Lake Compounce to Offer Concerts on the Lake in 2023

© Lake Compounce

Lake Compounce has announced the addition of new in-park live concerts to be held in 2023 courtesy of a new floating stage the park is building.  The stage, seen above in concept art form, will be located on the lake adjacent to the amusement and water park areas and will feature open sides that allow viewing from several places on the property.  

“This new stage takes advantage of Lake Compounce’s beautiful setting and will bring the lake to life like never before,” says park general manager Jeffrey Davis. “We can’t wait to see our guests enjoying an enhanced entertainment lineup in 2023, giving them reasons to visit all year long beyond our popular rides and seasonal events like Holiday Lights.”

 

The entertianment, which will include live music, interactive entertainment and more, will be free for daily ticket visitors as well as select season pass holders.   Lake Compounce plans to start the entertainment around Memorial Day 2023 with more information on specific acts to come. 

The property recently opened a giant waterslide named Venus Vortex and for the 2022 season added special effects to the park's existing Storm Surge waterslide.

Playland at PNE Building Launched Steel Coaster for 2024 Season

© Playland PNE

Playland at the Pacific National Exhibition, in British Columbia, has announced the addition of a new launched roller coaster that will open in 2024, with construction scheduled to start in 2023.  The ride is being provided by Zamperla and will cost the park nine million Canadian dollars to construct.

© Playland PNE

The coaster is actually one that has been refurbished by Zamperla as it was once known as Senzafiato at Miragica in Italy, which has since closed for good.  The coaster was designed by Intamin and opened in 2009.  It was one of the smallest Intamin Accelerator coasters produced, and Zamperla has changed the ride's launch system so that it will use a LSM Launch, replacing the hydraulic launch it used while in Italy.

 

© Playland PNE

The ride at Playland will feature bright yellow track, purple supports and new trains.  The ride's name and final theme are still being worked out, but these concept drawings from the park make it look like it will be vibrant, to say the least.  Playland has worked closely with Zamperla on this project, and both parties are very excited to continue their relationship.

 

“We are thrilled to be providing Canada’s fastest launch coaster to Playland at the Pacific National Exhibition,” said Zamperla CEO Antonio Zamperla. “Playland and Zamperla have a long partnership and their team started discussions with us over a year ago about their long-term planning and helping them grow the park’s offerings. This year we opened a Gryphon (called ‘Skybender’ at Playland), which was a huge success and allowed Playland to market the first ride of its type in the world.”

 

© Playland PNE

The coaster's new trains are especially exciting, seen here in a photo taken by Playland PNE.    There will be much more to come on these trains as they were one of the major reveals at this year's IAAPA.  Stay tuned for more on that!

Kennywood Adding Zamperla Flat Ride for Park's 2023 Season

© Kennywood

Kennywood Amusement Park will be looking to the skies in 2023 when they debut a brand new area, known as Area 412, which will be themed to extra-terrestrials - aka aliens.  The renovated area will feature an existing ride, a Disk'O now named Cosmic Chaos, which has been prettied up with new paint and a new name.

The star attraction of Area 412 is Spinvasion, a circular spinning ride that's out of this world... you could say.  Spinvasion is one of Zamperla's Gryphon rides, which is kind of like a modern Enterprise ride but with one-seater cars and it doesn't go up 90 degrees in the air.  Instead, the ride's carriages undulate up and down as it spins, creating a wavelike appearance that's neat to watch from the ground.

© Kennywood

Kennywood is advertising the new area and its attractions under the Battle For The 'Burgh slogan, however they note on their site that these aliens are friendly and the battle is actually against "evil Crab Bots."  It'll be interesting to see how the area turns out, the park was already doing to painting and theming before it closed for the year in the Fall.  The park also promises an Area 412 Gift Shop which should contain some cool merchandise themed to the Battle For The 'Burgh slogan, no doubt.

Lagoon Announces Primordial Interactive Coaster to Open in 2023

© Lagoon

It's been a long time in the making, but after around 7 years of development and construction Lagoon Amusement Park has announced that Primordial will open to visitors in 2023.  The long awaited partially-indoor roller coaster has been designed as a family attraction with riders as small as 36 inches able to ride with an adult who is at least 48 inches tall.

