Superman: Escape from Krypton top speed of 100 mph
Superman: Escape from Krypton top speed of 100 mph, Superman Escape from Krypton did not begin life with that name. In 1995, Six Flags Magic Mountain did not get any new rides. The reason was because they were focusing their efforts on building their brand new water park, Hurricane Harbor, right next door. With that project successfully launched, they turned their attention to making a very loud statement in 1996. In standard Six Flags fashion, they announced that they were going to build the world’s tallest and fastest roller coaster and Superman: The Escape was born.
Designed by Intamin, Superman Escape from Krypton is a 900′ long dual-track, launched shuttle coaster that goes 100 MPH and climbs a 415′ tower before free falling back down and returning to the station. The ride was built in 1996 at a cost of $20,000,000 and was due to open that Memorial Day weekend. However, technical difficulties prevented that from happening, but the ride did finally open to the public as Superman: The Escape on 15 Mar 1997. The ride remained pretty much untouched until July 2010, when it was closed with no explanation. It was later learned that it was going to undergo a complete refurbishment and reopen with new cars that face backwards, along with the new name of Superman Escape from Krypton.
This first photo is the only one I have of the way Superman used to look. It was taken a few years ago, from the Sky Tower on my cell phone, long before I ever even considered starting this blog. However, it still shows the way the ride used to look. The entrance plaza had the Superman logo in the concrete, but it was very subtle and blended in. The station was made to look like Superman’s “Fortress of Solitude” and had no signage other than a very basic Superman logo. The maintenance area for the two tracks was open on top and exposed to the elements, and the entire track and tower were an extremely bland grey color.
During the transformation from Superman: The Escape to Superman Escape from Krypton, they ended up covering the maintenance area. Although it’s not completely sealed and protected from the elements, it does provide much needed shade for those who have to work back there in the hot summer months.
Another nice change which didn’t require anything more than a little time and paint is the coloring of the plaza logo. This makes a huge visual difference.
The most noticeable change was the new paint job on the track and tower. Holy cow, it’s gorgeous! This is now giving the Sky Tower a run for its money as the most prominent feature in the park’s skyline. The red top stands out like a beacon for miles. Even the moon looks tiny next to it.
Bigger and more noticeable, the new Superman Escape from Krypton logo looks great:
All of the fencing around the plaza area got some new paint as well. Once it was all put together, the entire package came out really nice. The actual entrance is the shadowed area you see directly underneath the sign. The exit path comes out on the righthand side, behind that giant Coke bottle. That’s the same path you will use for the Flash Pass and wheelchair entrance, which I’ll cover later:
When the refurbished ride opened back up to the public in 2011, the lines were crazy long. It backed out of the building, all the way around the left side of the plaza, and then partially down the hill. If you know the layout of the park, you know that is a seriously long line for this ride:
When you walk through the entrance, you must choose which side you would like to ride, the right or left. During the off-season and slow days, you won’t have a choice. They’ll block off one of the sides with a trash can and only run one side:
Once you choose a side, there is a long tunnel making its way down each side of the ride building to the loading area. This is the right side. With the flash, you can see how dirty and grungy the walls are. However, most people don’t ever see that and I’ll explain why shortly. At the very end of this tunnel, where you can see the green glow, is the final staging area before boarding the ride. There is a door on the right, just before getting there, that leads to the exit path outside. This is the Flash Pass entry:
Because it’s Superman’s ice fortress, they usually keep it ice cold inside, which makes it a great line to wait in during the very hot summer months. This next photo is the final staging area. Riders are funneled into four lanes which feed directly onto the ride once the doors open. You can think of the doors as the air gates. The graphics on the doors tell you how many riders per dispatch. Lane 1 only seats two people. That’s the very back row of the car and is desirable because there are no outside arm guards. Lanes 2, 3, and 4 all seat four people, but the outside riders will have their outside arm restrained by an arm guard. The open door also feeds into the outside exit path and is the wheelchair entry:
Remember the dirty walls from earlier, but I said most people would never see them? That’s because everything inside the fortress is lit up with an emerald glow. It is meant to be the planet Krypton, full of the green crystal Kryptonite, which is known to be Superman’s only weakness. This is where the name Escape from Krypton comes from:
This next photo shows the opposite side of the doors from above. The Emergency Exit door was the small blue door you saw in the above photo. The employees use this door to go back and forth between the launch and queue areas. Door #1, right next to it, feeds into the very back row, which only has two seats. The ride launches backwards, so it will actually exit the station to the left from this angle:
Here you can see how the arm guards are attached to the outside of the restraints:
This is what the front of one of the cars looks like:
This is what the front of the other car looks like:
