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Let the People Choose


fryler87
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Wouldn't it be kinda cool if parks let their guests help design their new coasters? It'd be kinda like the whole thing with having people make submissions for the new World Trade Center buildings. I think this would bring a new level of design and creativity to the coaster business.

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PKI has a competition for young aspiring designers, but I think its for middle school students. I dont think they use the designs though.

Overall, bad idea. By the time that PKI releases that they are letting the public design the ride, pick one, send it in to Arrow, or B&M, it would have to be told at least 3 years in advance. Especially since the coasters nowadays take 18 months from conception to opening.

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i dunno...i think it'd be a neat idea. the point wouldn't be to let someone from the public design the whole ride; just assist with the creativity aspect of the ride. when i say creativity i mean:

1) theming for the ride

2) design for the station

3) design for the queing area (yes, there is an art to this...if you have ever waited in line for tomb raider, that is a perfect example.

4) landscaping around the station and queing area.

now that i think of this, it would be less of the design of the coaster. moreover the design of the visible part. (does this make sense?) if the park wished, they COULD let the winner of the above categories HELP design the ride...track elements and layout.

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Especially since the coasters nowadays take 18 months from conception to opening.

Anything like this that takes lots of engineering/design work, is gonna take a while to build. Coasters are built a lot like fire trucks. You put a bunch of different pieces from different systems together and try to get them all to work right, and work well with one another. fixing all the little problems and things that occur, as well as making sure it will function right every time, just takes time. 18 months is pretty fast if you consider everything. The average fire truck takes between 6 months to a year to build, and possibly more depending upon design/use. I am sure some cost as much as coasters do, as a cheap one goes for 200,000 and an expensive one can easily push the 1.8 million mark, and thats just for one ladder truck.

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Here's the problem from an engineering student's perspective:

Rollercoasters are mathmatically REALLY difficult to do. I mean, it's constant calculatons for every little turn, loop, bend, etc. You have to calculate wind resitance, the momentum, structural integrity, etc. I mean, it takes an extremely bright person with a decent mathimatical backround to do something like that. Now, how many people with those kinds of credentials? Not many, and those that do are already designing buildings, bridges, and perhaps even rollercoasters.

Now, if they had a competition for designing a coaster, everyone's design would have a hill that's 515' tall and have 26 inversions. Everyone would inherently want to design something massive. There's no way the average person would have any idea as to how to be able do the proper calculations to find out what is reasonable and what isn't.

Now, they could have ideas for rides, and the pofessionals could modify them, but it's just not the same. You might as well just let the professionals do their jobs.

Oh, and fyrfyter, I totally understand what you were getting at with the firetruck thing, but they're actually a lot simpler to construct that you would think. My cheif owns Summit Fire Apparatus (ever heard of it?) and they build and refurbish fire trucks. More or less what happens is that you choose the most basic things like the size of the engine, length of the truck, etc and that limits your options, and then for every other option you choose, it limits your other options a little more until you have a finished plan. I guess you can equate the problem-solving and decision making with building a rollercoaster, but a rollercoaster involves many more calculations, while a fire truck is a lot more of a cookie-cutter.

-Ryan

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Oh, and fyrfyter, I totally understand what you were getting at with the firetruck thing, but they're actually a lot simpler to construct that you would think. My cheif owns Summit Fire Apparatus (ever heard of it?) and they build and refurbish fire trucks. More or less what happens is that you choose the most basic things like the size of the engine, length of the truck, etc and that limits your options, and then for every other option you choose, it limits your other options a little more until you have a finished plan. I guess you can equate the problem-solving and decision making with building a rollercoaster, but a rollercoaster involves many more calculations, while a fire truck is a lot more of a cookie-cutter.

-Ryan

Actually, its not that hard. I think you would be hard pressed to find a rollercoaster company doing calculations by hand. This is why we have computers. I am sure that most coaster and truck manufacturers alike use them, so they are not doing things by hand.

As far as building either is concerned, there is nothing cookie cutter about a custom fire engine, or a rollercoaster for that matter. Both take a long time to design, build and finish. The fastest I have ever seen a fully customized pumper completed was 6 months. There is nothing cookie cutter about them, considering no two trucks are identical. In all a ctuality, I think the calculations for designing a coaster as well as a truck might be equal. Think about it, a custom truck, where people want something done a certain way. Nothing is easy about that, and I would say that there are trucks out there that will prove it.

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If anything, I like the idea of ....

Let the people decide on theme and general idea of what the ride should do.. i.e. Dive towards a wall with quick turn out, lots of head choppers... etc. Then let the engineers do their job of designing to that. Heck isn't that what the engineers already do. The park says... "this is what I want" and the coaster company says "ok". Or in other words, the park says "jump" and the coaster company says "how high?"

Or another thought.. Have a coaster company come up with different designs and possibly have the park come up with themes for them and stuff. Then let the public descide which one they like. Possibly with animation still and on ride animations.

That is the most interaction the public would be able to have... like everyone else has said, the common person wouldn't be able to design all the little aspects of a coaster. Or they would all want to make it one million feet high, going a zillion miles an hour and it would all cost more than the park is worth.

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If anything, I like the idea of ....

Let the people decide on theme and general idea of what the ride should do.. i.e. Dive towards a wall with quick turn out, lots of head choppers... etc. Then let the engineers do their job of designing to that. Heck isn't that what the engineers already do. The park says... "this is what I want" and the coaster company says "ok". Or in other words, the park says "jump" and the coaster company says "how high?"

Now, that's a good idea.

I totally agee with you that firetrucks are not cookie-cutters. I didn't define myself clearly enough, and I appologize for that. Basically, you have a choice of several chassies (sp?) which basically put you in the direction which you are going. Now, I agree that fire trucks are extremely customized. Especially when it comes to the tools which it comes to the apparatus which it carries (which particular hose lines, where foam is, whether or not it will have an SCBA filler) -- stuff like that. It is also customized in which kind of truck it is, but that's also chosen with the chassie, I mean you can't build an aerial and a mini pumper off of the same chassie (although recently the thing to do has been to build mini pumpers on F350s)

But yeah, they take forever to build. We've been working on our heavy rescue truck for about a year now. I wasn't saying that it was particularly simpler, but it is on a differnt plain than a rollercoaster.

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Yeah, fire the whole design/theming staff, who needs them? They don't know what the people want and they're totally out of touch with PKI's park! (sarcasm)

I say, let the people in charge keep doing what they do best. I think the park is much better since Paramount bought it.

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