I've been stuck on this ride for about 20 mins as a younger person in the hanging position...they gave us free passes to ride anything we wanted immediately. For some reason young & dumb me chose to ride it again. That pretzel loop is kind of addicting.
Six Flags: “Can we have a rollercoaster that requires some tree felling?” County: “No that’s damaging to the environment” Six Flags: “ Can we have a rollercoaster that is made of hundreds of chopped down trees?” County: “Sounds cool to me”
fyi, it has to do with river bank maintenance, the tree roots keep the banks from eroding. remove too many and you'll be polluting the river with sediment, and have to continually back fill the banks and or dredge to keep the river where it is.
I think the trees used in construction are from managed tree farms that are on a cut and replant cycle. The trees they wanted to cut down for the coaster in the park would damage the natural growth and aesthetic the county (or whatever governing body) wants to keep. Although, you’re right, it does still sound pretty silly.
Fun Fact: When I was 7 SF: Great America was my home park and Whizzer was my absolute favorite ride. When I had heard Whizzer was closing I started crying and my mom called Six Flags to tell them not to remove. Glad I could play a part in keeping the Whizzer safe!
My story is kinda similar to yours. I remember when I cried when Six Flags announced that Great Adventure was removing Great American Scream Machine in 2010. I honestly wish they could’ve kept it for a few more years before replacing it with something better than a relocated Stand Up coaster. I wouldn’t say Green Lantern is bad or anything, but I really think Great Adventure didn’t need a Stand Up coaster, and that a Wing or a Dive would’ve been a better replacement for GASM. Hopefully they relocate Green Lantern to Great America and have it converted into a Floorless, because let’s be honest, a B&M Floorless is pretty much another missing key in SFGAm’s coaster lineup at the moment.
To address the duck background, at Superman in the 2017-18 seasons we had this rule that if you worked at Super and came in as a guest on your day off, you had to get a duck from the claw machine in the blue tent. If you didn't, we wouldn't let you ride. Hence why there are a million ducks. We had a photo shoot one morning before opening and after checks and that's the only pictures I had to supply Ryan with for the leg flap release, chassis crank, etc. Duckies Unite!
I hope I don't have to do this when I work as a ride op, because I SUCK at claw machines. I'd probably go "If you click your seatbelts 1000 times, Brainiac will come out of a shed and lift up your train. He lifts up your train and he takes it away; he takes it off the track."
Current SFGA employee here, loved the video! One interesting thing about Superman that wasn’t mentioned is the gasoline-powered platform that must be used for ride evacuations if a train is stopped on the lift hill during a power outage. The first time I saw that I was absolutely amazed
I had no idea it was gas powered! I’m a Great America guy and I was admiring that rolling platform that can travel up the lift hill like a diagonal elevator
damn, B&M literally think of everything. Their backup checks have backup checks. It should be impossible for a train to come into the station in the inverted position, but they still check for it. Btw. can you make a video on Hagrids? That seems to be quite a problematic roller coaster. I know you mostly do coasters that you have operated before, but maybe you can get an insiders perspective from an operator there? Cheers
@@onefastslimjim thing is though, who knows maybe some freak chain of events could cause that and as the rider I don’t care how rare it is I’d like to keep my legs lol.
The amount of things the engineers take into account when designing these coasters is impressive (of course not just one person, but the team itself is worth lots of respect). Sure some example to aim for as a student myself.
@@dianauwu1312 I'm now at my last semesters of mechanical engineering, my focus being on general product/machinery project, and I'm currently as a trainee in a company that does just that: a client has an idea, they want it made, we figure out how. It's pretty fun frankly, glad I could find an area that meets my goals!
Fun fact, if you forcefully breath out on the pretzel loop, I've found you're less likely to pass/grey out. It's one of my favorite rides at the park and in general.
I'm a pilot and own a small aerobatic plane in which I often pull +/-6g, controlling your breathing is a good start for fighting g, but if you really want to be able to take lots of g without issues, just do what we do and do the old g strain... Which is basically tense the muscles in your legs and stomach as much as you can. The best way to describe it, if somewhat nasty, is pretend like you're on the toilet and you're straining really hard to squeeze out a poop. Lol. Do that same straining deal as hard as you can without having a blowout and you'll almost never have to worry about g.
