B&M’s Wing Coaster would be the first new type from the company since 2002 when they debuted the flying coaster.  Since then, then innovation has come in the form of trains—making the dive coaster’s even more ridiculously wide (and floorless), and staggering the seats on hyper coaster trains to make things inconvenient for everyone involved (I still don’t really get this one).  But the ‘new’ wing coaster isn’t entirely new—back in 2002 Arrow stuck some seats on the side of a coaster track and then made them spin… when it worked anyway.  In 2007, Port Aventura opened the Intamin designed Furius Baco. Themed to the mythical god of wine (which seems appropriate for Intamin), this coaster launches to an impressive 84 mph before heading through some low corners, a tunnel, and the longest inline roll ever.  While the layout may leave quite a lot to be desired, the cantilevered seats added some extra thrill and extra pain from the excessive vibration.  Also in 2007, Intamin debuted the ZacSpin… like an Arrow 4-D just with no spinning and no corners.  While it hasn’t quite taken off like some might have expected, these offered some thrills in a small space.

For B&M’s version, they opted for the traditional chain lift and a few extra inversions, all variants on the corkscrew element.  Raptor opened to very positive reviews.  For 2012, three new wing coasters will debut.  Here’s a look at all 4 and a speculation to the quality of each from someone who’s ridden none and really has no basis to make these claims.  Enjoy.

Raptor, Gardaland, Italy

Photo courtesy of Gardaland

As the prototype wing coaster, the coaster was small and shorter than a lot of people expected.  That said, it did a lot in the 2500ft. of track.  From an underground station, the coaster climbs a lift hill into a steep, straight drop.  That about ends the straight track as the coaster then takes to tight corners and 3 inversions—a corkscrew, zero g roll, and inline twist.  The first two are relatively the same; one is just wider than the other.  The final inline twist, like Furius Baco, is very stretched, and taken at a speed slow enough for quite a lot of hang time (this seems like a trend lately).  While nothing stands out as remarkably new or interesting on the layout, the huge trains make for a lot more dynamic course having a much larger rotation in the inversions and more movement in and out of banking in the corners.  The real superlatives on this coaster come in the theming.  Gardaland took note of the coaster type and adjusted the theme accordingly to accentuate the interesting seating arrangement.  The theme creeps closer to the track than most parks seem to go, which must give a fantastic effect on the ride.  Most notable seems to be a large coaster train shaped rectangle of metal theming that the train just barely slots through exiting the inline twist.  Even the train comes with a theme!  This is how theming should be done.  Thankfully foregoing the gigantic bulky restraints found on most B&M models, this coaster uses a system similar to the flying coaster with a nice padded vest and grab bars moved out from the body.  Early reviews seem to place this coaster very high, with the trademark B&M smoothness helping to push those comments forward (of course, compared to the rest at Gardaland, you can’t help but give this coaster some high marks).  With the bar set rather high, the class of 2012 will have a lot to live up on.

Swarm, Thorpe Park, Great Britain

Photo courtesy of Thorpe Park

Thorpe Park is awesome at overhyping itself.  But thistime the hype could be founded.  Swarm will be the park’s 2^nd B&M after Nemesis Inferno, the halfhearted attempt to replicate the popular Nemesis at another Tussaud’s park.  Swarm will push up on all the stats of Raptor, being a little taller, a little faster, and having 2 extra inversions.  Rather than include a traditional first drop, Swarm cuts right to the chase with an inversion.  Pulling a trick that hasn’t been seen since the infamous Drachen Fire, the ride’s first drop is the inversion… a roll into a dive loop right off the lift hill.  From there, the coaster is essentially a string of inversions.. zero g roll, inclined loop, corner, corkscrew, corner, stretched inline twist.  It’s not a long layout by any stretch, but it has a good number of twists shoved in there.  This coaster will feature a post-apocalyptic theme with crashed vehicles and junk strewn around.  There’s no real detail on how the coaster will interact with this theme, though I sure hope it’s better than Saw.

X-Flight, Six Flags Great America, Illinois

Photo courtesy of Six Flags Great America

Because putting X in front of things makes everything cooler, Six Flags Great America brings X-Flight.  This coaster also comes with lots of added coaster industry symbolism.  Iron Wolf, B&M’s first ever coaster is leaving to make way for B&M’s newest.  Great America was also the site of another B&M first—the inverted coaster (they missed being the first to have a B&M mega coaster by 2 months).  So X-Flight comes to the park with Circle of Life probably being played in the background.  To the layout, this coaster is pretty easily compared with Swarm.  The coaster will feature the same first drop dive loop and zero g roll and a rather similar layout, though X-Flight appears to be longer.  There will still be 5 inversions, though the inclined loop is forgone in favor of an immelman.  The corkscrew is also more zero-g-like on X-flight.  As for theme, X-Flight is about, well, flying.  Of course, this is Six Flags so not much should be expected.  That said, they nearly make up all of the points lost by putting the inline twist inversion through a themed control tower so the train is vertical while passing through the inversion.   From what’s been shown of all 4 of these coasters so far, this wins best use of theme to accentuate the train.  Of course, after the control tower there’s not much else to look at for this ride aside from a quick tunnel through a hanger type theme.

Wild Eagle, Dollywood, Tennessee

Photo courtesy of Dollywood

Leave it to Dollywood to do things differently.  Wild Eagle is the most recently announced Wing Coaster, done in a huge fireworks celebration in downtown Pigeon Forge.  This one is different… very different from the other three.  For one, it looks like it could be just a regular floorless or sitdown coaster.  The layout is oddly (and maybe unfortunately) traditional.  A big 210ft. lift hill leads to a 135ft. drop into a loop (a coaster type first!), zero g roll, immelman, and corkscrew.   After taking those 4 inversions in succession, there’s a small hill into a figure 8 finale.  From there it’s done, though there’s probably a lot still left in the tank after that size lift hill.  On paper this coaster looks somewhat disappointing when compared with the other things a Wing Coaster can do… especially what one could do with that height.  But the thing to remember is that this is Dollywood.  An early picture posted to the website shows a number of supports sticking up right in the middle of a group of trees.  Whereas most parks will cut down and probably burn anything that’s growing in a mile radius of their construction site, Dollywood is taking the time to preserve the natural landscape around the coaster.  The lift hill will be built into the terrain and many parts of the coaster will run along with the natural slopes of the hill.  Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much to say in terms of theme.  Unlike their last coaster venture of Mystery Mine, this theme seems to stop at the station.  We can hope that there will be last minute touches of theme here and there, though the coaster itself should be enough to carry this addition!

So let’s compare what stats are actually out there:

All that remains is to decide which one is better.  And I’m not sure I can do that.  Usually in a set of coasters there’s at least one that lags behind and one that seems to be the best of the rest.  But not here as each seems have features that could be used to make a case for the best.  Raptor has fantastic theming.  Swarm and X-Flight will have a lot of inversions and the unique first drop.  Swarm should have decent theming as well.  Wild Eagle has the height and speed.  I think if I had to choose I might say this is the first time ever a ride at Thorpe might actually be the best of its type.  With the layout and the theming I think it could end up being really great.  But the theming  has to be really great since the layout length is very much lacking.  As unoriginal as it might be, I think Wild Eagle is going to have a great layout for the views of the park and landscape around it.  Raptor has the best layout for interaction with the scenery.  X-Flight has the layout and that fantastic sideways pass-through.  You could really make the case that this is one of the first times with a set of coasters you can’t pick a best or a worst…

…which all in all I’d say is a win for us.

On August 18^th, Canada’s Wonderland introduced Leviathan.  It will be the biggest and fastest coaster in Canada and brings with it the notable title of being B&Ms first coaster over 300ft.  A few years ago a giga from B&M would be unheard of—unless you had 50 million dollars and were somewhat crazy.  But now we see this hyper coaster, topping out at 306ft. with a long sweeping out and back layout with airtime hills.  At most any park this would be an incredible addition—dominating the skyline and offering the newest and biggest thrills in the park.  But this isn’t most any park.. it’s Canada’s Wonderland.

In 2008, Canada’s Wonderland made the huge announcement for Behemoth.  Canada had never seen anything like it.  230 ft., 77 mph, 5318 ft. long—it broke all the records in Canada.  The skyline of the park which had been dominated by the likes of such wonders as an SLC and an Arrow suspended coaster now had a giant B&M hyper coaster towering over the rest of the attractions.  With incredible amounts of airtime and a new stadium style setback seating, Behemoth opened to rave reviews.  And all was well in the world.

