The bat

[jcgoble3]

You know it too?! *metaphorical high five*

I know it too! *shares the high five*

[Original]

I sadly, never got to ride The Bat but I sure would have liked to try it out. I know some people that have rode it and they said it was Very fun and the cars were swinging so much that Flight Deck can't compare.

Same here! I always thought flight deck was originally fun. Just one that is always fun. If this is the case. The Bat must of been really fun. Dang nab it, I missed it.

[TheCrypt]

Same way Backlot Stunt Coaster's is "Alright stunt team, listen up. As with any driving stunt, safety first, so STAY SEATED. Keep your head against the headrest and your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times. Secure all loose articles or leave them with the crew before we roll."

I always love saying that before I get on, with the spiel.

Can you give one more? I know it too.

You know it too?! *metaphorical high five*

I know it too! *shares the high five*

I have a new respect for you all.

[ohiocolts]

We shall all say it together on KIC Day...

[Tanna]

Actually, once you stop on Invertigo, you count 1...2...3... DROP! The 3 with a little retardando. So I guess it's 4.5 to 5 seconds.

For the record, Drop Tower is 7 seconds from the click, and I think Delirium's whooshes are awesome, as well,

Wow. After typing those spiels from memory, I realized 2 things: 1. Nobody cares. 2. Everyone probably thinks I'm crazy now!

Don't discount yourself so easily. The only thing keeping me from Drop Zone was the waiting to drop. So now, it's 7 seconds from the click. I won't go heart in throat crazy with the waiting. I'll now give the ride a try.

[16gwoods]

I know this may sound silly, but it is a long walk from the actual entrance of the ride until you get to the station. That is the only complaint I have for such a short ride.

Flight Deck, needs to use the "Aircraft Carrier" que line again. I loved the theming.

Even the ride ops make fun of the rides shot ride time. On many occasions I have heard them say " Welcome to Flight Deck, the only ride that takes longer to get to that it does to ride!"

[KIfan1980]

I know this may sound silly, but it is a long walk from the actual entrance of the ride until you get to the station. That is the only complaint I have for such a short ride.

Flight Deck, needs to use the "Aircraft Carrier" que line again. I loved the theming.

Interesting that after complaining about the length of the queue, you then ask for it to be extended through the lower level!

[KIBeast]

Makes you wonder if they had just banked the turns on The Bat, how different that part of the park would have been. Vortex would not have been built because The Bat would not have been taken down (at least not that that time). If The Bat was still around in the late 80s to early 90s would Flight Deck have been built? Would Bat have made it for 30 years or would it have eventually gone the way of Big Bad Wolf.....

I was just wondering the same thing myself about the banking. Now my question is, how long did it take Arrow to figure out to bank the turns and what was the first "successful" suspended with banking?

I got to ride The Bat...it was indeed a wild ride and was insanely swinging back and forth. The trains were the coolest thing I'd ever seen at the time and I still think so to this day.

[TheCrypt]

Why did Arrow Dynamics think that 0 banking would be OK? I mean, didn't they think that it would cause excessive wear on the track / trains? Then there's the whole brake-fin-on-bottom-of-cars thing.

[Vortex]

I guess when the ride was tested it work. The Bat was the prototype full size coaster. Can't find the video right now where the show the test area.

[TombRaiderFTW]

To be fair, the original intended purpose of the suspended model was that you wouldn't have to bank the track. Whether the purpose of this was to reduce manufacturing costs (as the bending of the steel would be significantly reduced) or simply to create interesting, unexpected movement, I don't know. In fact, the original model of a suspended included a corkscrew, but the idea was scrapped.

The ultimate problem of The Bat was steel fatigue. The track wasn't designed to withstand the sudden side-to-side forces of the trains swinging into the turns. The repeated twisting of each ride cycle wore the track out very quickly, which caused hairline cracks. You can see how Arrow accounted for this in future suspended projects--you never really feel a prolonged force in any direction on Flight Deck except downward, where Arrow track can bear forces and avoid fatigue very well.

Same goes for the braking system--the force on the bottom of the train created a twisting force (or a moment/torque, for you physics people) at the swinging hinge at the top, and that likely didn't have fatigue properly factored into its design. It's like if you repeatedly sat on top of a garden gate hundreds of times a day in the hottest part of the year: the hinges might be fine the first few days, but soon they'll bend (and eventually break.) I'd guess the twisting even further did a number on the wheels and brake run track, as they're going to pretty directly take the blunt force of the twisting of the brakes, too.

For what it was, The Bat was a pretty cool and unique idea. It just had its imperfections, and they did the ride in much sooner than rides tend to go.

FTW, very excited to take Failure Analysis...

