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[2024] Voltron Nevera | Mack Stryker Coaster

Tim said:
I understand why vloggers and media in general want to give a positive spin so that they will be invited back again. But from your or my perspective as the consumer of their content why should we accept that! Isn't that basically saying 'I'm OK with being lied to, if it means someone I don’t know and can't trust gets to keep going to special VIP events'?
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Again, people shouldn't just willingly follow other's opinions. Alas this is not the world we live in where many people blindly follow the word of their favourite influencer/artist/author and form their entire life around their views rather than have their own.

When Taron first opened everyone was calling it a 10/10 coaster, but I (having visited on opening day) thought it was lacking in layout to be such. But I don't have a following of people to force that opinion onto. So the Mrs will have to do.

Does Lost Gravity have a rattle problem on it these days? Don't recall it doing so 5 years ago.
 
Lost Gravity is a little bumpy/rough on the outside seats. There is apparently additional bracing on Voltron’s wing seats in an attempt to address this. Seemingly that hasn’t worked and that is very surprising.

I’m struggling to understand how Mack have ended up delivering a product that has such a pronounced roughness issue. The most viable explanation seems to be that it’s attributable to this apparent last second wheel change. If that’s not the case then that suggests something more fundamental with the design, which I’m guessing will be difficult (if not impossible) to resolve. Let’s hope it is the wheels.

As for the honesty of vloggers, it seems to be a mixed bag. There are some who seem to be almost nakedly positive to the parks they don’t want to upset. There is a basic conflict of interest occurring in lots of these cases. That sways the opinion of some, and if you’ve been given a load of free stuff and not had to wait 3 hours to get on a ride, it’s very clear why that’s an effective strategy for the park to drum up positive reactions.

The more egregious instances however (annd I’m not talking about the channels mentioned above) are some channels whose output seems to be entirely effected by this conflict of interest - they will churn out consistent and overtly positive spin for some parks. Unsurprisingly there is a direct correlation between the positive spin and them being given free stuff or organising an event with said park, You’ll often see less positive output for the parks who they haven’t organised an event with or handed over free stuff.
 
Tim said:
This might be controversial, but I'm not sure how much I buy that it's an issue with certain trains. This whole phenomenon of trains riding significantly differently to each other seems to have started very recently. I never remember hearing this comment about new rides in the past, and now suddenly Nemesis and Voltron have the same problem.
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I remember this being said about one of the trains (purple?) On Nash for about as long as I've been reading forums. It's definitely more common since The Smiler crash, but I'm sure that as least started the other way around, that the replacement train was smoother. Maybe it's just something people look for more now, or maybe it's a psychological thing. For like 95% of the time though I'm still unconvinced there's going to be that much difference unless something mechanical isn't right.
 
venny said:
I’m struggling to understand how Mack have ended up delivering a product that has such a pronounced roughness issue. The most viable explanation seems to be that it’s attributable to this apparent last second wheel change. If that’s not the case then that suggests something more fundamental with the design, which I’m guessing will be difficult (if not impossible) to resolve. Let’s hope it is the wheels.
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For what it’s worth, the park POV posted a few days ago appeared quite noticeably rattly, and that subdued review I read on CoasterForce was also from the pass holder previews, before the stall. So I’m not sure that it’s necessarily down to the wheel change post-stall, or at least, I’m not sure that it’s entirely down to that wheel change.

It does seem like manufacturers other than B&M have really struggled to make 4-across seating work properly in terms of smoothness, though. Intamin’s 4-across seating on rides like Hyperion has often been said to provide a notably rougher experience on the outside seats, Gerstlauer coasters like The Smiler can often provide a notably rougher experience on the outside seats from my own experiences, and between Lost Gravity allegedly not having the smoothest outside seats and Voltron apparently being plainly rough in the outside seats, it seems like even Mack is struggling to replicate B&M’s success with 4-across seating.
 
I was never expecting a Blue Fire-smooth coaster after my experience with Lost Gravity and the layout on Voltton being so much more aggressive, but it is disappointing that this seems to be an issue - especially in those outside seats.

