Scott and Carol Present: Verbolten at Busch Gardens Europe

Finally the day has arrived, media day for one of the most anticipated coasters, by families at least, of 2012.


Following the signs we made our way into the parking lot.


If you look closely there is a rare image of Carol appearing in the mirror.


Gerta and Gunter Schwartzwald, the brother and sister team who virtually run the entire Oktoberfest village at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. We will learn more about them later.


Carl Lum, Park President offers his insights. "When I moved here a year and a half ago I was amazed about how much people talked about Big Bad Wolf. So I knew it was a big deal and whatever we put here to replace we really needed to think carefully through it and do a good job because the Big Bad Wolf was a big deal."


"One of the strengths of this park are the European countries so when we redesigned all the buildings here what’s important is that we stayed with the German theme. We tried to make sure we did a nice job with that and the ultimate compliment was when the ride manufacturer was here about three weeks ago they said “I feel like I am back in Germany. So that was pretty cool!"


Busch Gardens Creative Director, Brian Morrow began telling us Verbolten's back story, "The story starts in Oktoberfest, where that holiday is celebrated every day in Busch Gardens Virginia. Imagine yourself as a tourist in Germany, which is what Busch Gardens is about, immersing yourself in different cultures. One thing you always want to do when traveling abroad is see the countryside and rent a car. So that is where this all started was this car idea. We knew we wanted to do a car themed ride because cars are really sporty and fun. Everyone can relate to them because everyone drives cars."


Brian continued the tale "Gerta the operator of the visitor center where travelers can rent cars and Gunter operates the garage that supplies the cars. Gerta loves the people, loves the village, but she is very afraid of the Black Forest, and gives us lots of warnings to stay out of it."


"Gunter on the other hand, is obsessed with the Black Forest and he wants to protect it from people who think it’s evil and bad. He does a lot of work for the forest like pulling the personal belongings out of the cars reclaimed by the forest."


Two of the five trains that will concurrently operate on Verbolten.


Brian said, "Gunter makes a lot of his own equipment to monitor the forest and to explore the forest so what you see in the queue and in the station is the closed circuit television system that shows six individual story lines along with Gerta and Gunter. In the station are also view ports into Gunter’s greenhouse where his collection of plant specimens are overgrowing his office and the station."


Carl added, "We always want to do things to accommodate our guests with any type of disability but we also wanted to do that because when you design that the right way you get better throughput and more people can get on the ride. You don’t want to build a ride and then have a line that is three hours long to get on it. We can operate five trains concurrently on this ride. "


The train rolls out of the station into some swooping turns with undulating hills.


Here the train is rolling into position for the launch into the "Black Forest." Just inside the building there is a nice pop of air before you encounter a wide sweeping upward spiral where you are stopped for the "show."

Brian gave us some more details, "We are the first people to use the new ultraviolet strobe lights. They are LED black lights and these are directional and focus able, so we can control exactly what we want you to see. We can dim them and strobe them, and while there are other types of lights in there too these are the majority of them."


The second launch takes you out of the "Black Forest" where you encounter a bridge.

Again from Brian, "Of course it is the wrong bridge, ready to collapse, so you encounter the main drop, down to the lake." The Rhine River on the park map is really a lake and Larry offers his ideas. "What we try to do at Busch Gardens is to utilize the terrain when we design our rides to bring the coaster and have it follow the great terrain we have available to us instead of trying to force fit in into the park.



The train slows to a crawl on the bridge, to better heighten the anticipation and also allow the guests to better experience the "Creaking Timbers," before the big drop.



Larry Giles, Vice President of design and engineering said "That is part of what we try to do at Busch Gardens is utilize the terrain when we design our rides is to bring the coaster and have it follow the great terrain we have available to us instead of trying to force fit it.

There was a lot of genius in Big Bad Wolf, there’s no denying it. And one of our discussion points early on was could we really improve that final drop. The answer that came back was probably not. Why would we want to try, if we tried to make it better, might end up making it worse. It was such a great finish to a ride, let’s go ahead and do it. We made it ten feet taller to give you a little more airtime in the back seat which you will feel and it ended up being a nice finish for the ride."


Carl told us, "The footers are in what is called an environmentally protected area, a wetland in this case, and because environmental responsibility is very important to our company, as part of the design were purposely reused those footers. It didn’t save us much money but I thought it was important to minimize the impact in that wetlands area so we reused them."




Larry said, "We want people to ride rides, not wait in line and we know that with two-across seating we can load quickly and get the train out of the station very quickly. We figured with a flat floor we could unload and load much faster. We ended up with a sixteen passenger train, we originally wanted a smaller train but we could get to our capacity expectation that way."


One of the banked turns on Verbolten. The trains all have side mounted lap bars as ride restraints.


Carl said, "The nice thing about the queue is that there is an experience there with the office and we purposely put the line on the other side of the building so people could see the trains coming in and be entertained by that. We knew we wanted to make the queue experience interactive and entertaining. Brian also had an interesting observation, "I am really happy with the way the guests are understanding the story that we have woven here and their appreciation for the fact that all the family members can ride. Lots of kids can ride the attraction with their moms and dads. We feel it is a powerful imagination based attraction that turned out as thrilling as we hoped it would be."

As for our thoughts on Verbolten, join us for a ride!



Thanks to all the kind folks at Busch Gardens Europe for the opportunity to share the Verbolten experience with NPN readers!

Scott and Carol Present: More On X-Flight At Six Flags Great America

On Thursday May 10th we covered X-Flight's opening ceremonies (if you missed that, check it out here) and from the cheers, clapping hands & smiles heard throughout the day the first announced "wing coaster" in the country proved to be a tremendous hit!



