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Vekoma criticism

I have been harsh on Vekoma, IMO rightfully so, but I'm fair so I will give some praise!

At Hershey Park they changed the restraints on Sidewinder (the standard Vekoma boomerang) and it was a night and day difference. I've never seen it before, its a soft harness that folds to shape precisely to your shoulders. It was very comfortable, and the ride was...smooth!

I really wish ALOT of rough coasters would change to this style. Also I wish Intamin OTSR's would switch to this style. If it cut the roughness on a Vekoma Boomerang down by 90% Intamin's would be glass!
 
JJLehto said:
I have been harsh on Vekoma, IMO rightfully so, but I'm fair so I will give some praise!

At Hershey Park they changed the restraints on Sidewinder (the standard Vekoma boomerang) and it was a night and day difference. I've never seen it before, its a soft harness that folds to shape precisely to your shoulders. It was very comfortable, and the ride was...smooth!

I really wish ALOT of rough coasters would change to this style. Also I wish Intamin OTSR's would switch to this style. If it cut the roughness on a Vekoma Boomerang down by 90% Intamin's would be glass!
Click to expand...

You realize that they have changed the whole train out, and just not the restraints?
The new smoothness is due to a new boggy style that Vekoma is using.
 
Makes sense, but the restraints is what jumped out at me.
Regardless, I had to give some kudos for the drastic improvement.
 
The lateral wheel banging is something ive been trying to put into words and can't quite describe how unsafe and scary it is. On a sit down its not too bad but on an invert, its scary. If the train derails down you go. The rides deteriorate much worse than others of the same age. B&ms are tight and stay to the track. A 10 year old vekoma feels like its all loose in the track and use track is very bumpy. The layouts are very good to start with but when the trains become Nackered much momentum is lost and the trains crawl through inversions. When the trains knock and bang around, the track is a faded colour and there is rust and lime scale everywhere it becomes a much different experience, a scary one
 
We found Blue Tornado at Gardaland quite rough. Whilst it wasnt too bad pointing the right way up every time it went through an inversion it jolted causing your head to bang. Didnt think to look at the time but assume this was caused by wheels not staying on the track at all times. Also the big pads added to the sides of the restraint caused headaches!
 
It's not unsafe. It's not good, but not unsafe.

Rollermonkey puts it perfectly here:

rollermonkey said:
The rides suck, and it isn't just the lack of originality. Vekoma aims to make budget priced coasters, and they do it by cutting corners.

That comes out in the lack of original designs as well as the crappy ride experience. Plus, they can have horrible bouts of down time from poorly executed programming. (Deja Vu much? Discussions with the mechs at Silverwood told me that while it's better, it's still not where it should be.)

Every time I get on an SLC now, I check something before I sit down: How much clearance between the unstop wheels and the track.

Every one is different, Blackout at Suzuka Circuit had about an inch of clearance. I could get the meaty part of my palm between the wheel and the track. A horribly rough ride results from such a poorly built train. A few hours away, F2 at Nasu Highlands, I couldn't get the tip of my pinky in between the wheel and the track. It's the smoothest SLC I've ever been on.

Vekoma has HORRIBLE QA standards within its product lines. Every SLC should ride almost exactly the same, but they aren't even close. (And I'm not talking about whether there's a helix or not.)

Every Boomerang should ride the same, again, some are fine, some make you wish that you'd stayed home.

They've gone bankrupt how many times? At least three times since I've been paying attention.

There are several things wrong at Vekoma, and it isn't just that they make cookie cutter coasters.
Click to expand...
 
rich210uk said:
We found Blue Tornado at Gardaland quite rough. Whilst it wasnt too bad pointing the right way up every time it went through an inversion it jolted causing your head to bang. Didnt think to look at the time but assume this was caused by wheels not staying on the track at all times. Also the big pads added to the sides of the restraint caused headaches!
Click to expand...

Thats funny because when I rode Blue Tornado this year I thought it was the smoothest SLC I had ridden, still some jolting but no head banging and I actually re- rode it a few rides and 3/4 of them were good. Infusion at BPP isn't bad either though it does have a little more head banging than BT. Limit and El Condor are just awful.

Vekomas criticism tends to be directed to there coasters that have inversions as they seem to be the rough ones. Ones like: Vogel Rok, Expedition Everest and Colorado Adventure are all very smooth.
 
I wouldn't knock Vekoma, they have never really done anything extraordinary and don't think they ever tried to. Much like a good theme park, they deliver rides that work, day in, day out, provide a ride, day in day out, that is consistent, usually mediocre, and fills space in the park, and time in your day, nicely. What is does, really reflects the price tag.

Just to bat off any arguements there, excluding Deja Vu and such variants, I often find Vekoma rides to be as reliable as B&M's. XNWO, Infusion, Corkscrew(s), Kumali, Velocity, never seem to be down, and are a million miles from the reliability of Intamin.

I think, a park knows what it is getting when it chooses Vekoma. It's getting reliability(with a few exceptions), it's getting a low price tag, and it's getting a ride that often will happily fill a gap for a season , draw a few extra people, and give guests another ride to say they have been on, that adds a little bit more to that sense of value for money.

I also hasten to add, that, everyone seems to be forgetting Hex. It summaries Vekoma perfectly (ignoring all themeing of course). Reliable, affordable, and thoroughly average.
 
The trouble that Vekoma runs into, is that fact that they built the bulk of their coasters, just after the hype of B&M's inverted coasters.. Smaller parks wanted to get a piece of the inverted action and Vekoma provided the affordable answer. Now, this comes with a price. Vekoma already had inverted options, but not to a scale of a full multilooper. I can only assume that these were quickly designed, to get a piece of the action, in a gap that they felt they could target. This probably does lead to several variations in build quality and durability.

On the point of being rough, thats another problem Vekoma runs into.. We ride most of their older coasters. Their are far fewer big Vekoma's being built recently, which I feel is a shame because I do believe that they've stepped up tremendous amounts when it comes to the engineering of the tracks and trains, but it seems that only Disney has true faith in them. In my opinion, Rock n Roller Coaster is comparable to any B&M coaster out there. Even Nemesis Inferno has some serious head knocking in places, so I wouldn't limit these thoughts to just Vekoma. It might be a park thing: Where they get their replacement parts is a big issue. Its actually cheaper to go to an out-sourced company to re-tread the nylon on the steel wheels of a train, than it is to go to the manufacturer (Vekoma / B&M / Intamin), where there is a certain amount of quality control and understanding of the ride system they will be refurbished for. I wouldn't localise the problem directly on the company who's made the coaster, I'd put quite a lot of it on the parks choices and maintenance knowledge.
 
I've had good and bad experiences on Vekoma's. I've ridden Goliath at SFNE and it was amazing. I rode a Boomerang model and all hopes of a good ride went down the drain. :|
 
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