originally posted on 6/14/2019
POSTED JUNE 14
First B&M Coaster Rises Again as Firebird at Six Flags America
Six Flags America (Upper Marlboro, Maryland) debuted its newest coaster creation, Firebird, to the public on May 17, 2019. Appropriately named, Firebird figuratively rises from the ashes of the park’s Apocalypse stand-up steel coaster. That steelie opened at the park in 2012, but in August 2018 the park announced that Apocalypse would close. Instead of being demolished or relocated, however, the attraction would be converted into a sit-down floorless coaster, renamed and rethemed.
Along with the conversion, now completed, the coaster has a new paint job – orange track, red rails, gray supports. Fans of the life-laid-to-waste look of the theming for Apocalypse will be disappointed to find it gone; however, the finale fire effect remains, as on the last turn, there's a burst of fire from a mini-volcano. And interestingly, the new sit-down trains are one row shorter than the prior stand-up trains.
This is the third Bolliger & Mabillard (B&M) stand-up to be converted into a floorless coaster, after Cedar Point's Rougarou (formerly Mantis) and California's Great America’s Patriot (previously Vortex).
Firebird has risen more than once. Before re-emerging in 2019 and even before that being reborn as Apocalypse in 2012, the coaster began its life in 1990 as Iron Wolf at Six Flags Great America (Gurnee, Illinois). Back then, it was B&M’s first-ever coaster and marked the now-lauded firm’s debut.
Photo: B. Derek Shaw. View full-sized image.
Photo: B. Derek Shaw. View full-sized image.
A Couple of Dummies Survive Coaster Mishap
During an April 20 safety test, a pair of test dummies flew off the GaleForce coaster at Playland’s Castaway Cove (Ocean City, New Jersey) and crashed onto the roof of a nearby hotel. Park President Brian Hartley confirmed no one was injured in the mishap, according to multiple news reports of the unusual incident. “It’s an unfortunate situation,” Hartley said to a Philadelphia television reporter. “It seems water used to fill the dummies and keep them at the appropriate test weight had leaked out, causing the accident. Obviously, it’s not something that would ever happen with a person in it,” he said. “The lap bar comes down. You’re secured in there,” noting that nothing failed on the ride itself. “The lap bar did not fail.” He added that the coaster undergoes two hours of testing every day it is operated.
Normally ACE News might not run with a story about such a relatively minor (though the nearby hotel owner might disagree) occurrence, considering enthusiasts know how safety testing is done at amusement parks, but media reports on this incident appeared nationwide. The angle taken with the coverage was interesting, probably because it allowed the reporters to touch, lightly, seemingly on the faux-danger aspect of coaster riding while pursuing the issue (again) of whether these rides are really all that safe.
GaleForce was built by S&S Worldwide and features a triple linear-synchronous-motor launch and a 125-foot, unique “kickflip” inversion. Please no leaking while riding. (Don’t be a dummy.)
Playland Castaway Cove is celebrating its 60th year.
Photo: Cheri Armstrong. View full-sized image.
2020 Coaster Looking Likely for Kings Island
Interest is so intense over early indications that Kings Island (Mason, Ohio) is building a new roller coaster for 2020 that a local television station (WCPO, Cincinnati Channel 9) flew a helicopter over the park to confirm that work is under way. And the station confirmed it -- drilling rigs have been burrowing holes for the presumed new coaster’s piers, and bucket loaders are pouring gravel and concrete for the foundation – all occurring in an area on the north side of The Racer, where Firehawk and Dinosaurs Alive used to stand.
A month earlier, local media learned that Kings Island had filed official blueprints to start work on a new attraction with the code name "Project X" and that they had been given the go-ahead to begin construction. But the plans merely said "ride" (not coaster) and showed only the foundation, footings and steel needed to frame the base.
Then, a couple of weeks ago more plans were filed and obtained by the media for sneak peaks. The latest blueprints this time clearly indicate an enormous coaster for the park, dwarfing The Racer next to it. The ride will apparently load at the old Firehawk entrance area, then climb a lift hill and benefit from what appears to be a 305-foot drop. The blueprints show it heading east past The Racer's turnaround toward the park’s railroad, making a banked turn using a "treble clef" maneuver, and then negotiating a helix or corkscrew turn near the end, as well as threading a tunnel before heading into the brake run.
