Attraction Source Forum

Just watched the video of the riders. I'm in awe this thing looks wild.

In a blog post posted earlier today, Cedar Point have announced that they have slightly increased the height limit for Steel Vengeance to 52" (approximately 1.3m). The ride previously had a 48" restriction (approximately 1.2m).

It's certainly an interesting move from the park, and suggests that the ride is more intense than they were anticipating. Will be interesting to see the public's reaction when it opens in a couple of weeks.

With all the attention Steel Vengeance will be getting, Cedar Point are planning to give Maverick a bit of love as well. Not a total refurbishment but they will be adding fog, as well as special sound and lighting effects in the launch tunnel.  

http://fox8.com/2018/03/09/changes-coming-to-maverick-roller-coaster-at-cedar-point/

With the media event for Steel Vengeance taking place today, Cedar Point have released a full on-ride POV!

[youtube]JVKK4QxWSNo[/youtube]

It looks crazy.  I can't wait to get back to CP to try this

I know I've said it before, but it just looks incredible! Having a quick look through some of the media coverage from today the reviews all seem to be very positive so far, although of course the real test will be when the ride opens to the GP. It just looks to be a stunning coaster - I really hope it rides as good as it looks!

Another video :lol

[youtube]uTJLOgXcjPg[/youtube]

Steel Vengeance was closed today for a private ticketed event due to high winds. Hopefully it can open tomorrow for the ‘world premiere weekend’

Trains Collide on Steel Vengeance – on Opening Day

Been hearing a number of reports online of a minor incident on Cedar Point's newest roller coaster Steel Vengeance. Reports suggest that two of the ride's trains have collided at low speed in the roller coaster's station. The ride has now been closed and is expected to stay shut for the remainder of the day. Pictures show that ambulances have been called to the scene of the collision as a precaution. No serious injuries have been reported. Hopefully all those involved in the collision will make a quick recovery.

The incident will undoubtedly by a major disappointment for Cedar Point and the many people who attended the park today to ride the coaster on its opening day.

Midway Mayhem posted a short video a few minutes ago regarding this which contains a small amout of more detail. From what they have been able to find out, the 'bump' was low speed - in the 5-10mph range, and there have been no injuries. It would seem there has been some damage to the track and sensors, but the extent of that damage is not yet known.

The ride is going to be closed for the immediate future - staff are telling guests that it is defintiely closed for the rest of today and tomorrow. Once the damage is fixed, it is expected the ride will need to be reprogrammed and before it is allowed to operate again it will need to be re-inspected by the relevent Ohio authorities.

At the time the queue was evacuated, those towards the front had been waiting up to 5 hours!

This will be a huge blow for Cedar point. Hopefully they are able to sort whatever needs sorting swiftly and get the ride back up and running as soon as it is safe to do so. I expect we will see a full statement from the park later today.

EDIT: The Park have released this statement to local media:

“At approximately 1:30 p.m., a Steel Vengeance train returning to the station lightly bumped a parked train in the loading station,” spokesman Tony Clark told the Register. “There were guests on both trains. Four guests requested a review at the ride by the park’s first aid team and went back into the park. All other guests left the ride and continued their visit.

“Steel Vengeance is currently closed while the incident is under review. There is no further information at this time.”

I feel so sorry for all guests involved and Cedar Point. I don’t get how this has happened, but at least everyone is ok.

Latest reports from people in the park are that it has now begun testing with a single train.

It sounds like the arriving train never stopped on the block brakes before the station. If they're running a test train then it sounds like track damage the above video spoke about was minimal and repairable and I'd assume they're using that train to gather data from the final brake run sensors.

This must have been scary as anything for the riders and those in the station and I'm glad that there are no reported injuries other than some bumps and bruises.

It seems crazy that this particular issue occurred at all. The automated safety systems are typically bullet proof and will have redundancy built into them. For a failure like this to have happened, more than one thing should have gone wrong and RMC will be facing a lot of questions.

Update

Steel Vengeance reopened to the public late on Saturday evening, after several hours closed. Cedar Point have also confirmed that the ride will be open as normal on Sunday. 

I'm not sure I'm overly happy about this, seems too rushed for what is a serious issue, albeit with minimal injuries. If a ride systems failure, then surely the same issue could reappear, or occur in more high speed areas of the ride.

The ride ran a single train on re-opening and apparently queue crowd control was handled by the police, who weren't the friendliest.

I've seen reports now that two people did end up at the hospital with what looks like whiplash like injuries. They went a couple of hours after the incident.



The same Twitter account has also stated one rumor they heard which was the ride was running in maintenance mode.



If it was operating in maintenance mode, then it would validate why they believe the ride was safe again to reopen so quickly. But if it was running in maintenance mode with guests onboard then that's a huge operations issue that could be park wide.

A real shame, as I was going to sort out planning and booking a trip this weekend. But I'll be waiting now to hear more about what happened now. I just get the feeling that having the ride open on opening weekend was more important to the park then guest safety. If this had been a UK park then the attraction would have been closed for weeks. If it was caused by the ride running in maintenance mode, then the park would have been closed until HSE were happy procedures were in place to stop that happening again. I'm guessing here the park self certificates.

Edit: Sad thing is this isn't the first time this has happened at Cedar Point. In 2007 Magnum did the exact same thing, which was then blamed on a wet track.

http://www.wtol.com/story/6573881/cedar ... =printable

I’m very surprised that the ride has re-opened so quickly.

If it was running in maintenance mode as the rumour suggests, serious questions need to be asked of Cedar Point. I can’t believe that such a high profile park would take the risk of something like this happening. That being said, if it’s been tested on Automatic mode and no issues have been found, that would explain how they’ve managed to get the all clear to run the ride again.

Hopefully the trains that collided aren’t too badly damaged, as a one train operation would generate some insane queues!

^The ride was only running 2 out of 3 trains yesterday anyway, the third train is/was not yet ready.

I think train 3 just got called up and made ready!

I'd also seen that they couldn't dispatch until the other train arrived back at the station. So operations were already at nearly the slowest they could be anyway.

You would have thought after the Smiler incident all the parks would triple checked their procedures for maintenance modes and over-rides. I'm also surprised that there aren't very loud audio warnings when a train is sent out with overrides active now.

This topic is getting silly. Little information is known about the exact details of the incident, and the amount of speculation floating around is ridiculous.

If you read the replies of the Twitter user above, you can see he is a waste of space.

The incident has nothing to do with the Smiler - different manufacturer, different country, different health and safety body.

I know a few of us on the team are not put off and certainly looking forward to riding in the coming months.

Sounds like it has started operations this morning after a delay and is running one train as expected, with a couple of rows blocked off.

Not trying to add random speculation from my previous post but such an issue will either be the safety systems failing or direct human interaction overriding them.

My concern is less of the incident itself but more the actions taken after and hope that there isn't undue pressure being given to get the ride operational.