As someone who's ridden Superman, and Firehawk, I preferred the Firehawk Style. I like that B&M takes all the safety precautions, but I prefer being on my back going up the hill and waiting to come back into the station, rather than being stuck face down.
@@TonyKimtheamusementparkfan I just make sure to have my fingers on the space bar and back arrow so I can navigate and pause in order to fully understand what is going on. I definitely want to give kudos to the creator for how well they explain the mechanics, even for lay folks like myself.
The B&M Flyer was the first model of coaster I ever rode. I'm autistic and used to be so scared of roller coasters, but the rest of my family loved them. My family and I were at SeaWorld Orlando just after my 13th birthday and convinced me to ride Manta, a Flyer. Having pressure on the vest area of my body is soothing to me, so the Flyer's restraints made me feel safe and being in the flying position right away relaxed me even more. If I weren't on a roller coaster, I probably could've fallen asleep like that. The B&M Flyer is still my favorite model of coaster over 10 years later. I love riding roller coasters, but the Flyer will forever hold a special place in my heart.
Tatsu will always have a special place in my heart. I rode it 6 times in a row at the opening employee party. I would have ridden more times, but that pretzel loop did me in.
When I tell you this was a wealth in good information. I am currently to big to ride this. I’m working on it a goal of mine. I never would have guessed this ride was so complex. I love all of the built in redundancy safety systems. Again great job. My home park is SFoG and my roller coaster buddies can’t remember other that the opening year when both sides have been in operation.
yea!!! Six flags over Georgia is my home park as well:) I also don’t remember a time where they used both loading stations.. I hope you are doing well gerrick and closer to your goal so you can enjoy one of the best coasters in that park! 💕🤍💕
Love the video and yes this ride is a pain lol, I operated this ride 2 years ago at Over Georgia and let me tell you this ride is very different from any ride that I operated in the park and I operated mainly all the rides in the front and the middle of the park. This ride has so much terminology to learn before getting behind the control panel. I wish we still used the dueling station will aka station 1 but like you said six flags would have to hire more employees for the ride, which we needed 12 attendants for 3 train operations. Yes the restraints on this ride is no joke you really have to pay attention to detail for this ride. But overall it’s a fun ride to operate just a lot you need to learn from just the basic stuff to the harder stuff to learn and know. I wish we could do a video about this ride even more together but maybe one day.
Thank B&M my friend, thank them :D It's no wonder their safety record is so clean. They literally think of everything, down to the minor details of these trains that we don't know about. It must be more of a headache for maintenance to try to replace parts for the ride, and even inspecting those trains.
I wonder what the max throughput would be with three trains. It's probably never been achieved with the slow nature of riders. Does Over Georgia still have it's third train?
I have to look at my notes for the max thoughput of the ride and yes they still have it’s in the storage station. Just need some parts to be back up and running again.
This has quickly become one of my favorite series regarding theme park attractions! I'm always looking forward to the next video. The mechanical side of these attractions doesn't seem to be talked about much but it's amazing at all the intricacies of each ride.
Dude, you explain everything so well! It seems like every time I go to ride Superman at my home park SFOG it's only running one train, and now I understand why! I had no idea of how complex everything that goes into this ride really was. Keep up the awesome work!
I love watching the mechanism that brings the train to a flying position. I swear, I have never been so satisfied with a train mechanism until I first rode Superman.
I like hearing about the leg flaps. I was 13 when I rode Tatsu for the first time and never having ridden a flying coaster before, wasn't aware of the leg flaps so while loading was happening I was just casually swinging my legs as if I were on an inverted coaster. Then I nearly wet my pants when the flaps closed and I realized my right leg wasn't secured. Of course the ride attendant came to fix it but I don't remember it being a big deal and only took a couple seconds to open the flaps and get my foot in place. Maybe it's easier to open when the chassis is down?
I have been to Happy Valley Beijing multiple times and I can safely bet that Crystal Wing is the best Superman Ultimate Fly Clone in the world, the amount of theming and near misses are insane. Also, great video Ryan! I really learned a lot from this series.