Meanwhile, neither Kings Island nor Cedar Fair has officially commented on any new ride, at least as of this writing. Stay tuned for further developments.
Photo: Jeffrey Seifert. View full-sized image.
— Written and Compiled by Randy Geisler
POSTED MAY 24
For 2020, Fårup Sommerland Can See the Saw
Fårup Sommerland (Blokhus, Nordjylland) in Denmark has announced a new coaster for 2020. To be named Saven (Danish for “Saw”), the steelie will be a custom Vekoma family boomerang shuttle, coming in at 78.7 feet high and 780 feet long, with some twists and turns along that length, even splashing over a pool of water before diving into a tunnel.
Per Dam, director of Fårup Sommerland, said, “It is wonderful that we can announce what we have started for next year. A big plan has been in place. This is a great project for us. This is a significantly larger investment than usual, but our guests also expect it from us. It is part of our DNA — every single year there must be something new. We have two new attractions this year and also expanded our hotel. But next year is bigger. We have already done a great deal of work on this [coaster]. It is completely unique — the first of its kind in Denmark that runs both forward and reverse.”
Video: Courtesy Farup Sommerland.
Photo: Courtesy Farup Sommerland. View full-sized image.
A Schwarzkopf Favorite Gets a Bit of a Makeover at Sweden’s Liseberg
Liseberg (Gothenberg, Sweden) has announced its 32-year-old Anton Schwarzkopf-designed steel coaster, Lisebergbannan, has been favored with a makeover with brand new trains, a new station area, and new façade theming. A park statement said, “Lisebergbanan is one of our most beloved rides and it deserves some extra attention. The new trains and new surroundings will complete the feeling of a traditional and exciting train ride (the ride's name literally means Liseberg rail line).”
Alleged to have been one of Schwarzkopf’s favorites, the 4,397-foot coaster was touted as Europe’s biggest when it opened in 1987, as it wended and weaved its way around a large park hill. Though no longer the lengthiest in Europe (U.K.’s 1991 The Ultimate takes that claim), Lisebergbanan remains long and large in its fame and high regard as an exceptional mine train-style coaster.
Of note, though designed by Schwarzkopf, the ride was manufactured by Zierer.
Photo: Jonathan Hymes. View full-sized image.
Photo: Jonathan Hymes. View full-sized image.
No Longer California’s Leased America
Cedar Fair, which has owned and has been operating California’s Great America theme park since 2006, has actually not owned the real estate the park’s rides are built on but has been leasing the property from the city of Santa Clara. But no more. Cedar Fair recently bought the property for $150 million.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, the Santa Clara City Council approved agreements finalizing the sale, which also includes a master plan envisioning an expansion of hours and park operations, as well as a new entertainment district outside park gates. “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to solidify our control of 112 acres in the heart of Santa Clara,” Cedar Fair President and CEO Richard A. Zimmerman said. “The transaction underscores our long-term commitment to enhancing and expanding California’s Great America, ensuring a high-quality, family-friendly entertainment destination for those who live and work in Northern California.” For amusement park fans, the agreement is especially fortuitous, since reports were that another buyer was interested who would change the property’s use.
For those keeping score, this is only the latest development in the park’s ownership/operational history. When the facility debuted in 1976, it was known as Marriott’s Great America (built by the Marriott Corporation). In 1985, the City of Santa Clara acquired the park (and they have owned the land until recently) and hired Kings Entertainment Company to operate it. In 1992 Paramount Parks took over. In 2006, Cedar Fair acquired Paramount’s parks, and now Cedar Fair bought the land from the City, at last owning and operating the whole kit and caboodle from the ground up.
Photo: Keith Kastelic. View full-sized image.
Tokyo Dome Enclosing Explosive New Quadruple Launch Coaster
On March 23, 2019, Tokyo Dome City in Japan opened a new steel coaster. An enclosed Gerstlauer custom family shuttle coaster, the ride is curiously and strikingly named: Panic Coaster — Back!? Daaan!!
