Unfortunately theme park accidents do happen, however rare, and people are injured or even killed. However, there seems to be a trend now with the news media of showing roller coasters stopped on lift hills and acting like it’s some huge lapse in safety. I’d argue it’s actually just the reverse, it’s safety measures working just as they were intended. Getting stuck 200 feet up on a lift hill for 30 minutes may be disconcerting for some, but in most cases the riders are in no danger and there’s no mechanical issue. Instead, it’s often something like a tripped sensor (the equivalent of the check engine light in your car) that must be checked and cleared before the ride can proceed.

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?

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.