The Curse of Novgorod

A reader left a comment on my post about April's poll that they were disappointed to see The Curse of Novgorod left off the list. Well, after looking into the ride a little more I see why!

Hansa Park is in Germany, and they've been working on the new coaster for some time now. It's a Gerstlauer custom designed euro-fighter coaster, and at first I thought it would just be similar to other rides of the type, perhaps like Saw at Thorpe Park.

Not that that's a bad thing, because that style of ride is pretty awesome - but what I didn't know is that Hansa Park is really taking the ride to the next level with an incredible amount of theming!
The park has created an entire website devoted to the ride which you can check out here. The amazing images presented here are from that site. A full backstory to fit the high level of theming has been developed as well, although the park does not plan to launch all the special effects and the storyline until the 2010 season.
A solid 50% of the ride takes place indoors either in the dark or in themed sections. Once the special effects are completed next year this coaster is really going to be amazing! There's a preview video of the ride on Hansa Park's main page that's pretty neat, too.

As for the ride itself, it's both launched AND features a vertical lift hill. The ride starts with a Mystery Mine-ish drop out of the station and then hits a launch that sends riders at 62 m.p.h. and completes several elements before climbing a 130+ ft. vertical lift. The 97 degree drop follows that in complete darkness, soon after that riders hit an inversion and then the brakes start to slow things down.

This is the largest part of the outdoor section - it's being called a 'new' element by the park named a "lark's head knot" but I think it looks suspiciously like one of the world's most famous coaster's turnaround, that of Mangnum at Cedar Point.

Still - the ride looks really awesome and I'm pretty excited to see videos of it once it opens. It just started testing so hopefully those will pop up soon!