The Nightmare that is 5HOP 5!
Hi all! (No, we're not done yet!)
I'm sure many of you are anxious to see results of this year's Five Hours of Power V. I figured I'd make a quick post while I'm finishing up my portion reviews and ratings, because this year is proving to be quite interesting.
Each year, Tom and I propose ideas to each other for a new challenge. We decided to try the "spaghetti bowl" contest idea for our fifth installment. As you know, we requested at least one mile of track inside a boundary. Initially, the plans seemed doable, as he proved to us all that it's possible to fit two Premier LIM bowls within our template.
"So that's the lagoon by Manic. Those two octagons are correctly scaled Flight Of Fear show buildings. Flight of Fear has ~2700 feet of track. [...] There's enough room there for 2 full spaghetti bowls and then some, which means plenty of room to get a mile of track (given that some will spill out side of the lake." — Ride_Op
Of course, this seemed quite difficult to achieve in five hours — but that wasn't new to this year's drafting session. I've previously been floored by the results of our challenges in the past. 5HOP 3 in particular seemed impossibly difficult, requiring two complete coasters and a terrain/template challenge. Yet, we had amazing entries, two of which were so close that single points split the hairs of TheCodeMaster (2nd) and docoaster (1st) to determine the winner.
Then comes this year. Welp... the struggle is real, and I think we hit y'all's breaking point!
Disqualifications were handed out like candy this year. If you made it to the final round, consider that an accomplishment in of itself. At this point, I can tell you that over half of the entries we received this year did not even survive to a proper judging round! 😱
Of those that survived, many had major technical failures. Where to start? Well, how about some massive clearance failures, with supports going right through the track and trains. Or swathes of track missing supports entirely. Finally, a couple rides that didn't start at all due to block failures. Oof!
Creatively, I think this contest rewarded "efficient" coaster types that cater to the meta. Multi-launch steel coasters proved to be the go-to, with lift-hill rides facing severe challenges. Most were simply trying to hit the length requirement through quantity, because they simply had to survive to the judging round! Though that does make for a tense challenge, I think we lost some uniqueness and variety that we had previously enjoyed in prior years.
Its safe to say that we underestimated the difficulty of making the equivalent of two Flight of Fears in five hours flat, fully supported and ready to go. Who'dda thunk??
So with that, I would like to say "thank you" for being our guinea pigs for how far we can push this contest. I think Tom and I can agree that we should look cranking the difficulty away from "11". Not only would we like to see more people have a chance at competing, but, well... functioning rides would be a start. 🙂
As far as progress goes, results are being finalized, and winners should be announced next week, assuming all goes to plan. Be on the lookout for new announcements, and stay frosty for Roundup 300!
~ disco / AJ