Nov03FrontRowNews

The Year That Will Be:
New Coasters and Projects in 2004.

By Kevin Moffett

New Coasters in 2004

Dollywood has announced that it will be adding its first wooden roller coaster to the park, courtesy of Great Coasters International. Thunderhead, a name that is not yet finalized, features the first-ever “fly-through” station, an effect for both rider and spectator to enjoy.

Thunderhead Gap was an old lumber operation and railroad community located at the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, where lumber was once cut and processed before continuing on to larger cities, like Knoxville, for distribution via the main rail line. The Thunderhead Gap Sawmill is strategically placed along the area’s main rail line where the Dollywood Express, an authentic coal-fired steam train, now hauls sightseers on a five-mile rail journey into the Smoky Mountains.

Entering the main sawmill, guests will climb aboard Thunderhead and begin their trip into the Smoky Mountains, climbing the steep mountainside just before they are sent plunging, narrowly averting the trees that have grown up along the path of the train. Doubling back through the sawmill station at full speed, the train continues on, climbing once again, twisting and turning along the mountainside before returning.
Says Ken Bell, Dollywood’s senior vice president: “Thunderhead will provide thrills for folks of all ages with drops, twists, and turns. For parents and grandparents, memories of some of the great old wooden coasters will come thundering back. This new area to Dollywood, named Thunderhead Gap, will also tell the story of the Smoky Mountains and its history as a major logging center.”
Thunderhead is being billed as a “new generation” wooden roller coaster featuring an intertwining smooth ride, tighter curves, and extreme banking made possible by Great Coasters International’s Millennium Flyer Trains. The ride will reach a maximum speed of 55 miles per hour and will feature a maximum drop of 100 feet, swooping to a high-speed S-curve at the base of the first drop. It will cover nearly five acres at completion and is scheduled to open spring 2004.

Camp Snoopy at Mall of America announced that it intends to add a Gerstlauer spinning roller coaster to be called Timberland Twister. The coaster, which is scheduled to open in spring 2004, will be the first major new ride at Camp Snoopy since The Mighty Axe debuted there in 1998.

Timberland Twister will take park visitors on a quarter-mile ride in a spinning, speeding car through hairpin turns and plummeting spirals, through Camp Snoopy and around the Kite Eating Tree. The ride will feature a four-person car that spins on its own axis as it travels five stories high and accelerates to 31 mph. Timberland Twister will be built in the current Wilderness Theater location of Camp Snoopy.

Construction to relocate the theater to the Northwood Stage began during fall 2003. Ride construction has already begun and will continue until the ride opens in spring 2004.

Magic Springs & Crystal Falls has announced the addition of a Vekoma looping roller coaster for the 2004 season. The coaster, a Vekoma SLC model, will stretch to 110 feet tall, reach 50 mph, and feature five inversions. The park predicts the ride will hasten a 25 percent increase in attendance next year.

“A roller coaster of this size and drawing power usually attracts 50,000 to 100,000 additional park visitors per year, and we fully expect that this new Magic Springs coaster will match those historic numbers,” Vicki Berni, the park’s general manager, told Arkansas Business.

The $7 million coaster is one of several recent additions/improvements for Magic Springs. This summer it also opened the new Timberwood Amphitheater, which hosted about 10 live performances.

It’s not quite a coaster, but it’s a 2004 opening that will generate excitement nonetheless. Scooby-Doo! and the Haunted Mansion is Paramount’s Kings Dominion’s latest addition. The Sally Corp.-designed ride is based on the Hanna-Barbera cartoon and is Kings Dominion’s first interactive dark ride.

Park guests join Scooby, Fred, Daphne, Velma, and Shaggy on the case to uncover the mystery of a green ghost who has been haunting a Victorian mansion.

The adventure unfolds aboard a Mini-Mystery Machine, which takes curious guests through the requisite graveyards, corridors, and creepy dungeons. While winding through the mansion, riders play the parts of their animated friends, using Fright Light ghost blasters to zap ghosts for points. The points are tallied at the end of the ride to see who is most skilled at ghost busting.

Scooby-Doo! and the Haunted Mansion will be located in the Kidzville section of the park. Guests will enter the attraction through the telltale wrought-iron gates, following a winding path through a swamp, ultimately leading to the mansion. Once inside the mansion, riders zapping targets trigger a variety of gags, making each ride a unique experience.

“Scooby Doo! and the Haunted Mansion is an attraction kids, parents, and grandparents can all enjoy together,” says Richard Zimmerman, PKD’s executive vice president and general manager, in a recent press release.

The multimillion-dollar attraction will open in spring 2004.

