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Giga Poster
Fraispertuis City (home to the S&S El Loco Timber Drop) is planning to add a "financially challenging" coaster in 2024/2025 depending on how it goes with the park's attempts to improve its parking and maintenance infrastructure. No details on what this coaster could be exists at this time.

 
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VonRolland

Hyper Poster
For what it’s worth, it looks as though a Merlin Magic Making van has now been sighted behind Duel at Alton Towers, suggesting that there may be work coming to it soon:
The extended queue line, which has not been used in a number of years, was also cleared recently.

Could something be happening?
or the MMM vans are off to the scrap heap with the mono trains & flume boats
 

Matt N

CF Legend
or the MMM vans are off to the scrap heap with the mono trains & flume boats
On all the previous occasions when an MMM van has been sighted near an attraction, something has happened to it, for what it’s worth. There have also been MMM creatives sighted near Duel, so it’s not like there’s no other potential evidence.

Also, I doubt MMM deals with scrap. They are the attraction design division of Merlin and that only.
 

EDjanaika

Mega Poster
On all the previous occasions when an MMM van has been sighted near an attraction, something has happened to it, for what it’s worth. There have also been MMM creatives sighted near Duel, so it’s not like there’s no other potential evidence.

Also, I doubt MMM deals with scrap. They are the attraction design division of Merlin and that only.
Yh you've got a good point i remember there as a van by Charlie in 2018 and a van by House of Monsters in 2019/2020 and they turned out to be new rides, i'm not saying this will definitely happen, the van could just be parked there cause they ran out of parking 😜 in the park
 

CrashCoaster

CF Legend
Yet another alpine coaster is set to be built in the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area; this time at Anakeesta as their second alpine coaster to be installed, complementing Rail Runner. This one, however, looks like it will be built by Wiegand.

 

gavin

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A brand new shopping mall park, Circus Wonderland, has appeared across the street from my place. I debated starting a whole new topic for it, but will put it here for now.
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Hixee

Flojector
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How that even happens in this day and age I don't understand.
I do know what you mean, but this did make me wonder - give how many cumulative thousands of miles coaster trains must travel in a given time period, maybe it's actually kind of staggering it doesn't happen more often if you came at it from a statistical perspective.

Looking at Bat in isolation - and pulling stats off RCDB:
  • Opened 1993
  • 2350ft length
  • 1200 riders/hour
  • 28 riders/train
  • 2 trains
The from the pictures above, each wheel assembly has 5 wheels (2 running, 2 side, 1 upstop) and there are 16 wheel assemblies on each train. And from the park website, hours are 10am-10pm and let's make a rough estimate that the ride/park is open every day during June, July and August.

That means, crudely speaking:
  • 21 trains per hour
  • Each train completes 250 circuits per day
  • Each train completes 23,000 circuits per season
  • Each train has completed 644,000 circuits in it's lifetime
  • That means the total distance covered by each train in it's lifetime is ~286,000 miles
  • The total wheel rolling distance in it's lifetime is ~22.8million miles
And there's only been one wheel failure? Doesn't seem actually that bad, statistically speaking.

Add the total wheel rolling distance for every major coaster in the world and this sort of thing starts to become staggeringly rare. Enough to just chalk it up to "accidents happen", no?
 

Indy

Hyper Poster
Add the total wheel rolling distance for every major coaster in the world and this sort of thing starts to become staggeringly rare. Enough to just chalk it up to "accidents happen", no?
You're not wrong. The rarity of it is truly astonishing. Nevertheless, it is still a little concerning. I'd be curious to know the frequency of non-destructive testing on some of the ride's parts. Some safety critical components are NDTed every season on some rides.
 
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