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Weird, Wacky & Strange Coaster Bits

This footage is legendary. The ride op was having the time of his life, as were the coaster group right there.

I wonder if anything happened to the employee besides getting the sack (being sued by the park, having to pay for repairs, etc.)
 
oriolat2 said:
This footage is legendary. The ride op was having the time of his life, as were the coaster group right there.

I wonder if anything happened to the employee besides getting the sack (being sued by the park, having to pay for repairs, etc.)
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According to the description, they “added 5 years’ worth of wear & tear to the coaster in an hour”…
 
Matt N said:
According to the description, they “added 5 years’ worth of wear & tear to the coaster in an hour”…
Click to expand...
Yeah, that I read. I was wondering about the ride op himself. I'd imagine that an employee putting the safety of the roller coaster and riders at risk running the ride improperly surely could lead to something more severe than getting fired.
 
Man that footage is legendary. Thanks for reminding me it exists! <3

oriolat2 said:
I'd imagine that an employee putting the safety of the roller coaster and riders at risk running the ride improperly surely could lead to something more severe than getting fired.
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Yeah, plus this is America. The idea of that operator being sued for all the maintenance costs for the next decade or so is totally believable.

One of the wheel bogies needs refurbishment? It was 'cos you ran the ride that day.
One of the restrain locking mechanisms needs replacing? It was 'cos you ran the ride that day.
The second to last corner needs retracking? It was 'cos you ran the ride that day.
The entrance sign needs a repaint? It was 'cos you ran the ride that day.
 
So RCDB put this up a few days ago:

Rotary Jungle Mouse - Expoland (Suita, Osaka, Japan)

Looking for statistics on the fastest, tallest or longest roller coasters? Find it all and much more with the interactive Roller Coaster Database.
rcdb.com

The Rotary Jungle Mouse was extremely unique in that the entire roller coaster rotated on a turntable around a stationary lift hill, working like a inside-out spiral lift hill.
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Anyone got more info/pictures of this? Because this sounds wild.
 
Ever wanted to ride an alpine coaster around a giant pot of tea? Well now you can at the slightly weird and wonderful "World's First Pot Of Tea Culture Park" in Meitan, China.

The short Chinese built alpine coaster intertwines with one of those ubiquitous alpine water slides that are popping up everywhere in China these days.
FB_IMG_1648910171166.jpg
FB_IMG_1648910167848.jpg
Short video here https://v.douyin.com/NVuNQEU/
 
Double post but some what related.
Ive been working in adding some parks to the rcdb this week and I think we may now have the greatest list of brilliantly named parks added to the DB in one week.

Luna Park Batman,
World's First Pot Of Tea Culture Park,
Acrobatic Cricket Happy Valley,
Snail Manor Happy World,

Luna park Batman was I'm afraid not one of my submissions but the other 3 were. An excellent list of bizzare names.

in the case of Snail Manor heres an interesting observation.
H500fd9f9d72a60592e82e3c42634349b023bba59.jpgreceived_309536334595120.jpeg

Notice any similarities between the signs?
 
Something very different.

You may have noticed one of the latest parks i sent into the RCDB has been added without an English name which is very unsual.
Duane spent some time getting the names of the coasters down for this one. And heres the entry.

unknown - Gesang Meiduo Amusement Park (Doilungdêqên, Lhasa, Xizang, China)

Looking for statistics on the fastest, tallest or longest roller coasters? Find it all and much more with the interactive Roller Coaster Database.
rcdb.com

Now im not going to post the translation here but I advise you check google translate for a laugh (18+ only?)

This is the Chinese name.
坑爹过山车

Cannot be right? surely.....
 
Couldn't resist a dig into that one, not only for the name but the fact that it's listed as Human Powered.

The name didn't make a whole lot of sense to Chinese speakers, but it appears to be related to this:

"Pit father, a catchphrase on the Internet, literally means the behavior of cheating father, making father embarrassed. After being widely used, it has been extended to mean "pit people", "how could this happen", etc., and is used to describe a situation that is very different from the original idea. Often used for sarcasm, ridicule, or dissatisfaction. The term first appeared in the online game World of Warcraft"

Which I guess makes sense as the human powered part is ridiculing a man by making him pedal you up the chain lift on a bike.

60D301E6BA642B977F7C9F2748256162_300_210.jpg


Here's the manufacturer (catchy as always - Zhengzhou Kalebe Children's Amusement Equipment), and a little article about them.
Seems like there's at least 6 of them out there so far, nightmare!
 
Not a coaster, but this weird hybrid of a pirate ship and a Disk-O that once existed at Bobbejaanland has been stuck in my head ever since I saw it on some of the commemorative plaques around the park:

e4wipHP.jpg


It seems to have existed at the park until at least the early 2000s since RCDB has a photo of it next to Bob Express (which opened in 2000):

Bob Express - Bobbejaanland (Lichtaart, Antwerp, Flemish Region, Belgium)

Looking for statistics on the fastest, tallest or longest roller coasters? Find it all and much more with the interactive Roller Coaster Database.
rcdb.com


Does anyone know more about this ride, who manufactured it, and if there are other installations currently out there? I'm a bit stumped myself.
 
