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Small News From The Theme Park Industry

Pokemaniac said:
I really don't get Jinma Rides. They've been in the game for so long. The principles of making smooth and exciting coasters are hadly state secrets. They've had so much times to learn the ropes and find their own style.

And yet their style is invariably "some other manufacturer on a bad day". It's B&M, but with bad track profiling. Vekoma, but with uninspired layouts. Intamin, but hungover. I have yet to be made aware of any of their coasters that looks like their own distinct, and good, product. I know the term "knock-off" is taking it too far, as they do make their own designs and there are other manufacturers whose coasters resemble somebody else's to the same degree or more, but Jinma coasters usually end up reminding you of a sub-par, slightly "off" version of something you've seen before. And I don't really see any good reasons why it is like that.
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As usual I'll play the roll of devils advocate for GH 🤣 No one else is going to do it.

I think their rate of improvement has been consistent and almost meteorically quick

I agree their rides so far are often Janky looking versions of western rides but go back just 10 years ago and they were pumping out only terrible clones of wild mice. Yeah the current rides arent much to shout about quite yet but they are way way better than they were and if they carry on they will get there sooner rather than later.

The first really very good GH coaster i rode was 2013s Expedition Volcano at HV Tianjin which is a lovely custom mine train and was the point i think they really started to improve. So that was only 9 years ago.

2016 (6 years ago) saw them take a big jump in ambition and saw them open Battle Of Jungle King the first GH Tilt coaster. Now i dont think anyones ever going to call it a good ride but by all accounts 2020's Broken Rail Coaster in Suzhou is a decent improvement with better suspension fitted trains and vest restraints giving a much better (if admitedly not B&M level ride experience) than the 2016 ride. And that happened in just 4 years.

The SLC's see a similar rate of improvement. 2007 saw their first addition of their first SLC at Fantawild, a Kumali clone that rides like crap. It admitedly took 10 years until they released their mk2 rides when Dragon opened at Long Gu Wan Dinosaur Park with their new track design. 2017 also saw the custom layout Happy Angel at Sunac Harbin open and saw their first step away from cloned western layouts for their inverted coasters.

Now they had their own much smoother track design it took Just 3 years before they worked on the missing link and added vest restraints and reworked suspension on their custom junior invert at Yinxian Resort which seems to have sorted out many of the issues with the older models. This is to the extent ive seen plenty of Chinese people comment they are now considerably better than the Vekoma originals like the SLC's at HV Beijing and Shenzhen.

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Taking a side step for a moment there is another issue at play here. We havent seen any more custom GH Inverts since then and I'd suggest thats not GH's fault. Big Chinese mega parks like Universal and Happy Valley go for western built rides because they have the money.

This leave GH supplying the mid and lower level parks. Now if you're a mid level park in China with a limited budget usually being built by a company more interested in real estate are you going to get a stock model invert like the Mk2 Kumali layout or shell out for a custom layout which probably costs millions more? GH are stuck in a bit of a hard place there, Their main customers will always go for the stock models because the big parks that can afford the custom stuff are going to go Western. its a difficult Niche to fill at the moment until they can prove they can compete. But they cant prove they can compete until they can built some proper custom rides.
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Going back to the actual coasters theres certainly misteps on the way so far. Their Dive Machines while custom look like poor mans versions of B&M rides and the same can be said about the new flyer in Xia'n however could they have built these just 9 years ago? Not a chance.

I actually think the LSM coasters they are starting to produce actually look rather good. The Blue LSM coaster in the previously posted video looks pretty solid. I mean the proof will be in the pudding but the rides currently being constructed at Silk Road in Hainan and so far it looks pretty damn good. The shaping looks solid and with their new trains I'm genuinly interested to see how this goes.
jinma.jpg

And hey if they ever get to build this thing it looks like something Mack or Intamin would produce. I dont know who they have designing layouts now but they dont look half bad.
GHLaunch.jpg

I'm certainly not saying they are world beaters yet and maybe not for a while but theyve come one hell of a long way in the last 10 years or so. And hey how many years did it take Arrow to produce a genuinly non janky actually rerideable smooth multi looper in Tennessee Tornado? And even big companies have missteps.

