2012: The Mid-Year Review

I had originally started writing a post for the beginning of this year picking my 12 most anticipated 2012 coasters and going into detail about them.  As it turns out, I’m long winded… and the post never got finished.  So let’s compare my list from then with how I feel now after hearing reviews form a number of these rides.

From my list written in January I had:

12. Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars, Hong Kong Disneyland, Hong Kong

11. Swarm, Thorpe Park, Great Britain

10. Superman: Ultimate Flight, Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, California

9. Wild Eagle, Dollywood, Tennessee

8. Shambhala, PortAventura, Spain

7. Manta, SeaWorld San Diego, California

6. Oz’Iris, Parc Asterix, France

5. Woden Timbur Coaster, Europa Park, Germany

4. Leviathan, Canada’s Wonderland, Canada

3. Dauling Dragon, Happy Valley, China

2. Verbolten, Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Virginia

1. Skyrush, Hersheypark, Pennsylvania

These got left out, but still warrant a note:

• Iron Shark, Galveston Island Historic Pleasure Pier, Texas
• Bullet Coaster, Happy Valley Shenzhen, China
• X-Flight, Six Flags Great America, Illinois

So how does it all shake out halfway through the season?  Most of this list is open now, except for the Hong Kong Disney Coaster and Superman: What the Heck in California.

Big Grizzly Mountain Happy China Lucky Panda Runaway Mine Cars is still receiving finishing touches, but it does look pretty nice.  It will undoubtedly have the usual Disney quality and charm, and their somehow magical ability to turn Vekomas decent.  This should be a hit for the park.

Swarm has gotten some very positive reviews due to the theming, and I’ll credit Thorpe for really stepping up the game on that front.  Still, the coaster just looks short to me.  If only they could have taken X-Flight’s layout and added Swarm’s theming.  Still, I think that deserves to go up at least a little on the list.

Superman is still the strangest coaster I’ve seen in a little while, but I think it has the potential to be good, even great.  If you ignore the fact that it’ll probably be broken down half the time and will also have a capacity of roughly 20 an hour, I think it’s something to look forward to.  It’s like a less practical Intamin impulse, but one that will probably be more fun.  Just get in line early and bring a tent…

I was unimpressed with Wild Eagle’s layout when it was first announced, mostly because it felt like something any floorless or sit down coaster could do.  It also seemed short in length for its height.  That said, the coaster really seems to have lived up to its potential.  While maybe standard, the inversions are very interesting with the wing coaster seating arrangement… especially the loop.  The finale figure 8 is low to the ground and swoops by lots of trees, which also improves things.   I think this has the potential to go up a little in the standings and seems to fit the ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ mantra.

Shambhala looks incredible—it’s one of my favorites this year from a purely aesthetic standpoint.  B&M hyper coasters are hard to judge by looks alone though.  Some seem to crawl over the hills but deliver fantastic sustained airtime while riding.  I think this will fall somewhere in the middle, with a good, but not amazing ride.  The theming is above average, though the ‘water splash’ effect is fake (cheaters!).  The helix is still absolutely gorgeous, even if the ride looks too slow at the peak.

If this was based purely on restraints alone, I’d vote Manta as number 1.  Mack launched coaster restraints are wonderful—very open and small for a coaster type that can perform inversions.  Manta wraps up the SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment launched coaster trio and is undoubtedly the most ‘family’ of the 3.  While still retaining great coaster elements and having a very cool launch tunnel projection, the ride falls short from a coaster thrill standpoint.  While arguably this is exactly what the park was shooting for, this list is looking at quality of coaster and the ride will take a small hit down the list.  Still, the park has a winner on their hands—exactly what SeaWorld San Diego needs.  Now just finish the landscaping that I hope is still missing!

Oz’iris wins the award for most underrated ride.  It was special to see a B&M inverted coaster being built, much less a custom one.  But Parc Asterix pulled out all the stops on theming.  The ride, queue, and all the surroundings are very well themed and show just how much effort the park put into making this more than just a coaster.  And from reports, Oz’iris really is more than just a coaster… it’s gone back to the glory days of intense B&M coasters that were known for their power and intensity.  The ride has an interesting layout—the first dive loop on an invert, no pre-drop piece, and an inversion order that certainly borders on strange.  But that’s ok and even encouraged… it’s clear Oz’iris is a ride not to be overlooked.

Europa Park looks great—lots of coasters and a great them.  For me, it’s all the quirky coasters that do it… a bobsled, vertical lift mouse, a coaster that just turns in one direction…  But this year, they added something more mainstream.  GCI has made a name for themselves in the wooden coaster business, culminating in an insane blend of height, speed, and terrain last year in China.  Wodan seems to draw some elements from it… the ride is tall, fast, and spread out.  That said, it may be almost *too* spread out.  What makes GCI coasters great are the quick direction changes and little pops of airtime here and there.  While they’re still visible, the overall experience seems to be lacking.  Thematically the ride is gorgeous and not to be missed, but I think in terms of ride quality it will leave the rider wanting a bit more.