Did these two paragraphs seem similar?  Well let’s compare:

The stats alone show how similar these rides are, but let’s take a look at the layouts:

Behemoth has a nice out and back design—straight drop, far turnaround, midcourse brakes, twists, brakes.  And lots and lots of airtime in between.   Leviathan is like the first half of Carowind’s Intimidator took some steroids.  The layout is nearly the same in terms of overall flow.  But comparing Wonderland’s two layouts together side by side, it’s startlingly similar.  You have to imagine a bunch of guys sitting around in design meetings pointing at a picture of Behemoth and going “that, just bigger.”  Now there’s nothing wrong with that.. but usually when you do that you’re looking at another park.

All this is said not to put down these coasters—Behemoth is wonderful and I’m sure Leviathan will be as well.  The purpose of this is just to wonder where the creativity went.  Essentially to ask “what were you thinking!?”  Canada’s Wonderland spent $28 million on this coaster.  That’s easily pushing the upper end of coaster prices.  At that price we can pretty much say that they could’ve had anything they wanted.  So rather than getting another big airtime coaster focused on speed it seems to me like there’s plenty of other things 28 million could have bought:

•          B&M Dive Machine
•          Intamin Giga Coaster like I305 that does something different than Behemoth
•          Intamin or B&M wing coaster
•          Anything at all that has a launch stronger than Stunt Coaster [hint: that’s everything]
•          Any large looping coaster: floorless, sitdown, etc.
•          2 or 3 more SLCs scattered around the park

For a park with a great mix of flat rides, their coaster selection has always come off as something of a mystery considering they were all decidedly average.  Until Behemoth.  Now, it seems like there ought to be some variety for the next big purchase.  But apparently there’s something to be said about sticking with what works.  Until then, we enjoy the coaster while lamenting about all the cool, unique other rides we could have had.

Of course, we can’t just pick on Canada’s Wonderland… we can pick on Canada as a whole instead!

It seems head-scratching coaster choices aren’t limited to Toronto.  In 2010, La Ronde debuted Ednor: L’Attaque.  This coaster came via a field at the Great Escape and before that from the sadly defunct Six Flags AstroWorld.  But one has to wonder who said “Yes, we’ll take your used SLC.”  Unless you’re desperate or a small park, that’s a phrase you’ll rarely hear.  I can’t speak for desperate, but La Ronde is not a small park.  In fact, they’re big enough to already have an inverted coaster… a better inverted coaster.  La Ronde already had a B&M mirror image Batman clone.  You could possible see starting with an SLC and then later upgrading to the B&M with the SLC removed, but two at once is just strange.

But our maple syrup soaked neighbors aren’t the only ones making questionable ride additions.  Take Holiday World, home of free soda, great wooden coasters, and some of the friendliest owners you’ll ever meet.  Next year they’ll debut Mammoth, a massive up and down water coaster 6 person circular rafts.  It starts with a lift and features drops and inclines going in and out of enclosed tubes, all built into the hillside.  Oh, and it’s also the longest water coaster out there.  This is a fantastic addition… unless you look to the left and see Wildebeest.  Wildebeest opened only one year ago as the longest water coaster out there.  It does essentially the same thing—lift, hills, turns, enclosed tubes, tunnels—just with 2 person rafts rather than 6.  While it’s nice to cater to different party sizes, Mammoth essentially makes Wildebeest obsolete.

Going back to Cedar Fair parks, we can take a look at Dorney Park which likes to make a habit of repeating itself.  Rather than send Cedar Point’s old Intamin first generation drop tower to a Cedar Fair park that has no drop tower, it winds up at Dorney Park… which already has a double S&S shot and drop tower (with a 3^rd tower all set to get an air canister).  It’s like turning back the clock to get an older version of the ride when there’s already something that beats it in every category.  Of course, something can always be said for the classics—it just seems like Demon Drop could have been far better served elsewhere.  And while not necessarily the same thing, it’s worth noting their newest attraction- the Vekoma invertigo from California’s greatest adventure.  And while it is notable for being the best of the three types of boomerangs, it’s also coming to a park that has 2 inverted coasters, including a forwards/backwards impulse coaster.  Still, there’s some variety there, though it is a shame they continue to get used rides.

There’s undoubtedly more examples out there—feel free to send in some others in the comments!  In summary: we’re asking Canada’s Wonderland whhhhhyyyy????  But still.. thanks for the coaster!

Today’s post is pretty short, and depending if you read CoasterForce or not you may have seen the interviews.  But the commentary is new and improved!  Or maybe just new.

So on March 26^th I went up to Carowinds to check out Intimidator for media day.  Media days are great for introducing yourself to really important people who will forget your name in a few minutes.  We spotted Dick Kinzel, Cedar Fair’s CEO pretty quickly, and went over to get a word with him. As it turns out, he’s a really nice guy and very enthusiastic about his job.  You always wonder before an interview if the big important people like CEOs will be receptive to the ‘little people’.  But Dick was a really nice guy.  Here’s what he had to say:

CF: What kind of involvement do you have in a ride like this seeing as you’re the CEO of the company?  What’s your say?

DK: Well, you know, I’ve got a great team.  It’s like anything else.  Just like Kerry [Earnhardt], I have to have a great pit crew and I get a lot of the credit for it.  But really I’m the figurehead for Cedar Fair and I’m very fortunate to represent these individuals; all of our employees and staff and the members that make it work.  But I’m also part of the planning of it and one of the visionaries of it.

CF: That must be great seeing it all come together.

DK: It really is.  I saw it for the first time last night.  I’d seen a bunch of pictures and everything, but when I saw it all together last night during a tour of the park it was fantastic.

CF: So does Dale Earnhardt Inc. come to you with an idea and say ‘here’s what we’re thinking,’ or does it start on your end?

DK: Well, if you back to 1989 when we put in the Magnum, we just sort of added that into every park that didn’t have it. The formula seems to work.  People really same to like it, and if it’s not broke…

CF: The hyper coaster seems like it has been a popular design.

DK: It sure has.  Anybody could be a CEO!  One good idea, that’s all you need!

It’s kind of amusing that after all these years he still goes on about Magnum.  Apparently Magnum’s gotten its return on investment over these years.  We were surprised by how candid he was about essentially copying a design over and over until they can put it everywhere.  However, it seems to work.  Let’s take a look at Cedar Fair’s hyper coaster additions:

-          Magnum XL200, 1989, Cedar Point

-          Wild Thing, 1996, Valleyfair

-          Steel Force, 1997, Dorney Park

-          Mamba, 1998, Worlds of Fun

-          Shivering Timbers, 1998, Michigan’s Adventure

-          Behemoth, 2008, Canada’s Wonderland

-          Diamondback, 2009, Kings Island

-          Intimidator, 2010, Carowinds

-          Intimidator 305, 2010, Kings Dominion

Yes, I realize Shivering Timbers is wood, but it does the same thing.  I305 is also not terribly representative of the hyper coaster type, but I expect that’s how Dick sees it.  All this leaves now is the California parks—Knotts Berry Farm (which doesn’t have space), and California’s Great America (which Cedar Fair wants to dump and things aren’t moving).  So with that it looks like the hyper coasters have run their course at Cedar Fair parks—what will be the next copied ride?  Will they finish their series of front gate inverted coasters?

Later on in the day, we talked to John Taylor, who’s the Director of Marketing at Carowinds.  He had already gotten over 12 rides on the coaster and was ready for more.  It’s good to see the head folks as excited about the rides as the guests visiting.  Here’s some questions about marketing:

CF: Tell us about the association with Dale Earnhardt Inc.  How did that come about?

JT: You know, actually it started a few years ago.  I had not come on board yet.  So I don’t know  where the initial contact came from, but I think they kind of realized that obviously we’re in a big NASCAR area and I think that’s the one thing that Carowinds has really never had a connection to in this region.  We’ve never had something that could interrelate us to the NASCAR Hall of Fame or Lowe’s Motor Speedway or your other dragster speedways.   There was always that one separation that Carowinds didn’t quite have with the rest of the region and I think this was established because it really gives us a connection and has opened up a lot of opportunities.  We’re doing a partnership this year with the NASCAR Hall of Fame and we’re working with Lowe’s Motor Speedway.  It’s just opened up an incredible opportunity and a new fanbase.  I really think you’ll get people here that have such an emotional connection to Dale Earnhardt that they’ll come out here just to see the ride.  I’ve been enamored with how emotional people get about Dale Earnhardt and I really think you’ll get people here to ride the ride just because it has Dale.

CF: So you’re reaching new audiences as well?

JT: Oh, absolutely.  I’m confident of it.

CF: How has the strategy for marketing this coaster changed from previous installations?  Are you doing more Internet marketing or exploring media like that?

