More theme parks than ever are offering Christmas events and opening for more days of the year. The reasons for this are obvious in that more operating days equals more potential revenue from the same capital. Most northern parks end with Halloween as the winter weather is generally too much for both people and rides, but even in Southern states like Georgia and Tennessee see temperatures of freezing and below in December. So what are some of the considerations for a park being open these months in terms of crowd comfort and ride operations/safety? Will your favorite roller coaster be running?

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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.

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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.

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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:

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The code name for the Busch Gardens Sand Serpent replacement is Project Halycon. This project is not just taking the old Sand Serpent plot of land, but a huge part of Pantopia. Although there have been no official announcement about a replacement, clues can be drawn from permit filings about what the park is up to. You can see from the permit revisions below that there is a locker area proposed and there is also a test seat involved. It also mentions a station! Thanks to Penguin_Master23 on Parkfans.net for finding this on the Accela Database which is a wealth of information for building permits searching under the park’s name or address.

So just because it has lockers and a test seat doesn’t mean it’s a coaster. After all, Stanley Falls has lockers and there’s a test seat for Serengeti Flyer. However, these taken together combined with the size of the space are tantalizing clues about what is coming to Pantopia and replacing Sand Serpent.

There have been a lot of rumors and thus far no official announcement as to what is replacing Sand Serpent and taking over a large section of Pantopia at Busch Gardens Tampa, known by the code name Project Halcyon. Last year Serengeti Flyer was announced on October 11th and in 2018 Tigris and Iron Gwazi were announced on September 12th, so hopefully we’re getting close. Here are some of the things that are rumored and the order is my guess of most to least likely.

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June 9th was the last day for the Sand Serpent, but this week 3 other rides disappeared from the website and are behind construction walls as well. They were the 3 kid rides located in Pantopia including the Busch Flyers, Desert Runners and the Kiddie Train. Also, the signs have been removed from the Sky Ride (per Busch Gardens Junkies) and it’s gone from the website Add this to the demolition of the SBNO Phoenix, the fire/demolition of Wild Surge and the official closing of SBNO (Standing But Not Operating) Tree Top Trails in Jungala and that’s 8 attractions in the past year by my count with the only addition being the Serengeti Flyer. That brings the park down to 24 rides with 9 of those being children’s rides.

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There have been so many rumors as to what will replace Sand Serpent. These include everything from a Giga coaster to an indoor ride using the Pantopia Theater to a wing coaster to family coaster. Busch Gardens isn’t exactly known for its theming, however the Egpyt area of the park is highly themed including the men’s bathroom! Whatever replaces Sand Serpent, however, I’m just hoping a little time, money and effort are spent theming the new ride, at least as much as this restroom.

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