Voltron was always going to my an 'ooft' sort of coaster, there are a number of coasters that I do rate highly but either because of the forces or comfort, I couldn't ride more than 2 or 3 times in succession. Rides include Skyrush and Steel Vengeance.

Hopefully the issues with Voltron will be improved over the coming days. The idea that some trains are worse than others just seems plain stupid on the face of it.
 
Tim said:
I understand why vloggers and media in general want to give a positive spin so that they will be invited back again. But from your or my perspective as the consumer of their content why should we accept that! Isn't that basically saying 'I'm OK with being lied to, if it means someone I don’t know and can't trust gets to keep going to special VIP events'?

I'll be honest in light of more recent reviews I'm starting to suspect EP cherry picked the people they invited for this very reason.
Lift hills and thrills was a bizarre choice. You can tell he doesn't know the park well (referring to Austria as Australia, and never having ridden those rides before the fire). He even acknowledged multiple times in the video that he wasn't sure why he was invited when so many people with long standing connections to the park weren't.
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It’s always been thus.

Restaurant openings, hotel openings etc etc.

People get invited and treated like royalty so that they leave good reviews, VLOGers are just the new version of that.
 
The reports of roughness on Voltron are of course disappointing. This doesn’t seem to be universal though, this discussion on the German forums for example is very different to the discussion in this thread, and more of them have ridden it. So that does give me some hope that there are some trains where it’s much less of an issue, and EP will be able to sort it across all trains in time.

I think any coaster with wing seats is going to suffer from those outer seats being a little more uncomfortable that the inside seats. By nature of their design, those seats are not as well supported. And even B&M wing coasters are can be quite bouncy in outside seats.

And then there is Mack rattle to contend with, which is a thing on most of their coasters (Blue Fire being a rare exception). Often this rattle is fairly un-pronounced and doesn’t impact the ride experience much, but I guess a combination of potential Mack rattle on Voltron and wing seats could be a cause for some roughness.

I’m still looking forward to riding it next month. And maybe having my expectations checked a little won’t be a bad thing!
 
In TPW’s updated vlog and review with more rides on Voltron, Shawn states that he spoke to a staff member, and the roughness is isolated to 2 trains and is due to them “not having had the full suspension fitted yet”. They are apparently safe to operate, but currently lack the suspension of the other trains, hence the rougher ride experience:

Shawn stated that his second ride was much more comfortable, so hopefully when they get the full suspension fitted on those trains, the experience should be much smoother.
 
Benzin said:
Does Lost Gravity have a rattle problem on it these days? Don't recall it doing so 5 years ago.
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I rode Lost Gravity in 2017 & 2022 and noticed the outside seats were rattly on both visits, noticeably more so in 2022.

Even when riding AlpinaBlitz, which had the same trains as Blue Fire, only few weeks after it opened I noticed a considerable rattle which made it a little uncomfortable (personal opinion only, I know many of the group didn’t feel the same!).

I am going to set my expectations low for Voltron, and hope they can be beat…!
 
The variability in reviews suggests different trains are on different wheel compounds so hopefully it’s something they can work on balancing comfort for the speed profile they want.
 
Matt N said:
In TPW’s updated vlog and review with more rides on Voltron, Shawn states that he spoke to a staff member, and the roughness is isolated to 2 trains and is due to them “not having had the full suspension fitted yet”.
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If this is the case then perhaps they are going to remove these from service when less busy days come up to work on them, when they can get away with a lower throughput. Makes sense they want as full a capacity as possible for the few days post debut.

Do we know if they’re running all 7 trains yet or are some still to be fully tested? (Excluding the one that stalled of course.)
 
Burbs said:
Do we know if they’re running all 7 trains yet or are some still to be fully tested? (Excluding the one that stalled of course.)
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Yep! It’s been operating on 6 trains; numbers 1 to 5 and 7 (it was train 6 that stalled).

It’s not great that a couple of the trains aren’t actually finished yet. If I was there and only got to ride it once, and that was on one of the trains without the suspension, I’d be pretty annoyed! Seems strange that they do have a couple of trains without the suspension as well.
 