JT: First of all, from when we’ve opened up previous coasters, social media’s become a lot more prominent.  So we’ve been incredibly aggressive with our social media and we re-launched our website last month.  We’re just trying to find new touch points to reach our consumers.  For instance, Facebook has been an incredible asset to us.  We have 14,000 Facebook fans and back in December we had 3.  So we’ve really been opened up to a new fanbase.  We can interrelate with our consumers much more than we have before.  In terms of an advertising standpoint, where the media world is going is more Internet and we’re going to be looking at more media opportunities there this year.  We’re placing a lot more of our advertising dollars in Internet marketing.  You’ll be seeing a lot more really cool flash banners this year that we have on the web for Intimidator.  It’s just where society’s going and we’re trying to follow the trend.

CF: And I’m sure that interactivity helps.  I remember watching the coaster get built from the webcam earlier this year.

JT: It does.  And actually we have 3 more webcams we’ll be launching on the new website this summer.  We bought them and it’s been so busy lately we haven’t had a chance to set them up.  But we’re going to be adding a lot more video and video blogs this summer to our website.  We’re really going to try to set the precedent for where things should be going with theme parks and web.

CF: So what about those new audiences like the NASCAR fans that might not typically be amusement enthusiasts?  Are you reaching them by different channels?

JT: We’ve actually made a lot of efforts through NASCAR.  For instance, NASCAR Illustrated was out here 2 weeks ago and they’re doing a 4 page spread on us in their June issue.  They were enamored at the similarities between a roller coaster and a NASCAR ride.  It’s just really cool cooperation in the way it’s been able to promote us.  We’re going to be doing some targeted niche advertising with different NASCAR publications and NASCAR Radio and stuff this summer that’ll really help us build awareness in a new medium that we’ve never had before.

I guess the main question over all of this, is how does Intimidator ride?

I’m still a little conflicted on the ride.  It looks fantastic.  And the ride is for the most part very good.  It’s a bit worrisome that there’s a little vibration already, the kind we’ve seen with some other newer B&M coasters (Goliath, Led Zeppelin, etc).  The vibration is negligible, so hopefully it’ll stay that way.  The ride it about what you’d expect from a hyper coaster of this type.  The ride is the 2^nd tallest coaster B&M has constructed so the drop is petty huge and carries a lot of floater down it.  The rest of the airtime hills all have long amounts of floating, although not to the strength you can find on Behemoth.  You have to wonder if they made some sort of calculation error on that one.  But Intimidator still carries strong airtime through the hills.  The hill trims grab some, but not too much as to effect the feel of the train.  I wish the turnaround had a little more banking to it or did something a little more exciting.  It felts a little weak.  The MCBR (which is not actually in the middle…) grabs a fair amount, although that may have been due to 3 train operations.  All in all, the coaster is a good representation of the B&M hyper type, about on the level of Goliath at SFOG although not as good as Behemoth.  The big open trains do about what they’re intended to do.  The space is larger and you have a nice open feeling, especially in the very back of the train.  One thing to note from a ridership perspective: ride towards the back.  Seating was assigned on media day and I expect it will be during regular operations.  But the farther back you ride, the stronger the airtime feels.  I can’t attest to the front, but row 3 is relatively weak compared to the very back of the train.

So that’s the one Intimidator.  I still haven’t had a chance to get to I305 yet, although I expect that to be vastly superior.  Still, Intimidator holds up well and really adds to Carowinds’ lineup.

Here’s the photo gallery from CoasterForce.  Check it out:

Image Gallery

Today we’re going to visit the land of semi communism.  China has been experiencing the coaster boom everybody else wishes they had.  If you haven’t paid attention to what’s been going on over there, you’re really missing out on some fantastic stuff.  We’re gonna back up 4 years and see what’s opened.  I’ll say that again… 4 years.

2006

Coasters Opened: 19 over 11 parks

Notables (i.e. stuff bigger than a family coaster)

4 Ring Roller Coaster- Daguan Park, Yunnan

If you go back through time, you’ll find this type of coaster appear over and over in some form or another.  China loves these things.  The most common layout is a loop and two corkscrews, although you’ll find anything from two corks, one loop, two loops, or even a helix before the drop.  But this sort of layout is what you’ll see the most of when you travel through China.  And if you think these types by Arrow or Vekoma or bad, go try these manufacturers.

Flight of the Phoenix, Harborland Theme Park

This is the 3^rd copy of Intamin’s 8 inversion coaster layout.  Oddly enough, one has opened every 4 years since 1998.  The layouts of these rides aren’t terribly creative, but the fact that it can shove 8 inversions in 100ft. of lift height is pretty impressive.  Of course, the ride pretty much has it all when it comes to inversions—loop, cobra roll, double corkscrews, and inline twists.  In fact, there’s enough inline twists to make it look like they just ran out of ideas, although unlike a certain coaster we’ll see later, this ride only has 3 inlines in a row.

Screaming Squirrel, Mysterious Island, Guangdong

The second and last of the stock S&S Screamin’ Squirrel  models gives Mysterious Island a cool looking, yet altogether pretty dull attraction.  We all know Stan Checketts is crazy, but the novelty of being suspended upside down for long periods at a time gets old pretty fast.  He should stick to trying to launch stuff with face flattening acceleration.

Chimelong Paradise, Guangdong

Although it didn’t get as much immediate recognition as did Happy Valley Beijing, Chimelong was one of the first parks where we all wondered “how can you afford these things!?”  The park opened with 5 coasters.  Although the first two were nothing more than a kiddie and a spinner from Golden Horse (a ride you’d wish upon no park), the last 3 were slightly larger rides.  An Intamin halfpipe, Vekoma motorbike, and only the 2^nd ever Intamin 10 inversion coaster completed the starting lineup.  The 10 inversion coaster was a big ‘up yours’ to Harborland, by throwing in another 2 inline twists to make the ride even less imaginative.  Speaking of less imaginative, we have the English names for these rides.  I hope more than anything else the Chinese names are more creative, but in terms of English we have: 10 Inversion Roller Coaster, Family Gravity Coaster, Half Pipe, Motorbike Launch Coaster, and Twister Coaster.  Take a guess as to which is which.  It’s pretty tough.

Happy Valley Beijing, Beijing

Beijing’s version of Happy Valley became the 2^nd of this chain of parks and soon became the park everybody pointed to when looking at the China coaster boom.  While it doesn’t look like the park is in a valley (disappointing in its own right),it does at least look happy… or well themed.  If you haven’t looked up some pictures from here, they’re worth checking out.  The theming is great, although pretty varied.  Happy Valley opened with 4 coasters, each with a rather curious name.   Harvest Time harkens back to the days of… working in a field?  That doesn’t sound terribly thrilling, which is a good fit for this Golden Horse spinner, which is probably also not so much fun.  Jungle Racing ups the theming a bit with a double lift Vekoma mine train through some pretty massive ruins and pretty thin jungle.  Golden Wings in Snowfield sounds awfully peaceful for a coaster that probably hurts like crap.  This custom SLC more or less copied the layout seen at the first Happy Valley park which was subsequently reproduced at Flamingoland with Kumali.  Thankfully (or maybe not), this coaster throws in an extra helix at the end.  Layout-wise, it makes it slightly less awful than the other similar ones, which is always a plus.  The final coaster is probably the most famous Chinese coaster in the enthusiast community (considering the most famous Chinese coaster outside the enthusiast community is probably none of them…).  Sticking with the wings theme, we have Crystal Wings, a B&M flying coaster.  Although it’s a Superman clone (or at least very similar), China got their first B&M as well as first flying coaster.  Unlike what Six Flags did with their flying coasters, the Happy Valley team got together and decided this coaster needed an f-ing huge city to around.  What looks to be about 175ft. worth of giant lost city offers a pretty darn cool setting to go flying through some canyons of fake brick and stucco.  I’ve not found out if you can go up into the city, but if not then it’s pretty disappointing.  Still, Crystal Wings is one of the coolest looking coasters out there.

Mad Cobra, Discoveryland, Liaoning

The last noteable coaster takes us to Discoveryland, yet another big new park to open this year.  Mad Cobra kind of cheats as it’s not a new coaster, but a relocated one from the Suzuka Circuit race track park in Japan.  Mad Cobra is what a hairball might look like as a coaster.  Suzuka got on the Premier launched coaster train back in the mid 90s when they were all the rage (a rage big enough to sell a whole 5).  But for the space, they got a pretty huge amount of coaster packed in there.  This may also be the first launched coaster in China, if it opened before Chimelong’s motorbike.

