This article will give you a "ride" on "X," and an up-close look at it. I find it helpful to examine examples. This is the only Multi-Dimension coaster that comes with RCT2, so it's a good place to start learning about Multi-D's. The first question: does the spinning of the cars affect ride stats? To answer this, I built a copy of X without the spins. The stats of both coasters are shown here.

Based on this experiment, the answer is a resounding, "No." Spins get you style points only. If you are playing a scenario, you can afford to ignore them. So, our examination of "X" is an attempt to understand the usage of track elements in the design, and what constitutes good style in spins.

Figuring out X became something of a project. Six Flags tracks are locked - no construction operation is permitted. Since I don't have (yet) a track analysis tool for RCT2, the method I used was to pause the ride, take a screenshot, and copy what I saw. For these pictures, I changed the track and support colors to gray, to make it easier to see the cars.

A fact about the Multi-Dimension coaster that I missed when I originally wrote the article was that the cars start pointing backwards; unfortunately I did not notice this - thanks to Joker of RCT Station for pointing this out. I had to enlarge several screen shots to convince myself that this is true. I believe the lower shot indicates clearly that the peeps are on their backs, which means that they started the ride facing backwards. This basically makes using the terms "forwards" and "backwards" very confusing, since "forwards" referring to the coaster's direction is "backwards" referring to the orientation of the riders. To ease the understanding of this discussion, I have created a "cheat sheet" of angles and rider positions here.

Above: empty cars
Below: With peeps (note that they are on their backs)

Arrow indicates coaster's direction

In the 0-degree (upright) position, the cars lean somewhat, appearing to be at -45 degrees. The appearances of all angles are similarly offset. In the lift-hill picture above, the cars are at -45 degrees, even though they appear to be parallel to the track, -90 degrees. The initial backwards lean is the zero point for all rotation measurements. You are looking at the front of the cars. The riders are face up, looking at the sky.

At the top of the lift hill, the cars flip back up to zero degrees, so riders can see directly behind them.

The cars continue their spin to +90 degrees; the riders are facing down as they continue down the drop.

The spin continues, until the riders are facing forwards, head down, (+270 degrees) during the vertical drop. In both its vertical drops, X has riders with their heads down, looking backwards. This seems to me to be a rather compromising position for a vertical descent. Landing on one's head could be hazardous to health.

At the bottom of the vertical drop, the spin reverses to +90 degrees, so riders are again looking at the ground.

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