|
It’s impossible to please all the people all the time, the saying goes, but Busch Gardens Tampa’s new steel coaster from Intamin, “Cheetah Hunt,” might come as close to accomplishing the impossible as a theme park can. Is it a “family coaster”? Well, typically those don’t hit speeds of 60 mph, involve three separate launches, and stretch across 4,400 feet of twisting track. It’s more of an extreme experience, then? Not exactly. The highest point of the ride tops out at a relatively low 102 feet, there is just one inversion, and, most notable, the height requirement is 48 inches. So how, then, are we supposed to classify “Cheetah Hunt”? According to park officials, it’s simple: A ride that delivers thrills for the widest possible audience.
Busch Gardens Tampa is no stranger to intense, aggressive roller coasters. Sit in the front row of “SheiKra,” for instance, and just try not to scream your head off when the train pauses for a few seconds hanging over the edge of a 200-foot vertical drop. But for this installation the park wanted a ride that would appeal to the entire family. Often that language is just code for little kids and their parents, forgetting about the teenagers. Not here.
“Our other coasters require an older person to ride them and exclude the younger folks,” says park president Jim Dean. “This coaster expands our ride inventory to a new audience. The technology that ‘Cheetah Hunt’ brings is a major roller coaster that younger members of the family can ride, but has the thrills for roller coaster enthusiasts. It’s a one-of-a-kind ride.”
 Cross Between a Jungle Cat and a Speeder Bike
The inspirations for “Cheetah Hunt” come from multiple sources. Mark Rose, the park’s vice president of design and engineering, has been dreaming of something like this ever since he saw the speeder bike chase scene in 1983’s “Return of the Jedi”; he wanted terrain-hugging speed. What’s more, Busch Gardens Tampa (BGT) had cheetahs on exhibit back in the 1970s and was interested in bringing them back. Rose started looking at ways to marry the animal to a coaster, and thus the name, theme, and layout came together.
“We were talking about the characteristics of cheetahs being fast, accelerating, their grace, speed, and agility,” Rose says.
To replicate a cheetah’s burst of speed, “Hunt” offers three separate linear synchronous motor (LSM) launches at vari ous points along its course, including one right out of the station. Landlocked as the park is, BGT usually has to remove something old when it wants to install something new.
The station building originally belonged to the park’s now defunct monorail, and features a dual-loading system so the queue never seems to bog down. One of the coaster’s signature elements is the serpentine weave it makes through a canyon that was once part of the “Rhino Rally” expedition attraction. “Cheetah” also interacts with the park’s train, the “Serengeti Safari,” and jumps over top of the “Skyride” cables (parts of the pulley system had to be adjusted to make room).
This means “Cheetah Hunt” is not only exciting for the riders but gives nonriders plenty to see, as well. Rose calls it his “Grandma Rose Moment.” When he designs coasters, he thinks of what his mom would do while her kids and grandkids are on the ride. He wanted to ensure there were places where pedestrians could get an eyeful of “Cheetah Hunt.”
“If I’ve done that for my mom, I know hundreds of thousands of other guests will have the same feeling,” Rose says.
Perhaps there’s no better example of this than the midway between the ride and its sister attraction, the new animal habitat “Cheetah Run.” To one side, guests can watch “Hunt” launch at 60 mph, then literally just turn their heads to view cheetahs playing in their 11,000-square-foot, multilevel environment. The designers even created a mini-sprint track for the animals to run that is parallel to the coaster launch.
‘Windcatcher’ Turns the Lift Hill Idea on Its Head
That launch leads directly into what Dean calls “a new icon for our park”: the “Windcatcher Tower,” where the coaster’s 16-passenger trains launch up a hill into a figure-8 move before dropping 130 feet into a gorge. It’s unlike anything else in the industry, and Rose says that’s entirely by design. He wanted this ride to be inherently buzzworthy.
“Social media is so ingrained in our society today—everybody takes photos and posts them online. The sharing is so instant, we wanted to be unique in our visuals,” Rose says. “Once you post [a picture of the Windcatcher] on Facebook and send it to your friends, they’ll say, ‘Where’s that?’ All of a sudden, their friends are going, ‘Wow, we better go to Busch Gardens and ride ‘Cheetah Hunt.’”
