Volume 2, No. 13. July 12, 2002
Rebirths
It’s
a roller coaster!
Six Flags Marine World in Vallejo, California, announces the rebirth of V2:
Vertical Velocity June 22, 2002. Measurements: 594 feet (180 meters)
total length of track, 150 feet high (45 meters), 28-seat train. Redelivered
by Intamin.
His
colleagues will forgive Jeff Jouett for expressing a little pique at coaster
enthusiasts.
The public relations manager for Six Flags Marine World suffered an off-season
of Web site barbs as the 1-year-old Intamin LIM launch coaster was reconfigured,
its twin towers cut from 186 feet (56 meters) high to 150, and the front upright
angled out 45 degrees with a corkscrew en route.
The
city’s environmental impact regulations limit construction heights to 150
feet, but because Intamin’s original design for the ride was 186 feet,
the park received a one-year variance to get V2
up and open. “We agreed at that time to make the change in the off-season,”
Jouett said. Coaster enthusiasts bombarded Web message boards with ridicule
for the alteration. “I read all that stuff and said, ‘Geeze, give
it a chance.’” Jouett said.
V2
is now a new ride experience, thanks to the front end extending out at a rising
45-degree angle over the ground—in fact, over the park’s entry plaza
and ticket booths: “It gets all the guests waiting to come into the park
revved up,” Jouett said. The first pass stops mid-way through the corkscrew,
so that riders pause at different angles depending on where they are sitting
in the train. On subsequent passages, the train's closing proximity to the end
of the track seems much more pronounced on a nearly horizontal track than it
does on a totally vertical track, Jouett said. “It ends, right there. That’s
the thing, visually: it’s not a looping coaster. The track ends.”
The ride opened with no staged fanfare. “We just wanted to get it open and get people riding. We may yet do some event,” Jouett said. That is not to say the V2 didn’t open with excitement, even from the off-season naysayers. “The most gratifying thing is that the coaster enthusiasts who were whining on line are now singing its praises,” Jouett said, then continued in joking repartee: “And I’ve kept all their on-line signatures. If I have a coaster event they will have to sign in with their message board names and I’ll decide whether they’re going to have lunch or not.
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