New Roller Coaster Features 97 Degree Drop
The New Fahrenheit roller coaster at Hershey Park in Pennsylvania features a 97 degree drop at the beginning. That's 7 degrees past vertical (see picture: right side, where the track curves back in). At the bottom of the drop riders experience 4 G's and then puke and/or passout. The two minute ride is being billed as the steepest and most severe in the United States and the coaster just opened on May 24th. I'm not riding it. And not because I don't love roller coasters (I do), but because of this quote from Popular Mechanics:
(Talking about the testing of the ride) First, engineers load the trains full of heavy water dummies, to figure out how the cars will behave when they're at capacity. The rules say you need 100 hours of this testing, but engineers at the park said they would run over 1,000 rides before people got on the coaster.
Stop the presses. If the ride is 2 minutes long and you run 1,000 rides, that's, uh, only 33 hours and 20 minutes of testing. You weren't the same engineers that designed the ride are you? You don't say. Say, if you wouldn't mind unstrapping me, I'd like to get the f*** off this thing before I make a little chocolate of my own.
Another picture and the video after the jump.
Fahrenheit Coaster [techeblog]
-
No this isn't Roller Coaster Tycoon, this is real life! The "Sum of all Thrills" is a new ride at Disney's Epcot Center that allows children to design their own roller coasters and then ride them in a virtual reality environment with the aid of a giant robotic arm. I smell vo... / Continue →
-
German extreme sportster Dirk Auer strapped on a pair of specially designed lollerblades and, with roflcopter hovering overhead (but not really), skated down a roller coaster at a German amusement park. He undoubtedly soiled his speedsuit. Spending two months planning the outr... / Continue →
-
This is a video of Jetpack International trying to raise the airspeed record for jetpacking. Because, well, you've gotta start somewhere. This is not especially difficult to do, considering that jetpack airspeed records don't really exist yet, but when you only have 30 or 40 ... / Continue →
