Quick Knoebels TR and Flying Turns Construction Photos

[Cyclonic]

Yesterday was a great start of the season for Knoebels.  Unlike past years, it did not rain on opening day, and in fact was absolutely beautiful out.

Just some quick highlights:

My first ride of the season was on the Flyers, where at the end of the cycle I scared myself witless by almost hanging the Flyer.  The cable caught the back and sent me spinning for a brief moment.  Scared the heck out of me, but it was fun.  Lots of folks were hanging around at that moment, so if anyone actually got a photo of that (I know there were a few cameras out) can you pass it along to me, I would love to know exactly what happened there.

Twister was running very well, not quite as fast as the end of last season, but pretty good through the helix and had nice pops of air at the top of the second hill and the top of the helix.

Pheonix was running OK.  Plenty of airtime as usual, but there was a nasty little pothole at the bottom of the first drop.

Looper had a long line all day.  They really picked a winner there, folks seem to love the ride.

The Flying Turns are starting to take shape.  When you see it in person, you can see just how much work there is to be done, it is going to take a while.  I talked to Lenard Adams for some time, and he explain alot of what is going into the construction of the ride, and gave us an overview of what the ride will look like.  Also he said the ride will go right out to the midway and infact jut out into it a bit.  Many of the trees that were there before are also staying put, they really took out only stuff that was dead.  The ride will come very, very close to some of those trees.  The trains are being designed, they are going to try and creat a restraint system similar to that on the Mack bobsleds, with the T-bar.  They are afraid, though, that the insurance may make them go with OTSR's because of the closeness of the structure, but they are trying to avoid that if they can.
Here are some shots of the construction:


Dick explains how the layers of the coaster are constructed.


Here the third layer still has to be installed.












An information booth with construction photos, the track plan, and photos of some of the old rides has been set up.

The rest can be found here:

http://cyclonic.smugmug.com/gallery/1412760

[Bubba Z]

That is absolutely beautiful. Thanks for the photo's!  Looking forward to see how the trains turn out and the rest of the ride.

About the looper, I was just watching  The Jerk over the weekend and thought maybe it could be the same model that was in the movie.

[sir clinksalot]

Did they say when the ride will actually be open?? It can't be this year can it???

[ChuckR]

The one thing that amazes me is that they let the people just walk right up to the construction. I mean if they did that at GADV, there would be chaos everywhere.

[Cyclonic]

They gave no estemate on completion, so who knows.  I bet DK wants to get it done in time for PPP, but there are a lot of variables involved since it is being done in house and this ride hasn't been seen in 30 years.

The construction site is closed off.  They let us in for a tour, although the site is easily seen from all around.

[ChuckR]

Oh alright, I was about to say.

[Dubya91]

Wow, that ride is really taking shape but seems that it takes a very long time to build as all of those layers need to be added on. Id bet that the Flying Turns will be ready for 2007

[stew560]

Wow! That just looks amazing!

Hanging your car on the Flyers is scary! I did it at PPP a few years back and I was like...ummm... WHAT'S HAPPENING!!!?!  It was pretty sweet though. I did get a round of applause from the enthusiast crowd for doing it!

[Cyclonic]

It scared the snot out of me.  It is kinda like getting in a car accident, while it is happening, it is frightening, but when it is over, you are like, WOW, I want to do that again.  Or maybe that is just me, I am a bit of a freak

It turns out, after talking to some folks that were watching, I did not actually almost hang the flyer, but instead had somehow managed to get slack in both cables at the same time.  I've never seen that happen, and have no idea how I even did it.  No body else I have talked to has seen that happen either.