United States

Paramount’s Great America, in Santa Clara, Calif., has made plans to open a waterpark inside its gates. Boomerang Bay, a multimillion-dollar addition, will make Great America the only park in California with both a waterpark and a theme park on the same property, both for one admission price. The 2.7-acre Australian-themed waterpark will feature a variety of slides, kiddie splash areas, and water play activities. “Boomerang Bay is designed with families in mind, and it provides activities that kids of all ages can enjoy together. We are confident visitors throughout Northern California will love this new addition,” says Tim Fisher, executive vice president and general manager of Paramount’s Great America, in a company press release.

To make room for the new waterpark, Paramount’s Great America is removing the Stealth roller coaster.

Germany
Thirteen years ago, East Germany collapsed and the Berlin Wall was taken down. Today, for many Germans, there still exists nostalgia for the old communist state. Peter Massine, a Berlin entrepreneur, has announced plans to spend about $1.35 million to open an East German-themed amusement park in the German capital, right in the former Eastside industrial district of Oberschöneweide.

Due to open sometime in 2004, the 107,000-square-foot park, which will be patrolled by guards in communist and border patrol uniforms, will feature rides in East German Trabant cars, a checkpoint search where guests will have their papers and identification cards searched and scrutinized, and a gift shop offering some of East Germany’s trademark items, including Vita-Cola and Rondo coffee.

The park is being conceived more like a museum or a historical attraction than an East Germanland with coasters and thrill rides. Authenticity is being stressed, with employees in character and exhibits on what life in East Germany was really like. Visitors will be able to check out an East German living room outfitted with flowery wallpaper, paintings of socialist factory life, and cupboards stocked with special plates marking the anniversary of the founding of the East German state. Even models of the East Germans’ beloved dachas or weekend cottages with their own garden patch will offer visitors a rare glimpse into how those living in the socialist system took their leisure breaks.

Massine says the park is primarily targeted at a national audience, some with vivid memories of communist living during the height of the Cold War. The park has already attracted the interest of Americans and Japanese, whose bus tours the organizers hope to lure.

Belgium
Merlin Entertainment has announced the opening of a new museum in Ostend, Belgium, in early 2004. Themed on the four elements, the museum, called Earth, Wind, Fire and Water, is the first of many Earth Explorer centers that Merlin plans to debut in Europe.

The $10 million attraction—developed by Merlin, in conjunction with the Belgian government and Dirk Frimont, the first Belgian astronaut—will primarily target families with children age 12 and under. It is an interactive attraction that examines how the planet was created, and it encourages visitors to undertake their own hands-on discoveries of tornadoes and volcanic eruptions. There will also be a theme-park-style ride that has been advertised as a “nonstop journey through the center of the earth and back again.”

Merlin Entertainment’s chief executive, Nick Varney, says: “Selling science is notoriously difficult. This is where Merlin’s established experience of successfully mixing fun and education within a profitable attraction makes Earth Explorer such a natural fit for our brand portfolio. This is the recipe which has proven such a winner for the Dungeons and Sea Life Centers.”

Merlin says a second center is planned with five more to open by the end of the decade, including one in England.

Alsace, France
Bioscope—“a new kind of amusement/educational park based on the concept of ‘Life: a fragile delicate balance’”— is scheduled to open next year, in Alsace, France. Global Estudios developed the new attraction in conjunction with Alsace Authority, as well as with the Grévin group (owners/operators of Parc Astérix and others).

It is being touted as an attraction that is neither a science museum nor a theme park, but a fusion of the two. Global Estudios was responsible for the concept design and master planning and continues to collaborate closely with the Grévin team, starting with defining the model of the park and ending with a formula for attracting visitors. The intention is to attract 400,000 visitors in the first year.

Bioscope will include attractions aimed at families, along with interactive animation of the kind shown in technical and scientific public education centers, promoting an enjoyable experience, “but also to learn about their life and the future of humanity.”

Already nearly $70 million has been invested into the 74-acre park, which will be located in the middle of the Alsatian potassium basins, between Mulhous and Colmar.

Paris, France
A new aquarium southeast of Paris in the town of Sénart will open in the spring of next year. The town, endowed with public funding for development, received about $1.5 billion total. Included in this is about $58 million for the Grand Aquarium of Ile-de-France, which will be the biggest aquarium in the region. And more expansions are planned, with a final completion date of 2010.

The park is being themed on discovery, emotion, relaxation, and awareness. The Magic of the Seas section will have a display of ocean fauna, Austral Park will showcase cold-water animals such as penguins and seals, and Tropical Waters will be a mammoth enclosed rain forest display.

The Central Mall will have multimedia centers, restaurants, and Imax screens, as well as the Aquatic Parc, which will include waterslides, a wave pool, and a lazy river. Planners are expecting 1 million visitors in the first year of operations.