Month: October 2018

                Valravn is the tallest, longest, and fastest dive coaster in the world.  A dive coaster is a steel roller coaster model developed and manufactured by Bollinger & Mabillard. The design features one or more near-vertical drops that are approximately 90 degrees, which provide a moment of free-falling for passengers.  Valravn was opened in May of 2016; Cedar Point’s newest roller coaster.  Valravn was manufactured by B&M, as any coaster of its kind is.  Valravn marked B&M’s 100^th coaster even built since their founding in 1988.  Valravn gets its name from Danish folklore.  Valravn is a based on a mythological bird; it directly translates to “raven of the slain.”  The valravn in Danish folklore is a bird who feasts on the dead bodies of those who die in battle.  Site preparation for the ride began in late 2014; a year and a half before opening.  They began by knocking down a theatre, a kiddy ride, and relocating several other attractions.  Each train consists of three cars holding eight passengers across.  This unorthodox train is typical for dive coasters.

                After leaving the station, the train turns 180-degrees and climbs the 223-foot hill.  Once at the top, it makes a slight turn just to build anticipation even more as riders approach the 90-degree free fall towards the earth.  Just as the train crests the top of the drop, it stops.  “What happened?  Oh no, did it malfunction?  How long am I going to be up here? I got places to be!”  many first-time riders think to themselves.  After this 4 second pause which feels like an eternity, the brake disengages and it hurls the riders towards the earth reaching a maximum speed of 75 miles per hour; the fastest of its kind.  The ride then climbs into an Immelmann loop which is very common for B&M coasters (if you happened to read my last blog, there is also one on GateKeeper).  The train then hits a series of brakes and goes into a second, smaller drop just like the first except it’s only 131 feet.  Right after the drop, the train dives into a dive loop, which climbs upward and then twists at the peak, inverting the train and bringing it back down.  It then leads into one last inversion which is a 270-degree zero-g roll.

                To simply regard this roller coaster as one of a kind is a mere understatement.  The overall rating will be based on uniqueness, speed, height, and ride experience.  The ride is the fastest, tallest and longest of its kind, and for that, it gets a 10 out of 10 for uniqueness, 9 out of 10 for speed (the speed isn’t its greatest attraction), 9 out of 10 for height (knock one point because there are plenty of taller rides in the park), and 10 out of 10 ride experience.  The ride overall is very smooth and invigorating, certainly worth whatever wait it may have.  Based on my sub-ratings, the final rating of the coaster is a 9.5 out of 10.

Imagine you’re going to Cedar Point for the first time.  You’re on the expressway taking you out to the park, and in the distance, you see it.  The skyscraping, bloodcurdling, gut wrenching heights of giga and strata coasters like Millennium Force and Top Thrill Dragster.  The adrenaline is already beginning to course through your veins.  Then you get to the main entrance and what do you see?  The record breaking blue beast that twists and turns ever-so smoothly over the entrance to the park.  Thrill truly starts at the gate: this is GateKeeper.

Designed by Bollinger & Mabillard (B&M), GateKeeper became the fifth Wing Coaster ever created.  GateKeeper became the third ride at Cedar Point to be created by B&M, following Cedar Point’s inverted coaster, Raptor, completed in 1994, and Cedar Point’s stand-up coaster, Mantis, completed in 1996 (Fun Fact: Mantis was recently renovated and changed from a stand-up coaster to a floorless coaster.  It was also renamed Rougarou).   A Wing Coaster is a type of steel roller coaster where pairs of riders sit on either side of a roller coaster track in which nothing is above or below the riders.  Construction began in September of 2012 and took eight months to complete.  In order to create the ride, Cedar Point had to get ride of two older coasters, bringing the number of rollercoasters in the park down to 16 (Now 17 with the addition of Valravn, which will be covered in the next blog).  The ride opened on May 11, 2013, on the most successful opening weekend to date in the park’s history.  GateKeeper has broken several records. Among Wing Coasters, it became the longest and fastest, featured the longest drop, and contained the most inversions.  It also set a new record for having the highest inversion of any roller coaster in the world, surpassing Volcano, The Blast Coaster (one of my personal favorites) at Cedar Point’s sister park, Kings Dominion.

