Why does B&M group their gigas with their hypers?

[CarolinaRider]

Does Intamin have a patent on giga coasters or do they just want to group their coasters?

 

[Hixee]

More likely the latter. I think.

I generally get the impression B&M aren't too fussed with lots of specific categories - more about the general ride experience. Once Thunderbird is finished, they won't differentiate between a wing coaster or a launched wing coaster - it'll just be a wing coaster. I think they see hyper/giga as almost a meaningless distinction, one is basically just a bigger version of the same ride*. I can't imagine Intamin have a trademark on the name... but maybe someone can correct me.

*I realise that floorless and sit-down B&M models could be argued to be the same, but I don't have an answer to that.

 

[elephant58]

^You kind of answered that question yourself, with the wing coaster comment.

Wing Coasters, Floorless Coasters and Sitting Coasters are all looping coasters, with different trains, with floorless giving a more open feeling than sitting and wing coasters being very different, therefore they are all different categories.

 

[Mysterious Sue]

I would guess that it comes down to the mechanical differences in building the ride. Designing and building a hyper vs giga isn't very different, whereas a wing coaster obviously requires a whole different set of forces. Floorless vs sit-down have more differences (in terms of weight and materials at least) when designing the ride than hyper vs giga. Just a guess...

 

[Jared]

Re: Why does B&M group their gigas with their hypers?

It's down to the trains.

Hyper and Giga coasters by B&M use the same trains, so why complicate the product titles for customers who don't understand the difference between hyper and Giga?

 

[owentaylor121]

^I'm if a customer is going to be buying a ride from B&M they will know the difference between a Hyper and a Giga coaster.

 

[GuyWithAStick]

Whatever the park markets it as, that's what type of coaster it is. Simple as that.

WITH THE EXCEPTION of Six Flags and their Larson Fireballs.

 

[Pokemaniac]

To elaborate on floorless coasters vs. sitdown coasters, although they may look the same, the heartline of the trains are a little higher up on the floorless ones, resulting in minuscully different design of elements such as zero-G-rolls.

That's not the crucial difference, though: What makes them different purchases for the customers would probably be the mechanisms required for lowering the floor in the stations, as well as evacuation procedures. This would influence the design of walkways, the complexity of maintenance, possibly (but I'm guessing) certain safety regulations such as "no flip-flops", etc.


As for Hypers and Gigas, they're functionally the same rides. Okay, at some point you'd have to take aerodynamics into consideration on a slightly different level, but mechanics-wise, Gigas are just bigger Hypers. Likewise, Hypers can be considered bigger Megas, which are bigger... well, whatever we call those, but at some point the customer base will be so radically different that it's not worth it to group them together any more, from a marketing perspective.

 

[elephant58]

^Hypers and Megas are the same size.....

 

[Pokemaniac]

^According to the good ol' conventions, a "Mega Coaster" is a coaster between 30 and 60 meters tall, if I remember correctly. B&M chooses to call the entire product line of Hyper-like coasters "Mega Coasters", but in enthusiast slang (backed up by CF's glossary page), "Mega" denotes anything above 100 ft. in height, though it's unusual to count woodies or anything with inversions under this category. Note that this makes the Mega-Lites technically Megas on their own.

Rides such as Apollo's Chariot, Goliath (la Ronde) or Hollywood Dream: The Ride would be among the few B&M coasters which fit this seldom-used category.