Official details of what Primordial will offer are still murky, even with the official announcement of the ride's opening.  For now Lagoon is only stating that they have "worked with an international team of designers and manufacturers, including amazing local companies and vendors, to create and produce this incredible state-of-the-art attraction."

 

This news article does give a bit more information, and some recent photos of the giant mountain structure that the park built to contain most of Primordial's track as well.  The park touts the attraction as interactive, which ties to the dragon and other characters than can be seen in the preview video at the bottom of this story.  Many speculate that the indoor section of the ride will be the interactive portion, with riders possibly having the ability to battle the creatures within.

 

As with the park's most recent roller coaster additions, Primordial has been largely constructed "in-house" as the park coordinated its design and construction using a plethora of industry contractors. 

For now that's about all we've got, below is the park's teaser just released for Primordial - very Game of Thrones inspired it seems!

Alberto Zamperla

The very first interview we ever did at IAAPA was in 1999 with Alberto Zamperla, president and CEO of Zamperla SpA. I was very nervous and he told me I was doing just fine. Over the years we found out just how much he meant to Give Kids the World and amusement parks worldwide. Zamperla was constantly donating rides to the Give Kids the World Village and using the technical information they learned to improve rides for the rest of their customers. Carol used to take picture of the presentations and for many years he kept trying to pay her for them and she told him if he could donate and entire ride she could surely donate a few photographs.


Alberto Zamperla was inducted into the IAAPA Hall of Fame in 2019 and Zamperla hosted a celebration with cake and champagne at the massive booth during the last hour of the show that day. When they cut the cake he handed her the first piece and told her to put the camera down and enjoy the cake. And of course she did, because when Mr. Zamperla speaks, people listen. He is probably reading this right now still telling us "My name is Alberto," but we could never bring ourselves to call him that.


Despite all the accolades, he always treated everyone very well, and many times told us that he treated ideas from everyone in the Zamperla organization equally because they brought new perspectives to be considered. It has been said by many that no man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child, so Mr. Zamperla was a true giant. The thousands of GKTW campers who got their first experience of feeling the motions of a ride are a testament to how large his heart was during his time with us. The world is a better place because of his presence and his legacy will continue.


Our hearts go out to all the members of the Zamperla family, and if you are a true amusement park enthusiast, hold a positive thought for them in their time of need. Maybe the next time you go a park, take a ride on a Zamperla product in memory. It will do you good.


Scott & Carol

Wildcat's Revenge Will Open at Hersheypark in 2023

© Hersheypark

Meoooow!  Hersheypark has announced the renovation of the park's Wildcat wooden roller coaster, which has already closed to the public as announced, which will see the coaster reopen in 2023 as Wildcat's Revenge.  As many predicted, the ride will become a steel tracked hybrid experience, as provided by Rocky Mountain Construction.  A considerable bit of the ride's layout will be changed, and the steel track will allow for RMC's thrilling elements to be added, including inversions!  Definitely a different ride than the wooden roller coaster that opened in 1996.

© Hersheypark

Wildcat's Revenge will start with a much different lift hill experience.  Gone will be the wooden lift hill the ride had in the past, replace by a truss style steel support structure that stretches 140 feet into the sky.  Remember, original Wildcat stood 106 feet tall, so the new ride is gaining quite a bit of height.  The ride's first drop will plunge the trains down at a steep 82 degrees, sending the trains flying along the red track at 62 miles per hour.

© Hersheypark

From there the trains will head up into an underflip element - described as the largest of its king - that utilizes the area of the old ride's top-of-the-lift-hill.  The underflip has the trains invert as they climb only to immediately begin to curve and descend in one fluid maneuver.  Next up is a giant air-time hill, which will no doubt be pretty forceful in the best of ways.

© Hersheypark

The rest of Wildcat's Revenge's 3,510 foot long layout includes several wave turns, and three more inversions, a large stall element and then two corkscrew kinda zero-g rolls, it's hard to tell for sure as the official POV animation has not yet been released.  But when all is said and done there will be four inversions on the coaster.  The ride will feature three trains with some really awesome theming on the front - as seen in the above image.

While we wait for next summer for the coaster to open you can check out below the preview footage that the park released for now!