme amd repaint for flight deck. Its splashed all up on my Facebook wall, so someone could have been mixing words in there.
 
559753_10152280924048368_1036445315_n.jpg



https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =1&theater

Thirty-three years to the day it was first introduced in 1980, The Bat will fly again at Kings Island. The park is changing the name and colors of the Flight Deck roller coaster to The Bat. The change will take effect for the 2014 season. The new color scheme for The Bat will feature orange track with two shades of charcoal for the columns and structure. Black will be the featured color of the trains.
Click to expand...


Yep...
 
I saw the announcement, pulled up Wikipedia's picture, got to work, and this happened.

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I really hope they theme that station to something other than a steel scaffolding-ish structure on a paved lot. I could see them putting some panels on it to make it look like some sort of haunted house (Is that what original Bat/Vortex's station was supposed to look like? I always thought that.) or gothic bell tower.
 
If nothing else, it means that they're at least planning on keeping it around for a while. After the one in Canada - and there's really not much in it - it's the best Arrow suspended coaster left.
 
It is nice to see additional TLC to the 'Action Zone' section of the park, and fun to be able to work park history in.

Now if only it didn't take a fort night to trek out to the ride.
 
Thought something like this was going to happen and it's a good move for the park, in conjunction with Banshee, to attempt to increase the ride's popularity.

Will the new name and track colours be the only renovations? I really hope they alter the trains a little more than just painting them, perhaps making them reminiscent of the old bat trains, which looked epic:

bat-8.jpg


Maybe, with two haunting-themed coasters, the action zone will be completely rethemed over the off-season?
 
As so far has been reported, the trains will only be repainted black.
 
Does the layout bare any resemblance to the original prototype bat that was scrapped?

Still pretty cool that they are bringing the old bat theme back from the dead and keeping it seeing as most of these coasters seem to be closing now.
 
In short, no.

Here is a comparison of the layouts.

Bat

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg-OWKFyp8A[/youtube]

Flight Deck

Screen%20Shot%202013-10-31%20at%2010.45.31%20AM.jpg


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smft-Z9kfp8[/youtube]
 
The old Bat looks like it has a lot stronger layout so it's a shame it only lasted a couple of years.

What were the main reasons for it only lasting a couple of years? It doesn't come across as a ride that was typical technologically advanced, even for the 80's.
 
Darren B said:
The old Bat looks like it has a lot stronger layout so it's a shame it only lasted a couple of years.

What were the main reasons for it only lasting a couple of years? It doesn't come across as a ride that was typical technologically advanced, even for the 80's.
Click to expand...
If you watch the POV, you'll see that the turns didn't have any cant in them, leading to some crazy >90 degree swinging motions from the lateral forces. This was very wearing on the parts, and eventually maintenance costs proved too high to be worth keeping the ride.

The technology behind the ride itself was also a little iffy, as you can see the ride came to a stop momentarily when it engaged to the second lift.
 
Since Arrow was adding another degree of motion, the sideways swinging of the trains, it was difficult to predict what forces would be experienced throughout the layout. Specifically, Arrow did not bank turns with the Bat, which created excessive force and created a jarring rider experience. There was excessive wear on the train hardware as BBH mentioned (especially the shock absorbers), as well as concern for stress on the track.

You can see this in a promo video that was made by Arrow, featuring their suspended roller coaster concept. If the scale model that is depicted in this video is taken as credence, Arrow could very well have also considered the possibility of utilizing inversions.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miERaeQZYZQ[/youtube]

Bat faced so much downtime that it was the reason the Racer famously turned around the red train, to act as a replacement thrill for park visitors wanting to ride Bat.

The Bat in many ways was a true prototype, that allowed Arrow to fine tune their design to lead to more successful suspended coasters down the line; such as Big Bad Wolf, Ninja, or Iron Dragon. By banking track turns and beefing up the train shock absorbers, Arrow was able to deal with the swinging dynamics of the ride and minimize maintenance concerns.
 
There's a close-up photo of it on the KingsIslandPR twitter that I can post because I'm on my phone, but they've started! The base of Bat's lift is black on the webcam, looks like primer! Let's hope this looks better than the red Top Gun to silver Top Gun or Stealth to Borg repaints!
 
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