2007

Coasters Opened: 7 over 5 parks

FantaWild Adventure, Anhui

Sadly not themed to the soda brand, FantaWild was the biggest (and maybe only) new park to open in China in 2007.  This park was a great place for Golden Horse to practice ripping off real companies.   There’s only one picture of the fantastically named Space Vehicle on rcdb, but looking at the track, you can already see some misshapen stuff in the first helix.  Not a good start.  Hanging Pulley is a rip off of the suspended wild mice you might find on fair circuits back in Europe.  I think Zamperla makes them, which might actually not be any better than Golden Horse, which is kind of concerning.  Still, with the wild mouse corners, the ride looks like a recipe for unpleasantness.  The next ripoff is of the Vekoma inverted coaster layout we saw at Happy Valley Beijing.  Why anyone would want to ripoff Vekoma of all companies is beyond me, but this looks deceivingly like it might actually be good.  I’d hazard a pretty good guess to say it’s not.

2008

Coasters Opened: 10 over 8 parks

Beijing Shijingshan Amusement Park

This park is notable for the one fact that their website used to be b-samusementpark.com, which is pretty hilarious.  Sadly someone must have noticed as they’ve changed it now.  This park was also ripping off Disney mascots until somebody posted some pics up on the web.  That stopped pretty quickly.  As for these coasters, the first drops a layout with such exciting elements as flat track, few drops, and even a helix!  Thankfully, Jurassic Adventure puts the whole thing in a building and adds some pretty ok theming to make the ride itself bearable.  The 2^nd coaster is called Spinning Batman, which neither spins nor is related to Batman.  The ride is an odd single rail suspended coaster, the kind you really don’t see any more over here.  For a ride of this type, it’s on a pretty big scale… a tall vertical lift and a decent size layout.  The supports are cool in that they’ve been themed to look like trees.  Surprisingly enough, it’s actually pretty convincing as a thematic element.  If this park knows one thing, it’s how to make what are likely crappy coasters seem passable with nice theming.

Dive Coaster, Chimelong Paradise, Guangdong

Opening a year after the park, Dive Coaster continues Chimelong’s practice of giving coasters really obvious names.  Thankfully, the coaster more than makes up for the lack of creativity on the naming front.  At almost 200ft, the ride became the tallest coaster in China as well as the one with the more ridiculous looking trains.  Using nearly the same elements as SheiKra, Dive Coaster puts them together just a little different to create a custom layout.  This was the first B&M installation of the B&M dive coaster in China (although not the first in Asia with Taiwan’s G5).  At its opening Chimelong had the strongest coaster lineup in China, although 2009 would bring some stiff competition.

Unknown, Discoveryland, Liaoning

Apparently, this park isn’t visited so often as the name of this coaster is still listed as unknown.  Opening 2 years after the park, this coaster is an inverted coaster from Beijing Shibaolai Amusement Equipment.  As it turns out, there’s more than one company in China good at ripping off European rides.  This SLC ripoff is an unfortunate 137ft. tall, making it far larger than necessary to inflict a lot of pain.  There’s no other information about the layout, although if we look over at our friends from the BS Amusement Park, we find their very own inverted coaster from this company.  4 inversions are dropped into a rather awful looking layout including impressively bad transitions and even an airtime hill.  If Discoveryland’s coaster is any bit similar, I’d recommend staying away.

Vesuvius Volcano, FantaWild Adventure, Anhui

1 year after the other 3, Golden Horse gets another opportunity to rip off Vekoma at FantaWild Adventure (which still has nothing to do with the soda).  This mine train design at least looks really fantastic.  There’s no telling how good it runs, though.  You have to wonder how hard it is to screw up a mine train coaster, but you might be surprised.   By theming alone, the ride is easily the coolest looking in the park and potentially the most redeemable.  Hopefully it rides as good as it looks.

2009

Coasters Opened: 20 over 12 parks

Moto Coaster, Jin Jiang Action Park, Shanghai

Zamperla jumps in on the moto coaster action, opening their first one outside the U.S.  Although it’s the same layout as the OCC MotoCoaster at Darien Lake, this version gets launched faster and quicker.  This can only be a good thing since all OCC was lacking was a little more speed.  Unfortunately they still seems to be letting colorblind people take on the painting as the supports change from yellow to white all throughout the ride.  Aside from looking ridiculous, the coaster… well… just looks ridiculous.

Hand Roller Coaster, Harbin Amusement Park, Heilongjiang

Sometimes you just have to wonder if the Chinese pick the American versions of coaster names just to screw with us.  If you translate the Chinese name, it comes out Steel Dragon Inverted Coaster.  This is passable for the oddly specific generic Chinese coaster name.  However, the sign clearly has Hand Roller Coaster, so we’ll just assume they’re retarded.  This is another inverted coaster from Beijing Shibaolai Amusement Equipment with the same layout we looked at earlier.  The green and gray look kind of nice on the ride, but unfortunately pain can’t make a ride good.

Happy Valley Chengdu, Sichuan

With the Chinese finally discovering what good amusement parks are like, 2 more Happy Valley parks opened in 2009, upping the coaster quality in the process.   The first 3 coaster are pretty standard for these parks, a Golden Horse spinning coaster (Madrats), a Vekoma double lift mine train (Dragon in Snowfield), and the standard Vekoma inverted coaster seen at the other Happy Valleys (Dragon in Clouds).  As you can see, we continue the propensity for strange names.  Thankfully, Happy Valley decided it was time to bring in the big guns for their final coaster.  Fly over Mediterranean is an Intamin mega-lite (according to Intamin’s website, they’re “mega-good”).  Although under 110ft. tall, this coaster produces tons of airtime in a great layout.

Happy Valley Shanghai, Shanghai

After Happy Valley Chengdu, the board of directors must’ve sat around and thought up how they could make the park more awesome.  The current coaster lineup just wasn’t cutting it, so it was time to build the best park in China.  The park has 6 coasters, and some very impressive ones at that.  LeLe’s Chariot is the obligatory kids coaster from Golden Horse, but things get better from there.  With Spinning Coaster, the park decided it’d had enough of Golden Horse and mercifully opened a Zamperla model instead.  They won’t know what to do with a spinning coaster that’s semi-passible as a quality ride.  For Mine Train coaster, Happy Valley decided to go with Intamin instead of Vekoma.  In the process, they made a coaster infinitely cooler than any of the Vekoma mine train models and then proceeded to put it in a big fake mountain.  Dive Coaster became the biggest B&M Dive Machine in the world, although the layout is very similar to Sheikra.  Going back to Intamin, Happy Valley bought its 2^nd Mega-Lite, the park’s next large and awesome coaster.  But the most interesting ride in the park is Fireball, China’s first wooden coaster.  A Gravity Group design, the coaster throws twists in with airtime to create one heck of a layout.  The only question now is how well can a country with no experience in wooden coasters take care of this ride?  Gravity Group coasters are not kind to their equipment, so Happy Valley better be ready to take care of the ride if it’s to stay smooth.  But regardless of the future quality, Happy Valley’s coaster lineup makes it the strongest in China.

Giant Wheel Park of Suzhou, Suzhou

As if all these other parks weren’t enough, another park opened in 2009 with one of the more interesting coasters in the country.  Giant Wheel Park of Suzhou is based around a really big Ferris Wheel as I really hope you could guess.  The Chinese like their giant wheels for some reason, so it’s pretty natural to have a whole park based around one.  But for the coaster crowd, there’s Stingray: the return of the Vekoma flying coaster.  We saw 3 of their ‘Flying Dutchman’ model in the US backat the turn of the century and then nothing.  But the Stingray is different.  Packed into a tight little layout, the coaster features a vertical lift flipping backwards into the flying position.  Stingray has a pretty short layout, but throws in a few helixes and the first outwards half loop on a flying coaster.  The footprint is so tight that the brakes are actually located in an inversion as the train gets back to a station.  There hasn’t been much in the way of reports since this coaster has gone up, so hopefully this Vekoma hasn’t been met with the downtime some of their other ventures have experienced.

Nanjing East China Mall, Nanjing

We move to malls now.  Because shopping isn’t interesting enough, sticking a coaster in there helps things along.  Here in Nanjing, Vekoma is adding a custom motorbike coaster to the mall.  The size and speed are pretty average for the ride, but the layout is certainly going to be interesting as mall’s don’t usually have a big flat open space to stick a coaster.  Hopefully they’ll get creative.  Although this falls in with the 2009 listing, the ride is still listed as under construction.  Hopefully it’ll be opening soon.

Powerland, Shandong

The 2^nd of the mall coasters promises to be one of the more interesting Vekoma junior coaster layouts ever built.  Shell’s Shuttle winds down the mall corridors and curves around two plaza areas.  The ride is part of a larger amusement area within the mall and wraps around some of the other rides.  While it’s not as big or as fast as some of the other coasters this ride shows just how much can be done with the Vekoma junior coaster and makes us wish more malls in America decided to add coasters.

2010

Coasters: 12 over 7 parks

Dragon Rider, Floraland, Chengdu

As we make it to 2010, apparently Floraland didn’t get the memo that inverted coasters from Chinese companies are awful.  Unfortunately they’ve opened yet another instance of the inverted coaster we’ve seen in several parks over the last few years.  In one of those things you never think you’ll ever say: ‘won’t somebody buy an SLC!?’

Unknown, Tianjin Water Park, Tianjin

For some reason, water parks are getting in on the coaster boom too.  Unfortunately, this park is also building an inverted coaster.  While we hope for an SLC or even a B&M (in our wildest dreams), it’s likely to come from a Chinese company and be yet another instance of things you’d really rather not ride.

Flying Horse Family Coaster, Chimelong Paradise, Guangdong

Chimelong continues to add coasters with this entry, a Mack YoungSTAR family coaster.  These coasters are small, but have a good variety of dips and turns that they look fun anyway.  The 4 instances of this coaster have been of the same layout model.  But for some reason, this coaster is slightly different in the fact that they took away the first drop.  Yes, in another ‘wtf, China!?’ moment, the ride’s first drop levels out less than halfway down to the ground and continues along flat until the first corner.  If anybody can explain why anyone would do this, please do.  For now, we’ll just assume this family coaster was too darn intense.

Unknown, China Dinosaur Park, Jiangsu

If you’re wanting to check out the major coasters on this list, skip to next year and this park.  For now, we’ll take a look at the two coasters this park intends to open this year.  First we have an unknown steel coaster, which is noted as looping.  Judging by previous experience we could hazard a guess to say that this will probably be something similar to a loopscrew design by Arrow and Vekoma, just poorly made and with over the shoulder restraints (fun fact: this describes like 50% of the coasters in China).  The other coaster will be a Zamperla Motocoaster with a (thankfully) custom design.  The stats are currently listed at 70ft. tall and 30mph, making it the tallest of the Zamperla designs out there.  One would hope they’ll do more than some nice meandering corners dropping slowly.  We’ll come back to this park in a year for maybe the most significant entry on this list.

Knight Valley, Guangdong

Another new park, Knight Valley is actually part of a much larger resort area, developed by the same people that are involved with the Happy Valley parks.  This coasters at this park suddenly popped up on everyone’s radar a few weeks ago as GCI posted designs of their wooden coaster for the park, making everyone wish they lived there.  At 147ft., this will be GCI’s largest creation to date, and at 4,817ft. it’ll be their longest (by over 1,200ft.).  The ride is pretty much what you might envision looking at a big hill and thinking ‘a coaster down the side of that would be really darn cool.’  The ride starts with a triple down, keeping close to the ground the entire time.  As the trees turn into a blur, the coaster hits various turns and bumps all designed to produce the usual awesome GCI airtime.  The ride features a station fly-by and a fully underground tunnel, showing that when you give somebody enough money, they can make one of the best looking coasters out there.  Thankfully, the ride uses GCI’s amazing Millennium Flyer trains, meaning this ride should stay pretty smooth no matter how clueless these people are taking care of it.  Much less interesting, but just as notable is a Maurer Sohne X-Car coaster.  We still have yet to see the full layout of the Sky Loop design exhibited by the company.  Sadly, this is just the single sky loop design as seen at Skyline Park and Magic Springs.  While the restraints are hit or miss it seems, the ride should be pretty exciting, especially for a region of the world that hasn’t seen anything like it.

World Joyland, Jiangsu

I guess by now we should stop being surprised by new parks opening.  Hopefully, though, this park will be as cool as the concept art, which shows some really crazy abstract theming with a few cool coasters mixed in.  The first ride is unknown, yet lists two lift hills, which leads us to believe it’s probably the usual mine train design.  The next is another Maurer X-Coaster with the sky loop design we say at Knight Valley.  2 in 1 year might be a surprise if it were anywhere else besides here.  The most interesting coaster is a custom B&M flying coaster that has what could potentially be the coolest layout of the type.  I talked about this ride in my very first post on this blog, so if you feel like reading even more than you already have (I’m impressed you’ve made it this far.  We’re almost done!), go check that out.  The ride lists the inversion order as being an inline twist, loop, and double corkscrew.  The layout has not been published, but with a listing like that, you know it’s going to be interesting.  The main question is whether the loop will be outside or inside, a design concept debated for years by forumgoers everywhere.  Regardless of which design type, it’s never been done before by B&M, so what we’re seeing here will be completely new.

2011

Coasters: 2 over 2 parks

Unknown, Knight Valley, Guangdong

Apparently Knight Valley really likes Maurer Sohne because they’re getting another X-car for 2011.  Not as stupid as getting an inverted coaster from two different companies (calling you out again, La Ronde), this type is a launched version of the style, the same kind as seen at Drievliet.  While the layout isn’t terrible impressive, it manages to sneak in 2 inversions and some weird shaped angles we’ve come to expect from X-car coasters.

Unknown, China Dinosaur Park, Jiangsu

It’s fun to study Chinese parks because there’s so little news coming over to the US or European enthusiast community.  News tends to come suddenly, no rumors, just suddenly a big announcement.  This happened earlier this year when S&S showed a concept art drawing of a new 4-D coaster for the park.  We’ve only seen 2 of this type of coaster, and only one of those from S&S.  A lot of this is due to these coasters being so incredibly expensive, that very few can afford them, let alone the maintenance.  It’s actually a wonder that anyone would buy another one of these after all the maintenance issues that X went through.  But nevertheless, the 3^rd 4-D coaster will hopefully open in 2011.  The layout hasn’t been shown yet, but we can take a guess that it’ll probably be similar to Eejanaika.  It’d be nice to see some new things tried, but that might be a little bit much to hope for on a coaster that’ll likely be broken down anyway.

2012

Coasters: 3 over 1 park

Chimelong Hengqin Island, Guangdong

This project is by the same folks that did the Chimelong Project in Guangzhou.  Like that park, this will be a resort with a bunch of other over the top stuff along with the park.  RCDB lists a marine park, a safari, and a hotel.  So once again, here’s people not afraid to spend their money.  Right now there’s 3 coaster listed, although that number is almost certainly going to change with the park still being 2 years out.  The first two coasters are listed as Mack water coasters, a SuperSplash and a regular water coaster.  Neither of these are too exciting, although they have the potential to be pretty nicely themed as we’ve sort of come to expect from Chinese parks.  The last coaster is still unknown and was just recently listed on the coaster database.  So far, there’s nothing listed for the ride aside from the length, which is listed at a huge 6,561ft.  With the current worldwide stats, this would be the 6^th longest coaster in the world, just short of Millennium Force’s mark.  Hopefully this will be a good coaster and not another Daidarasaurus.  I’m sure time will tell as some more information surfaces about the park.

A Summary

So those are the notable from the past few years and looking forward to the next couple.  Of course, there’s likely much more on the way for 2011, 2012, and probably even 2010 as the year progresses.  China is certainly the forefront of coaster construction and even development as we’re seeing some different types of layouts.  And it’s not just coasters; these parks are getting great themes to go along with everything.  It’s clear they have more money than they know what to do with.  Thankfully they’re introducing China to the world of coasters; a region which has traditionally been lacking in the amusement industry.

Of listed coasters on the coaster database, we’ve seen 73 coasters built in China since 2006.

To compare, coasters since 2006, by continent:

• Africa: 1
• Asia: 156
• Australia: 2
• Europe: 206
• North America: 151
• South America: 14

Europe is still the leader, although I hazard I guess that per large coasters, Asia is about in par.  That said, China is just one country, producing 73 coasters themselves.  Only the United States has more coasters since 2006 and most of those are smaller coaster for smaller family parks.  When you look at the scale and general quality of rides, China is right up there with the best.

For one final study, here’s a map of China with all the parks we looked at in this entry.  You can see the development is happening all over, not just one area of the country.  [Click to enlarge]

Well.. that’s it!  If you made it this far, then I’m impressed.  Hopefully the next entry will be sooner than it took to put this one up.  Coming up next week is a trip to Texas to visit Six Flags over Texas, Six Flags Fiesta Texas, and Kemah Boardwalk.  I’ll put up some pictures and maybe a report or two once I get home.  I’ll also be off to Intimidator at Carowinds media day, so we’ll have some coverage of that.  Hope you enjoyed today’s entry!

No, I don’t have another full entry done.

Why?  Because everything likes to happen at once.

But anyway, here’s some stuff to look forward to being posted here in the coming weeks

- China’s coaster boom: what’s happened recently

- Six Flags over Georgia: the good and the bad

- Intimidator at Carowinds: Full media coverage

- General thoughts about Texas parks (SFOT, SFFT, and Kemah Boardwalk)

It’s back to work now!  A legitimate blog entry coming to your computer screen very soon.

Six Flags announced today that as it nears the scheduled end of its restructuring process, it has decided to reject its lease with the Kentucky State Fair Board relating to the Kentucky Kingdom park. In recent weeks, Six Flags had proposed a new lease arrangement to the fair board that would have enhanced the viability and future of the park. Unfortunately, those proposals were not accepted and the park will cease operations and the company will move expeditiously to re-locate employees and several of the more than 40 rides and attractions to one of its 13 other markets.

“We are deeply disappointed to be leaving such a great fan base in the greater metropolitan area of Louisville and we are grateful to the thousands of employees at Kentucky Kingdom and the millions of guests for their dedication, support and loyalty over the years,” said Mark Shapiro, Six Flags President and CEO.

“This action relates solely to Kentucky Kingdom,” Shapiro continued. “The substantial lease payment has been a significant hurdle for this park in recent years. Our other parks, which reside largely on company-owned land, will be completely unaffected and will open as scheduled for the full 2010 season.”

So there you have it.  Six Flags decided they wanted out.  If you’re familiar with the park (or just pay attention to news and have some amount of insight), then you probably saw this coming.  First, a bit about the park.  SFKK was expanded out of the Kentucky State Fairgrounds.  It was actually like 2 parks in one… an entrance area led to a circle of path and general amusement rides (mostly kid-friendly).  Then in one of the biggest wtf moves you’ll find at an American park, a little bridge crossed over about 4 lanes of traffic (the fair complex outer loop road) to get to the waterpark and more thrilling attractions.  At maybe 6 or 8ft. wide, it’s a wonder you didn’t have huge lines of people on either side waiting to cross.  Then again, maybe that says something.  The coaster selection wasn’t terribly impressive, although it felt about right.  The wild mouse had clever theming out front and the Schwarzkopf shuttle loop was on its 3^rd life and hanging on as the last operating of its type to grace US soil.  (It’s up to Brazil and South Africa to take it from here…)  Jumping across the road we had the park’s two wooden coasters.  Thunder Run was reminiscent of the Hurler models, with maybe a little more character thrown in there with the random kinks in the track on the big out and back section.  Twisted Twins was  a rather oddity of a ride as a quirky half-assed dueling coaster.  The crossed lifts were cool, opposed drops were cooler.  The rest of the ride was rather forgettable even with the last dueling spot in there (with a huge section of parallel track so they really didn’t have to completely figure out the timing).  Gerstlauer trains and wood on steel construction gave the ride a lot of character (read: pain), and placement way back behind a bunch of stuff made it rather hard to find.  The Vekoma kiddie let you go around twice… even more embarrassment in just one ride!  T² is rather universally hated in the coaster world for even existing.  That’s not entirely off-base, although I didn’t think it was near as bad as everybody said.  Being able to kick the overgrown trees and bushes on the way up the lift made it feel especially janky.  And it was.  Chang was the out of place star attraction… too big for the park and what might be considered too awesome to be there.  The initial 3 trains was cut to 2 because who’s really going to fill 96 seats worth of coaster here?  (and who’s really going to run a stand up coaster where 3 trains can run smoothly?  Hint: no one)  The ride itself was wonderful, miles better then than the similar ride up north, yet never getting the recognition because of its setting.  The 7 coasters sat together as a testament that even a lot of mediocrity can be kind of fun once in a while.

Hurricane Harbor had become the park’s main event as it neared demise.  The whole thing sat in the center of the side across the road and the rest of the park wrapped around it.  A single entrance controlled those in and those out and frustrated the heck out of anyone who didn’t bring a map.  While the amusement rides side of thing languished, the Harbor got a tornado slide, a bowl slide and the US’s first LIM launched waterslide.  One should take care to note that closing times of water parks are often different from the closed parks… otherwise this author might have gotten to ride it. Potential bitterness aside, the waterpark section carried a decent, if obligatory, nautical theme and seemed to do its job grabbing the bulk of the visitors to the park.  While I’m still a little lost on the whole ‘waterpark in a park’ concept that people seem to be loving these days, I’m guessing it worked.  Until the closure announcement, the park had been willing to ship Chang off to go hang out in a parking lot in favor of a waterpark expansion.  When you dump your biggest ride in favor of a waterpark, you know it was a big asset.

Probably the biggest claim to fame SFKK would ever get was the drop tower incident.  Hellevator, as I will always refer to it despite the name change, was one of the best drop towers out there.  Quick and simple, it took you up and dropped you down without and spinning or tilting or sprinkles.  But SFKK learned the hard way that you should probably inspect things once in a while.  In what must have been a pretty awful thing to watch, a girl exited the ride sans feet before getting one sewn back in the hospital later on.  Lawsuits abounded and soon everybody was taking a second look at their cables.  While the girl affected has long since been forgotten, there’s no doubt that 30 years to come in any amusement park out there, some ‘tard in line for the drop tower will say they’re hoping not to lose their feet.  Sadly, most of them won’t.  For SFKK, the lasting effect was the loss of a much needed thrill ride and entrance focal point (note to parks—design spaces like this!) and a public not really sure if they can trust what they’re riding.

The park managed to shuffle on for a little while longer.  A lot of reviews weren’t pleasant, although on two experiences I had a great time including a particularly exciting moment of being evacuated from Chang’s platform in the thunderstorm from hell.  SFKK managed to become a park with great buildings and a very nice atmosphere without being ostentatious.  It had the charm of a non-chain park while still having all the advertisements and over hyped marketing that we’ve come to expect and revile from Six Flags.  But after the Hellevator incident, there wasn’t much good to say anymore.  With the drop tower gone, the balance of attractions shifted fully across the road.  Even before the loss of limbs, the park’s S&S dragster attraction had shut down, taking away one of the park’s most unique rides.  Then Twisted Twins closed as 2007 rolled around.  And not just the coaster.  The entire path spur including a splash boats ride and several smaller rides shut down to save some cash.  If you weren’t starting to see if coming by now, then you were probably an idiot.  2009 brought rumors, confirmation, and removal of Chang in under a month as the park prepared for the waterpark expansion.   At this point, the leading assumption was that SFKK could become a waterpark only attraction.  A good theory, judging by the proposed expansion and general interest on the part of guests, but one that we sadly never got played out.  The February 4^th closure announcement left the enthusiast community all saying they saw it coming (which probably isn’t terribly far off reality).  The offseason closure also means no farewell sendoff for the devout SFKK fans (all 3?) or locals that could appreciate a worthwhile coaster.  If you’re feeling cheesy, go have a ride of silence for the little park that apparently couldn’t.

So now to speculation.  Things are closed and presumably won’t be left to rot.  It’s an unfortunate expectation that the wooden coasters will probably join the less-than-noble ranks of the scrap heap before long.  Most people would probably like to see T² do the same, although it seems like a ride Six Flags might be willing to ship elsewhere.  Just about all their parks have an inverted coaster now, although it’s not out of the question for one to have another join in (that’s right LaRonde, I’m calling you out in a 2^nd straight post).  Most likely to go elsewhere are the kiddie coaster and mouse which are universally generic enough to get plopped just about anywhere.  Maybe SFMM can add them both to pad their coaster count… since it’s about quantity, right?  Right?  Greezed Lightning will hopefully have a future (message from SFOG: we’ll take it back), although it’s already well travelled.  As much as I don’t want to think it, Six Flags America could do well with the ride where it could join the ranks off 10 minute loading times and people who’d rather be elsewhere.  These coasters all fit the bill of being small rides that should be relatively easy to cart of to a new park and advertise as shiny and new.  But what about the water rides?  I’ll admit, I really don’t know much about relocations of this sort of thing, although it seems pretty straightforward.  Deluge had only just started its life, so I expect that will be the first to get sent off.  Most of the older slides will probably be forgotten, although the bowl slide and tornado could pretty easily find a home at another growing Six Flags waterpark that doesn’t already have those—which may be rather hard to find.  Either way, it’s unlikely Six Flags will waste time in finding new homes for these rides.  With the 2011 anniversary year coming up, they’ve just acquired a bunch of ‘new’ attractions to use.  How convenient.

SFKK now falls into the ranks of the Geauga Lake’s and Astroworld’s of the amusement industry.  We’ll look back in a few years and probably remember Twisted Twins as being awesome or the park having the best of something or another.  The loss of that park might mean bigger business for Holiday World and Beech Bend, who could both use some more recognition.  This is never the way you want to see a park go, but hopefully some rides will see another life.

