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Alpine Coaster for Snowdonia in 2016

Yeah totally. "Coaster" won't have a Welsh word, and they'd be stupid not to use English for "Zip World". "Zip", as in "zip line", won't have a word anyway. "Fforest" is clearly just "forest", so it's the only "Welsh" word they can actually use, which makes the whole thing look stupid.
 
My siblings bought me a ride on their zipwire for my birthday, but I shall delay the trip to deepest, darkest Wales until the alpine coaster opens.
Obviously, I went on the one in Stoke way back when, but it was nothing special really - this looks to be on a larger scale and considerably better landscaped.

To be honest though, the zipwire looks bloody terrifying...

I shall be doing this on 18 May.
 
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Ride opens tomorrow. Not the greatest quality video in the world but a POV has been released, hope the slowness in parts is down to the guy filming and not the auto braking system in place:
https://www.facebook.com/
(ride starts at ~2mins in if you want to skip lift hill)
 
I don't think that has any of the braking fins (using the new one at Bellewaerde as reference - the potato quality of the end of that video made it hard to work out if it has a brake run of any sort)?

Looks half decent!
 
Thekingin64 said:
from: http://www.dailypost.co.uk/whats-on/everything-you-need-know-zip-12787158

I'm taking that quote to mean there's an auto braking system in place for health and safety reasons. Max speed is supposedly around 25mph.
Click to expand...
I was just about to post something on the matter. Most of the newer Wiegand coasters have the auto braking system installed to prevent crashes. As you can see, there is a small fin in the middle of the track in the video, which isn't present on the older models...
https://flic.kr/p/NJqxho

(Sorry for not embedding, I believe Flickr has made that impossible on the mobile devices...)
 
Never seen or heard of Alpine Coasters having MCBRs? Or does this one have that auto brake stuff like the one in Gatlinburg does?
 
^I believe there is an auto-braking system present. As discussed earlier, there is an additional fin in the track to accommodate the brakes.
 
I think all the future Wiegand alpine coasters will have the auto brake system, because all the newer ones do have the system I believe! :)
 
18620055_10155485021440864_8303259489062657339_n.jpg


So, I did this today en route to the zipwire place, and... it's an alpine coaster. I've not been a huge fan of bobsleds since falling off that one at Oakwood in 2005, but obviously, people that do like bobsleds will like this. It has a nice feel of speed to it, but quite clearly, as has been discussined, also has some kind of automatic braking on to stop disasters occuring at every corner; I think the problem comes when the automatic braking and the manual braking are combined, because psychologically, it's incredibly difficult keeping the lever all the way down when you're heading towards a corner. Personally, I'd have enjoyed it more without the controls, but I guess that's what essentially makes these different from a real rollercoaster.

It's worth a go if you're in the area anyway, and it's probably done that bit of Snowdonia a lot of good (all the staff were very excited about it), but to be honest, I wouldn't make a special trip. As an aside, £15 for 3 rides is quite steep too; a ride's about 5 minutes, but more than half of that is lifthill.

This, however, looks interesting...
[youtube]
 
£15 for 3 rides is pretty cheap compared to US prices, but expensive compared to euro-prices. Go figure!
 
davidm said:
£15 for 3 rides is pretty cheap compared to US prices, but expensive compared to euro-prices. Go figure!
Click to expand...
I think it's rather comparable to some of the European ones. But yeah, considering the (short) length, it's quite pricey...
 
^ Yeah guess theres some variety.
The US ones I've been on, the cheapest was ~$15 for one ride, the euro-one €2.50/ride.
 
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