This is the maintenance area that I pointed out from the aerial photo earlier. You can see that the new covering isn’t much more than a mesh fabric, but I’m sure it keeps the temperatures down quite a bit in this area:
This is the launch tunnel. The new cars are a bit wider than the old cars, making it possible for people to touch the walls, so that is why the arm guards were added. In the blink of an eye you are shot outside the tunnel and down the 600′ of horizontal track, reaching speeds up to 100 MPH in just 7 seconds:
The cars move through the use of Linear Synchronous Motors, or LSMs, located along the track. Each motor, when powered with electricity, generates a strong electromagnetic field. The cars have very powerful rare earth magnets mounted underneath them. Each LSM has a very strong attraction to the car’s magnets, pulling the cars towards it. As the car passes over it, the opposite occurs and the magnets repel the LSM, pushing the car away towards the next LSM. The next LSM is powered and the cycle repeats itself. As the car passes each LSM, its speed increases. All of the LSMs are programmed with a very exact timing sequence to allow the car to reach its maximum speed.
If something goes wrong and one of the LSMs doesn’t fire, or the timing of when they fire is off, the car won’t reach it’s maximum speed and it won’t go as far or as high as it should. This following video is an example of a failed launch I happened to capture as they were testing the new cars with water dummies. You’ll hear the car approaching, but it never makes it up the tower due to lack of speed. You’ll see it slowly roll backwards back down the track. They had to winch it back to the LSMs to get it back to the station:
In this next photo, a car had just been launched out of the station. Each pair of the white strips that you see on the track is an LSM. As you can see, it takes a lot of them to get a 5+ ton car up to 100 MPH. My understanding is that the white buildings between the tracks contain all of the electrical equipment necessary to power this ride. I’ve also heard that this ride consumes more power than any other ride in the park, which makes sense since there’s much more than a simple lift hill motor. It also looks like there is a small heat pump located outside each building, so I assume that the insides get very hot and the air conditioning is used to keep everything cool and working properly:
This is what the track and power stations look like from the ground:
The white rectangles are the LSMs that the car passes over to pick up speed. You should also note that Superman Escape from Krypton does not run on traditional round roller coaster rails. Instead, the track is basically a steel I-beam, and the car is affixed to the top portion of the beam. This gives the car a jet-like scream as it races down the track:
At the end of the horizontal run, the car is at its maximum speed and quickly goes vertical, up to the top the 415′ tower. There is approximately 200′ of vertical track to climb. This stretch of track is called the “Zone of Weightlessness” because once you reach the top you’ll be at zero G’s, or basically weightless, and gravity takes over. You’ll be completely weightless for approximately 6 1/2 seconds as you free fall back down. You will speed back up to 92 MPH while falling, which will carry you all the way back to the station. The car cannot go any higher than you see in the following photo because there is a strip of powerful magnets mounted to the track that will repel the magnets on the car and force it back down. It’s a safety mechanism to prevent the car from going too high. I don’t have a picture of it, but you can also see the back of the massive Superman logo attached to the other side of the tower. It’s internally lit and shines at night for everyone passing on the I-5 freeway below to see:
As the cars return to the station, the LSMs fire in reverse order slowing the cars back down. In the extremely unlikely situation in which all power is lost after a car has already been launched, the same emergency magnets that are at the top of the tower can be found in the maintenance area on the other side of the loading area, stopping the car abruptly but safely. If you scroll back up to the maintenance area picture, you’ll see the twin rows of magnets built into the track. Here is a car returning after a successful ride:
Before the new cars arrived, they were using the old cars for testing purposes. You can see in this next photo the 15 seat, forward facing arrangement of the old car. Notice that the four seats across pretty much fit within the yellow track. If you look at the previous photo, you’ll notice that the car is definitely wider and the outside seats actually extend over the yellow track, which is why the arm guards were necessary for protection through the tunnel. There were rumors that the park may one day reintroduce one of the old cars, giving guests the option of riding forward or backwards:
It’s not still there, but the following ride specifications for Superman: The Escape used to be on display in the Magic of the Mountain Museum. It gives all the details on how the technology works and all the specs for the ride. I really wish all parks would do this for all their rides. Maybe it’s just the geek in me, but I find this very interesting:
Please keep in mind that these are the specs for the old cars. The specs for the new cars have not been published. I find it funny that they list the capacity at 1,800 riders per hour. With 30 riders per launch, between both cars, that’s 60 launches of each car per hour, or one every minute. I can’t see even the most experienced ride op crew that ever existed pulling that off. I’d be a very happy camper if they were able to get half that throughput, a launch every two minutes. Unfortunately, my experience is usually a few minutes between each launch. If they’re only running one side, you can cut those numbers in half again.
