Rollercoaster Season - Colossus
You never forget your first looping coaster - well, that would appear to be the concensus, anyway. Maybe it's just the company I keep, but a lot of people have described it as a sort of minor rite of passage.
Certainly, I can remember my first time. Not going to go into too many details; I was 14, the place was Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach, and a fair amount of peer pressure was involved. Well, the very first time, anyway. Not the second time, though, about four minutes later, when I'd abandoned the formerly pressurising and now rather subdued peer to hop straight back into the queue. Funny, really - I can just about remember the name of the girl concerned if I think hard, but I could tell you that the coaster was a Pinfari Looping Star as easily as I could tell you my own birthday. It was small and it was brutal and it was rather wonderful - while it isn't the exact same machine, interested parties can view an identical model here.
Where was I? Coasters with loops, upside-down bits or, in the appropriate technical jargon, inverts. No matter how many scientific explanations are given, there's always something just a bit magical about a train of speeding cars appearing to defy gravity. While it took until approximately the 1960s for materials and engineering technology to advance to the point where looping coasters became a staple feature of even quite small amusement parks, instances have been recorded as early as 1846.
The Chemin de Centrifuge was located in the Frascati Gardens in Paris, had a one-rider capacity and a loop diameter of thirteen feet; it was apparently adapted from an English model with a six and a half foot loop.
We've come a long way over the past 160 years or so - certainly, too long for me to want to bore you with the details. Besides, different manufacturers tend to refer to the same sorts of inverts using different terminology, and despite my enthusiasm as a rider, without the aid of this helpful glossary I can't tell a Batwing from an Immelman from a Cobra Roll. If it makes me put my hands in the air and shriek like an orgasmic banshee, why sweat the small stuff?
Today's featured coaster is Colossus, at Thorpe Park in England. Colossus has lots of inverts - ten, in fact. That's more than any other coaster in the world barring an exact replica built in China a year back. I really enjoyed Thorpe Park on my last visit. The food and merchandise were good quality and reasonably priced, the staff were a delight and the water rides were pretty much about as much fun as it's possible to have getting freezing cold and soaking wet. In April. With a streaming cold. Thank you, Pete. Nemesis Inferno proved to be a suitably spunky re-imagining of her peerless older sister (who gets a richly-deserved entry of her own tomorrow), and... you can see where this is going, can't you?
As you can see, Colossus is a treat for the eyes. Unfortunately, it cheats a bit. It has five rather nice inversions:
1: A glorious vertical loop.
2, 3: A really sensational cobra roll.
4,5: A double corkscrew - not my sort of thing but a nice enough use of the space.
So far so competent, even if it rides a bit roughly. However, y'see that spiral bit in the photo below?
That's inverts five through nine. Now, even I'll admit it actually looks pretty bloody cool in the photo - a quad heartline roll, for those who like their tech talk. Problem is, however, that by such a late point in the ride the train has lost a lot of speed. Sure, you go upside down, but the thrill factor is somewhat reduced by the nagging feeling that you could probably be covering the ground rather more quickly on foot. Adding insult to injury, invert ten is just a quick one more of the same right before re-entering the station. Well, I say quick, but... I'm sure you get the picture.
I don't doubt that having a record-breaking ride does wonders for the park's annual takings, but with less histrionics and more careful design work they could have had something truly stunning on their hands. As missed opportunities go, it's a biggie.
Certainly, I can remember my first time. Not going to go into too many details; I was 14, the place was Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach, and a fair amount of peer pressure was involved. Well, the very first time, anyway. Not the second time, though, about four minutes later, when I'd abandoned the formerly pressurising and now rather subdued peer to hop straight back into the queue. Funny, really - I can just about remember the name of the girl concerned if I think hard, but I could tell you that the coaster was a Pinfari Looping Star as easily as I could tell you my own birthday. It was small and it was brutal and it was rather wonderful - while it isn't the exact same machine, interested parties can view an identical model here.
Where was I? Coasters with loops, upside-down bits or, in the appropriate technical jargon, inverts. No matter how many scientific explanations are given, there's always something just a bit magical about a train of speeding cars appearing to defy gravity. While it took until approximately the 1960s for materials and engineering technology to advance to the point where looping coasters became a staple feature of even quite small amusement parks, instances have been recorded as early as 1846.
The Chemin de Centrifuge was located in the Frascati Gardens in Paris, had a one-rider capacity and a loop diameter of thirteen feet; it was apparently adapted from an English model with a six and a half foot loop.
We've come a long way over the past 160 years or so - certainly, too long for me to want to bore you with the details. Besides, different manufacturers tend to refer to the same sorts of inverts using different terminology, and despite my enthusiasm as a rider, without the aid of this helpful glossary I can't tell a Batwing from an Immelman from a Cobra Roll. If it makes me put my hands in the air and shriek like an orgasmic banshee, why sweat the small stuff?
Today's featured coaster is Colossus, at Thorpe Park in England. Colossus has lots of inverts - ten, in fact. That's more than any other coaster in the world barring an exact replica built in China a year back. I really enjoyed Thorpe Park on my last visit. The food and merchandise were good quality and reasonably priced, the staff were a delight and the water rides were pretty much about as much fun as it's possible to have getting freezing cold and soaking wet. In April. With a streaming cold. Thank you, Pete. Nemesis Inferno proved to be a suitably spunky re-imagining of her peerless older sister (who gets a richly-deserved entry of her own tomorrow), and... you can see where this is going, can't you?
As you can see, Colossus is a treat for the eyes. Unfortunately, it cheats a bit. It has five rather nice inversions:
1: A glorious vertical loop.
2, 3: A really sensational cobra roll.
4,5: A double corkscrew - not my sort of thing but a nice enough use of the space.
So far so competent, even if it rides a bit roughly. However, y'see that spiral bit in the photo below?
That's inverts five through nine. Now, even I'll admit it actually looks pretty bloody cool in the photo - a quad heartline roll, for those who like their tech talk. Problem is, however, that by such a late point in the ride the train has lost a lot of speed. Sure, you go upside down, but the thrill factor is somewhat reduced by the nagging feeling that you could probably be covering the ground rather more quickly on foot. Adding insult to injury, invert ten is just a quick one more of the same right before re-entering the station. Well, I say quick, but... I'm sure you get the picture.
I don't doubt that having a record-breaking ride does wonders for the park's annual takings, but with less histrionics and more careful design work they could have had something truly stunning on their hands. As missed opportunities go, it's a biggie.