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SeaWorld Orlando: General Discussion

Matt N said:
Mako is currently being repainted by Baynum Painting:

I noticed that quite a few areas of it were looking a bit faded in recent POVs, so it’s great to see that they’re doing this work to the ride!

The ride has been shut for around a month so far, and it will reopen “in a few weeks”.
Click to expand...

Mako has now reopened, and it looks very vibrant, in my view! This POV shows off the new paint job quite nicely:

I'm glad to see the ride back open and looking so striking!
 
If anyone’s interested, I rode Pipeline: The Surf Coaster for the first time today. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe I’m the first member on here to ride Pipeline, so I thought I’d offer my thoughts on the ride. I should preface my comments by saying that I only rode once, in the morning, in row 12.

I was very excited to ride Pipeline after hearing many superlative reviews from the initial crop of riders. Comments like “B&M have finally perfected the standup coaster”, “they’ve finally made the standup coaster comfortable and fun”, “it’s so unique and brilliant”, “the standup coaster is back in fashion”, “it’s the sleeper hit of 2023” and “every park should get their hands on one of these” really amped up the hype for me. I was expecting something rather brilliant based on the reviews, and with it being a prototype B&M that seems to be garnering pretty positive reviews, I was excited to ride and had reasonably high expectations.

But the key question I should probably answer is; did Pipeline live up to the hype for me? I apologise for being a curmudgeon, but if I’m being brutally honest, I was bitterly disappointed. The ride definitely didn’t live up to the hype for me, and contrary to popular belief, I don’t personally feel that B&M have managed to solve the problems of the standup coaster with this ride.

In the interests of fairness, I’ll start with the positives…
The Positives
  • On paper, the ride should be really good. It’s smooth, it has a snappy launch, there are a few surprisingly strong airtime moments, and the layout is quite fun. When you list its positives out like that, it sounds great, and in theory, there should be nothing not to like about it.
  • It’s also absolute eye candy; it’s comfortably one of the best looking B&M coasters I’ve ever seen, and it looks absolutely stunning next to the lake at SeaWorld. It’s so sleek, it has a beautiful colour scheme, and it’s really well presented, with a fun theme and aesthetic going in the plaza!
  • To be fair, the “jumping” seats are an interesting idea. The seats raising does offer some interesting airtime (if you can call it that), and I do think that the idea has potential. I’d be interested to see these on a sit-down train, as I believe B&M actually filed a patent for.
As you can probably tell based on my initial tone, however, there is a considerable negative side coming…
The Negative
For me, there is one key negative that ruins the ride, and that is that it fundamentally is not comfortable, in my opinion. The harnesses are quite uncomfortable, in my view, and I did not feel that the freedom of movement in the seats necessarily helped the comfort factor of the standing position compared to an older stand-up coaster (I’ve only done Shockwave at Drayton Manor, an Intamin standup, but I would not have said that Pipeline was any more comfortable than that ride). The main thing I found is that when the seat “jumped”, it was a bit painful in a few ways:
  • The airtime meant that the vest restraint really pinched my collar bones, far more so than the vests on rides like the flying coasters or The Swarm ever did. These are definitely the least comfortable B&M vests I’ve ever ridden in.
  • When the seat went back down after the “jump” was over, the positive g impact caused discomfort in my knees and legs.
  • When the seat rose over some of the hills, it did squash my private area a bit and give me some pain there.
In short, the ride is ruined by the fact that it is fundamentally uncomfortable, in my view. I know that sounds incredibly petty, and I apologise for that, but as I was going round the ride, I wasn’t enjoying the airtime and elements like I would on most coasters. All I was thinking was “this is uncomfortable”, and whenever the airtime came, I found I was trying to shield myself from the discomfort it caused rather than laughing and enjoying it like I would on most coasters. I’m going to throw a bold statement out there and say that Pipeline is the only time thus far that I have ever found airtime uncomfortable or not enjoyable on a ride; I’m sad to say it, because 99.9% of the time, I absolutely love airtime on coasters, and airtime is one of the key things that will make me rate a coaster highly, but I didn’t especially enjoy Pipeline’s airtime simply because the harnesses and riding position made it uncomfortable.

This isn’t related to the ride experience itself, but another possible negative I would raise is that Pipeline does not appear to have solved the capacity problem of older standup coasters. When I was in the queue, the ride averaged 474pph, which is a train of 24 every 3m 2s. In many cases, the dispatch time was easily 3-4 minutes, so while throughput was not an issue at SeaWorld today (I only waited 20-25 minutes) I do feel that capacity could possibly be an issue to consider for wider deployment of this model. I do feel that something like a dual station, similar to that seen on B&M’s flying coasters, would be a good idea for future iterations of the Surf Coaster, as the single-station throughput capability of this train design did not appear to be overly high, by my observation.