Funny story: one time i rode superman ultimate flight at over Georgia and the ride was having some error so the train in the station could not unlock the restraints, so when our train finished the course i was on the final brake run and on the last row, the last row does not fit over the concrete below so I was hanging over rocks for about 20 minutes until they manually pulled the train into the other side of the station, similar to what you mentioned at 21:25
@@joeskrtit3061 It sucks dude, it is so uncomfortable getting stuck in the prone position. Ideally the brake run and station should be set up where you recline on your back and run inverted outside of those areas. Vekoma's Flying Dutchmen were not good rides, but they had a better setup by doing the brakes and station segments "on the ground."
@@sharkheadism "Vekoma's Flying Dutchmen were not good rides" Actually, that's just Nighthawk, and even then it's mainly just the roughness that hurts it. Batwing is generally considered pretty decent (same with Firehawk when it was still in operation).
Every ride I ever had on this coaster featured snail-paced lines that aggravated me and I'm glad to gain some appreciation for the really remarkable engineering that went into this ride. I love how in-depth you get when talking about the technical elements of running rides!
I look at maxxforce like a more interesting top thrill/kinda ka/red force. Big launch followed by a big uphill but then the fastest inversion ever and I love the vertical break run at the end
That pretzel loop is forking intense! And yeah operations on it aren't as fast as a B&M Hyper or Invert; but WAY faster than a Vekoma Flying Dutchman or Standup coaster!
Man, I remember the first year they had Superman at Great America. I was at an age where I was still a little iffy about coasters, and I'd never ridden an inverted coaster before. My little sister, on the other hand, was a coaster maniac and barely passed the height restriction for the ride. Because it was new, the wait time was nearly two hours first thing in the morning, but my parents and I stuck with it in the summer heat for my sister who was pleading to go on the ride. When we finally got on the ride, my sister was so excited...until the floor dropped out. Suddenly "I wanna go on the ride!" turned into "IWANNAGETOFFTHERIDE!!!" My parents just laughed because it was definitely too late now, and we were off. My rating at the end: not as intense as it might look. Very fun! My sister's rating: THAT WAS AWESOME!!!
I will never forget my first flying coaster. It was Nightwing at Carowinds. I knew it would be a flying coaster as I obviously saw it, but it was such a unique experience that the whole ride, I was laughing my ass off! I rode it in the afternoon after having rode quite a few standard style coaster and by the time I rode Nightwing, I was getting to the point of being ready for something different and it gave me that!
That pretzel loop has to be one of the craziest things I’ve ever ridden through. The forces feel like they punch you in the gut and shove you back into your seat, and it’s all so fun!!
As a ride mechanic that maintains one of these B&M Flying Coasters, this video is spot on. I can see that there are definite differences between Superman and the newer ones. However, this is an excellent video that covers a lot of content, and nails a lot of the major points. Great Job @eltororyan
Man that first inverted loop/pretzel was one of the most fucked up EPIC feelings i have EVER experienced in a roller coaster to this day! Have ridden this Superman at Six Flags Great Adv soooo many times its one of my top 3 probably. Other than the first loop the ride sucks really bad and is over quick, BUT that first inverted loop STILL to this day makes it one of my top ones to ride and have ever ridden. I will NEVER forget first riding this and completely not expecting that feeling of this inverted loop/pretzel. You actually like used to be underground on the bottom of the pretzel/loop while your literally facing the opposite direction while on your back than you were at the top(hard to explain but i know some get it), it was just EPIC. Upon watching some newer pov's videos of this ride i noticed though that they filled in that hole on the bottom? I specifically remember a little fenced in square holed area at the bottom of the first loop. I remember they said it was necessary in order to fit the loop in place bc they "ran out of room", so they needed to dig into the ground a little to fit the bottom section of it. I wonder how they went about making that particular bottom section of track NOT underground anymore? Cause I dont see really any digging that was done, which i would guess is how they would do this (by just excavating/digging out a much broader/wider area so then the track looks Above ground like now). The front and BACK(i prefer) rows both have there reasons for doing but man being dragged through that pretzel in the back for the first time was one of the scariest things i have experienced still to this day. I couldnt breathe(which never happens to me anymore as im mostly used to it all, but this kicked my ass to say the least) and i know some people who have said they blacked out or was very close to it. Front is also just as fun in that it truly gives a much better flying feeling obviously, bc nothing is in front of you(your not looking at the back of peoples feet/sneakers lol). That hill climb(though not very high) in the first row is still something else. You're literally just looking at the ground as you ascend higher and higher with nothing to catch you God forbid, its just you and air straight to the ground, all wide open 😯(check out a pov on it, youllsee). Idk if its just cause my body wasnt expecting it or what, but i thought i was about to die almost my first time riding this(lol exaggerating slightly, but you get it). I think i was front row first time too and the push up from the back cars while coming out of the pretzel is insane too, even that little pull up part right before you dip into that pretzel! If it only had like atleast 3 of these pretzels omg lol. Makes me wanna ride it right now!