A unique feature of the 794-foot-long coaster is that it launches riders forward out of the station, first flying over a few twists and turns and a drop all in the dark (while going up to 18 mph). A midcourse maneuver launches riders again, still in the dark, while negotiating the trackage and transitions, to then arrive back in the station but facing the other way from how they began (!?). After a few seconds (now presumably panicked) guests get launched backward over the track, again in the dark, with the midcourse launch included once more. When finally arriving in the station a second time, having completed the circuit, riders are facing forward, and the ride is over.
A rider (“Maverix94”) who was able to check out the coaster experience himself (as described on the reddit.com/rollercoaster site) summarized it by concluding, “I had zero expectations going into this other than being a family shuttle, and it blew me away. I really hope this concept takes off, especially with the way it was done. Unless you know about it beforehand, coming into the station facing the wrong way catches you completely off guard and there's no way to know that that happens.”
The ride experience employs lighting effects, projections, lamps and special effects along the way to create the impression of cartoonish “comical” explosions going off all around (“Daaan” sort of translates onomatopoetically to a bomb’s “boom” sound).
Photo: Courtesy Hanwa. View full-sized image.
Photo: Courtesy Hanwa. View full-sized image.
— Written and Compiled by Randy Geisler
POSTED MAY 3
Green Lantern’s Light Goes Out
Six Flags Magic Mountain (Valencia, California) has announced that it will be removing the steel Green Lantern: First Flight coaster to make room for future development. The 105-foot-tall attraction has been classified standing-but-not-operating since July 2017. Manufactured by Intamin, Green Lantern was the first and only ZacSpin model in the United States. The three others in the world, still in operation, are 2007’s Inferno at Terra Mitica park (Benidorm, Spain), Kirnu at Linnanmäki (Helsinki, Finland) and 2009’s Insane at Gröna Lund (Stockholm, Sweden). On a side note, it was with the debut of Green Lantern in 2007 that Six Flags Magic Mountain claimed the title of the most roller coasters in the world (a superlative previously boasted by Cedar Point).
Regrettably, the coaster was reportedly plagued by frequent downtime, issues with low capacity and uneven customer satisfaction. Once Green Lantern: First Flight is removed, the park will remain as home to 18 operating coasters (still the most of anywhere in the world). The park’s 19th coaster, the new West Coast Racers, will be opening later this year. Six Flags Magic Mountain will be co-hosting Coaster Con 42 this June.
Photo: S. Madonna Horcher. View full-sized image.
Photo: S. Madonna Horcher. View full-sized image.
New Jersey’s Jenkinson’s Boardwalk hit by Tidal Wave
Jenkinson’s Boardwalk (Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey) had regretted that due to increasing manufacturing and operating costs, it realized it needed to replace its vintage Flitzer coaster at the end of last year. Though that coaster’s loss is sad news, the good news is that the beachfront park has arranged for a new attraction quickly and doing so with the addition of another coaster, in this case a new SBF-Visa Group spinning car model. To be named Tidal Wave, the ride will spin riders in a clockwise manner, reach top speeds of 20 mph and stand 20 feet tall. The new beach-and-surf themed family steelie will be one of three new attractions coming this season for the shore town oceanfront park. The other two are the Fun Slide (a giant three lane slide ride) and the Flying Buccaneers kiddie/family ride.
Jenkinson’s (which has been operating since 1928) is already home to one other coaster-like ride — Tornado. As it is a Zamperla family-oriented steel powered single helix model, the new Tidal Wave will bring a true gravity-driven coaster back to the park.
With the removal of Flitzer (Zierer), and the loss of Morey’s Piers’ (Wildwood, New Jersey) Flitzer in September 2018, none are left in the United Sates. Flitzer devotees will need to check out the only two remaining in operation in the whole world at Bakken park (Klampenborg, Denmark) or the Rand Show event in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Jenkinson’s Boardwalk purchased the coaster directly from the 2018 IAAPA Expo floor.
Photo: Jeffrey Seifert. View full-sized image.
