Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk | Undertow | Maurer Söhne spinner

[CookieCoasters]

this coaster will be replacing the Hurricane coaster that is leaving the boardwalk very soon. The name of this coaster will Undertow and i am pretty sure by the pictures it will be an Xtended SC 2000 model

to find out more:http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1220395#p1220395

 

[TilenB]

Re: New Maurer Sohne spinner for Santa Cruz 2013

Cool, Hurricane was a little too bumpy

 

[furie]

Re: Santa Cruz | "Undertow" | Maurer Sohne spinner

Official details on the park website:
http://www.beachboardwalk.com/undertow/

One thing I could never stand was all the damn spinners...

 

[reddude333]

Re: Santa Cruz | "Undertow" | Maurer Sohne spinner

Yay! A new coaster I will definitely get to ride sometime soon. Fairly low capacity but then again I've never had to wait long for anything at SCBB. It will be much better than what is replacing that's for sure.

 

[oriolat2]

Re: Santa Cruz | "Undertow" | Maurer Sohne spinner

^Well, I wouldn't say it has a low capacity. According to the official stats, the ride is meant to have a throughput of 900 pph, which is A LOT for such a small park.

Then again, I have yet to see a park operate their spinners at top capacity, besides Alton and Disney... So theoretical capacity could be greatly reduced (something like 500 pph seems more plausible...) if they don't run all cars at the same time.

 

[Youngster Joey]

Re: Santa Cruz | "Undertow" | Maurer Sohne spinner

If SCBB is anything compared to seabreeze the capacity really won't be an issue. It's 4 people per car but you can run 5-6 trains at once

 

[Temleh]

Re: Santa Cruz | "Undertow" | Maurer Sohne spinner

The fun begins with the first drop as riders scream downhill in a disorienting sideways position at speeds of up to 40 mph.

Interesting, normally the cars take the first drop with riders facing either forwards or backwards.

 

[Martyn B]

Re: Santa Cruz | "Undertow" | Maurer Sohne spinner

^ It is a spinning coaster, remember.

 

[Temleh]

Re: Santa Cruz | "Undertow" | Maurer Sohne spinner

^ It is a spinning coaster, remember.

I know, but on these models the car is locked into position from the station until the second drop. Riders take the first drop facing either forwards or backwards hence why it interesting they say sideways.

 

[Martyn B]

Re: Santa Cruz | "Undertow" | Maurer Sohne spinner

^ I dont know about others, but on Crush's Coaster the car is 'unlocked' at the top of the lift hill.

 

[furie]

Re: Santa Cruz | "Undertow" | Maurer Sohne spinner

A lot of the Spinball cars lock sideways, or angled, or don't lock at all :lol:

 

[Temleh]

Re: Santa Cruz | "Undertow" | Maurer Sohne spinner

^ I dont know about others, but on Crush's Coaster the car is 'unlocked' at the top of the lift hill.

See Whirlwind at Camelot to see what I mean.

 

[rollermonkey]

Re: Santa Cruz | "Undertow" | Maurer Sohne spinner

It's simply where they put the little ramp to push the pin up. You Brits should know that. For ages, you could tip the ride ops at South Pier a quid to pull the pin up before leaving the station.

 

[ECG]

Re: Santa Cruz | "Undertow" | Maurer Sohne spinner

^The cars remain locked on the drop, so it's either facing forwards or backwards (watch the video). I wouldn't count on being able to bribe the ride ops in Santa Cruz. :wink:

I spent a couple of days with the Maurer Söhne engineers who are on site doing final checks and testing, so I thought I would share a bit of what is going on.

They hope to complete all their testing and turn the coaster over to the park next week. All that will remain after that is the state's safety inspections, so the coaster should be open in a couple of weeks (even though the park is hoping by Labor Day, it will probably take a bit longer).

The track was actually completed in May and the engineers were scheduled to complete testing then, but the park put everything on hold due to delivery issues for the spiral staircases.

They even held off station construction until a couple of weeks ago, which kind of pissed off the guys from Maurer Söhne since they have to work around those guys right now.

The first day of my visit was hands-on training and lessons for the park's engineers and ride-ops, conducted by Franz. He's the one standing on the track in front of the car...

...and showing them the control panel operation.

Christian is the one in the green t-shirt (and attaching the module in the video) and Markus is on the far right (and analyzing the data on the laptop in the video).

After the lessons, they spent rest of the day doing test runs that included full operations (all cars running), block brake stops and releases, single & dual car operations, etc.

The following day was strictly engineering testing. Here are some close-ups of the velocity module that was attached to one of the cars.

I helped prevent it from getting damaged when they were moving it off and on the transfer track. (That's Franz again in the grey t-shirt).

I had a great time hanging out with the guys and can't thank them enough for spending time with me and answering all my questions.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2oG52EBBmw[/youtube]