Way back in 2007, there were already the first rumors of the next Busch Gardens coaster. SheiKra had been recently converted to floorless and the speculation was already running wild. Prevailing theories had a B&M hypercoaster pegged for the park. In March of 07, screamscape.com wrote:
“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.
On A Rail 