Over the past few months the Hollywood Rip, Ride, Rockit did reopen and quietly went back into regular daily operations, all the while hoping everyone forgot about that long bout of unexpected downtime last year. Before the downtime, there were a few rumors about impending changes on the way to the ride which never took place, due to the last year’s problems. Now, almost everyone is silent on the matter. Almost...
According to a Screamscape source, Universal and Maurer got together and performed a little upgrade to one of the ride’s trains in an effort to improve the ride experience. This new car has been running the rails for awhile now, mixed in at random with the other cars, in order to judge the guest reaction. Hearing comments from you readers all the time about this coaster, I’d have to say that the new car seems to have gone unnoticed, as the comments are generally the same as before, with the ride having a hot & cold reputation both before and after. As such, the cost to upgrade the entire fleet of cars may not be justified.
This is where the other interesting rumor comes in, as I’m told that Universal is also rumored to have shopped around the idea of buying entirely new trains from other coaster companies. The list of those asked is pretty much the usual suspects… B&M, Vekoma, Premier and Intamin. Before you get too excited, I’m told B&M has already turned down the project, which isn’t surprising as they turned down the chance to build Rockit in the first place. The other three are said to have submitted basic bids on the project, and ideas on how they would do it, and any other items of note for Universal Creative to base their judgment on.
Premier could be an interesting choice, and they do have a successful lap-bar only system that could handle the Rockit’s layout. The park maintenance team is also familiar with Premier trains from the nearby Revenge of the Mummy coaster as well, which is a plus.
Vekoma would also be an interesting choice, if they were to opt to use Vekoma’s new and very comfortable restraint system, which is great for riders of virtually all sizes, but also has the safety of an OTS system, without the need for a redundant seat-belt for quick loading.
Finally there is Intamin who have apparently submitted the idea of switching over to use their Maverick style train design, complete with standard Intamin OTS restraints. I would imagine they are thinking of using three of their 4-passenger cars per train to keep the train capacity up to at least 12 riders.
So which way will the Rockit go? Nothing has been decided upon yet it seems, but it seems a safe bet that Universal doesn’t want to keep things going the way they are any more either. So stay tuned and maybe you can get a lucky ride on the new car.