Aerial Antics: Nagashima Spa Land

Nagashima Spa Land is an interesting park, located in Japan and home to the tallest traditional-lift coaster in the world (at least until Fury 325 opens).  The park has a great selection of rides and coasters, and also offers a huge water park as well.

The park does not have 45 degree images available on Google, but recently updated pure aerial views.  So we shall make do with these.  Above is the giant double helix turnaround portion of Steel Dragon 2000, now operating with some nice looking B&M trains.  The ride's lifts extends up to 328 feet, the current record for that style of ride. 

The back part of the park features an expansive water area, which includes these two slide towers.  On the left is a very new slide from WhiteWater, which is a "fusion" ride combining a Boomerango and Manta.  On the right is the slide tower that features at least a dozen or more slides coming off of it!

One of Japan's few wooden coasters, this is White Cyclone.  It opened back in 1994 and is an Intamin ride.  The ride's track stretches over 5,500 feet, which is quite considerable for a wooden coaster.

Nagashima Spa Land's coaster collection also includes two real gems, at least in my opinion.  Here we see the Looping Star, and original Schwarzkopf coaster of the same name.  With relatively few of these rides still around, I hope this one lasts for years to come.

And the park actually offers another Schwarzkopf ride, this one a shuttle ride.  Creatively named Shuttle Loop, the ride uses a flywheel launch to send trains up each of the 137 foot towers, and of course through a vertical loops.

The park has a new coaster going in as well, this time a B&M flying coaster named Acrobat - a clone of Manta at SeaWorld Orlando.

To check out the rest of the park, click here to head to Google maps.