I am curious about B&M giga coaster chain lifts.

 My limited coaster understanding In the 90s was that coaster chain lifts above 200’ were heavy and reaching the practical limit.

 This appeared to be confirmed in 2000 when Steel Dragon utilized dual chains, and Millennium Force introduced a cable lift.

Flash forward to 2012, and Leviathan breaks 300’ with what appears to be a traditional chain lift. Not only that, it’s quite fast, and there’s no return trough hanging below... it’s enclosed in the beefy track.

This has obviously been successful with Fury and now Orion.

 So my question is, what’s special about B&M giga chain lifts? How did they seemingly so simply solve this problem that other engineers did not?

Vibranium.  They have a special source.

 

I doubt other engineers couldn’t figure it out. 10 years is plenty of time for innovation of a chain lift hill. 

There are endless formulations of steel.  One need only look at the different specialty steels involved in high end cutlery, especially the Japanese knives, to see that.   It may be the weight/durability issue was solved with a lighter, more durable (and likely more expensive) formulation.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if this factors significantly into the the additional cost of going 300'+.  

We may not know for a long time as these things tend to be tightly held secrets.  From my understanding we still do not know the precise formulation of Ancient Roman Concrete that inexplicably still holds up to this day.  Boggles the mind. 

So in conclusion:

 

Not sure who said that but height is really a non issue as far as capability goes. They can go as high as they want with a chain but it may be less money with other options. Just need an electric motor large enough to run it and you can get electric motors large enough to turn a chain as high as you could make a structure.