Haha definitely need to Volcano at least! It was always one of my favorite coasters but definitely had more than its share of problems and was basically a prototype one off as I understand.
From someone (me) with no formal engineering classes I’m utterly amazed at your incredible knowledge! I saw the “gum scraper” and laughed because I actually know how to use those scrapers for construction and walls and I never thought of it like that! 18:29
Excellent video as usual! I'm not sure about other B&M coasters, but I know for a fact that Riddler's Revenge, Dueling Dragons, and Hulk used A/B panel view since their installations in 1998/1999. There were panelview style GUI's for various Intamin, Premier, and GCI coasters along that time too.
Why can’t all rollercoaster systems be as simple as arrow coasters, seriously, arrow corkscrew coasters never ever break down, they last for ever, they can run in the rain, they can run with tons of trains and block breaks and they never have errors. Definitely the most reliable coaster type ever and safest if you ignore roughness.
I live by gurnee and I rode the superman's flight there 16 times in a row to try to break the record. Sadly they closed before we could hit 21 but always fond memories of this ride.
Current SFGA employee here, loved the video! One interesting thing about Superman that wasn’t mentioned is the gasoline-powered platform that must me used for ride evacuations if a train is stopped on the the lift hill during a power outage. The first time I saw that I was absolutely amazed.
HAVEN'T WATCHED YET BUT THANKKKK YOUUUU! These videos are amazing. I really hope you're getting monetization in some form, or will use these in the future to get a job that allows you to do so. You are exceptionally talented and its so rare to find someone like that. Killin' it, bro.
My home park is SFGM. Since I consider myself a loose enthusiast, I often talk (don’t shut up) about SFGM. Whoever I talk about Superman: Ultimate Flight, someone always WITHOUT FAIL tells a story about how they were stuck in the flying position for anywhere from 20 minutes to upwards of an hour.
6:40 Project rejected due to the number of trees that needed to be taken down. Installed a huge wooden coaster instead. Edit: I noticed the comment below now. Cheers!
@@Mrcaffinebean Oof... somebody doesn't understand the difference between 'we want to maintain the aesthetic of the park' and 'we don't want to use wood'.
@@tim3172 I doubt the “aesthetics“ we’re at issue seeing as they were looking to take down trees within their own park. Not sure why the township would have any say over what a private park does on their private land from an aesthetic standpoint. However townships have been known to intervene on environmental grounds. So just guessing but I bet that’s what the issue was.
@@felishiahendra it's gonna open, there only letting a certain amount of people in the park at a time, and you are going to have to make a reservation before you go....check the website and look on instagram!
Despite finding it fun I have such a phobia of being stuck in position on this ride on the car I won’t ride it ever anymore. Only current ride in too afraid to go on in the world
More Six Flags Great America coasters would be great to see on this channel!! It’s my local theme park and I’d love to see it represented more on the channel :)
Great video! The Superman at Over Georgia has amazing terrain to go with the ride. Unfortunately, it’s broken almost as much time a day that it is running. I don’t even try to go on it anymore ever since I was stuck hanging out on it for 30 minutes because the other train had an issue and they no longer use the dual station. Also, it’s broken while I’ve been in line at least 5 times over the past 10 years. Fun but holy crap it’s annoying between the breaking issues and the constant hour+ wait for a one trick pony ride.