Once back in the station, all riders exit towards the center and make their way through a turnstile as the doors open on the other side to let the next batch of guests in:
Once through the turnstile, there is a stairway leading down:
You turn right at the bottom of the stairs and pass underneath the right track. On the other side, you hang another right and back up another flight of stairs:
Once you’re on the exit path, you’ll notice an alcove on the right where the door for the wheelchair access is. This is the open door you saw in the photo of the queue above:
Looking back down the exit path, you can see where the last flight of stairs from the ride exit come back up. The wheelchair access alcove is down on the left, just before the stairs. This door is the Flash Pass entrance. This puts you in line at the end of the ice tunnel:
In another flashback to the ride’s early days, here is one of the uniforms the Superman ride operators would wear. This was on display in the museum as well:
Another gem I found in the museum was this old concept art for the ride, before they settled on the Superman theme. It was going to be called the Velocetron. With the exception of the multiple corridors down the side, the layout is almost identical to what was built. You enter on the right and choose a side. You then walk down a long corridor to the four lanes that then feed into the ride loading area. You can also see the exit stairs in the middle on the left, leading under the right track then back up on the side of the building, right next to the alcove with the wheelchair entrance:
What do you think of Superman Escape from Krypton at Six Flags Magic Mountain?. Is it better backwards or forwards?
Designed by Intamin, Superman Escape from Krypton is a 900′ long dual-track, launched shuttle coaster that goes 100 MPH and climbs a 415′ tower before free falling back down and returning to the station. The ride was built in 1996 at a cost of $20,000,000 and was due to open that Memorial Day weekend. However, technical difficulties prevented that from happening, but the ride did finally open to the public as Superman: The Escape on 15 Mar 1997. The ride remained pretty much untouched until July 2010, when it was closed with no explanation. It was later learned that it was going to undergo a complete refurbishment and reopen with new cars that face backwards, along with the new name of Superman Escape from Krypton.
This first photo is the only one I have of the way Superman used to look. It was taken a few years ago, from the Sky Tower on my cell phone, long before I ever even considered starting this blog. However, it still shows the way the ride used to look. The entrance plaza had the Superman logo in the concrete, but it was very subtle and blended in. The station was made to look like Superman’s “Fortress of Solitude” and had no signage other than a very basic Superman logo. The maintenance area for the two tracks was open on top and exposed to the elements, and the entire track and tower were an extremely bland grey color.
During the transformation from Superman: The Escape to Superman Escape from Krypton, they ended up covering the maintenance area. Although it’s not completely sealed and protected from the elements, it does provide much needed shade for those who have to work back there in the hot summer months.
Another nice change which didn’t require anything more than a little time and paint is the coloring of the plaza logo. This makes a huge visual difference.
The most noticeable change was the new paint job on the track and tower. Holy cow, it’s gorgeous! This is now giving the Sky Tower a run for its money as the most prominent feature in the park’s skyline. The red top stands out like a beacon for miles. Even the moon looks tiny next to it.
