originally posted on 9/2/2022 1:57:00 AM
All images courtesy of Adventureland. View full-sized image.
When a major theme park adds a new coaster every two or three years, it is easy to be impressed with such continued investment. When it is a midsized regional park, multiple new coasters over a short time span is remarkable.
Adventureland (Altoona, Iowa) is doing just that.
Turn back the calendar. Just six years ago, the park delivered Monster in 2016. Three years later, Phoenix spun into the park. Two years after that — and even through a pandemic — Dragon Slayer charged onto the scene in 2021. Now
announced for next season, Flying Viking will make four new coasters within just eight seasons. Color ACE impressed.
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Supplied by Zamperla, the new family coaster will combine with a new log flume, much like the pairing at Luna Park at Coney Island.
The height is 50 feet, and the length is 1,312 feet. This is an ideal addition for a park that really doesn’t have a junior coaster. At 26 mph, it should provide just the right amount of thrills. The layout features curves, dips and spirals, but big drops
are not a part of the design.
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Draken Falls will join Flying Viking. The park retired its original log flume when Monster was erected, so park fans were enthusiastic to see the return of a similar ride. The combination of the two rides will carry a Viking motif, bringing
it into a cohesive theme. The front of the coaster train looks particularly striking.
The two attractions will share a similar theme.
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“This idea is where we take one of our large assets like a coaster or flume and design it with other attractions laid out in the same area,” said Adam Sandy, roller coaster sales and marketing director, Zamperla. “This concept grew from several places.
We watched our clients at MOi Park (Istanbul, Turkey) and Cultus Lake Adventure Park (British Columbia, Canada) wind our coasters around their facilities and put attractions from us and other manufacturers in those spaces. We also visit a lot of properties
and have been excited about what clients like Mall of America (Minneapolis, Minnesota), Gröna Lund (Stockholm, Sweden) and others have done. They used smaller footprints to create a different type of density by using vertical space.”
From there, Zamperla began conceiving a planned combination.
“We asked ourselves, why not offer the concept instead of having our clients piecemeal them?” said Sandy. “Therefore, we started conceptualizing what our ride integrations could be like. The first one we created was for Ferrari World (Abu Dhabi, United
Arab Emirates) where we supplied three family attractions and a junior coaster in the same footprint; this project opened in 2020. At the same time, we were working on a new area for Luna Park, and when we started thinking about maximizing capacity
and investment on a small footprint because of the lot sizes at Coney Island, the integrated rides concept felt like a perfect fit.”
“At Adventureland, the two rides will replace an older attraction and redefine a corner of the park,” said Michael Coleman, North American Sales, Zamperla. “With multiple trains on the coaster and up to 20 boats for the Super Flume, it is possible to
realize throughput up to 2,000 people per hour on this one footprint depending on a park's needs. I wouldn't be surprised to see more of these integrated ride packages pop up at parks around the world due to the spectacle and positive guest-related
opportunities they present.”
When the rides open, Adventureland’s coaster count will be seven, three of which are wood.
— Tim Baldwin, ACE News Editor
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