Schwur des Karnan at Hansa Park is one of the craziest and most unique roller coasters
in the world. This Gerstlauer Infinity coaster is a mysterious hyper coaster that starts indoors
before maneuvering through an aggressive outdoor layout. This ride’s theming,
intensity, and bizarre elements are what make this coaster special and in this video,
I will review Karnan and explain why it’s one of my favorite roller coasters in the world.
Before starting this review, I need to say this up-front. Karnan’s indoor section has a lot of
surprises. I think the ride is better if you do not know these surprises exist. I accidentally
spoiled these surprises for myself. These are revealed on the attraction’s RCDB page, Wikipedia
page, and safety sign. If you have any intentions of visiting Hansa Park, I urge you to go in as
blind as possible as to what happens inside the building. It will make the ride that much better.
For that reason, I will divide this review into segments
RIDE HISTORY RIDE PLOT
QUEUE LINE/PRE-BOARDING PRE-DROP INDOOR SECTION
DROP OUTDOOR SECTION
FINAL INDOOR SECTION FINAL THOUGHTS
Hansa Park has a great relationship with Gerstlauer. The German manufacturer provided
two well-themed coasters in 2009 and 2011. Fluch von Novgorod opened in 2009. This
EuroFighter has an intense launch, an inversion, a vertical drop, and some dark ride elements.
Schlange von Midgard opened in 2011. This family coaster has a nice setting
over the water and also includes a showscene. Both these rides were well-received, so Hansa Park
began discussions with Gerstlauer on their biggest coaster yet. In 2013, the park announced Schwur
des Karnan or the Oath of Karnan. The station and lift would be enclosed in a colossal 260 foot or
79 meter tall tower. This Infinity coaster would stand 240 feet or 73 meters tall,
reach a top speed of 79 mph or 127 kph, and traverse 4052 feet or 1235 meters of track.
This is the only hypercoaster Gerstlauer has built to date and I really hope they build more!
Construction began in April 2014 and the ride opened in July 2015. However, not all
of the theming was complete. For the ride’s first year, the giant tower was just a concrete shell.
Thankfully, the ride was painted for the following season and now Karnan’s tower looks incredible
for both its detail and sheer scale. The only thing comparable in the US is Cannibal’s tower.
Karnan is an actual tower. It’s the only remaining structure of a 1300s medieval
fortress in Helsingborg, Sweden. This tower is the symbol of Helsingborg and interestingly,
the version at Hansa Park is taller. The actual Karnan is just 115 feet or 35 meters tall.
The coaster and ride’s tower are more than twice the original’s height.
The ride is themed around King Erik VI. He was a cruel ruler, so both his people and other kingdoms
challenged his rule. To protect himself, King Erik sought to create an impenetrable fortress.
He hired a master builder who sympathized with the people, but the king made him take
an oath he would build him his fortress. The master builder used magic to trick the king.
The master builder told the king a spell was needed to make the fortress invincible,
but it had a high price. King Erik, obsessed with perfection, ignored these warnings,
didn’t ask what the cost was, and recited the spell. The fortress became impermeable,
but the king died shortly thereafter and his soul was bound to the tower.
Guests enter the tower during present day where they’ll find scientists who recently discovered
a new chamber and shaft in the cursed tower. This is an unbelievably detailed story for
a coaster as intense as this, but it’s told incredibly well throughout the queue line.
Karnan has a lengthy outdoor queue, but it was not needed the day I visited. I visited on a
summer weekday in 2019 and at its longest, the line backed up to the start of the indoor queue.
This took roughly a half hour. But I didn’t mind because of how detailed the queue line is.
It has a really ominous feel with the dark lighting and music.
Eventually you reach the throne room where you have a Cobra’s Curse-esque pre-show
with some projection mapping and audio effects. Eventually you reach the library where you must
put all loose articles inside a cubby. These cubbies are locked while you’re on the ride,
so they’re very secure. Everything must go in here- phones, keys,
wallets, and glasses- even if you have a strap. You are then assigned a row. But it is done in the
coolest way possible. Each train seats 16 guests- in 4 rows of 4. So there are four queues in this
room. After everyone is in their queue, the room is filled with loud music and swirling lights.
