speed vs. acceleration.

So, I was watching tv the other night and a commerical for disney's ride "tower of terror" came on. At some point they say that the ride will "drop you faster than the speed of gravity" and I think to myself no, that's not what they said, no company would be stupid enough to use that in their advertising campaign. So, i looked it up online and sure enough, they are. And it just got me thinking about what they really meant.

When they say "Faster than the speed of gravity" do they mean faster than 9.8 m/s instead of 9.8 m/s^2? But in free-fall, as long as the ride is longer than one second, it should be going that quickly. Although, maybe this is speical because most rides are not in true free-fall, roller coasters are slowed down by friction and whatnot. However, shouldn't this "tower of terror" ride be slowed as well?

But I really think that they mean that the ride accellerated faster than gravity. my theory is magnets, electromagnets that are powerful enough to pull overcome the force of friction and actually make particles accelerate faster than normal gravity would allow for.

anyway, this kind of changed from my original topic, which was to bash disney for allowing "Speed of gravity" to enter a commercial. their physicists should be ashamed.