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Maxx Force NEW FOR 2019

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Postby IssaCoaster on July 13th, 2019, 5:39 pm
Heard reviews for Steel Curtain. Seems to be a great ride. Especially if you are an inversion type of person.
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Postby gottastrata33 on July 13th, 2019, 6:21 pm
So glad the que is put together. Basically. But my god I waited In that last que & it was awful In the sun. I’m still peeling from it LOL I hope there are plans to install shade. Also hope they don’t just say “the station is what it is” & leave it as it is.
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Postby coasterfanatic on July 13th, 2019, 6:22 pm
I wouldn’t expect much more from the station. Cheap cheap cheap.


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Postby Sven18 on July 13th, 2019, 6:47 pm
IssaCoaster wrote:Heard reviews for Steel Curtain. Seems to be a great ride. Especially if you are an inversion type of person.


Steel Curtain is the better S&S built this year. 720pph per hour which is fine for a park like Kennywood. Theming looks great too...SF skimped on theming & the station unless there is stuff coming and like everything else isn't done. Ride open 2 weeks and your still welding the queue together & forcing the line into the Midway.
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Postby JackGlass on July 13th, 2019, 7:59 pm
Sven18 wrote:
IssaCoaster wrote:Heard reviews for Steel Curtain. Seems to be a great ride. Especially if you are an inversion type of person.


Steel Curtain is the better S&S built this year. 720pph per hour which is fine for a park like Kennywood. Theming looks great too...SF skimped on theming & the station unless there is stuff coming and like everything else isn't done. Ride open 2 weeks and your still welding the queue together & forcing the line into the Midway.


Steel Curtain looks great! Sadly our mega looper was sent to the scrap yard years ago and never replaced with anything remotely comparable.
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Postby ChiefBeef234 on July 13th, 2019, 11:49 pm
Sven18 wrote:
IssaCoaster wrote:Heard reviews for Steel Curtain. Seems to be a great ride. Especially if you are an inversion type of person.


Steel Curtain is the better S&S built this year. 720pph per hour which is fine for a park like Kennywood. Theming looks great too...SF skimped on theming & the station unless there is stuff coming and like everything else isn't done. Ride open 2 weeks and your still welding the queue together & forcing the line into the Midway.
Hopefully most of the capacity problems with MF are due to computer problems and they can be fixed and improved eventually. As for theming, I don't know why anybody expected anything. It's six flags were talking about. Steel Curtain theming is based off a football team which isn't saying much either, a lot of that money for the theming probably came directly from the Steelers. I also kind of want to blame the construction company sf uses for it's late opening. It's the same crew that built The LOOP and they couldn't even get that opened on time. They've had the Pictorium down since May last year which is a full year in advance of prep work. A lot of landscaping went on for the rest of the 2018 season and then stopped, because S&S track didn't even arrive until December. They couldn't even test the sensors and station bits for the train until June when the train finally arrived. A lot of the delays aren't really six flags fault, I'm not saying they are faultless but a lot of the blame goes to the construction company and S&S. Six Flags probably realized how long just the coaster was taking to put up so they told the construction crew to just finish the coaster for now so we can open it and we can worry about the little theming it was going to have later. I knew the theming was going to be little to none, but I am dissapointed in the pph. Again that might be fixed later but they just wanted to get the ride open asap due to all the people complaining so they couldn't optimize it. A long station would have been nice so one train can unload and the other can load but the supports for the final inversion are literally feet away from the pool in HH. At least the coaster is open unlike WCR, hopefully they can improve the computer systems to increase the pph.

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Postby Sven18 on July 14th, 2019, 12:19 am
The capacity issues are inherent not because some computer issue. The low capacity was already explained. Best case scenario is 480 per hr. Its running at about 320 to 400 now. That's horrible, a ride with that low of capacity should have not been the 11st choice for a 3million attendance park
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Postby ChiefBeef234 on July 14th, 2019, 12:46 am
Sven18 wrote:The capacity issues are inherent not because some computer issue. The low capacity was already explained. Best case scenario is 480 per hr. Its running at about 320 to 400 now. That's horrible, a ride with that low of capacity should have not been the 11st choice for a 3million attendance park
The ride can launch every minute, it has two air tanks for this. One is used for the launch while the other is still refiling. A couple things can be done to improve capacity: Release lapbars on offloading earlier, stop the train closer to the station, move both trains at the same time while transferring, have the train attempt to connect with the catch car sooner, lower the brake fins sooner, and open the dedicated single rider line. Six Flags isn't completely dumb, the capacity shouldn't be this low, on the PDF directly from S&S advertising the specs and stats for Air Launch coasters for potential buyers they list the average pph as 1005 pph along with a load/unload time of 55 seconds. Maxx Force clearly isn't at it's most optimal state.