Here's the video Vortex is looking for:

[jandyb79]

This may interest some of you who are into conceptual stages of art production - namely Kings Island rides/attractions. I am good friends with one of KI's early employees who was a concept designer/sculptor. I met this individual from tracking down some of his other early work when he was employed with Kenner toys here in Cincinnati. This is the guy who sculpted the original Boba Fett action figure, for those of you who are into Star Wars While at Kings Island he sculpted nearly every fiberglass relief (3d character, sign, etc) in the park from the early 70's until KECO took over in the early 80's. He has told me several stories of what it was like working on projects big and small in the park. Some concepts were scrapped very early on, while others made it further and few were put into full production. I have always been most interested in The Bat ride and remember only seeing it as a child. At the time it was standing, but not operating. When he mentioned having worked on the design phase of the ride, I naturally asked if he had anything left over and he said only a few pieces have survived, but yes. He explained his work on the ride in an interview I conducted with him as follows: "I was told that we were getting a newer kind of coaster that would be very unique. There wasn't much detail given about the specifics of the ride, but we knew it was going to be different since Kings Island decided to go the route of unique coasters after the success of The Beast. The original concept for the park was that it would compete head on with Disney, but coasters seemed to be the new wave, so thats the market they played to. The first idea management had was that the new suspended coaster would be space themed. So they had me draw up a few sketches with moon surfaces and a queue line leading into a space station dome. I loved creating waterfalls, so naturally I added that in to the design. The entire surface was to be sculpted out of polystyrene and then covered in fiberglass. It would've been a massive undertaking, but we had already done this with the revamp of the Rub-A-Dub ride, so we knew we could do it. A week or so later I was given an order to begin creating a haunted house type station that would serve as the loading dock for the new ride. So out went the space ride idea and now we are working on some kind of haunted house themed coaster. I was told that they were now going with a bat theme and would need some sketches reflecting this concept. It was soon after that I was asked to sculpt up a large bat head to be attached on the front of the coaster trains. I love that thing! The haunted house loading station was to be decorated with pictures of "bat people" and a vampire maquette so I came up with a few ideas that were somewhat crude in nature, but would be refined once approved. Those concepts were unfortunately not approved since the theme was strong enough as it was. It was a job like any other...you are told what you were going to work on and the art department did everything they could to get it approved. Ideas would sit around for months and then all of a sudden management would approve the idea and want it completed and in the park yesterday! The ideas were already in place, my job was to simply refine the idea and give us a heading on what we were working on and how it would be accomplished, but ultimately management had the final say on what we could and could not do. The best projects were the ones where they would tell us to just be creative and come up with something! But I thought The Bat was a great theme and it's a shame the ride had so many problems"

and lastly, his "artists proof" that was the first pulled from the mold and airbrushed for management approval...

All of these items were rescued from certain destruction as KECO was taking over. They saw no value in the items and auctioned off the majority that remained. I'd love to one day showcase these items for the general public to view...if the park would ever ask me

~Josh

[TOPGUN1993]

Great Post, glad some people still value KI's history.

[jandyb79]

I'm working late tonight, so you kids enjoy

~Josh

[Tanna]

How cool that you met the guy who was responsible for making so much fantasy become real? And complete with artwork. Some of the things I remembered most from my visits as a kid no doubt came from this man's studio.

[The Interpreter]

And some of these ideas lived on apparently. Witness Phantom Theater and Flight of Fear and even some of the marketing leaks for the not to be Addams Family Coaster.

Kings Island has both benefited and suffered from a series of owners with widely divergent goals and ideas. I have often wondered how different the park would be had Taft continued to this day, or had sold the park to Time

Warner, if VIACOM had not bought Paramount Studios--rather Sony or Disney had, or even had Paramount Parks bought Cedar Fair in the late nineties, as almost happened.

[KIfan1980]

Last night I posted in another forum about them becoming harder to stick with - thanks jandb as your post is a great example of why I do.

[windshawne]

Thanks for sharing those pics. I always thought The Bat heads were incredible.

[TheCrypt]

jandyb, I can not begin to express enough gratitude for what you put together. I have never seen The Bat heads in full color, all the more making me want to find someone who has it, just to see it. It should be put into a museum (the same one where they put cars from the Big Bad Wolf) and join the rest of its bretheren.

That is one of my favorite posts currently. Thank you.

[jandyb79]

jandyb, I can not begin to express enough gratitude for what you put together. I have never seen The Bat heads in full color, all the more making me want to find someone who has it, just to see it. It should be put into a museum (the same one where they put cars from the Big Bad Wolf) and join the rest of its bretheren.

