halfway up wasn't so bad

[spatch]

The first day of coastering at Busch Gardens was a lot of fun. I am back in the hotel now exhausted as all hell, but very pleased with how it all turned out. I had planned to spend the busy Saturday taking pictures during my backstage coaster tour and then ride a lot on Sunday, but my shiny camera died while I was taking the slow elevator up Griffon's 210-foot lift hill. Oh. Well, then.

Turns out the batteries were at fault, but by the time I went "Wait, weren't those new batteries from the same pack that died in the TV remote? What if I just got some new ones?" I was too busy riding and having fun. I rode a lot today.

But here is the neat maintenance elevator that we rode to the top of the lift hill:



And here's what part of the ride looks like from halfway up (and then the camera died):



Busch Gardens is a beautiful park and there are lots of great places to take neat pictures of tangled tracks and foliage and trains and stuff. I'll visit them tomorrow with fresh batteries, and write a full trip story later on.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The history of loop-the-loops is so weird--first attempts in the 1850s, scattered instances in the early 20th century, then nothing until 1976 when suddenly there was an explosion of looping coasters. I'm guessing it just took a while for engineering to catch up to rising safety standards.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

1840s, actually.

The loops on the 19th-century looping coasters were very small, and it must have been neck-spraining hell to ride them.

[spatch]

The real change in loop design was the development of the teardrop-shaped clothoid loop, which is easier on the Gs both coming in and going out. Werner Stengel perfected that bad boy, but there was at least one other looping coaster at the turn of the 20th century at Coney Island which used a teardrop shape as well. Legend has it that the ride didn't make any money because more people wanted to watch it than ride it.

I have to wonder about that story, primarily because Coney will make money any way it can and charging spectators seems like the most obvious solution. They used to charge to watch people stick to the wall on the Hell Hole centrifuge, f'rinstance. So who knows.