Things happen fast and often on X-Flight, starting with a diving inversion on the 120 foot first drop. Riders experience five inversions, including a zero-g roll, an in-line roll and a barrel roll over three minutes while sitting in trains with cars located on either side, not on the track, with their feet dangling.


The $15 million, 3,000 foot long thrill ride, designed by Bolliger & Mabillard also has a kick butt signature element, a sideways roll through an air-traffic control tower replica. Referred to as the "Keyhole," it is followed by an inverted "head chopper" which the park has named “The Yellow Jacket.”


The ride is smooth, fast and very re-ridable. Over the course of the day we had the opportunity to ride various seats on the train and while the ride experience differs greatly from the front to the back, there isn't a bad seat on the train.


Between rides Scott took the opportunity to interview a few people and find out a little background information.


Park President Hank Salemi was walking around, grinning from ear to ear, watching the newest addition to the park. When asked to about working with Bolliger & Mabillard, Hank replied, "What a dream for a Park President to be able to build this one-of-a-kind coaster that really delivers."


"We have a long history with B & M here at Great America and we just sent Walter and his team a copy of the space available and asked them what they could do with it. We are very landlocked so to put something in we have to take something out but this is a terrific area right across from the food court and game area."


Salemi also commented on shoe-horning X-Flight into the County Fair section, "We were able to fit an incredible coaster in a fairly defined space. We wanted to add as much theming as we could to the ride with both the space and budget we had to work with for this project. We think it is the top coaster in our park and that makes it one of the tops coasters in the country and we want to invite everybody to come out and try it out."


The park's Director of Maintenance/Construction, Gary Pohlman spoke more about the site preparations than the finished product. "We brought in a grinder and used it to recycle all the old concrete by grinding it into gravel and covering the entire site about 2-3 feet below grade. We gave us a good surface to work on and we reused the spoils from the caissons for the footers. Then we put black dirt on top for the landscaping."


"Through the middle we knew we had a large pipe where we pumped out storm water to the retention lake out front so we exposed it and gave ourselves an open water way. We use that waterway as a catch basin for the water cannons and misters."

Pohlam also gave us a bit of a history lesson, "B & M are great people to work with and they provide great rides. Their roller coasters are easy to put together. They (B & M) gave us a list of parts that are common to all of their rides here in the park. They did their first independent ride project when they built the cars for the bobsled coaster formerly in the park and we also used to have their first ride, Iron Wolf. They built their first Batman coaster here also."

Les Hudson, the Vice President of Design was happy to elaborate on X-Flight's premise, "We wanted to follow the theme of flight testing so we chose the wing rider design and the design elements to accentuate the visceral features of the ride like articulation of the trains, nearly 90 degrees from front to back, and also, despite how large the train is, how nimble and maneuverable it is."

"The physical sensation of the ride is the best part, but the elements and experiences add to the enjoyment of the ride, but it could be built in a parking lot, and it would still be a terrific experience."


“The design evolved as we were working with B & M and nowadays we have the good fortune of being able to work with simulation of the ride and computer generated models so before we actually clear the ground and start building the coaster we can visualize the experience, like a flight simulator."


Hudson added, "We look for the best places to do flybys and experiential things and then we want to make sure the ride is also fun for the people watching it, being impressed by the maneuvers and things that they see and as we all know, people wait in line to do this so we wanted to put them right in the middle of the experience for as much of that time as possible so they are being entertained and in a dynamic space while they are waiting to ride."


"We like to do things that add to the value of the experience of a great roller coaster so we try to focus our efforts on things that are truly going to help the experience and be something that people are going to remember.


President and Co-founder of B & M, Walter Bolliger spoke of the company's newest ride, "We like to give a lot of freedom to the passenger, thus the inspiration for the wing rider. We continued to dream about the flying seat and we like acrobatics too. So we did acrobatics with a crazy pilot and the passengers sitting on the wings, feet dangling, nothing overhead, and a lot of distance to the next passenger. We wanted lots of acrobatic elements like wingover drops, Immelman, inline roll, and things like that. We not only ride in acrobatic planes, we also read about acrobatics and attempt to work not against but with the G forces and use them to our advantage."


Addressing X-Flight's tight fit, Bolliger stated "This ride was very challenging, but this is what we like. It’s a tight area, because there is not a lot of space left at Six Flags Great America, and we wanted to put as many elements in the ride. We wanted to arrange them not one right after the other but with a certain distance so you can enjoy each element."


"We made a lot of studies about what people with special needs required to be able to go on the ride while also being safe. Of course being safe is the first priority. This required a lot of testing and mock ups. It is our goal to allow as many people as possible on the coaster."



Wing walker, Tony Kazian, spoke of the similarities of riding X-Flight and walking on the wing of a real airplane, "The first drop and that first barrel roll, that’s exactly what it feels like on the wing of an airplane. We do that first drop as a part of our air show, only we drop from about 1,000 feet to about 200 feet. But that is the same feeling and the barrel roll it feels like there is nothing out there. This is the best roller coaster I have ever been on, it doesn’t matter how long the line is, it is worth it to ride this coaster."



Six Flags Chief Corporate Engineer, Larry Chickola explained the complications caused by a 17 foot wide train, "The trains are heavier and bigger than they have used in the past, which require larger footers than we have used in the past. The custom design was modified to get the large sweeping turns and the roll above the midway for as much show for people moving along the midway. We wanted to get as many ride elements in as possible. The train looks like a 747 so there is a huge rotation through the elements."

We would like to thank Six Flags Great America for a wonderful, fun filled day! We suggest everyone make a trek to Six Flags Great America and take a ride on X-flight. As you can see if you watch the video below, we really enjoyed!