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Postby anewman35 on July 14th, 2019, 12:23 pm
The question for me is always this: does Six Flags even CARE if the capacity is low? Lower capacity = longer lines = selling more flash passes = profit.
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Postby staticshadows on July 14th, 2019, 12:33 pm
anewman35 wrote:The question for me is always this: does Six Flags even CARE if the capacity is low? Lower capacity = longer lines = selling more flash passes = profit.

They probably see it as adding capacity to the park because Maxx Force replaced a dead area that was 0 pph for many years. Same thing with Justice League replacing SWA. I don't think they care much about ride capacity, but they did add an extra four seats to each train compared to the initial announcement.
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Postby AirTimeDaz on July 14th, 2019, 1:04 pm
would have been a bit better if the trains were 4 across like the trains in this video but that would probably throw off the race car motif

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbAb6eJHccc
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Postby ChiefBeef234 on July 14th, 2019, 1:13 pm
anewman35 wrote:The question for me is always this: does Six Flags even CARE if the capacity is low? Lower capacity = longer lines = selling more flash passes = profit.
They do care because you can't even use flash pass on Maxx Force right now. The more people that ride Maxx = more people who will buy season passes.

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Postby coasterlove on July 14th, 2019, 1:13 pm
anewman35 wrote:The question for me is always this: does Six Flags even CARE if the capacity is low? Lower capacity = longer lines = selling more flash passes = profit.


Or it could mean less time spent eating at restaurants or getting other concessions. It could also mean more dissatisfied guests who come back less often. No matter what, the overwhelming majority of people aren't going to buy Flash Passes so most people will still wait in long lines and even longer lines due to others having Flash Passes. Even if an argument is made for getting a Flash Pass, they can only sell so many before it defeats the purpose and those lines would become so long that people wouldn't see it as worth it.

Six Flags Great America has some great coasters as do many Six Flags parks but they need to occasionally think big or at least accommodating. It seems silly to build a reasonably large coaster like Maxx Force but fall short in a few areas like themeing, capacity and just simply getting a ride open and ready to go without ongoing site work and construction going on.
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Postby ChiefBeef234 on July 14th, 2019, 1:15 pm
AirTimeDaz wrote:would have been a bit better if the trains were 4 across like the trains in this video but that would probably throw off the race car motif

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbAb6eJHccc
Those trains would be heavier so the launch system would be stronger then what it already is for the same speed. I don't think they have any room for a stronger system so they opted for the two seater to hit the NA record.

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Postby coasterlove on July 14th, 2019, 1:17 pm
AirTimeDaz wrote:would have been a bit better if the trains were 4 across like the trains in this video but that would probably throw off the race car motif

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbAb6eJHccc


Race cars don't typically sit two people in the car so why not? I wonder if cost was an issue of some sort because the tracks and supports would need to be larger. Imagine though if they used similar four across seating in six rows for 24 capacity. Even if the launch intervals weren't any better, it would still be a 50% increase in hourly capacity.
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Postby Airboss on July 14th, 2019, 1:17 pm
The main way they can improve capacity right now is by reprogramming the ride to make the "inactivity" period shorter. By the "inactivity period" I am referring to the time between one train dispatching and the next train parking in the station and opening the restraints. Absolutely no progress is being made in terms of loading / unloading during this time, so it's best if this is short. Take a look at the following video I filmed, you'll see that Maxx Force has an inactivity period of 59 seconds: (train dispatches at 0:02, next train's restraints unlock at 1:01).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEWLTH2YUSY

For comparison, Steel Vengeance (which has longer trains than Maxx Force AND doesn't have multimove) has an inactivity period of only 33 seconds, and Raging Bull (which, again, has longer trains than Maxx Force and doesn't have multimove) has an inactivity period of around 24 seconds.

If they increase the speed of the drive tires or add multimove (or ideally both), they could completely shorten the inactivity period which would shave a good 20-30 seconds off of *every* cycle.

ChiefBeef234 wrote:
anewman35 wrote:The question for me is always this: does Six Flags even CARE if the capacity is low? Lower capacity = longer lines = selling more flash passes = profit.
They do care because you can't even use flash pass on Maxx Force right now. The more people that ride Maxx = more people who will buy season passes.

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They have started allowing Flash Pass users to skip the line on Maxx Force.
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Postby coasterlove on July 14th, 2019, 1:40 pm
^Good point and video to back up the point. I know space would have been an issue but if they could have spared another 50 feet or so and could have had an unloading station. Of course that brings up other issues like personal items because and needing lockers or leaving items with non riders which not everyone has someone just waiting around for them.

