Happy National Roller Coaster Day! At least to everyone reading this on Wednesday night. If you're not reading this until Thursday, which will probably be most people, then you may have heard that several of the biggest parks in the country made their announcements for their 2018 additions! This week we wanted our blog post to recap all of the announcements as well as share our thoughts and opinions on them. So, let's get started!
The first major announcement of the day came from King's Dominion in Richmond, Virginia. Unsurprisingly, information about this park's new coaster leaked a bit early, and the majority of theme park enthusiasts were left feeling underwhelmed with a reveal that they already knew by name. However, don't let that take away from the fact that KD's new addition will definitely be a wild ride. Twisted Timbers, a Rocky Mountain Construction revamp of Hurler, a previously existing wooden coaster, will feature the coaster's original wooden structure with an all new steel track. It will feature 3 inversions and travel along over 3,000 ft of track.
We're also very excited to see the addition of WinterFest, the park's new holiday event! This festival is something that we've seen being added to many of the Cedar Fair parks over the years, and King's Dominion was next in line. The event will allow guests to experience some of the most popular attractions, holiday shows, and everyone's favorite man: Santa Claus! Overall, these were some great choices for King's Dominion. Cedar Fair has done a great job of improving not only King's Dominion's Roller Coaster line-up, but also the entire atmosphere of the park.
Next up today was Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri. While every single park had their own unique live-stream announcement videos, this park's was HANDS DOWN the best. They did a great job with theming, and had a fun and engaging video to publicize their new roller coaster: Time Traveler. This coaster is an epic addition to this park, breaking a ridiculous amount of records. Time Traveler will be the fastest, steepest, and tallest spinning roller coaster ever created! A Product of MACK, this coaster will cost a whopping $26 million to build. But, from the looks of it, it will be worth it. This ride is definitely not for the faint of heart, but also may just be impossible to pass up. Make sure not to eat too much park food before getting on this one! :p
Time Traveler will be Silver Dollar City's 4th major roller coaster, and just like King's Dominion, this park has made strides towards being one of the top coaster parks in the country.
At the same time as SDC's announcement, the roller coaster capitol of the world, Cedar Point, was making their record-breaking coaster announcement!
Over a year ago, we saw Mean Streak (once the tallest wooden roller coaster in the world) close and rumors began swirling of Cedar Fair finally working with Rocky Mountain Construction Co. Today, all of the speculation was finally answered with the announcement of Steel Vengeance. This coaster is RMC's largest project ever attempted and it is only fitting that it will be part of Cedar Point's already epic line-up of record-breaking roller coasters. Steel Vengeance will be the world's first hyper hybrid coaster meaning this bad boy will reach 205 ft and feature both wooden supports and steel tracks. This ride will also take the record for most air-time on any coaster, which will add to the thrill of weaving through the wooden structure. As always, Cedar Point continues its streak of world-class, record-breaking rides and we can't wait to ride Steel Vengeance!
The last two park announcements for the day were on the West Coast. First was California's Great America, an up-and-coming park located right outside of San Francisco. This park has seen many additions over the last few years and is quickly becoming one of Cedar Fair's most well-funded locations. CGA faces the struggle of not having as much space as some of their sister parks, so Cedar Fair has had to get creative in keeping the park innovative in their coaster line-up. The company has transferred rides to other parks, revamped a roller coaster, added a GCI wooden coaster, and announced Rail Blazer as their newest addition. Rail Blazer is a product of RMC. It is a single-rail style track as opposed to the hybrid coasters that we previously mentioned. It may look familiar, especially to all the San Antonio natives out there, because it is a clone coaster of the recently announced Wonder Woman roller coaster at Six Flags Fiesta Texas. This is not necessarily a bad thing for California's Great America, considering how far away from each other these coasters are, and that Rail Blazer appears to have better theming. Its compact design will feature 3 inversions and be perfect for a park looking to save some space.
The last announcement of the night came from Knott's Berry Farm in California just 2 hours ago. Not unlike its fellow Cedar Fair parks, Knott's made the announcement of a new roller coaster that ultimately replaced an existing coaster in the park. Hang Time, the park's new dive coaster, will stand at a staggering 150-feet and feature 5 gravity-defying inversions. The coaster train will stop just after the lift hill at the highest point on the track and hold riders for a few seconds before releasing them down the beyond-vertical drop.
Hang Time will be located in the newest section of Knott's Berry Farm: The Boardwalk. It will be a welcomed addition next to some of the park's other newer attractions, and will feature colorful nighttime track chase lighting to really help bring that cool boardwalk feel to the area.
Overall, this may have been the biggest roller coaster announcement day that we have ever seen. Today, we saw the additions of 5 new coasters for 2018, and these are only SOME of the parks that have made announcements this year. It's definitely looking like 2018 will be a great year for theme parks, and we couldn't be more thrilled.
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AuthorsParker and Brittany Ruhmel- Lovers of all things food and theme park related! Categories
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