The database project continues; still in the midst of doing the first tree of relocations back to Cedar Point.  So far there’s 146 parks and 832 coasters (relocations are entered anew each time) and one heck of a giant diagram with lines going everywhere.  I think it might be finishing up, but the last time I said that I found another 60 parks or something.  We’ll see.  New parks on the list of places with a ton of relocations: New Pleasureland Southport (6 in, 4 out), Blackpool Pleasure Beach (4 in, 3 out), and Geauga Lake (8 out).

With news out of the way, here’s some commentary on some new stuff in the amusement park world:

While I was down in Orlando over the summer, I spent 3 or 4 days at Islands of Adventure and had a chance to watch the Wizarding World of Harry Potter section start to take shape.  It was a long way off back then (unless the Potter universe is a lot of precast concrete blocks), but now it seems to be just about ready to go.  From the few pictures I’ve seen of the architecture, it’s very detailed and impressive… just what we’d expect from a place with a ton of money.  Still, I can’t help but wonder if this was the best decision for the park?

I’ve deliberately tried to stay away from a lot of the news on this, but from what I know of the main ride it should be pretty fantastic.  They’ll be calling it Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, which I suppose sounds menacing and everything by I can’t help but wish they didn’t have to put ‘Harry Potter and the’ in front of everything.  Will there be a Harry Potter and the Hamburger of Secrets stand outside?  If not, there should be.  The ride will be using Kuka robot arm technology just mounted on a coaster track and able to go through scenes like a dark ride (or so I hear).  This is rumored to be one of the most expensive rides ever, and I can see why if that technology is going to be expanded into a whole dark ride.  Consequently, they better get it right.  Across the lagoon, Spiderman already takes care of the whole 3-d adventure ride thing, so hopefully HPatFJ will do things a good bit differently.  Otherwise, it’d be like buying two of the same type of coaster (I’m looking at you, La Ronde..).  That said, the big castle the ride’s sitting in is going to be darn cool.  I just hope there’s going to be some interaction with the building since everybody that looks at that will probably have some form of “I need to climb that” in their heads.  If you don’t, you’re probably lying.

The most important thing to note as I complain about things is that I haven’t read the Harry Potter books.  Everybody says I need to read them eventually, but I never had an interest.  Maybe I’ll stop being lazy one of these days.  But anyway, I question the choice of the Harry Potter theme in that I’m not sure how long lasting it will be.  Take the other areas of the park.  Seuss Landing looks at the most well known children’s book author in history and teaches kids everywhere that there’s no such thing as straight lines.  Super Hero Island has all the comic book characters adults grew up with.  Even today we’re still sitting through the crappy movies made from them.  Toon Lagoon takes care of all the popular cartoons from when newspapers still produced worthwhile comics.  Although I expect the younger generation is probably a little lost on Dudley Do-Right and Popeye, this theme seems to have survived a number of years in popular culture.  Jurassic Park is maybe the hardest to justify since it was just one good movie and two things we don’t like to talk about.  I’d hazard to say that everybody knows Jurassic Park well enough or can at least understand the whole ‘hey guys, there’s dinosaurs here’ idea.  It seems pretty universal.

So that brings us to Harry Potter.  I expect it’s only me who hasn’t read the books.  The movies have also likely been seen by everybody but me.   So that adds up to a lot of people knowing the theme.  I’m just wondering how relevant Harry Potter will be in 15 or 20 years.  I expect they’ll have to do something to keep Harry Potter relevant, and I’m sure J.K. Rowling will be all over ways to make herself some more money.  I’d hate to see all this effort into a new themed land where nobody really knows the in-depth story.   I expect to be decently lost when I go wondering through Hogsmeade (what kind of name is that!?) this summer.  Unless the franchise is able to keep the series current, I’m not sure it has the lasting power that Seuss and Marvel characters do.  It almost would’ve been better if they’d done a generic medieval kind of castle thing where magic is involved.  The Lost Continent section that Harry came and sat on was a pretty generic theme, but it was my favorite part of the park.  It was tasteful but not tied to a specific story that someone had to know to get the full effect.  Hopefully the Harry Potter theme will stay current enough to still be worthwhile in 20 years time.

I suppose my one wish is that they wouldn’t have taken up so much of Lost Continent in order to build this new section.  It wasn’t necessary to have that big of a Harry Potter section at the expense of other areas.  The worst part is the retheme of Dueling Dragons.  In what might be some of the worst naming since calling a coaster Thriteen, DD will now be called Dragon’s Challenge.  The blue and red scheme will go away and a new theme and color will replace it.  Dueling Dragon’s had the best entry and best queue line I’ve ever seen.  While I’m still holding out that they won’t touch the inside of the building, I doubt we’ll get off that easily.  I suppose I don’t care as much about Flying Unicorn getting rethemed, but people that like unicorns I’m sure are pretty upset.  Maybe…  Until the ride opens, I suppose I’ll reserve judgment, but I’m not a huge fan of messing with something that’s already pretty fantastic.

I can see Harry Potter as the big trend right now.  I can think of a bunch of other themes I’d rather see first, but for what it is.. I hope it works.  And they better not use the word muggle in there… that just sounds ridiculous.

Jolly Roger Amusement Park (Maryland): 2 from, 5 to, 7 total relocations

Alton Towers (England): 5 from, 3 to, 8 total relocations

Flamingoland (England): 3 from, 5 to, 8 total relocations

Others with 4: Steel Pier (New Jersey), Playland Park (New York), Selva Magica (Mexico), American Adventures Theme Park (England), Movie Park Germany (Germany [duh]), Cedar Point (Ohio), Boardwalk and Baseball (Florida)

Like I said—this isn’t complete—I know Geauga Lake will turn out to have quite a few outgoing as will Six Flags Astroworld.  If I can finish this tree in the next millennium then there will be a big story about it.  I’m drawing the tree out on an 18×24 sheet of paper and it’s hilariously large.

But now to today’s article:

This is a little sooner than I was intending to write this, but I came across it again while adding it to the database and figured I’d go ahead and do a quick story.  Phantom’s Revenge at Kennywood is only 19 years old, but It’s already lived 2 lives.  This type of change is relatively unique in the coaster world as what’s essentially a brand new coaster was built out of the old one.

Back in 1991, Arrow’s 2^nd hypercoaster opened as Kennywood’s Steel Phantom.  This was one of the first coasters to raise the debate of what exactly classified a coaster as hyper.  Yes, there was a drop greater than 200ft., but it was the 2^nd, not the initial dip.  The lift hill was also well under the 200ft. mark.  Further complication matters, Arrow decided to throw in some inversions to the mix.  This meant that the ride would get over the shoulder restraints, which made the collective coaster enthusiast world cringe.  Perhaps ignoring better judgment, the coaster opened and was met with largely positive reviews, despite the bruising.  A 160ft. lift hill led to a turning and diving drop before going up for the 2^nd hill.  225ft. later, riders were down in a ravine and behind Thunderbolt, which the ride passes through on the drop.  This kind of thing took interaction to a whole new level.  They weren’t going to pass close by to the other ride, they were going to fly THROUGH it.  After the interesting opening, Steel Phantom took a left turn and headed up into the curious inversion section.  Usually when a park buys a coaster, they have to decide on a specific type.  It seems like Kennywood just said “We’ll take both.  But make it one coaster.”   Unfortunately at this time, Arrow was about the only company to go to for this sort of thing, although they still seemed to be in the mindset that all inversions should be the exact same size, no matter what coaster.  This led to tiny loops placed hilariously high off the ground.  A huge lead-in hill slowed the train enough to send it through the usual Arrow loop and batwing as seen 9 years earlier on Darien Lake’s Viper.  From there, it seems Arrow realized it might actually be possible to not have one size of corkscrew.  Steel Phantom features a long and wide corkscrew with a slightly thicker spine to support the element.  A final oddly shaped helix leads back under the corkscrew and up into the brakes.  Despite being a large coaster, Arrow must’ve run out of ideas quickly because it’s over in only 3000ft.  Although popular, Steel Phantom featured all the jolts and strange sections of banking that make the company so easy to make fun of.  But by 2000, it seems Kennywood was ready for a change.

Rather than scrap a 9 year old several million dollar investment in pain, Kennywood decided to do the sensible thing… and just replace half of it.  Morgan was brought in to give the ride a total overhaul and turn it into an actual hyper coaster.  In what must have been pretty satisfying, the 4 inversions were torn out… as was everything from about halfway down the 2^nd drop.  Figuring the lift and hill were at least decent, Morgan started their track halfway down the big drop.  Because 225ft. just wasn’t good enough, they also upped the drop by 3ft.  Poor Thunderbolt was once again torn apart as new track was laid through in not just one but two locations.  Instead of heading off into pain, the big drop now led to a high banked helix with about 8,000 supports before diving back through Thunderbolt.  Next up were the expected airtime hills.  While other Morgan coasters had very standard, receding segments of hills, it seems somebody might have had a seizure while designing the back end of Phantom’s layout.  Tiny little hills including a ridiculous double down provide massive amounts of airtime.  Despite the length being increased to 3200ft., there’s not much in the way of hills, but what’s there is certainly strong.  In continuing with Kennywood’s efforts of being cheap (or wanting to recycle, your choice), they reused the old Arrow train chassis.  Removing the over the shoulder restraints (to a collective cheer from the enthusiast community), Morgan created a new lap bar that operated from the side so they could reuse the mechanism from the old Arrow trains.  With a repaint and a rebranding as Phantom’s Revenge, it was ready to go.