Details for Ireland’s Upcoming Two-Coasters-in-One Revealed
A previous ACE News story (February 2019) noted that Tayto Park (Ashbourne, Meath, Ireland) announced it will build an “iconic” steel coaster. The article noted it would be a step-by-step process — that is, the park said it would proclaim its intentions in 2018, secure planning in 2019, build the coaster in 2020 and open the 14 million Euro ride in 2021. The step-two 2019 promised action has already occurred — the park has secured planning permission from the local Meath County Council. The recorded details indicate that the coaster (which Tayto Park’s owner intriguingly teased will be “two roller coasters in one”) will be by Vekoma, but some inquisitive minds wanted to know more. Plans submitted by the park and obtained by such groups as ThemeParks-EU, Screamscape and Coaster-Nation revealed that the proposed ride will combine and interweave both an inverted coaster and a sit-down, more family-friendly, shuttle coaster. The inverted (the tallest of the two) will be 105 feet tall. Track length will be 2,388 feet for the larger ride and 801 for the shuttle.
Tayto Park already boasts two coasters — the new-in-2018 Ladybird Loop, an SBF-Visa Group compact family spinning coaster, and the wooden (2015, The Gravity Group) 3,590-foot-long Cú Chulainn, with a third on the way opening in May 2019. Being called Flight School, it’s a Zierer (Force 281) 36-foot-high, 921-foot-long, family airport-themed steelie, which, according to the park, is “set to give young pilots a real experience of what it is like to take to the skies! On arrival back to the flight terminal, flyers will also have the option to leave with their very own Tayto pilot driving license.”
Photo: Courtesy Tayto Park. View full-sized image.
Photo: Courtesy Tayto Park. View full-sized image.
A Whale Rides in a Soap Box at SeaWorlds
The Zierer Shamu Express kid-friendly steel coaster, with cars shaped like whales, offered its last rides under that name and theme at SeaWorld San Antonio (Texas) when the park closed out its 2018 season on January 6, 2019. But fear not, the ride re-emerged, newly themed and renamed with the February 23 beginning of the park’s 2019 season as Super Grover’s Box Car Derby.
Since it opened in 2004, the coaster has been part of the park’s Bay of Play, a now Sesame Street-themed area. As part of that famed TV show’s 50th anniversary, SeaWorld thought it was time to upgrade the coaster to better fit the Sesame Street Bay of Play experience, according to Vice President of Marketing Chris Derby. The coaster’s track will remain the same, but its vehicles have been changed in appearance to now look like soap box derby cars, Super-Grover-style.
Meanwhile, over at SeaWorld Orlando (Florida), their similar version of the Zierer Shamu Express (in this case, a Force Three model rather than San Antonio’s Force Zero model), which they originally opened in 2006, closed on April 8, 2018 while a whole new Sesame Street land was built, redoing the previous Shamu’s Happy Harbor area. This coaster reopened as Super Grover’s Box Car Derby, along with the new redone park area on March 27, 2019.
Including the Grovers, the SeaWorlds in Texas and Florida are each home to five coasters, all steel.
Photo: Courtesy SeaWorld Parks. View full-sized image.
Photo: John Chen. View full-sized image.
Vancouver’s Playland May Not Be This Coaster’s Final Destination
Playland park (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) closed its Vekoma Corkscrew coaster at the end of last season, and it turns out they closed it for good, at least at this park. That sad news is balanced by the prospect that the steel ride might live to thrill another day because the Intermark Ride Group (a ride manufacturer’s sales representation company and used ride brokerage firm) website lists a Vekoma coaster for sale and features a picture of this ride.
Corkscrew ran at Playland from 1994 to 2018, where it gained a bit of celebrity status by appearing in movies, such as: “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days” and “Final Destination 3” (this latter film might be viewed by enthusiasts with some trepidation, since, though it is horror movie fiction , the story features a coaster ridiculously derailing resulting in rider death).
The 75-foot tall double corkscrewer originally opened at the now-closed Boblo Island (Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada) with its 1985 debut, where it operated through 1993 until that park’s closure. Playland purchased it and relocated it within Canada. It remains to be seen if the now-for-sale Corkscrew can (hopefully) survive to find a third life at another (unfinal?) destination, and that death is again screwed.
In the meantime, Playland still offers three coasters: the Bug Whirled, an SBF-Visa Group compact spinning cars steelie; the Kettle Creek Mine, an E&F Miler 16-foot-tall family/kiddie steel coaster; and finally and most famously, Coaster, the 1958 Carl E. Phare-designed woodie (an ACE Coaster Classic and ACE Roller Coaster Landmark).
Photo: Steve Gzesh. View full-sized image.
Photo: Bobby Nagy. View full-sized image.
— Written and Compiled by Randy Geisler
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