That is one of my favorite posts currently. Thank you.

I appreciate your interest! One comment in regard to the full color Bat head, this is actually the only one painted up like this. All other examples have a more simple paint scheme - all dark gray with airbrushed touches of light gray. This example was the first relief to be pulled from the mold and was painted up as a sample for approval (never used out in the park on the ride). I would imagine when execs gave the ok their next question was "How soon can you have 30 made up?" The budget and time for the project were likely factors for cutting out the other colors.

~Josh

[TheCrypt]

Wouldn't it be something for each Bat head (was there one on each car? I think there was) was painted up like the rendering...

Do you by any chance know how long it took for each bat head to be made? If it was only a couple days per head, the off season could have easily had enough time to work on that.

(Again) Thank you so much.

[jandyb79]

I don't have any idea how long each took. I do know quite a bit about early sculpting and casting techniques from researching action figure production during the late 70's and early 80's, and from speaking with several sculptors who were involved in 3 dimensional production in those days. They would sculpt a master from either clay, wax, polyester, foam, etc. and then cast it in silicone or plaster. In the case of The Bat heads, and various other items throughout the park in the 70's and 80's, the preferred sculpting medium was clay. This type of sculpting is known as terra cotta and was sent into an oven once sculpting was completed. After the mold was created, copies were then cast from fiberglass and could take 1 to 2 days to complete each piece. You can only get about 10 good copies from a silicone mold before they begin to wear down. At that point a new mold would need created to maintain the integrity of the original sculpting (however, I do not believe this was the case with most of KI's projects - remember they wanted it completed quickly and some items were very crude in nature when compared to fine art sculptures). As for the paint scheme, I really have no idea what factors played into them not painting them all up with the intended colors. Just because it ends up in the early concept renderings does not guarantee that it will make it into production. I'm sure it was approved all the way up until production was in full swing. At that point, they were told to cut back. This is all speculation, however, and I do not know the exact scenario that was played out. This happens a lot in the early stages of project development (ever own a toy that looks different than it did on the toy packaging?). What I do know is that all of the footage, photography, etc doesn't have any of The Bat heads painted up with colors other than shades of gray. I hope that brings a little more clarity to the question.

~Josh

[Vortex]

Sorry for the bump.

Saw this picture on Theme Park Review.

http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/files/dollywood_13_4.jpg

http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=60777&start=70

Yes that's a corkscrew.

[VortexBFForever]

^A corkscrew? Wonder would that would be like on a suspended swinging coaster.

But alas, it cannot be done, especially with a good potential for disastrous results, if at any time the train didn't have the right amount of energy to swing up and through the corkscrew.

[jandyb79]

Wow, that's an interesting picture for sure! Thank you for sharing that info I had heard that there was testing for incorporating corkscrews on the Arrow suspended coasters, but didn't know that it went beyond the small scale model to full scale prototype.

~Josh

[Browntggrr]

There is video somewhere of the suspended corkscrew prototype in action.

It drives me nuts that I can't find it.......

[TTD-120-420]

This is it, unless they had a full scale prototype that I don't know about.

[Browntggrr]

It could be, but I recall a POV of the prototype w/ corkscrew in this pic:

[Hank]

I noticed a problem with Arrow's prototype of the barrel-roll coaster. Once you get through the barrel roll, you need another lift hill as all of the momentum gets lost in the roll, unless you start with an extremely high beginning, which would be cost prohibitive. The same is true for the suspended coaster. You've got to start high enough to get some speed because the swinging of the train slows the momentum of the train. That is why there are two lift hills in most of the Arrow suspended coasters - or the ride would be over rather quickly, as is Flight Deck. Think about it.....when rifing Flight Deck, where could you go after almost coming to the brake run? No where but up again, meaning another lift hill and a lot more expense.

In Arrow's barrel roll prototype, they tried to keep the seat with as open a view as possible. I recall watching a video with an Arrow engineer explaining to Ron Toomer that the steel track comes too close to the rider then going through the roll & therefore a safety panel needed to be placed to the riders sides (a panel popped-up as the rider pulled down on the over the shoulder harness - it looked like a car window being rolled up). One has to wonder if other then-new ideas were tried, such as placing the brakes for the suspended coaster on top of the trains instead of the bottom, but the diaper idea to catch debris had not come to fruition. I wish I could find that video - it also showed a new kind of harness restraint and a scale model of a new suspended coaster on to which they had placed a camera in the front seat - the train kept getting stuck and Mr. Toomer kept prodding it with a wooden pointing stick. Maybe someone out there can find it?

[Vortex]

Also at one time The Bat was designed with a corkscrew. Had a picture but my computer stop working so might have lost it.