Looking back Intamin built Z-Force in 1985 as their first big proper extreme coaster, They admitedly did much better with Shockwave (SFMM) the following year but it would be hard to say those stand ups were great rides and they certainly had loads of room for improvement. The much more refined Drayton Manor Shockwave was.... well 9 years later in 1994.

Are GH rides great? no certainly not at the moment. But I honestly think they could be soon.

TLDR:

Its a learning process building coasters, you need the experience, The manafacturing knowhow, the staff and the technology and that doesnt come overnight. You cant go from Crap Wild Mouse to B&M flyers overnight. 10 years down since they really kicked on and they arent doing too badly so far. 10 more years and ask the question again They'll either be great or I'll agree with you 😀. The next 10 years will really show what GH are made of.
 
I think the problem with your argument though is looking back at the history of western manufacturing companies. CAD is a readily available resource, and has been for many years, a resource that was not available back in the premier days of companies such as Vekoma/Intamin/Arrow, or at least not in anywhere near advanced stages it is now.

A company these days should be adapting far quicker than in the 80’s.
 
Pokemaniac said:
I really don't get Jinma Rides. They've been in the game for so long. The principles of making smooth and exciting coasters are hadly state secrets. They've had so much times to learn the ropes and find their own style.
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I certainly get what you are saying, but to piggy back @roomraider and play devil's advocate, the principles of making a smooth coaster kind of are state secrets. Each manufacturer/designer essentially has their own approach for how to create a layout/centerline and they don't share a lot of details about the process. Each design approach is a bit of an art and you either need somebody within a company to teach you how they do it or you need to be very smart and develop your own way of doing it.

Then comes the next challenge; taking that centerline and transforming it into data that is usable by a manufacturer or manufacturing equipment. That's also not always easy when you're dealing with twisting steel pipe or plate in 3D space.

And once you have the layout translated into manufacturable information, you need to have a serious quality control program in place. It's incredibly easy to get off a little bit here and a little bit there. Things such as the ambient temperature when a piece of track is being manufactured can have an effect. Nevermind the fact that track will expand and contract as heat is put into it during the welding process. You can fabricate a piece of track exactly to spec, but find that it is several inches off once the steel cools. You can specify an incredibly tight tolerance, but it doesn't matter if that tolerance can't be realistically manufactured in a reliable manner. And going back to situations such as steel expansion, you need manufacturers who understand how the steel will react under certain conditions such as welding and can then compensate for it to try and hit the tolerances.

Assembly is key too. The construction team needs to be careful and have a good strategy for how and when to place each piece of track. The track is not going to always line up perfectly and the team needs to not only have a good process for dealing with these situations. In all fairness, this is something Jinma should have a good handle on at this point.

And then train design is massively important. Trains are extremely expensive. Depending on the nature of the ride, manufacturers will simplify their designs in order to save on costs. You can sink a lot of money into wheel assemblies and there are a lot of them on any given train. Making small design changes means small cost savings that are then multiplied many times over until it's a big cost savings. However, sometimes that might lead to a ride experience that isn't as smooth.

As for designing an exciting coaster, there are a few factors there, but one potential factor is the fact that people involved with creating rides aren't always passionate about creating rides. For a lot of people, it's just a job that happens to be kind of cool. Furthermore, you can browse just about any NoLimits forum or YouTube channel and find that there are actually quite a few goons in the world who have ridden tons of coasters but can't really put together a stellar layout.
 
Crazycoaster said:
I think the problem with your argument though is looking back at the history of western manufacturing companies. CAD is a readily available resource, and has been for many years, a resource that was not available back in the premier days of companies such as Vekoma/Intamin/Arrow, or at least not in anywhere near advanced stages it is now.