It was probably a pretty big surprise for everybody when on the first test runs, the coaster slid right through the brakes and into the station (reportedly anyways).  When you can’t have a longer brake run, it appears you just make part of the course into one.   Trim brakes sit on the 2^nd to last and last hill on the course to scrub off some of the huge amount of speed the ride has on the way back to the station.  Thankfully, it seems the ride actually stops now.  It’s also quite popular with general guests and even enthusiasts (ranked 25^th in the most recent steel coaster poll).  While it would be awesome to see them edit the coaster again in a few years to make it longer or something (or maybe reinsert inversions just to confuse the heck out of people), it seems Kennywood got it right the 2^nd time around.

Today’s entry is a little bit scattered, but I wanted to get something posted tonight.  A pretty major update is on the By the Numbers front.  There’s not much to say just yet, but I’ve moved away from Excel and into Access.  Essentially, I’m creating another version of RCDB, just on my own computer and with more things considered.  When finished, I’ll be able to look at some really interesting stats like I’m doing right now.  One thing that’s already become massively interesting is the way that information is going into the database.  I started with Cedar Point (naturally) and entered the entire set of coasters past and present (darn CP and their huge array of old wooden things).  From there, I began entering parks that were linked to Cedar Point through relocations (past or present).  Entering parks linking to those other parks through relocations  starts a big tree of parks stemming from Cedar Point.  It’s like the 6 degrees of separation, just with parks.  What’s amusing is just how huge this tree has already become.  I’ve been to USA, Canada, Germany, Thailand, Netherlands, France, UAE, Britain, Sweden, Russia, Malaysia, England, Austria, and Mexico to name a few of the ones I know so far.  I haven’t found the end.  Assuming I ever complete the tree (sigh…), I’ll post a diagram.  It’s hilarious how many places you can go just linking through relocations.

The next thing is that if you’ve been following screamscape.com, it looks like my Busch ideas might be wrong.  Well darn.  But it might be Intamin.  So that’s not really a bad thing.  More on that as it happens.

The last thing for tonight is a copy of something I did for college.  The class is called “How do we Dwell? Histories and Theories of Environmental Behavior and Design.”  You could make It into an acronym (HDWD:HATOEBAD) but I think I’ll just call it the Dwelling class.  We’ve been discussing sensory perception of a place and for an assignment we were to describe a focused perception of a place.  Naturally I took the one place I remembered the most about… Cedar Point.  This class has proved pretty interesting thus far and afforded a number of opportunities to talk about parks.  When I feel like typing it out, I’ll do another post on an article with some arguments against theme parks like Disney.  We’ll see why I (and I assume most of us) disagree.  So here’s sensory perception of the Top Thrill Dragster midway:

“Cedar Point is undoubtedly a manmade park, assaulting your senses with endless stimuli.  Along the midway the brightly painted steel from the biggest roller coaster in the park stands out against the usually bright blue sky.  Although the ground is a wide expanse of concrete, care is taken in the landscaping with planters along the path and seating areas away from the crowded midway.  Nearly everything about the area is manmade, from rides, to buildings, to landscapes formed to highlight the first two items.  Every two or three minutes a coaster will fly by on either side.  One glides almost peacefully by while across the way another roars down the track as it launches to 100mph.  Each time the motor spins, the sound is reminiscent of an airplane as metal pulls against metal.  The colors of the train blur as it launches by.  Viewing grandstands erected by the ride allow a place of respite for the parents while the kids keep running back for more.

The fake popcorn smell emanating from the carts always seems to draw a line.  And why not?  It smells fantastic.  Guest walking by carrying everything from cotton candy to French fries leave behind a mixture of smells reminiscent of a day at the carnival.  The sun is bearing down from above and you can see the people that probably won’t make it until evening and will take an early exit.  An inviting breeze blows from the air conditioning unit above the door of a gift shop.  The architecture fits the theme of the area; bright and eye catching, beckoning people to take home a memory of the park.   In reality, the buildings all fit the ‘decorated shed’ concept, but in a setting such as this, that’s all they need.  With all the people that walk the midway in a season, it comes down to appealing to all the senses in a positive way so guests leave with positive experiences to pass on to future guests.”

That’s all for now… something more focused with the next update.  I promise!

“If the latest rumors are true, Busch Gardens Tampa may be thinking of adding their own version of Apollo’s Chariot, a fantastic B&M Hypercoaster”

First off, I’ll note that fantastic is entirely the wrong word right there.  I’d be more inclined to say poor or dull.  In what turned out to be one of the worst of the B&M hyper installations, Apollo’s Chariot lacks any real impressive airtime on a layout that we really wish rode as good as it looked.  But a hypercoaster for the other Busch Gardens?  Let’s take a look.

It’s relatively safe to say that if it’s a big coaster, the park will be going for B&M.  Busch Gardens and the Sea World parks all operate under the same company (Busch Entertainment Corporation until recently).  The parks have a history of B&M coasters with Manta and Kraken at Sea World Orlando, Great White at Sea World San Antonio, Griffon, Alpengeist, and Apollo’s Chariot at Busch Gardens Europe, and SheiKra, Montu, and Kumba at Busch Gardens Africa.  For only 5 parks, 9 B&Ms is a pretty sizeable number.

So if we assume B&M, what type would it be?  B&M offers 7 models of rides, diving machine, floorless, flying, inverted, hyper, sitting, and standing.  We can rule out diving coaster, inverted and sitting as the park already has that (unless they want to pull a LaRonde and add two inverted coasters).  Floorless is unlikely since it does the same thing as Kumba, just without a floor.  While standing would be hilarious since we haven’t seen one since 1999, I’m relatively certain Busch isn’t going to install something to screw with enthusiasts.   That leaves us with flying and hyper, the two most likely installations.  Looking at just the park, a flying coaster seems like a pretty good choice for theming ability and ride type.  When you look at the larger picture, it’s unlikely a flying coaster will come to the park since Sea World just added Manta last year.  So that leaves a hypercoaster like most of the rumors have been saying.

There’s been at least one hypercoaster from B&M over the last 5 years: Intimidator for 2010, Diamondback at Kings Island in 2009, Behemoth at Canada’s Wonderland in 2008, Hollywood Dream for Universal Japan in 2007, and the two Goliaths in 2006 for Six Flags over Georgia and LaRonde.    From 2008 in, the installations have all been with a new train style.  While reducing the capacity by 4, the staggered seating option allows for better views all around.  From the coaster enthusiast’s perspective, you also have a train almost twice as long as the old one, so the disparity of forces is a lot bigger, meaning stronger airtime on the ends (or just no airtime in the middle depending on how much of a cynic you are).  Although they’ve all been added to Cedar Fair coasters, I think it’s a pretty safe bet we’ll see them everywhere now.

At the park, survey markers have started popping up all around now.  Rumors say that the park may try and reuse part of the skyride’s station that once housed the loading area for the inverted monorail.  This does seem like a pretty good way to reuse resources (although we’ll hope they might give it a retheme so it doesn’t look like a giant box).  Click on the image below to make it bigger and you can see the skyride marked in red and the yellow box being the proposed station.  All the markings seem to be around the skyride right now, which makes sense as they’ve just closed it for a few months.  Most of the survey markers have popped up by the Nairobi train station and fit into that big yellow polygon thing on my map.  Behind the station, we see some markers by the old Clydesdale barn (guess it’s good the horses left after all…) that could make a turn around after the brake run.  Rumors have also mentioned the ride going up and over the water section of Rhino Rally (up and to the right of the polygon), although I haven’t seen any pictures of flags towards that direction.  If you stretch it out over that run and run the coaster a little bit back towards where the animals are (presumably scaring the crap out of them in the process), then you have a pretty good strip to throw a hypercoaster into.

Right now, I would put my money on a hypercoaster from B&M.  There’s really no telling which way the park will go, however, making me glad I’m not a betting man.   Looking at a big coaster with airtime, B&M seems to be the way to go as of late, and with rides like Behemoth and Diamondback getting pretty impressive ratings, I think it’s safe to say a hyper would be a good choice.