After the injury lawsuit, I doubt we see 3 train Apollo operations again. The train can hit the brakes hard after the photo, if the trains are stacked and the 3rd one has to to stop. Just speculating.
Apollo's Chariot
- Thread starter Zachary
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OMG WHY IS THE MOST INTENSE PART OF THE RIDE THE BRAKE RUN? Like why is it so abrupt?
Apollo's Chariot solidly ranks as the #10 B&M Hyper Coaster out of the 10 operating in the US for me (including the two gigas which B&M sees as a larger "hyper coaster" in their line of models). I love the ride deeply as it has an incredible setting and it was the first B&M I ever rode. Whenever people want to hate on it for being "tame" or "slower" I always stress to remember, it was in fact the OG and is still a delightful roller coaster. I go back and forth on if I like it more than Alpengeist all the time. Alpengeist is the more intense time tested ride absolutely as it stands up to inverts like Banshee and Apollo falls a bit short compared to newer Hypers like Mako, Candymonium, the absolutely absurd roller coaster that is Goliath in Georgia, and of course Fury 325 and Orion.
Personally I would almost want to just rank it X in my rankings as a personal favorite. Love that smooth ride through the woods.
Personally I would almost want to just rank it X in my rankings as a personal favorite. Love that smooth ride through the woods.
Apollo is better than the generation of hypers that came directly after it (Nitro, Diamondback, Thunder Striker), but the modern hypers are unbeatable
I would. A modern B&M hyper wouldn't be the same there. Maybe the layouts are better but I'd want a full 1-to-1 retrack if it comes to that. Same with Griffon and Alpengeist.
What lawsuit are you referring to? I’m not aware of one, so apologies if I simply missed this. Also, it did run 3 trains for a bit in 2023 but then an overinflated drive tire blew and fucked up the 3rd train so it was on 2 trains for the rest of the year as a precaution.
My understanding is this is due to the U-turn after the brakes toward the transfer. Supposedly if the train stopped at the far end of the brakes, it wouldn’t have enough speed to to make it around that turn and engage with the drive tires on the other side. I don’t know how true that is, but it is something I’ve heard in the past a couple times.
I need to ride Nitro again I last rode it in 2011. I rode Raging Bull last year and that was in the bottom half of the group. I like Thunder Striker and Diamondback more than both for the airtime I get on those.
All that said GA Goliath is my favorite B&M Hyper/Giga that is not Fury 325 in the US class. It's just............unhinged compared to the others. Can ride a little rough in the valleys but the airtime is strong and that downward helix is fantastic. It was the 9th B&M Hyper coaster I rode in the US and it absolutely blew me away and that's saying something. That said I understand if people prefer Mako or Orion to that one. Candymonium is also great but it falls short of the other 4 I'd rank above it (Fury, Goliath, Orion, Mako).
All this out there and I love Apollo's Chariot yup great ride. I do not want it EVER replaced unless it's a retrack.
Crowd buffet back then was amazing. The line would be spilling out of the queue starting at Roman Frieze (now Rita's Italian Ice) and the longest I'd wait to get on was a max 45 minutes. On average it was about a 35-40 minute wait.
Yeah, what lawsuit? The reason it stopped is because of how the blocks are setup. The second half of the brakes are called the "Safety Brakes" and it is it's own block to allow a buffer if the train slides too far. Rainydays, this would often happen. Not sure why they couldn't have programmed it to get to a certain speed and stop closer to the end. The u-turn is sloped down so I doubt that slow speed was an issue.
Did the case ever go to court? Looks like it probably got put on hold due to covid. Either way, the article doesnt specify where the train stopped. Main brakes, normal. MCBR, not normal. It also seems that the case hinges on a ride operator's "negligence," not on the stop itself. I would also guess that the park would claim that there was at least one ride restriction this guy did not follow and is why the incident occurred. Either way, I see no reason why the park would put a 2 train limit on the ride.
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I'm not able to find any more up-to-date articles about the outcome of the case (if there was one), but the fact that it even was supposed to go to trial (versus just settling out of court like a lot of these theme park injuries result in) suggests that -- at some point -- BGW felt their case was solid and that they hadn't committed any wrongdoing. It would seem silly to me that they would permanently cease 3-train operations because of a single (known) incident related to the brakes in the ride's 25-year history, and the park's decision not to immediately settle seems to mean they didn't think there's anything wrong with it operating that way.
InvadR never had a third train.
Can we talk about the damn one train ops on Tempesto lately?? This park is really going down the tubes.
LIne still moves better than Darkoaster
Alpie went down to permenant 2 train status in 2015 (was lead over there that year) due to overall declining ridership the previous years. They still wouldn't run with one at the time though. Griffon and Apollo are still popular enough to really utilize 3 trains. Alpie only needed it a few days of the year and it wasn't worth the money to have a third train ready-to-run for only 3-5 days out of the season.