A company these days should be adapting far quicker than in the 80’s.
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I also dont think its as easy as you think it is to just design a coaster in CAD and then build it. Sure a lot of people can design a nice coaster in say No Limits 2 but thats a million miles away from designing a coaster in real life where you have to take into account structural loads at every point in the design, local geology, client demands and local safety regulations. Not to mention working within the limits of what your track fabrication plant can produce and the tolerences they can work within. That all takes time an experience over time.
 
oriolat2 said:
And the award to the biggest WTF-moment goes to Parque Warner.

Today, the iconic WB globe that sits at the park entrance plaza decided to go all Indiana Jones rolling away from its foundation.

IMG_6440.jpg


View attachment 18653
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Was it a strong gust of wind? Did the foundation have too much rust? Don't think it should've just rolled off like that if it was structurally sound.
 
roomraider said:
I also dont think its as easy as you think it is to just design a coaster in CAD and then build it. Sure a lot of people can design a nice coaster in say No Limits 2 but thats a million miles away from designing a coaster in real life where you have to take into account structural loads at every point in the design, local geology, client demands and local safety regulations. Not to mention working within the limits of what your track fabrication plant can produce and the tolerences they can work within. That all takes time an experience over time.
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Again though, CAD is not just used for the design phase, it’s used at every phase of construction, including working out tolerances. Their progress should be far quicker in modern times with modern technology.

I think one of the problems with GH is the fact that it’s burnt bridges, rather than create working relationships with western companies. Stealing layouts, track designs etc, rather than trying to make it’s own unique mark on the industry.
 
On ECC event at Gulliver's valley today, Got speaking to a member of management. Apparently the Antelope clone is still on the cards, they just don't know when yet. Adamant that park owner still wants it built though
 
Thekingin64 said:
On ECC event at Gulliver's valley today, Got speaking to a member of management. Apparently the Antelope clone is still on the cards, they just don't know when yet. Adamant that park owner still wants it built though
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Shame they can't be bothered to invest in something better like a family GG woodie. I reckon they could fork out for it tbh, they're just being cheap.
 
CrashCoaster said:
Shame they can't be bothered to invest in something better like a family GG woodie. I reckon they could fork out for it tbh, they're just being cheap.
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Still could be possible. While I was told it'll be a clone, doubt anything is set in stone yet so anything could happen
 
CrashCoaster said:
Shame they can't be bothered to invest in something better like a family GG woodie. I reckon they could fork out for it tbh, they're just being cheap.
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Ehhhh, I'm not so sure. Gulliver parks are focused more on the whole resort aspect, not just the theme park. Whilst a family GG woodie would almost definitely be the best ride in their portfolio, the cost of them is pretty large for what is just a local park. Simply put, I can't see a GG woodie working out as more profitable for them over whatever cheap junk they would otherwise go for.
 
Efteling's Joris en de Draak is set to close for a significant refurbishment starting October 3rd and lasting all the way til Christmas. This is in response to the numerous technical problems the coaster has had in recent years. According to insiders, the park isn't just looking to do a major renewal of the track, but they are also looking to restore the long-dormant dragon animatronic to its former glory. This is happening concurrently with a major refurbishment taking place over at Droomvlutch, with is set to be closed from October to March of next year.

www.looopings.nl

Efteling pakt houten achtbaan Joris en de Draak aan: bijna drie maanden buiten gebruik

Joris en de Draak in de Efteling krijgt komende najaar een flinke opknapbeurt. De afgelopen jaren kampte de houten achtbaan zeer regelmatig met...
www.looopings.nl www.looopings.nl
 
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CrashCoaster said:
Small piece of unknown information but Tomahawk at PA had some re-profiling work done by GCI this year on the first turn after the lift, smoothing it out:-


Kinda sad tbh cause that was a good yeet moment.
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Yeah, booooooo.
 
CrashCoaster said:
Small piece of unknown information but Tomahawk at PA had some re-profiling work done by GCI this year on the first turn after the lift, smoothing it out:-


Kinda sad tbh cause that was a good yeet moment.
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I still got good yeet in the back row 🤷‍♂️ There’s been a ton of retracking done to both Tomahawk and Stampida this year and I’d argue the new sections on both are butter smooth.
 
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