Rob said:
Yep! It’s been operating on 6 trains; numbers 1 to 5 and 7 (it was train 6 that stalled).

It’s not great that a couple of the trains aren’t actually finished yet. If I was there and only got to ride it once, and that was on one of the trains without the suspension, I’d be pretty annoyed! Seems strange that they do have a couple of trains without the suspension as well.
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Oh awesome. Besides the suspension/wheel issues, this is still mighty impressive! When you consider The Smiler (a similarly lengthy coaster), runs 4 on a good day, with 5 being all but pointless when it did run all of them, and running 3 most of the time.* The queue for Voltron must really shift!

*citation needed, not been to ATR for ages so this is a presumption
 
In light of resent news I am shocked that Europa opened Voltron. And I don't think they should have soft opened Austria either, with the themeing in that area still going into place.
A good opening is really important for long term success, even for somewhere like Europa, which has an amazing track record of continuously improving rides.
They failed to open the finished product and clearly weren't prepared operationaly either (treating the day just like any normal Friday).

Unless there's some important holiday locally this week I can't understand why they didn't delay the official opening to coinside with Austria's opening date. Soft open Voltron with only the trains that are ready to run, still giving people chance to ride if they are willing to wait (which some people would). Then on opening day stagger the openings so Voltron opens with the park in the morning and Austria a few hours later. This gives the extra staff needed to handle an opening time to reassemble over there.
Either way, given that Voltron runs alongside the edge of the park there's no reason they couldn't have created a new entrance over at Traumatica for people to join the line from the moment they arrived. That's the minimum they should have done given it was obvious everyone would head their first.

I have to say EP even made some of the UK's opening days look good. At least the ride hardware has been finished!
 
I understand criticizing the operational details, but I think the answer lies in one word: Capacity. I am not an insider, but I know that the long Ascension Weekend (this year starting already May 9th) is the normally one of the busiest times (and Pentecoste soon afterwards, too), and I am sure that the Park wanted until then to have Voltron, Alpenexpress and TWW open and running smoothly to have maximal capacity. So I understand the rush to open those as early as possible to have 2 weeks in advance to iron out possible problems. Also they originally hoped to open with season start which did not work out, and got a lot of critic for that, so that’s additional pressure. Sure, they could have softopened Voltron, and perhaps should have, but I have no idea if that would have caused other problems that are less obvious. But I agree that it could have been probably handled better.

On the other hand I do not agree that a good opening is that crucial. People forget very soon, and they will come no matter how the opening was, if the park/ride is appealing. Also, I am surprised how much this aspect it discussed here; the other forums and videos I watch concentrate on the ride and land experience and do not care that much about the chaotic aspects of the opening.
 
Imagine the biggest issue was probably cancelling the annual pass holder preview the day before due to the train valleying. If that goes ahead I imagine the next day the majority of pass holders might turn up for the atmosphere but aren't that fussed to ride.

Anyhow it's open now and I'm starting to see more great reviews coming through from people I trust to give fair opinions.
 
Gurkensalat said:
I understand criticizing the operational details, but I think the answer lies in one word: Capacity. I am not an insider, but I know that the long Ascension Weekend (this year starting already May 9th) is the normally one of the busiest times (and Pentecoste soon afterwards, too), and I am sure that the Park wanted until then to have Voltron, Alpenexpress and TWW open and running smoothly to have maximal capacity. So I understand the rush to open those as early as possible to have 2 weeks in advance to iron out possible problems. Also they originally hoped to open with season start which did not work out, and got a lot of critic for that, so that’s additional pressure. Sure, they could have softopened Voltron, and perhaps should have, but I have no idea if that would have caused other problems that are less obvious. But I agree that it could have been probably handled better.

On the other hand I do not agree that a good opening is that crucial. People forget very soon, and they will come no matter how the opening was, if the park/ride is appealing. Also, I am surprised how much this aspect it discussed here; the other forums and videos I watch concentrate on the ride and land experience and do not care that much about the chaotic aspects of the opening.
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I agree that whilst it could clearly have been handled better, the opening day is an irrelevance long term.

I look forward to riding in four weeks.
 
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