A few big things that need addressing in this thread.
I'm starting to think that Mack may need to add some kind of rolling launch on that section before the outer-banked element to prevent this happening again.
This is something I see thrown about a lot now, but it's not a simple thing to do.
The ride is a standard lift hill coaster. Adding on LSMs to the track and making the train capable of utilising it is not a quick or easy thing to do. In fact, I can't think of any coasters out there with a chain lift hill and LSMs. There's likely a reason for that.
The design flaw that the third element is taller than the second element would do that.
This isn't a design
flaw, this is the design.
The ride was purposefully designed like that to help create the hangtime/stall feeling. There are plenty of rides which have a latter element taller than a previous element.
The issue seems to come that Mack have done some sort of miscalculation. It runs absolutely fine when filled with people, but then struggles when empty. Which I'll discuss in a bit.
Have they not learnt that this thing needs to test with dummies?
They do. Every day. The testing process includes a full train of full water dummies, which are gradually emptied. It takes a long time.
But ultimately, a coaster has to be capable of running empty. It just has to. They could, if they wanted, test the ride with dummies after every shutdown. But empty water dummies are heavy, take a long time to load/unload. And it'll take even longer if they fill and empty those.
As mentioned, I think the issue is Mack have done some sort of miscalculation somewhere. The ride runs fine when full. But when empty, in certain conditions, it seems to absolutely hate the stall. That miscalculation could be anything, to do with what the climate conditions are like in that part of the park, the direction of the wind, etc.
Obviously that's a huge thing to say: I'm saying that one of the biggest coaster manufacturers around has made a pretty large error. I could be well wrong. But it seems justifiable given what we've seen. And also, let's not forget this relates to a never-before-done element, which is designed to mimick the sensation of stalling. They've pushed the envelope quite far out, and maybe they've just gone too far out. I'm not saying that's an excuse, but I'm not saying it's a big blame game.
And again, I could be completely wrong with what I'm saying there and there might be another reason.
But now, what happens here. Do the park continue to just run it and hope and pray rollbacks don't happen? Do they look at redesigned trains, given it's now rolled back on various different types of wheel? Do they have to redesign and rebuild that element? Do they have to convert the lift hill and add LSM recovery to that area? Can they actually do anything? And if they do do something, who foots the bill? Some coaster manufacturer legal issues I'm sure very few of us have any ideas on.
However, I think those are just used to help recovery and aren't actually used as boosters (as far as I know).
