Oblivion: General Discussion

[AltonLover123]

Speaking of, I never hear anyone talk about how cool the tunnel really is. I’m quite sure Oblivion is the only dive coaster where it is vertical (were rounding here, I know) at the point it enters the tunnel. Its always bothered me the way all the later dive coasters kind of start to flatten out a bit before the tunnel. Fair play, not many parks want to blow half the budget on a tunnel, but this thing must of been quite remarkable at the time for it.

To be fair, the most popular compliment of Oblivion is its drop which is due to the tunnel. I’d say if there’s anything positive people say, it’s that.

 

[Hid]

To be fair, the most popular compliment of Oblivion is its drop which is due to the tunnel. I’d say if there’s anything positive people say, it’s that.

I will also say the pull out of the drop is pretty intense and the drop provides some great floater airtime. Oblivion is short but sweet it does the dive so well

 

[DistortAMG]

Speaking of maintenance before the drop: John Wardley said in his first book that Oblivion only had 2 rows of seats because a longer train would not have been possible with a vertical drop (thus the rows were made wider to compensate for the lack of capacity behind) - but, if this is true, then how has Hyperia managed to have trains with 10 rows? (Granted: the extra rows were possibly what led to the problems on opening day)

To go back to this as I have only just seen it. The angle it changes and more specifically the radius of that angle is very tight on Oblivion, to specifically take you from horizontal to vertical in a tiny amount of space. Even today in 2025, you could not have a long train on track like Oblivions, where the radius of the angle change is so tight. This would result in the rear of the train being sharply whipped from horizontal to vertical, a big no no for passengers. You still cannot do this, to this day, hence why all dive machines have a small number of rows in comparison to other rides. It is all to get that vertical drop transition.

The simple answer as to why Hyperia manages it, is nothing to do with technological advances, but more to do with the radius of the angle of the change of direction of the track, is much much bigger and spread out over a much bigger area. This allows the front of the train to be descending the hill, without the back being absolutely whipped across a really sharp angle change, something that would cause huge injury to passengers at the back.

An easy way to look at it, look at the track on both rides, where the track goes from exactly horizontal (on Hyperia it would be where it crests the lift, (Oblivion, before the drop hold brake, then to where it first gets vertical. That arch made up from that angle, will make up a quarter of a circle, draw that into a full circle. That is essentially the radius of the curve, you will see on Oblivion, the circle is much, much smaller, making it impossible to have long trains, on Hyperia it is a much much bigger circle, making the radius of the curve much less pronounced and take place over a much gradual and larger area.

They could have done this back in 1998, but for whatever reason, they chose not too. Possibly because of the limited height, the transition radius on Hyperia is so large, it would take up about 3 quarters of the space of the above ground vertical drop for Oblivion. They wanted the majority of the drop in view to be straight down, so a tight radius was essential working within the limited height they had.