In a recent investor call, SeaWorld CEO Marc Swanson brought up their plans to add a resort hotel in 2025 and another in 2026, but details were sparse. This has been rumored for some time, but it appears to be getting more serious. Here are some of his comments from the call:
Continue readingI’m a huge roller coaster fan and even have a sister blog dedicated to 3D printing (this entry appears on both sites). One of the more recent advances in roller coaster technology has been the use of magnetic launches as opposed to the old school lift hill (think click, click, click up the hill). To be fair launch does go back 50+ years with examples like the Tidal Wave coaster I used to ride at Six Flags Great America as a kid. This defunct ride actually used a falling weight and pulley system to launch the train with a deafening “clank” as the weight hit bottom! One of my personal current favorite launch coasters in Cheetah Hunt at Busch Gardens Tampa where the launches are used to mimic the acceleration and movements of a cheetah.
Continue readingScorpion at Busch Gardens has a rare element, a circular loop. It’s one of the few remaining. There was a great article in Vox about loops and the move away from circular to lessen g-forces. As a rider I can’t say I’ve found the loop overly intense, but there is only one and it isn’t that fast. Here’s how the park describes it:
Continue readingYears in the hot Florida sun are not kind to paint and especially when it carries high speed objects with all the vibrations and movement involved. From time to time a coaster needs a fresh coat of paint to keep corrosion at bay and the ride looking sharp.
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Sea World (parent company of Busch Gardens) may be feeling the financial impact of coronavirus more than initially thought as it appears to have fallen behind on some bills. Specifically several of its partners such as Rocky Mountain Construction (RMC) have filed liens over unpaid bills over many of the company’s new 2020 rides.
Continue readingHave you ever wanted to have your own copy of your favorite Busch Gardens coaster at home? I mean not actual size (although that would be cool), but more of a desktop model. Thanks to Coasterdynamix you now can! Continue reading
This paint job on Scorpion (the park’s oldest coaster opened in 1980) looks amazing! When it opened almost 40 years ago its original paint scheme featured orange track and black supports, but this changed to red track with blue supports in a 2004 repaint. Continue reading
I saw the still in this video and was in awe. My first thought was, “that’s Tigris at Busch Gardens Tampa!” So after watching the video the answer was, well sort of. It is indeed a Sky Rocket II by Premier Rides (which Tigris is as discussed previously), Continue reading
Flipping through a travel magazine and saw this cool spread with fun facts about Busch Gardens. 21,638 is the combined length of all the coasters in the park (to be made longer by Iron Gwazi later this year). That’s about 4 miles of track you can ride! The park having 300 animal species as well as the animals eating about 2 tons of food a day was also pretty cool. No word on how many tons of food a day the humans eat…
Kumba has a distinctive roar, but it appears that the sound is caused by something that is missing rather than something that is added. B&M has a characteristic track design seen below of a box “spine” with fins that hold the rails. This box can echo the natural vibrations of the ride and is often filled with sand to dampen it to the customer’s desired level. My guess is what makes Kumba unique is that these boxes are probably empty to maximize the “roar”, and not minimize it in any way.
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BGT Safari 