The Millenium Force Essay, Research Paper

Millennium Force

The Millennium Force is located in Sandusky, Ohio at ?Americas Roller Coaster Park?, Cedar Point. Standing at 310 feet tall and traveling at speeds up to 92 mph it is the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world. It is said to be the first giga-coaster or the first to break the 300 ft tall barrier. The 25 million dollar coaster has a team of 120 workers building it, and will be open to ride May 13, this year Cedar Point?s opening day. The statistics alone show how amazing the Millennium Force really is.

Peaking at 310 feet in the air its longest vertical drop is 300 ft at an angle of 80 degrees, 10 degrees more and it would be a straight drop! Its second hill stands at 169 ft while the third exceeds that to 182 ft for a combined length of 6,595 ft of steel tubular track. It travels at about 92 mph for a ride length approximately two minutes and forty-five seconds long. The Millennium Force is an out and back coaster, which means the train leaves the station goes through its routine and returns back to the same station. Also it contains such features as 122 degree banked turns, two tunnels it travels through and a new magnetic breaking system. Its ride capacity is approximately 1,600 riders per hour, using three 36 passenger trains. You can?t even imagine how much time and effort went in to the actual planning and building of it.

It took two years alone to plan out the design and development of the coaster, then another seven months construction project and finally the two month testing and inspection process. It also required 9,400 yds of concrete for 226 footers or 262,000 ft, which is nearly 50 miles of sidewalk. All together it ended up having 229 pieces of individual track sections weighing at about 11,000 to 17,000 pounds each. Supporting this monument of track is 226 massive silver support columns plus an additional 2,413 steel pipe supports. At the end 175 truck loads of steel were delivered to Cedar Point requiring the usage of 19,000 bolts. Five cranes were involved in the actual construction, the tallest one stretching to a height of 360 ft tall. Finally they built the trains, and found that one Millennium Force train weighs 19 tons which is equivalent to the weight of 3 elephants. This is all pretty amazing but not as amazing as the 10 world records it breaks.

The Millennium Force breaks world records such as being the tallest and fastest roller coaster with the longest drop. Its also adds on to Cedar Points already large collection of rides and roller coasters, breaking two more records, but probably the Millennium Force?s greatest achievement is topping 300 ft. At a sky scraping 310 ft tall it is taller than the Statue of Liberty. Other interesting facts about it, is it would take 744 cans of Pepsi stacked one by one on top of one another to reach the height of the coaster, and traveling at speeds of 92 mph it breaks the legal speed limit for most states, which is 65, by 27 mph. The Millennium Force sets the standards for all coasters to come and I hope some day I get to ride it.

Bibliography

www.CedarPoint.com