So in summary, I’m sorry to say that Pipeline was a definite disappointment for me. I really wanted to like it, and before I rode, I was really rooting for it to be a potential top 10/20 contender based on the glowing reviews (for context, Pipeline was my 94th coaster ridden, and I’ve done 96 following my day at SeaWorld today). Now I’ve ridden it, however, I don’t even think that it’s in my top 50, and I’d say that of the 16 B&M coasters I’ve now ridden, it sits towards the bottom of the pile. I concede that I only got one ride on it, and I may have gotten a “bad ride” or whatever, but those are my honest thoughts based on the ride I had. I’m sorry that this is a more negative review, and I’m conscious that this review makes me sound very petty and bitter, but I am simply being 100% honest with you all about how I felt towards Pipeline. I’m aware that I have a reputation for always saying good things around these parts and never slating things, and even in this review, I made an effort to make it fair and constructive rather than launching into a scathing diatribe slating the ride at every turn (although I’m unsure how well I’ve done in this regard), but I don’t feel it would be right for me to beat around the bush and pretend I was super enamoured with Pipeline when I wasn’t.

Here are a few photos I took of the ride; as much as I wasn’t overly impressed with the ride experience itself, I’ll admit that it’s a visually striking coaster that looks incredible:
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On a more positive note, today was my first visit to SeaWorld Orlando since 2016, and I had an absolutely brilliant day at the park! I got on 10 rides in total, including 5 rides on Mako (which is 100% still my number 1 coaster), and I also got on Ice Breaker for the first time, which was a fantastic ride that comfortably exceeded my expectations! If you’d like to read about my day in more detail, you can read my trip report here: https://towersstreet.com/talk/threa...a-10th-24th-june-2023.6782/page-2#post-421704
 
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Wow, that would be unexpected if true!

Given how phenomenally reliable Zachary from ParkFans has been with SeaWorld leaks in the past, though, I'd be inclined to believe this theory. He's correctly leaked all kinds of SeaWorld proposals over the years, including Pipeline, DarKoaster and Pantheon.

If true, B&M have really begun branching out! They were a company who wouldn't even build launches or family coasters as recently as 10 years ago, and they're now building multi-launched sit-down family coasters!
 
@Matt N nice honest review, thanks for that. Shame it didn't live up to your expectations.

@MakoMania interesting this. Thanks for sharing. Its does seem to me B&M are aiming to compete with the family market now. I guess there is more demand for these types of coaster than all out thril machines, especially given the current cost crisis.
 
Very interesting indeed, and ParkFans are normally spot on with their leaks. No surprise that B&M are looking to diversify their coaster offering, you could argue they have fallen behind the likes of Intamin, Vekoma and Mack when it comes to the range of coasters offered.

The trains for this will be interesting, a new restraint style from B&M perhaps?

Also a dark ride section suggests that money will have to be spent on theming this time!
 
I rode Pipeline recently and thought I'd post a few thoughts here. Overall, I have mostly positive things to say but have a couple of negatives/room for improvement.

Clearly I had not experienced a ride like Pipeline before, and didn't know what to expect, but if I could describe the ride I would probably say it rides like a wing coaster but with more airtime. The Swarm is by far the ride with the most similar set of forces that I have experienced, minus the airtime moments. I thought the ride was comfortable, smooth, and offered an experience that was more exciting than what the layout looks like from off ride. SeaWorld have also done a nice job with the ride area with a custom surf-style soundtrack, landscaping, and a very nice water effect before the inversion.

Moving onto two negatives - one for SeaWorld and one for B&M. I do feel as if the landscaping and overall vibe of the area is lost a bit in the final section of queue line which is a little bland, albeit offering nice views of the ride. Secondly, the vests on the ride definitely have the tightness issue associated with some of the older wing coasters. I'm not sure why this is the case as the newer wing coasters have fixed the issue, but I would definitely like them to look at remedying this in the future.

Overall, a very solid ride and a great addition to SWO. I'd say it's not as good as Mako, but for me places a solid #2 in the park's coaster lineup.
 
Thanks for the review @MakoMania

I'm curious to understand how the ride experience differs to a standard B&M stand up ride.

The whole stand-up thing always felt like a gimmick and not a very interesting one.

I didn't particularly enjoy the older ones, iron Wolf in particular was horrible. It just felt like it was trying to do too many things within such a small space. On the other hand, Riddler at Magic Mountain is enormous and those huge elements seemed like a good fit for the format.
 
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