Back to the Trip Report Archive
Back to Dave's Adventures
Back to Dave's page.
"150 people wouldn't come visit MY office!"
At Jeff Pike's generous invitation, we joined the cattle call on Sunday morning to visit his office. We drove through the woods, over the river, through Sunbury, over the river again, around the mountain...and there it was, right across the street from where Jeff said it would be.
We made our way to the front door and entered. Inside, the hopefully-unnecessary legal matters were attended to, and the tour began.
I wasn't expecting much. GCII is a very small company which manufactures an extremely expensive product for very few customers. Furthermore, it is a product which is almost entirely fabricated at the customer's site. So what does a wood coaster manufacturer require of a headquarters? Particularly a manufacturer whose operations are spread between facilities several thousand miles apart? Offices for everyone, space for files and paperwork, room to have lunch on the odd days that someone is actually working in the office instead of in someone's park, right? Well, that's pretty much it. Jeff's office is up front, where he showed us the most recent photographs of the Thunderhead construction at Dollywood.
Next door is Chris Gray's office. Chris was downstairs showing other people around. Inside were some samples of his model building, and sheets and sheets detailing the logistics of building a new wood coaster. A ground plan diagram of Thunderhead occupied a large portion of the wall, highlighting indicating the portions of the ride already completed. Next to it, a large chart detailed every component, every process, and every stage of construction, detailing anticipated and actual dates, and again the highlighting to indicate visually what was done. At a careful glance, one can get a dramatic insight into the enormous task of constructing a single wood coaster.
The next room back was a conference room, where an image video played on a television, files and models lined the walls, and fresh doughnuts covered the conference table. We waited here for a few minutes until Chris was ready. He led us down to a ground-level basement (the building is built on a hill) and started by telling us about himself, showing us his rejected and accepted parts bin, and explaining...in not quite such blunt terms...that he is an extraordinarily picky procurement manager. It's necessary, of course. GCI's objective, regrdless of what you think of their designs, is to build the highest quality rides they possibly can...and that begins with the best materials they can use. In particular, GCI now supplies their own trains. But they do not have either a machine shop, nor a fabrication plant, nor an assembly staff. Outsourcing is a matter of necessity, with custom engineered castings, fabricated parts, and machined parts coming from an assortment of fabricators. These parts arrive in Sunbury, where Chris personally inspects every component, then assembles the parts to build the cars that make up the unique trains. The space appears to have been constructed as an auto repair facility, with an oil-change pit in the middle of the floor that looks like it is, conveniently, sized just right to allow access to the underside of a coaster train.
By supplying their own trains, GCII is able to provide every component of the coaster except for the control system. This also means that the track and train are an optimized system, and in fact Chris was telling us about how he had been taking measurements on the car frames recently to make sure that the train will be able to handle the INSANE roll rates (way-too-many degrees within a single car length) that will be featured on Thunderhead.
Car frames and related components were stacked around the room, but down at the end, a single car was nearly complete except for seats and lap bars. It will be their IAAPA display car, but I'm sure the partial assembly may have been partly for our benefit as well, to give us something recognizable to look at. Naturally, I seized the opportunity to examine it in microscopic detail. Their cars have some very interesting design elements, along with a basic geometry which should allow for smooth running and accurate tracking. Combine this with quality trackbuilding, and the result should be minimized maintenance requirements on ther track. In fact, Chris revealed that on one of their rides running these trains, after four years, not a single linear foot of track has been replaced. Considering that there are rides out there where portions have to be re-tracked several times a season, that's a pretty good record!
As expected, there wasn't a whole lot of place for Jeff and Chris to show us. But the GCII tour was a fantastic opportunity, and Chris and Jeff gave us a fascinating insight into the whole process of building a wood coaster. They also made a pretty convincing argument for why their product build quality could be better than anybody else's. It was a most interesting tour, and I thank GCI for extending their hospitality on a Sunday morning.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Next: Cedar Point (#12)
Back
to Trip Reports 2003
Back to the Trip Report Archive
Back to Dave's Adventures
Back to Dave's page.