I went on the Superman ride many times at Six Flags Jersey and it was Amazing! The rubbery safety vest that goes over you was perfect fitting and like you are flying! The best seats for this ride was way in the front seats really makes you feel like you are flying since there's no seats in front of you And also if you want to have better feeling of drops than sitting all the way in the backseat is the best which fills you with more adrenaline .... Those are the 2 best seats, all the way in front or all the way in back! I went on Superman multiple times. I had a season pass took Six Flags and I was going 4-5 days a week at one point. Great times!
Brilliant work. My home park is Alton towers and I've always wondered how the restraints work and how the train is put into the flying position on Galactica 😎
As a SFGA Gurnee fan, (since it’s in my area) the Superman Ultimate Flight ride there is honestly one of my favorites. The Whizzer is also a favorite of many of the younger audience at my six flags.
Suggestion for a future episode: Vekoma Giant Inverted Boomerangs (Deja Vu / Aftershock / Goliath) . Sounds like those have had their fair share of problems.
Poor deja vu had a rough rough life. Shockwave did too. I think that’s what was was there before super man , ultimate flight? It’s hard to remember nowadays. I’m old now. Iron wolf as well. But what a blast 🤣
I LOVED X-Flight in Ohio back in the day! That and the Batman: Knight Flight ride, I lost count of how many times I rode those. It helped that I lived practically down the street from that 6-flags.
B&M say they're a rollercoaster engineering firm, but this level of DETAIL for ONE TRAIN is damn mindboggling. Bolliger and Mabillard are true damn engineers that ensure their coasters have the LEAST liability issues, and this video proved it. They really went ALL OUT on this model. Triple and sometimes quadruple redundancies? I can't think of any insurance company saying no to that. The price though? Good LORD you could buy an entire Cessna Citation V for that price. Honestly it's still worth it though because of the liability.
23:10 Please never ever be impressed by lines of code. In production environments it is almost always a useless metric. In this particular case, 80K lines of code my be a lot or practically nothing simply based on the language used to write that software. I suspect the latter as it almost certainly written in Java, which is known for verbosity and code bloat in even semi-complex systems. A better metric would be amount of data being sent for diagnostic purposes. However, since there's not much to compare to, even that is fairly useless. TL;DR - color me unimpressed regarding the "80K lines of code".
I don't mean for this question to sound rude, but do you really think they would use Java as the language of choice for efficient machinery equipment, let alone a roller coaster responsible for human life? Most rides use programmable logic/automation controllers made by Rockwell, Siemens, etc. The programming language for those systems is usually a graphical logic language like RLL (relay ladder logic) or FBD (function block diagram). Some programming is done in text based languages, but languages of choice would be highly efficient, low level languages like C#, C, or even possibly Assembly (depending on the application). And trust me, coming from someone who has written in low level languages before, 80k lines of that crap with no overhead or dependencies sounds like hell, lol. Source: www.reddit.com/r/rollercoasters/comments/4vn6bf/every_rollercoaster_has_a_computer_who_makes_and/
@@RehlmProductions You'd be surprised. Java is used in a ton of places you wouldn't expect, even stuff like control systems on military ships. And to be honest if it's not a system that needs sub-millisecond realtime precision or is extremely memory constrained (meaning it can't tolerate a garbage collected language/runtime) I'd rather have something written in a managed language like Java or C# or whatever rather than C or C++ where I'd have to worry about random memory errors (use after free, data races, all that fun stuff) that the programmers missed. C# is really about as efficient and no more "low level" than Java, it's also a language compiled to intermediate code and then JIT'ed with a garbage collected runtime. 80k LOC for this thing means to me it's probably lots of spaghetti accumulated over long development time with changing requirements.
Rode this for the first time at Great America this week. The pretzel loop is easily the most intense inversion I've ever experienced, which is funny because the rest of the ride is very gentle, as if it's apologizing for trying to kill you. Decent ride, but definitely a one and done, especially with one train ops.
When you brought up the TV remote, i was like "but that's infamrated. I don't think that's a good example" Then you brought up the eyes and i was like "OH MY; THAT IS INFRARED"