With its crisscrossing supports and devil-may-care piping poking up all over, Rose calls Windcatcher a “Pick Up Stick design,” referring to the classic children’s game. It also represents a hallmark for BGT coasters: proper pacing. Rose doesn’t design coasters to overwhelm and disorient riders by pummeling them with elements packed one after another; he wants guests to get off his rides knowing exactly where they’ve been and what they’ve done. The Windcatcher is a good spot for riders to catch their collective breath and take in some gorgeous views of the park before plunging into the second half of the ride.
Integration with the Existing Environment
While BGT certainly made a splash with “Cheetah Hunt’s” Windcatcher, officials nevertheless wanted to be sure the new ride didn’t overwhelm its environment. The park flew test balloons all along the track’s path to ensure it would only be seen exactly when and where it was supposed to. For instance, designers purposefully made it so guests could not see “Cheetah Hunt” from certain animal habitats so as not to intrude on those “peaceful” experiences, Rose says.
Though the coaster covers a total of 13 acres, Busch Gardens took great care to make “Cheetah Hunt” look like a part of the park, not something new that was plopped down among older attractions. Horticulture is a signature of Busch parks, and Dean says the foliage surrounding “Cheetah Hunt” was carefully selected and adjusted “to make sure this roller coaster doesn’t offend the horticulture lovers” who stroll the park’s pathways in search of serenity. Both the queue building and adjacent “Cheetah Run” habitat are themed like a crumbling temple, which Dean says is crucial to creating a new “realm” at BGT.
“It’s added a lot of rich flavor to the park,” he says. “[Theming] is something this park and this company take a lot of pride in—like horticulture. We don’t necessarily have to have the horticulture we have here, but we do it because it creates an environment that’s different than anywhere else. It’s a rich environment that engulfs you, and ‘Cheetah Hunt’ is no exception to that.”
Contact Senior Editor Jeremy Schoolfield at jschoolfield@IAAPA.org.
LOOK AT THOSE Cheetahs ‘Run’
 SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment has mixed animal habitats with amusement rides for some time, but the company’s taken the practice to another level in the past few years. First there was “Jungala” at Busch Gardens Tampa, where tigers roam and orangutans swing around an immersive children’s play area. Then “Manta” followed in 2009 at SeaWorld Orlando, blending the queue for a major roller coaster with a dazzling aquarium.
And now we have “Cheetah Run,” the sister attraction to Busch Gardens Tampa’s new coaster, “Cheetah Hunt.” The lush, multilevel habitat offers more than 11,000 square feet of grasslands, rock formations, waterfalls, and plenty of viewing angles for 13 of the great cats.
“The cheetahs are as enamored with the guests as the guests are with them,” says Busch Gardens Tampa President Jim Dean. “They’ll come right up to the windows.”
All of the “Run” cheetahs were hand raised, so they are comfortable with their human keepers, who routinely walk the environment. Large rock structures at either end of the enclosure provide shady spots where the cheetahs gather in the noonday sun, providing great up-close views for guests. Keepers also feed the animals out in the habitat, so onlookers get a chance to see them move about the space and devour their meals. Finally, a 220-foot-long sprint track at the rear of the habitat is fitted with a mechanical lure system (similar to what you’d find at a dog track) to entice the cats to show off their preternatural speed.
The cheetahs were bred in Africa and kept back of house at BGT for six months before entering the exhibit full time. During that period keepers introduced elements like overhead banners and crowd noise to get the cats acclimated to life in a theme park.
By far the most popular resident this summer is Kasi, the cheetah cub who arrived at BGT via the Jacksonville Zoo shortly before the attraction opened. Kasi is kept separate from the adults to ensure his safety, so the park is raising him with a friend, Mtani, a yellow lab puppy. The duo make regular appearances at “Cheetah Run” when the adults are back of house, and even made a cameo on the “Today” show in June.
|
PUBLIC ANIMAL CARE & NUTRITION CENTER Opens Later This Year
Busch Gardens Tampa isn’t done introducing new attractions for 2011. In December the park will open its new Animal Care & Nutrition Center. This centrally located building will take what were previously back-of-house procedures for animal care and put them “out on the sidewalk,” says BGT President Jim Dean.
The nutrition center will be set up similar to a television cooking show, so guests can watch and learn how the animals’ diets are created— including everything from fruits to insects. The treatment center, meanwhile, will allow visitors to observe animal checkups, treatments, and even surgeries.
“It’s as exciting to me as anything else—to see an ape or a tiger in the care of our zoological professionals,” Dean says. “People are going to be right at the glass watching that.” |
|