If there can be no long term solution, I only hope they add another new big ride sooner rather than later to help draw crowds from this because it would stink if lines were constantly long which brings me to another point.

I think it was a good thing in a way that the queue wasn't done. People see the line stretching out of the queue and automatically think it's a long line not really realizing that there wasn't any queue and that line stretching out onto the midway was really almost the whole line. While it's a small queue area, I think it could still hold at least 600-700 people, maybe near 1,000? On the low end of 600, if capacity is roughly 300-360 an hour, that could easily be a two wait with no breakdowns. Even if it hits closer to 400 an hour which right now seems absolute best case scenario but if the queue holds 1,000 people, you're still looking at 2.5 hour queue. Add in overflow and possible breakdowns, 4 hour waits wouldn't be out of the question.
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Postby Sven18 on July 14th, 2019, 2:53 pm
ChiefBeef234 wrote:
Sven18 wrote:The capacity issues are inherent not because some computer issue. The low capacity was already explained. Best case scenario is 480 per hr. Its running at about 320 to 400 now. That's horrible, a ride with that low of capacity should have not been the 11st choice for a 3million attendance park
The ride can launch every minute, it has two air tanks for this. One is used for the launch while the other is still refiling. A couple things can be done to improve capacity: Release lapbars on offloading earlier, stop the train closer to the station, move both trains at the same time while transferring, have the train attempt to connect with the catch car sooner, lower the brake fins sooner, and open the dedicated single rider line. Six Flags isn't completely dumb, the capacity shouldn't be this low, on the PDF directly from S&S advertising the specs and stats for Air Launch coasters for potential buyers they list the average pph as 1005 pph along with a load/unload time of 55 seconds. Maxx Force clearly isn't at it's most optimal state.

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The low capacity is inherent. Simple fact is it's impossible to do 1 minute launches, there is no way people are dropping off bads, bottles, getting seated checked in 1 minute. Also, you could have to adanceto the catch and launch. Pure delusion. Best car scenario is 2 mins and that with officer ops and passengers. Fyi, spec capaciy are theoretical, even great ops, not SF can only get to 80percent of spec. Also, the capacity you listed for air lanuuch is not this model, it's for longer models with more trains
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Postby ChiefBeef234 on July 14th, 2019, 3:05 pm
Sven18 wrote:
ChiefBeef234 wrote:
Sven18 wrote:The capacity issues are inherent not because some computer issue. The low capacity was already explained. Best case scenario is 480 per hr. Its running at about 320 to 400 now. That's horrible, a ride with that low of capacity should have not been the 11st choice for a 3million attendance park
The ride can launch every minute, it has two air tanks for this. One is used for the launch while the other is still refiling. A couple things can be done to improve capacity: Release lapbars on offloading earlier, stop the train closer to the station, move both trains at the same time while transferring, have the train attempt to connect with the catch car sooner, lower the brake fins sooner, and open the dedicated single rider line. Six Flags isn't completely dumb, the capacity shouldn't be this low, on the PDF directly from S&S advertising the specs and stats for Air Launch coasters for potential buyers they list the average pph as 1005 pph along with a load/unload time of 55 seconds. Maxx Force clearly isn't at it's most optimal state.

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The low capacity is inherent. Simple fact is it's impossible to do 1 minute launches, there is no way people are dropping off bads, bottles, getting seated checked in 1 minute. Also, you could have to adanceto the catch and launch. Pure delusion. Best car scenario is 2 mins and that with officer ops and passengers. Fyi, spec capaciy are theoretical, even great ops, not SF can only get to 80percent of spec. Also, the capacity you listed for air lanuuch is not this model, it's for longer models with more trains
Na it's possible but the dead time needs to be improved. Most of the time between launches comes from that.

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Postby coasterfanatic on July 14th, 2019, 6:11 pm
Yeah! One minute is ridiculous mainly because of guests. They can’t even get bull to dispatch every minute because of slow guests. I agree that 2 minutes is likely the best case scenario. I don’t think we will see much improvement on the 2.5-3 minutes this year though.


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Postby RBull4life on July 14th, 2019, 7:12 pm
Airboss wrote:The main way they can improve capacity right now is by reprogramming the ride to make the "inactivity" period shorter. By the "inactivity period" I am referring to the time between one train dispatching and the next train parking in the station and opening the restraints. Absolutely no progress is being made in terms of loading / unloading during this time, so it's best if this is short. Take a look at the following video I filmed, you'll see that Maxx Force has an inactivity period of 59 seconds: (train dispatches at 0:02, next train's restraints unlock at 1:01).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEWLTH2YUSY

For comparison, Steel Vengeance (which has longer trains than Maxx Force AND doesn't have multimove) has an inactivity period of only 33 seconds, and Raging Bull (which, again, has longer trains than Maxx Force and doesn't have multimove) has an inactivity period of around 24 seconds.