More information on and pictures of the Santa Maria ride in Bobbejaanland can be found on this website. It was removed from the park in 2007. It was kind of iconic because of it's location, it was the first ride you would see when entering the park.
www.bjlnostalgie.be

Santa Maria

Santa Maria was een vrij uniek schommelschip waarvan er maar 5 in de wereld gebouwd zijn. Waar andere schommelschepen al hangend heen en weer zwieren, bewo
www.bjlnostalgie.be www.bjlnostalgie.be
 
Kw6sTheater said:
It's only a matter of time before Golden Horse attempts a swing launch...
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You were right. it took 2 years and 6 months before they opened this https://rcdb.com/19431.htm

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Anyway back to the weird and wonderful
And one of my favourite crazy/strange/unique coasters of all time. This is a coaster that like the acually spinning wild mouse at expoland has ever happened again.

Back in 2018 i posted about this really weird shuttle coaster at Funabashi Health Center in Japan that operated around about the 1970s/80s.

Weird, Wacky & Strange Coaster Bits

Note: The date on the video says 1948 but considering the ride in the video (Giant Coaster at Fuji-Q) wasn't built until 1966 this is obviously either not using our calendar or just wrong. also, at the end you can hear the theme song from Indiana Jones playing in the background... so that...
coasterforce.com coasterforce.com

This was a unique coaster in that it was also a transport ride of sorts. It was a shuttle coaster with a station at either end. Imagine a really streched out Arrow shuttle loop where each side is a station you can board the ride at. This allowed transport between the theme park and water park areas of the park.

I found this picture of the ride today which really threw me because i didnt think this ride had any corners.
Funabashi_Shuttle.png
Now in the background you can see one station with a V shaped a roof and in the forground you can see a corner. What you cant quite see is at the bottom of the drop on the right was another corner (making this into a kind of S-bend) kind of like this

Funabashi7.png

How do i know its an S-bend? Well that arrow in the image above is roughly where this image below was taken. (Whatever that box is next to the carousel in the above image is gone but the carousel matches up nicely) And this is the only place this image could match up.

Funabashi_Shuttle6.jpg

Further to that heres a colour image of the same ride from the other side of the carousel and if you look in the background you can see the same V shaped roof (although of the other station) which proves an Sbend. (otherwise it should be way off to the left)
Funabashi_Shuttle4.png

Heres the original aerial image i found of the ride
Funabashi_Shuttle2.png
The 2 red circles are the stations at either end and the blue circle is the s-bend area. (its clear this image was taken a lot later as the big building in the first images is gone and theres now a train ride which passes under one of the hills)

Moving on - heres a nice image of the top of the left hand lift hill of the ride - note the classic Japanese Jet Coaster and ferris wheel in the background which are nicely visible in the aerial image too)
Funabashi_Shuttle3.jpg

And heres an image of the same lifthill from further back

Funabashi_Shuttle5.jpg

What you may notice from these images is that both stations were on an incline. I would love to know how that worked since you cant incline the seats to compensate as theres a station at either end at opposite angles. If you look at the 2nd image in this post everyone is sat facing one way so i tentatively conclude you could sit either way on any seat?

Either way i dont know of any other ride quite like this. Not only is it a single rail coaster decades before RMC its also the only example ive ever seen of a shuttle coaster you can board at both ends and use as a transport ride (its not currently on the RCDB because of this although ive pleaded my case that its a cred again today). To top it off the stations are at an angle on the the lift hills at each end which all adds up to make this one of the most bizare rides ive ever seen.
 
roomraider said:
shuttle coaster you can board at both ends and use as a transport ride (its not currently on the RCDB because of this although ive pleaded my case that its a cred again today).
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What's Duane's reasoning for not including it in the database? The fact that it was used as a transport ride as well? From purely the mechanical point of view, I don't see it being much different than the old switchback railways from the late 19th century that could be boarded at either side.

 
roomraider said:
How do i know its an S-bend? Well that arrow in the image above is roughly where this image below was taken. (Whatever that box is next to the carousel in the above image is gone but the carousel matches up nicely) And this is the only place this image could match up.
Click to expand...
Is this not the track underneath heading off the frame?
LKPZZQw.png

roomraider said:
What you may notice from these images is that both stations were on an incline. I would love to know how that worked since you cant incline the seats to compensate as theres a station at either end at opposite angles. If you look at the 2nd image in this post everyone is sat facing one way so i tentatively conclude you could sit either way on any seat?
Click to expand...
This would seem like the Occam's Razor answer to me. It's hard to tell from the picture, but I wonder if it was just a bench seat so you could sit with your legs either way (or seats running parallel to the track and you straddle them).

What I find interesting is that, given they also have a 'reverse spike' lift hill, it seems surprising to me that they'd bother inclining the station rather than just having the station level and low to the ground (like the modern Boomerangs). Elevating the station makes sense when you're not adding a spike, but it seems unnecessarily extra effort when you are. Commendable though, those sloping v-shaped roofs are pretty great.
 
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