Bigger and more noticeable, the new Superman Escape from Krypton logo looks great:
All of the fencing around the plaza area got some new paint as well. Once it was all put together, the entire package came out really nice. The actual entrance is the shadowed area you see directly underneath the sign. The exit path comes out on the righthand side, behind that giant Coke bottle. That’s the same path you will use for the Flash Pass and wheelchair entrance, which I’ll cover later:
When the refurbished ride opened back up to the public in 2011, the lines were crazy long. It backed out of the building, all the way around the left side of the plaza, and then partially down the hill. If you know the layout of the park, you know that is a seriously long line for this ride:
When you walk through the entrance, you must choose which side you would like to ride, the right or left. During the off-season and slow days, you won’t have a choice. They’ll block off one of the sides with a trash can and only run one side:
Once you choose a side, there is a long tunnel making its way down each side of the ride building to the loading area. This is the right side. With the flash, you can see how dirty and grungy the walls are. However, most people don’t ever see that and I’ll explain why shortly. At the very end of this tunnel, where you can see the green glow, is the final staging area before boarding the ride. There is a door on the right, just before getting there, that leads to the exit path outside. This is the Flash Pass entry:
Because it’s Superman’s ice fortress, they usually keep it ice cold inside, which makes it a great line to wait in during the very hot summer months. This next photo is the final staging area. Riders are funneled into four lanes which feed directly onto the ride once the doors open. You can think of the doors as the air gates. The graphics on the doors tell you how many riders per dispatch. Lane 1 only seats two people. That’s the very back row of the car and is desirable because there are no outside arm guards. Lanes 2, 3, and 4 all seat four people, but the outside riders will have their outside arm restrained by an arm guard. The open door also feeds into the outside exit path and is the wheelchair entry:
Remember the dirty walls from earlier, but I said most people would never see them? That’s because everything inside the fortress is lit up with an emerald glow. It is meant to be the planet Krypton, full of the green crystal Kryptonite, which is known to be Superman’s only weakness. This is where the name Escape from Krypton comes from:
This next photo shows the opposite side of the doors from above. The Emergency Exit door was the small blue door you saw in the above photo. The employees use this door to go back and forth between the launch and queue areas. Door #1, right next to it, feeds into the very back row, which only has two seats. The ride launches backwards, so it will actually exit the station to the left from this angle:
Here you can see how the arm guards are attached to the outside of the restraints:
This is what the front of one of the cars looks like:
This is what the front of the other car looks like:
This is the maintenance area that I pointed out from the aerial photo earlier. You can see that the new covering isn’t much more than a mesh fabric, but I’m sure it keeps the temperatures down quite a bit in this area:
This is the launch tunnel. The new cars are a bit wider than the old cars, making it possible for people to touch the walls, so that is why the arm guards were added. In the blink of an eye you are shot outside the tunnel and down the 600′ of horizontal track, reaching speeds up to 100 MPH in just 7 seconds:
The cars move through the use of Linear Synchronous Motors, or LSMs, located along the track. Each motor, when powered with electricity, generates a strong electromagnetic field. The cars have very powerful rare earth magnets mounted underneath them. Each LSM has a very strong attraction to the car’s magnets, pulling the cars towards it. As the car passes over it, the opposite occurs and the magnets repel the LSM, pushing the car away towards the next LSM. The next LSM is powered and the cycle repeats itself. As the car passes each LSM, its speed increases. All of the LSMs are programmed with a very exact timing sequence to allow the car to reach its maximum speed.
