. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It's been a long time coming, friends. After more than a year of announcements,
rumors and disappointments, the most highly-anticipated thrill ride in history
has finally opened.
SUPERMAN: THE ESCAPE, the first ride designed to achieve that almost mythic
speed of One Hundred Miles Per Hour, can now rightfully claim to be the
World's Tallest and Fastest Hiney-Kicker, deposing its Australian sibling,
the Tower of Terror. Yes, the Tower of Terror casts a mighty long shadow,
reaching 380 feet into the skies. But the Supe-ster stands heroically upright
at 415 feet. This, in simple language, is Bee Eye Gee, friends.
There's been some debate among the thrillseeking community about just how
to classify this new pleasure device. Call it a rollercoaster, call it a
freefall tower, call it an instrument of torture, it doesn't really matter
to me. What matters is that S:TE offers an experience once only available
to our finest jet pilots.
So, you may be asking, after all this waiting - after all the hype - could
any ride possibly live up to such expectations? You'll have to decide for
yourself, but after my first trip, all I could whimper was "I gotta
do that again!"
It totally, utterly, completely Rules.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I don't care how much you may have heard about the size of this thing -
once you actually see what 415 feet really means, it takes your breath
away. Yes, I'll admit it, I began to get a little frightened.
When you enter the park, stop and listen... "Gee, I didn't think there
were any naval bases nearby. Where are those F-16's coming from?" You
can't imagine the noise this thing makes. Stand under the bend in
the far end of the track and wait for a car to pass overhead - it is earsplitting.
Follow the trails up to Samurai Summit and there you'll find a miniature
version of Superman's Fortress of Solitude. The line snakes inside the icy
cavern, where it forks in two. Makes no difference which way you head, really
- you're gonna get a fine view from either track. The dimly lit corridor
leads into an anteroom just outside the "launch chamber." Inside
this room, you can hear, but not witness, the departure: there's an uneartly
whine, a split-second of screaming, and then silence. Whatever happens in
there is happening horrifically fast.
A row of automated doors opens and admits a car-load at a time. The
trick, I think, is to finagle an aisle seat; that allows for an unobstructed
look at the horizon when the car reaches its maximum altitude. Once your
hindquarters are planted, you may find yourself pawing around for a seat
belt or shoulder harness. Guess what? There aren't any! Just a simple lap
bar. Yes, it is perfectly acceptable to freak out at this point. One
woman I rode with needed some reassuring from the nearest ride operator
before we were allowed to leave.
You may get to watch the car on the opposite track get motorvated. Wave
bye-bye, and don't blink, or you'll miss it.
There's nothing left to do but put yer noggin back up against the headrest
and say yer prayers. The car drifts forward, almost floating, so you have
one heartbeat to try and brace yourself - and then it happens.
One second, you're stationery. The next, you are ripping down that 900-foot
track like your life depended on it. Your adrenal glands go berserk and
if this doesn't make you scream like a rabid monkey, see a doctor. Faster
and faster, it's a long, smooth rush. The force pushing against your back
is simply awesome, 4.5 G's worth. And seven seconds after this chaos has
begun, you're traveling at that magic One-Uh, Oh speed, ready to get vertical.
The car plows through the curve, and your proboscis points 90 degrees
off horizontal: Up, up and away! Higher, higher, higher... it's incredible.
Gradually, gravity wins and you stop. Now's when you want to look to your
side and see what the world looks like from roughly 400 feet up. Holy Toledo,
that is something to tell the grandkids about. Remember, you're up twice
as high as Niagara Falls.
Time to head back down. Six and one-half seconds, utterly weightless, backwards.
If you can wrench your hands from the bar, hold a penny in your open palm
and watch what happens. " 'Cause I'm free... I'm free-fallin'..."
By the time you hit the curve, you're doing the Triple-Digit Boogie again,
but the miracle of "eddy current" braking starts to cool things
off, and you cruise back into the Fortress.
Perhaps only twenty seconds will have passed, but your life will never be
the same again. Do it now.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
All this magnificent pleasure didn't come easy. Jim Blackie, Six Flags
Magic Mountain's Vice President of Maintenance, Construction and Engineering
explained why S:TE had such a long gestation period.
It all started back in December of 1994. Parks around the globe had for
some time been working towards developing the first 100 MPH attraction.
And Intamin AG of Switzerland had come up with a bold idea to use what are
called "linear synchronous motors," akin to the propulsion system
used for the OUTER LIMITS coasters, to get something moving at that speed.
But the scale of this attraction would obviously be unprecedented. Huge
amounts of power and fantastic precision would be required to pull it off.
It was a major challenge.
Six Flags was more than up to such a challenge. And Magic Mountain, already
home to some of the greatest thrill rides in the world, was the obvious
place to put this prototype through its paces. Time Warner, owner of the
Six Flags Theme Parks, had begun actively developing a new "Superman"
feature film and saw the obvious synergy in creating this kind of ride with
a related theme. Checks were signed and work began.
Now, in the lab, theory and practice came together fine. But the real world
never cooperates that easily.
The first issue was electricity, a whole mess of it. Because the idea behind
the propulsion system is this: the vehicles carry huge magnets. The track
is lined with these linear synchronous motors, essentially electromagnets,
that are turned on and off very quickly, in sequence. The near end of the
motor attracts the magnet; the far end pushes it away, on and on down the
line. And to get a 6-ton car hustling along, those motors need some
serious juice: 1.2 megawatts per track. The park had to run a dedicated
line off SoCal Edison's local grid just to feed this beast.
Getting extra power into the park was one thing; getting it to the motors
was even trickier. Engineers first encountered a problem called the "skin
effect" - the wattage was so great that power only traveled along the
outer surface of the wires. So, a larger diameter wire had to be employed.
Then came the bigger issue of timing. Each motor in the chain has to be
turned on and off within a fraction of a second, at an absolutely precise
moment. Not an easy task. Test after test after test was needed to get the
timing down. Special software had to be written and rewritten to control
the power delivery to such a fine degree.
(If you think this all sounds pretty intense, you're in good company: NASA,
that's right, the folks that shoot stuff up into space, have been actively
following S:TE's development. They want to apply a system like this to their
space shuttle launch procedure. Could cut down on the fuel costs, they say.)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
SIX FLAGS and all related indicia are trademarks of Six Flags Theme
Park Inc. TM & © 1997
SUPERMAN and all related elements are trademarks of DC Comics © 1997
