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VITAL STATISTICS

Try this on for size: What in the world does it take to build the tallest and fastest roller coaster on planet Earth? The folks at Cedar Point amusement park & resort know first-hand about the tedious construction of the 310-foot-tall, 92-mph "giga-coaster" called Millennium ForceTM, which opened to the general public on Saturday, May 13. Two-year planning, design and development phase Seven-month construction project and two-month testing and inspection process 9,400 yards of concrete for 226 footers &endash; or 262,000 feet -nearly 50 miles- of sidewalk. Talk about a long walk! 226 footers, with the largest ones measuring 56 feet wide by 56 feet long and five feet deep &endash; thatís about the size of a 3,000-square-foot house with a "crawl space" five feet deep! 229 pieces of individual track sections, topping the scale between 11,000-17,000 pounds each! 226 massive silver support columns; plus 2,413 steel pipe supports 175 truckloads of steel delivered to Cedar Point &endash; what a haul! 19,000 bolts &endash; howíd you like to tighten those up? Five cranes used on construction project &endash; tallest one stretching a whopping 360 feet tall! 19 tons is the weight of one Millennium Force TM train, which is equivalent to the weight of three African elephants! Whoa!!! 360 wheels -- 3 trains with 9 cars each; the first car of each train has 24 wheels; the remaining eight cars have 12 each for a total of 120 wheels per train. 1,100 feet of elevator cable for the prototype "lift system" 120 construction workers and project managers One 15-out-of-10-on-the-thrill-meter-world-record-breaking-"giga-coaster!"