If something goes wrong and one of the LSMs doesn’t fire, or the timing of when they fire is off, the car won’t reach it’s maximum speed and it won’t go as far or as high as it should. This following video is an example of a failed launch I happened to capture as they were testing the new cars with water dummies. You’ll hear the car approaching, but it never makes it up the tower due to lack of speed. You’ll see it slowly roll backwards back down the track. They had to winch it back to the LSMs to get it back to the station:
In this next photo, a car had just been launched out of the station. Each pair of the white strips that you see on the track is an LSM. As you can see, it takes a lot of them to get a 5+ ton car up to 100 MPH. My understanding is that the white buildings between the tracks contain all of the electrical equipment necessary to power this ride. I’ve also heard that this ride consumes more power than any other ride in the park, which makes sense since there’s much more than a simple lift hill motor. It also looks like there is a small heat pump located outside each building, so I assume that the insides get very hot and the air conditioning is used to keep everything cool and working properly:
This is what the track and power stations look like from the ground:
The white rectangles are the LSMs that the car passes over to pick up speed. You should also note that Superman Escape from Krypton does not run on traditional round roller coaster rails. Instead, the track is basically a steel I-beam, and the car is affixed to the top portion of the beam. This gives the car a jet-like scream as it races down the track:
At the end of the horizontal run, the car is at its maximum speed and quickly goes vertical, up to the top the 415′ tower. There is approximately 200′ of vertical track to climb. This stretch of track is called the “Zone of Weightlessness” because once you reach the top you’ll be at zero G’s, or basically weightless, and gravity takes over. You’ll be completely weightless for approximately 6 1/2 seconds as you free fall back down. You will speed back up to 92 MPH while falling, which will carry you all the way back to the station. The car cannot go any higher than you see in the following photo because there is a strip of powerful magnets mounted to the track that will repel the magnets on the car and force it back down. It’s a safety mechanism to prevent the car from going too high. I don’t have a picture of it, but you can also see the back of the massive Superman logo attached to the other side of the tower. It’s internally lit and shines at night for everyone passing on the I-5 freeway below to see:
As the cars return to the station, the LSMs fire in reverse order slowing the cars back down. In the extremely unlikely situation in which all power is lost after a car has already been launched, the same emergency magnets that are at the top of the tower can be found in the maintenance area on the other side of the loading area, stopping the car abruptly but safely. If you scroll back up to the maintenance area picture, you’ll see the twin rows of magnets built into the track. Here is a car returning after a successful ride:
Before the new cars arrived, they were using the old cars for testing purposes. You can see in this next photo the 15 seat, forward facing arrangement of the old car. Notice that the four seats across pretty much fit within the yellow track. If you look at the previous photo, you’ll notice that the car is definitely wider and the outside seats actually extend over the yellow track, which is why the arm guards were necessary for protection through the tunnel. There were rumors that the park may one day reintroduce one of the old cars, giving guests the option of riding forward or backwards:
It’s not still there, but the following ride specifications for Superman: The Escape used to be on display in the Magic of the Mountain Museum. It gives all the details on how the technology works and all the specs for the ride. I really wish all parks would do this for all their rides. Maybe it’s just the geek in me, but I find this very interesting:
Please keep in mind that these are the specs for the old cars. The specs for the new cars have not been published. I find it funny that they list the capacity at 1,800 riders per hour. With 30 riders per launch, between both cars, that’s 60 launches of each car per hour, or one every minute. I can’t see even the most experienced ride op crew that ever existed pulling that off. I’d be a very happy camper if they were able to get half that throughput, a launch every two minutes. Unfortunately, my experience is usually a few minutes between each launch. If they’re only running one side, you can cut those numbers in half again.
Once back in the station, all riders exit towards the center and make their way through a turnstile as the doors open on the other side to let the next batch of guests in:
Once through the turnstile, there is a stairway leading down:
You turn right at the bottom of the stairs and pass underneath the right track. On the other side, you hang another right and back up another flight of stairs:
Once you’re on the exit path, you’ll notice an alcove on the right where the door for the wheelchair access is. This is the open door you saw in the photo of the queue above:
Looking back down the exit path, you can see where the last flight of stairs from the ride exit come back up. The wheelchair access alcove is down on the left, just before the stairs. This door is the Flash Pass entrance. This puts you in line at the end of the ice tunnel:
In another flashback to the ride’s early days, here is one of the uniforms the Superman ride operators would wear. This was on display in the museum as well:
Another gem I found in the museum was this old concept art for the ride, before they settled on the Superman theme. It was going to be called the Velocetron. With the exception of the multiple corridors down the side, the layout is almost identical to what was built. You enter on the right and choose a side. You then walk down a long corridor to the four lanes that then feed into the ride loading area. You can also see the exit stairs in the middle on the left, leading under the right track then back up on the side of the building, right next to the alcove with the wheelchair entrance:
What do you think of Superman Escape from Krypton at Six Flags Magic Mountain?. Is it better backwards or forwards?
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