originally posted on 8/5/2024
All Photos: Courtesy Kings Dominion. View full-sized image.
Kings Dominion (Doswell, Virginia) plans to celebrate its 50th anniversary in a huge way. In 1974, Kings Dominion opened with a preview of the first attractions in the park — the Lion Country Safari (a drivethrough animal attraction) and Scooby Doo (now known as Woodstock Express) — a tease of what was to come. When the park officially opened on May 3, 1975, it featured the Eiffel Tower, Rebel Yell (now known as Racer 75) and a small steel Galaxie. However, nothing prepared the public for what was in store.
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In 1979, a 170-foot mountain arose in the Lost World section that contained three rides: Journey to Atlantis, Land of the Dooz and Time Shaft. Journey to Atlantis was a log flume-style ride that later became the Haunted River in 1980. Land of the Dooz was a family mine train-style ride that took guests throughout the village of the Dooz people and later became Smurf Mountain in 1984. Time Shaft was a standard rotor that used centripetal force to press riders against the wall during the ride. Smurf Mountain closed to the public in 1993; in 1995 the Haunted River and Time Shaft followed it into the history books.
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Guests started to wonder what would replace the three rides, and in 1998 Volcano The Blast Coaster erupted — an Intamin multilaunch linear-induction motor (LIM) coaster. It featured two launches, one of which erupted guests out of the top of the 155-foot-tall mountain with a vertical launch into a rollout. The coaster had a top speed of 70 mph with a drop of 80 feet and four inversions — two of which boasted of being the tallest and fastest of any coaster at the time. It immediately became one of the park’s most popular rides, although mutterings of the ride’s demise began when the trains would not crest over the mountain and rollbacks occurred because the vertical LIMs wore out. In 2018 the ride permanently closed, yet the mountain still stood quietly.
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That is, until July 19 when a clue on Facebook to “Keep your Eyes on the Skies” was highlighted by a link to a video on Kings Dominion’s website. From the rubble of Volcano The Blast Coaster, a new record-setting coaster called Rapterra (meaning “Jungle Hawk”) will be soaring across the skies as the park’s 14th roller coaster. A Bolliger & Mabillard multilaunch wing coaster, Rapterra will take guests around the recently added Jungle X-Pedition from 0 to 65 mph in less than four seconds to reach a height of 145 feet along 3,086 feet of track, making it the world’s tallest and longest launched wing coaster. The layout will be highlighted by an Immelmann loop and an S-curve to simulate a flight through the jungle.
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Ken Parks, creative director for Six Flags, was quoted as saying: “We could never bring Volcano back and that wasn’t the intention. We were creating a new experience, but we certainly want to pay homage to what has come before and what we loved. So, we worked that into our story. It just happened to be at the base of the of a volcano that collapsed in on itself and became a caldera. That is now giving the opportunity for guests to go and explore with this group we have in Jungle X called the ‘Whey Foundation’ and seek new adventures.”
— Amanda Hilliard
#ACENews