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SeaWorld Orlando | Pipeline: The Surf Coaster | B&M Surf Coaster | 2023

One of the coolest features of the ride for me is the bunny hill on the launch. The launch isn't overly intense, but the hill provides that first sensation of having the floor leave your feet all while continuing to accelerate. And they don't waste time launching. You stop for maybe a second and then it takes off.

The ride really shines in the S-bend hills/turns where the train goes into negative G and the seat rises while switching directions. The seats have quite a bit more vertical motion than I ever expected. And while the vests are definitely a bit stiff at the shoulders, I still found the ride to be a ton of fun.
 
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Do we know what kind of price tag is on one of these? I could see this work very well at a number of park but I imagine most of them don't have B&M budgets to work with😅
 
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I apologise for bumping the thread, but for anyone interested, I rode this for the first time today. 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 on 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://coasterforce.com/forums/threads/matt-n’s-frolic-in-florida-10th-24th-june-2023.46268/#post-1156031
 
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I rode Pipeline for the first time a couple days ago too on my holiday to Florida.

I really enjoyed the ride, it is a really interesting concept. My partner didn't really enjoy it though and I can agree with her perspective.

The vest restraints are so so tight, they are constantly pushing on your collar bones. Manta for example is nowhere near as tight in the sitting or flying position.

The "seat" is better than the old design in my opinion, didn't really cause any pain for me as a man 😅. The boarding process is interesting, as every seat pops up to their highest position which takes quite a lot of weight to push it down. Children are too light/weak to push them down. Ride ops sometimes help people but it's not ideal.

You push it down and it sorta stays down whilst you get into it. You pull the restraint down and then you can sort of control how high you are, the ride ops ask you to "stand tall" i.e. Put your feet back and stand up straight.

The launch feels powerful and good, the layout is cool. It's really fun to jump up at moments of airtime, your feet lift off the floor.

Its a fun ride, I can't imagine what a really tall layout would be like. Probably really terrifying as you feel really exposed.

The ride was annoyingly down for the first hour on my visit with no communication from the park which wasn't ideal.

Managed to ride it a few times later in the day with no queue. Oh and they have no ride ops batching so it's a complete free for all.

We need more of these rides but the vest restraints need sorting out as it just hurts a lot. It didn't ruin the ride for me but when I was back in the brake run it started hurting me.

With the jumping aspect I have pretty strong legs so wasn't bothered by the jumping but I think some people were struggling with the forces on their legs when landing back down on them. You do seem to land harder than just your body weight, it feels like the mechanisms weight pulls you down harder.
 
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With the jumping aspect I have pretty strong legs so wasn't bothered by the jumping but I think some people were struggling with the forces on their legs when landing back down on them. You do seem to land harder than just your body weight, it feels like the mechanisms weight pulls you down harder.
This part I'm kinda nervous about (not likely to ride it in a while cause expensive to go, but) if I were to ride it. My joints easily bend in the wrong direction and dislocate, especially my knees. I take it there's nothing really preventing you from going down further than your initial position at dispatch? So if I don't actively keep my knees bent for landing and I accidentally land straight legged there's a big risk for dislocation as there's the seats weight also pushing down?
 
This part I'm kinda nervous about (not likely to ride it in a while cause expensive to go, but) if I were to ride it. My joints easily bend in the wrong direction and dislocate, especially my knees. I take it there's nothing really preventing you from going down further than your initial position at dispatch? So if I don't actively keep my knees bent for landing and I accidentally land straight legged there's a big risk for dislocation as there's the seats weight also pushing down?
If you don't actively try jump about you should be fine. If you just ride it normally it shouldn't be an issue.
 
I rode this last night, it's hilarious, on each of the hills I was being lifted up off the floor, regardless of if I jumped or not, so you don't really need to try hard to get bonus air.

In particular, there's a twisted transition right towards the end that really flicks you up.
The jumping mechanism is stiffer than I thought, it felt more like raising a piece of gym equipment up and down rather than some bouncy thing.
The various turns have quite a bit of force, particularly the overbank turn right at the end of the layout.

Great fun!
 
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