I’ve written about why I think Leviathan is ridiculous, so I’ll try not to rehash all of that.  Regardless of how I feel, we now have the first +300’ B&M and two opportunities to ride the same type of coaster at Canada’s Wonderland.  Does it live up to the hype?  I’d put the answer as a solid sorta.  Yes, it’s big and fast and tall and will have some great floating airtime.  But part of me is still disappointed in how stretched out the coaster is and how it ends with so much potential left (the final brakes are taller than the entirety of Dragon Fire!).  If it weren’t for the park already having a hyper, I’d rate this higher I think, but the ride in general is just a little perplexing.  Still, I’m incredibly excited to ride this later in the year to see if the opinions hold true.

China continues to provide the first word on quality named attractions.  Dauling Dragon opened nearly 2 months ago and I’ve yet to see a single review.  Perhaps I’m not searching hard enough.  From looks alone, the ride seems pretty spectacular.  The ‘high five’ element is probably a lot of nothing on the ride, but from the ground I’m sure it’s a great visual.  Afterwards the ride seems relatively unremarkable; though does throw in some pretty nice looking duel (daul?) spots and a flowing layout to connect them all.  My main worry comes with the trains.. PTCs are not great in handling intense corner-heavy coasters and Dragon is the picture of that.  Unless they can put some good maintenance into the thing (because we all know how likely that is to happen) I expect future guests are in for a rough ride.

Enthusiasts will never forgive Busch Gardens for removing Big Bad Wolf.  Verbolten tries its best to help with some of that, but it will always be a sore spot.  As one of Zierer’s first attempts on a big stage, it was largely a ‘wait and see’ ride and it seems like the coaster has met most expectations and exceeded in others.  The theme certainly shines, with a great queue line and developed story.  In the enclosed portion of the ride, there are 3 different options for the story, which adds a lot to re-rideability.  And while the vertical drop element is a pretty big gimmick, it works well on the ride and adds a lot of excitement.  In general, I’d liked to have seen the outdoor portion be a little longer and the ‘broken bridge’ scene taken a little faster.  That said, Verbolten is about as good of a replacement that could possibly be for Big Bad Wolf without getting rid of the ‘family’ coaster sticker.

There are often those rides that look amazing from the start, but often don’t live up the hype.  I think I can safely say that Skyrush is distinctly not one of those.  Hershey continues to impress with Skyrush, completing their Intamin trio.   From all angles this ride looks great.  The speed leads to incredible airtime and intensity, though from multiple reports it also leads to leg pain as the forces shove down the lap bar even further.  But still, I can look past that for the simple fact that they used a lap bar!  It’s great to see a park pass on the over the shoulder restraint that’s become so standard.  Hershey does a great job shoving rides into areas where they have no business fitting and Skyrush is no exception.  Comet now has a new friend, and the river & picnic grounds are far more exciting with a bright yellow Intamin roaring past.  For me, this is clearly the best of 2012.

Six months later, this is how I would rank the best of 2012 now:

12. Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars, Hong Kong Disneyland, Hong Kong

11. Manta, SeaWorld San Diego, California

10. Superman: Ultimate Flight, Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, California

9. Swarm, Thorpe Park, Great Britain

8. Woden Timbur Coaster, Europa Park, Germany

7. Shambhala, PortAventura, Spain

6. Leviathan, Canada’s Wonderland, Canada

5. Wild Eagle, Dollywood, Tennessee

4. Dauling Dragon, Happy Valley, China

3. Verbolten, Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Virginia

2. Oz’Iris, Parc Asterix, France

1. Skyrush, Hersheypark, Pennsylvania  

Skyrush stays at number one and Oz’iris makes the biggest jump upwards.  But since this is the Internet and people have opinions—what do *you* think?  How would you rank them?  Which have you ridden?  Full disclosure for this piece is that I have not ridden any yet, but if all goes as planned, I will have Leviathan, Wild Eagle, and Skyrush by September.

Battle of the Wing Coasters

Last year B&M debuted their new Wing Coaster at Gardaland in Italy.  The word on the street (or maybe the track) is that they got a nice discount from B&M for letting them build and test this prototype design at their park.  I don’t know what kind of discount it must’ve been, but it’s hard to go wrong with a B&M design because you know it’s actually going to work… unlike some other companies out there.

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:

	Height	Speed	Length	Inversions
Raptor	108ft.	56mph	2526ft.	3
Swarm	127ft.			5
X-Flight		55mph	3000ft.	5
Wild Eagle	210ft.	61mph	3127ft.	4

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.