If they increase the speed of the drive tires or add multimove (or ideally both), they could completely shorten the inactivity period which would shave a good 20-30 seconds off of *every* cycle.

ChiefBeef234 wrote:
anewman35 wrote:The question for me is always this: does Six Flags even CARE if the capacity is low? Lower capacity = longer lines = selling more flash passes = profit.
They do care because you can't even use flash pass on Maxx Force right now. The more people that ride Maxx = more people who will buy season passes.

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They have started allowing Flash Pass users to skip the line on Maxx Force.


Today is was only Platinum Flash Pass and you could only use it once.
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Postby Ilovthevu' on July 14th, 2019, 9:32 pm
coasterfanatic wrote:Yeah! One minute is ridiculous mainly because of guests. They can’t even get bull to dispatch every minute because of slow guests. I agree that 2 minutes is likely the best case scenario. I don’t think we will see much improvement on the 2.5-3 minutes this year though.

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Raging Bull's exit turnstyle is FLAWED. I mentioned this before. I can't even exit within a decent amount of seconds because of that stupid turnstyle at the exit of Raging Bull. The exit area is too small, and the stupid exit turnstyle won't let me leave the Raging Bull station quickly. Than, the people that have items to put into the bins can't get to the bins because of the people waiting to leave that small exit area. If it wasn't for that exit turnstyle, Raging Bull would be so EASY to get under a minute dispatches. If the park continues to not change the exit turnstyle, and leave it as (as it's been for a very, very long time), than I will still be taking forever to exit the exit area because of stupid turnstyle, and so you will be taking forever because it's FLAWED! Batman the Ride exit area is NOT AS flawed ever since they added that gate they can open and close. People leave the exit area much, much faster even though the station's exit area is kind of small.

With Superman, that ride has a turnstyle, but the exit area of the station is very LARGE, so that turnstyle should not affect the people coming on the ride as compared to Raging Bull. It's in direct conflict with people entering the ride, and putting their items there. It will probably never change just like American Eagle going from one line to two lines, to one line, to two lines.

One minute dispatches have been done many, many, many times for Batman the Ride which is a much "harder" ride to dispatch than Raging Bull because Raging Bull just deals with 1 thing (a lap bar compared to a seatbelt, and a harness).

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About Maxx Force opinions, I've heard 2 people (enthusiasts) say they liked the ride, but they complained about how short it is. On the facebook group, I've heard people say it's not worth over a 30 minute line, and it's probably because of how short it is. To me, I've seen this coming a mile away. I think the majority of enthusiasts are going to be disappointed because of the length of this ride. It's the same thing with Kingda Ka. The general public people seem to really like it, but if you look at those lists of top 10 steel coasters, rides like Kingda Ka are not on those lists, and it's rides like Millennium Force, and Fury 325 making the list, and it's partially because of the majority of enthusiasts really want longer rides, and to me they seem to like traditional chainlift rides rather than launches, or shuttles.
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Postby gottastrata33 on July 15th, 2019, 3:01 am
I mean, there’s a reason why I adore Raging Bull, AE & XF the most. The length of the rides are better but that doesn’t mean Maxx & Goliath aren’t good. We know they are, they’re just over within 3 eye blinks.
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Postby ilrider on July 15th, 2019, 8:50 am
^XF and Goliath actually have almost identical ride times, at just over 1:30 start to finish. XF might have just a couple more seconds after the lift. They are both a bit too short for my tastes, though they are both great rides. Raging Bull and Eagle are good examples of what we used to get, with much longer rides. Shockwave was over 2 minutes too.

All the reviews of MF online are great launch, but too short. The S&S launches in China are not ridiculously long, but they are about 40 seconds, to about 22 for MF. I would have liked a good 10-15 more seconds of ride time. I guess with the space and capex issues, this is what we have to deal with. We have gotten some cool, unique coasters the last 7 years, starting with XF, though.
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Postby SaveTheWAVE on July 15th, 2019, 9:21 am
Thia is where I part ways in opinion with many of you.
Length of a coaster means nothing to me.
I would rather have an short, intense coaster rather than a long, boring, meandering one; I would take Maxx Force and Goliath over Relaxing Bull any day of the week.
Besides, if Maxx Force was any longer, the elements would get slower and slower, detracting from the intensity of the ride.
This is a nuance that escapes most coaster enthusiasts.



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