Ride Layout and Experience
The ride begins after a train is dispatched from either two loading zones which merge at a track switch. After the switch, the track banks left and stops on a flat section of track just above water level on Paradise Bay. After a short wait dictated by the location of the previous train on the track, a Victorian Carnival character voiced by Neil Patrick Harris can be heard counting down from five before the train launches up the coaster's first hill. The train drops below another section of track and banks to the right traveling through the ride's first brake run. This is followed by another 180 degree right turn and sudden descent followed by a banked turn to the left. Momentum at this point carries the train up the coaster's largest lift hill before LIM's take over to carry the trains the remaining distance to the crest. At 120 feet (37 m), this is the highest point of the coaster from which the track drops steeply and curves left, followed by a quick incline to the right and another 180 degree turn. In preparation for the ride's single loop, the train travels through a set of brakes added in 2005. The track drops slightly and manoeuvres through the loop rising and then dropping again. A wide U-turn to the right leads into a small climb and another brake run. Here a straight section of track along the front of the coaster's length contains a series of dips and rises known as "bunny hops" or "bunny hills" which create significant air time for riders. Another brake zone sends the train down and to the left past the off ride camera which is positioned in a helix. After the helix, the roller coaster ends with a series of brake runs intended to hold trains in case of a backup at the station. Back at the station, the train is either sent left or right to one of the platforms.
California Screamin' uses side-mounted friction brakes on all its brake runs rather than mounting the brakes on the track. In addition to this, stray LIM boosters are placed in the station, and near most brake zones; these include the launch hill (Zone 2), the lift hill (Zone 4), after the loop (Zone 5), before the bunny hops (Zone 6), and before the switch track back to the stations (Zone 9).
In 2005 California Screamin' received two sets of magnetic brakes to slow the train down before the loop and in brake run 6. The result is a slightly slower ride.
The 12 block brake sections in the attraction are as follows: Immediately after leaving the station, the train is in section 1, followed by section 2.1, the location that the train stops at for launch. The launch hill is section 2.2, followed immediately by section 3. Section 4 is the lift hill, ending at the top of the lift. Section 5 includes the loop up until the entrance to the next blue tunnel. Section 6 continues until the bunny hops, with section 7 ending just before the final spiral. Section 8 is the initial slow down point, followed by section 9. The main side of the station (or if you are entering the station on the train, the left side) is section 10A, while the spur side of the station is Zone 10B.
Read more about this topic: California Screamin'
Famous quotes containing the words ride and/or experience:
“Thou and I
Have thirty miles to ride yet ere dinner-time.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“And yet we constantly reclaim some part of that primal spontaneity through the youngest among us, not only through their sorrow and anger but simply through everyday discoveries, life unwrapped. To see a child touch the piano keys for the first time, to watch a small body slice through the surface of the water in a clean dive, is to experience the shock, not of the new, but of the familiar revisited as though it were strange and wonderful.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)