The ride begins by climbing a 170 foot hill, and then dropping riders to a mere 6 feet above the ground at a 164 foot drop.  The drop puts the rider immediately into its first of 6 inversions, twisting and turning it back towards the lift hill.  At the bottom of the hill, GateKeeper reaches its maximum speed of 67 miles per hour, the fastest of its kind of coaster.  The rider experiences a G-force of about 4 at the bottom of the hill, in which riders feel about 4 times heavier!  Immediately after the drop the ride is brought into an Immelmann Loop, which is half of a complete loop and brought back into upright position by a twist.  Shortly after this loop is the camelback hill which gives the rider a similar feeling of weightlessness, or the closest thing to it.  The train then goes through a tall barrel roll followed by the most impressive inversions of the whole ride.  The ride snakes its way through two keyholes while performing a zero-g roll, which literally just twists the track 360 degrees.  The ride is then brought to the ground and sent into an inclined dive loop, in which the ride climbs a hill and twists back into the upright position at the point of inversion.   The train then performs an inline twist which is attached to the keyhole towers, before hitting a series of breaks and returning to the station.

The ratings of this ride will be based on speed, height, uniqueness, and ride experience.  Its not a lightning fast coaster, but it is the fastest of its kind so for speed it receives an 8 out of 10.  The drop could be higher, but it catches riders by surprise with an unorthodox drop, 7 out of 10.  As for uniqueness, there’s only 5 other rides like it to exist.  If it was the only and/or first of its kind, I would give it a 10 out of 10, but it isn’t, therefore it receives a 9 out of 10.  As for ride experience, it is one of the smoothest rides I have ever been on.  It doesn’t rattle you around, you feel very comfortable the entire way through, therefore it receives a 10 out of 10.  After factoring together all of these ratings, the final rating of this ride is 8.5 out of 10.

If you thought the west couldn’t get any wilder—you were wrong.  This western themed coaster sits on the appropriately placed west part of the park right across from Steel Vengeance.   Although this ride is a metal coaster, it whips and jerks you  around like its made of purely wood and nails.  The ride experience certainly fits the theme of “The Old West Was Never This Wild” because it is most definitely a wild ride.

Maverick was completed and opened in May of 2007 by Intamin.  This was also roller coaster designer Werner Stengel’s 500^th roller coaster design.  Maverick is also the first ride to feature a twisted horseshoe roll, a corkscrew that leads into a 180-degree banked turn and ends with another corkscrew that rotates in the opposite direction as the first.  In October of 2005, the log flume ride that used to be where Maverick is currently situated retired and construction began shortly after in the following February.   The ride was completed in late 2006 and testing began in January of 2007.  Originally, the ride was planned to open on May 12^th, 2007, but 4 days prior the park manager announced the opening needed to be postponed because three 40-foot sections of track needed to be replaced.   These pieced of track composed the original heart-line roll part of the ride.  Engineers ended up abandoning the heart-line roll and replacing it with an s-curve.

The ride begins with not a lift up the hill, but a launch.  Engineers on the project decided to use a LSM, or a Linear Motor, to launch the train up the lift hill, reaching the peak in less than 10 seconds.  Upon reaching the peak, riders are dropped in a 95 degree fall of 100 feet.  The ride reaches a speed of 57 miles per hour.  The ride isn’t very fast purely because most of the ride is composed of twists and turns, and if the train travels too fast it could pose a threat to the riders.  The ride then experiences a series of banked turns before embarking on the twisted horseshoe roll.   Following the horseshoe roll is a 400-foot tunnel underneath the station, in which the ride is slowed down and then launched to the maximum speed of the ride of 70 miles per hour.   After exiting the tunnel, the ride hits a series of brakes while climbing an incline before falling into an elevated banked turn.  The last attraction is the s-curve which navigates riders through a series of rock walls.  Its because of these rock walls that there is a height restriction on the ride.  The rest of the ride is comprised of twists and turns before finally taxiing back into the station.

A few blogs ago I received a comment that has certainly influenced the way I rate coasters.  I will be rating them based on height, speed, inversion quality, and uniqueness.  As far as speed goes, Maverick receives a 7 out of 10; it’s not a very fast coaster, but for a ride that, apart from the lift hill and launch track, is composed entirely out of twisted track, it’s pretty fast for its design.  For height, even though it is a small drop, I am giving it a 7 out of 10 as well because it has that wow factor in the 95 degree drop, therefore, making it a very invigorating part of the ride.  For inversion quality it receives a 10 out of 10; I can confidently say that there is no coaster that is more entertaining than Maverick when it comes to inversions.  For uniqueness it also receives a 10 out of 10 because for its time there was absolutely no ride like it.  By averaging these scores together, Maverick receives a final rating of 8.5 out of 10.