Russia Celebrates the Winter Olympics with a New Theme Park

Next month's Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia will be home to a brand new, $300 million theme park named Sochi Adventure Park.  Construction is currently finishing up on the project, which is located directly next to the main site of the Olympic venues.  I had heard of the project before, but with it being in Russia and the Olympics so far away I didn't give it a hard look - well now suddenly the Olympics are right around the corner!  Time to check the place out, I guess.

The concept art above gives a very idealized look at Sochi Adventure Park - but you can see some rides poking up that look mighty interesting.  The large castle is a hotel, I believe, but also serves as the park entrance area.  There are four or five themed sections, though each looks fairly compact as the park is fairly compact overall.

How about rides and coasters?  The park has several, one of which will be a Vekoma Giant Inverted Boomerang, only the 6th of its kind ever constructed.  Named Quantum Leap according to RCDB, there will be no significant differences between this and the others we've seen - at least not that I can see.  I think the ride is located in a Science Fiction themed part of the park, making the name make a lot more sense.

Another rather exciting coaster that has gone up appears to be a clone of Blue Fire, a launched Mack rides located at Europa Park.  The Russian version looks to not feature the blue track we've seen on many of Mack's recent rides, a nice change!

Sochi Adventure Park will also have a Mack wild mouse, several flat rides, at least one dark ride and a large S&S tower ride as well.  The park hasn't opened yet that I can tell, but is expected to shortly since the Olympics start in a month's time - and once the games are over it will stick around and become part of a new tourist area.  I'm looking forward to seeing more photos and video of the park when it opens... especially that Mack launched ride!