So it’s good to have goals right? This year I set the goal to ride every roller coaster in the State of Georgia. For Georgia that’s 27 coasters spread across several theme parks and a couple of oddballs. Georgia also gained 3 new coasters this year with the opening of ArieForce One and the two dueling tracks of Kid Flash Cosmic Coaster. On the last Saturday in November I finished off my list adding the 6 credits available at Wild Adventures with the last one being the Swamp Thing, a Vekoma suspended family coaster pictured above. I can’t claim this goal has any redeeming value, although I did walk 170+ miles at theme parks this year according to the Log Ride tracking app, but it sure was fun.

Without Robert Mampe of Six Flags Great America we may not have Montu, SheiKra, Kumba and the upcoming Phoenix Rising!

Every company starts somewhere and that includes Bolliger & Mabillard, better known by coaster enthusiasts as B&M today. It’s an origin story you can read elsewhere, but essentially Walter Bolliger and Claude Mabillard used to work for a steel manufacturing company called Giovanola (who built some roller coasters), but struck out on their own after Giovanola had a restructure. They had a relationship with Robert Mampe, a Six Flags Great America staff engineer, from some previous projects and  asked the new company to design and build a stand-up roller coaster for the park. This ride would eventually be known as Iron Wolf (POV here) it still exists today as Firebird (formerly Apocalyse) at Six Flags America where it was relocated in 2012. This would be the first B&M roller coaster that at the time was probably most famous from being featured in the Richie Rich movie. Two years later in 1992 they would design and open Batman: The Ride, the world’s first inverted coaster, also at Great America and this cemented B&M as a prominent roller coaster manufacturer.

Busch Gardens has announced its new suspended family coaster for 2024, Phoenix Rising, which is replacing Sand Serpent, the Phoenix looping starship and a couple of kiddie rides. It’s interesting that of all that the new name plays off of the former looping starship? I guess “Montu 2” was too corny? It will be interesting to see two B&M inverts in the same park though. Few details are known though about Phoenix Rising other than a sketch and a few lines in a press release: