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Millennium Force's Height/Speed Record

jayjay

Giga Poster
I'm doing a bit of research for a project I'm working on and I'm getting different facts from different websites here.

Basically, this involves Millennium Force's height and speed records and Superman the Escape at SFMM. From THIS article (relevent passage quoted below) it gives me the impression that Cedar Point advertised the ride as "the fastest roller coaster in the world" but from other places I've picked up that it was advertised as the "fastest continuous circuit..." and I've got all sorts of other facts that seem to contradict each other from other places.

Could somebody clarify what happened? Did Cedar Point genuinely disregard Superman as a roller coaster?

There's also the age-old question - what is a coaster? Parks will call anything a coaster if it means they can claim they have the tallest, while other parks will conveniently forget other 'coasters' if it suits their agenda.

One of the best examples has to be Superman The Escape at Six Flags Magic Mountain which opened in 1997. Delayed by a year, it opened to deafening fanfare and was the first coaster to go over 100mph with a 415ft spike of track.

There was muted debate as to whether Superman The Escape was a coaster. In fact, it became a topic of ridicule (and so it should) on newsgroups and forums, not least when Millennium Force opened at Cedar Point five years later.

Like Superman, Millennium Force was claimed to be the tallest, fastest coaster in the world. The press release loudly proclaimed that "Millennium Force [would] shatter 10 world records" including "tallest roller coaster at 310 feet" and "fastest roller coaster at 92 mph"

So Cedar Point made up its own mind as to whether Superman The Escape was a coaster or not. Although Millennium Force was without question the tallest and fastest complete circuit coaster, any extra (and perhaps unnecessary) adjectives water down what is otherwise a press-ready soundbite.
 

gavin

Moderator
Staff member
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From what I remember seeing and reading before, Superman was, and still is, disregarded by a lot of people, including Cedar Point's marketing department, as the article says. If you need stuff for a project you'll need some links, obviously, so hopefully somebody can provide those.

The track might have a height of 415 feet, but the car never reaches that height. These days it doesn't even come close. To me, it's like building a 500 foot shot tower that shoots about half way up. It would be the tallest tower, but the facts are dubious. Then, factor in that Superman doesn't resemble a coaster in the traditional sense, and you've got enough speculation to allow the "facts" to be ignored.

Anway, MF only held the record (the way CP saw/marketed it) for two and a half months.
 

Snoo

The Legend
Gavin is spot on. Many people, even some SFMM fanboys, disregard SUE as a good/real/record breaking coaster. From some recent reports, it isn't even hitting the top speed of 100mph as advertised.. and when I rode it.. I honestly don't think it broke 300ft.

When CP advertised MF, it was the 'fastest continuous circuit roller coaster' and that is also the record Guiness Book recognized. Here are the records that CP claimed they were breaking:

* First ever complete circuit roller coaster to top 300 feet)
* Tallest complete circuit roller coaster (310 feet)
* Longest drop on a complete circuit roller coaster (300 feet)
* Fastest complete circuit roller coaster (92 miles per hour)
* Steepest non-inversion banked turn on a roller coaster (122°)
* First roller coaster in the United States to utilize a cable lift system
* First roller coaster to feature magnetic braking system

Some of which are true facts, others bull****.

This also explains Top Thrill Dragsters abnormal height. Either the people were druggies in a past life or they wanted to end all controversy (which flared up 3 years before when they advertised MF over SUE).
 

Error

Strata Poster
One thing that really bugged me while working is that Cedar Point didn't even seem to know how fast it was. The shirts all had 3 different speeds (92, 93, & 94) so the Millie ride hosts each said the 3 different ones, because the handbook didn't know either.

Superman: the Escape looks dull anyways, and Millennium Force at least has a bunch to it.
 

Harvey

Hyper Poster
Incidentally, this isn't the first time Cedar Point did this. Magnum XL-200 was advertised as the first 200 ft. coaster, when Moonsault Scramble had actually held the record some six years prior - however, once again, Cedar Point chose to overlook it under the argument that it was not a full-circuit ride.

If you find that dubious you should go to Blackpool, where The Big One is still lauded as the tallest and fastest ride in the world, fifteen years on......
 

Harvey

Hyper Poster
Just another exmple on the dog pile.

Personally I find Supermans claims to be nothing short of dubious, the ride has never, to my knowledge continually and frequently operated at a record breaking height, in so far as that surely it is impossible and unjust to claim a ride the tallest in the world, when it can't offer the riders such an experience?

Plus theres the whole confuzzling debate of the ride being a coaster at all, with it being a shuttle type ride, can of worms time?

WRONG, MORE BEER TIME! :D
 

Harvey

Hyper Poster
If that coaster inverts then surely it is HIGHER than stated, even more so if you stick your ickle' toes out into the air? Where do we want the book to stop UC?
 

jayjay

Giga Poster
Thanks for the replies. They've been useful, and I think I've got enough info to be getting on with what I was doing (it was just for the sake of a few sentences in a documentary but I would rather there were no innacuracies).
 
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