All of the sudden, the floor illuminates underneath you and the doors illuminate
opening randomly one-by-one. The order the doors open dictates which row you ride in.
I’m mixed on this. While the seat selection is very theatric, it can be frustrating that you
may struggle to get the row you want. The ride itself is so good you’ll want to reride anyway,
but the fact you can’t pick your seat sort of forces you to keep reriding it if you
want a specific row. I only got the front row once. Usually I got the back two rows.
Thankfully, the ride is amazing in every row. There is one way to game the system.
If you’re with a group, split yourself up among different queue lines.
You can then switch with each other if you want to get a different row.
The staff permitted me to jump around as a single rider to fill any open seat.
Karnan has the lap-bar trains Gerstlauer features on many of their Infinity coasters.
These coasters have no seat-belts, just a tight but comfortable lap bar.
If you’ve ridden HangTime, Monster, or any of the Gerstlauer EuroFighters with lap bars,
you’ll probably be familiar with these restraints.
This is where the real spoilers start. If you want to avoid these,
please skip ahead to the next section of the video. I have the timestamp on the screen now.
The ride starts with a small, but sudden dip out of the station
in complete darkness. You then round a hairpin turn with some surprising laterals. No one ever
talks about this part of the ride, but it’s a quirky pre-lift section with some bite to it.
You then reach the gigantic vertical lift. You ascend this lift,
which is extremely disorienting since it’s in complete darkness.
But you stop right before the top. King Erik appears on the ceiling
and begins yelling at riders in German. I couldn’t understand what was being said, but I believe it’s
something to the extent that you’re trapped in the tower. Creepy music rises to a crescendo.
The train starts to shake. And then all of the sudden, you plummet backwards down the lift hill.
This is the element I wish I didn’t spoil for myself. But even with me knowing it was going
to happen, I didn’t know the exact moment when it would drop me. So it felt like a bizarre drop
tower since you’re lying on your back for the drop. It caused my stomach to drop and I’d say
the intensity of this drop was somewhere in between an S&S and Intamin freefall tower.
I read this drop was intensified between the 2016 and 2017 season, and I’d love to see this
element incorporated on more coasters. Even on an outdoor one so I can see the reaction of others
since it must be a bizarre sight to witness. After you reach the bottom, triumphant music
begins and you begin ascending the tower. This time, you crest the top.
Karnan has one of the best drops of any coaster. It is a vertical drop with a 90 degree twist.
This drop feels like Expedition GeForce’s first drop on steroids. It’s steeper and 50 feet taller.
The sustained ejector airtime and laterals on this drop are insane if you’re towards
the back of the train. And it’s enclosed too. So you have- not even a headchopper-
but a bodychopper with the concrete building that boxes you in on all sides.
It’s a really odd visual that made the drop even more intense. And you can’t really see
the bottom of the drop either. You just see a bright light rapidly approach you.
When you emerge into the daylight, you are blinded by the light. It’s quite the shock for your eyes
since you’ve been inside the dark queue for quite some time. It’s a similar effect to
the on-ride photo on Space Mountain or any night ride blinding you. For that reason,
I can’t tell if I started to greyout at the bottom of the drop but it was decently forceful.
You then rise up into this funky-looking, non-inverting sea-serpent element.
This element is huge and gives some awesome views of the nearby Baltic Sea. If you’re up front,
you get some amazing laterals and floater airtime on the first half of this element
and a smaller pop of airtime and laterals on the second half of this element. If you’re towards the
back, the sensations are reversed. You get a small pop of airtime and laterals on the first half
and then some sustained floater airtime and powerful laterls on the second half.
Karnan then rips through an overbank that turns you to the right, but the descent is
this insane double down. Most double downs focus on airtime. Karnan has other plans. This double
down has two of the most violent and aggressive instances of laterals on any coaster. These are
on par with the Stengel Dive on Skyrush. On the descent from the overbank, you are
rapidly flung from the right to the left. It feels like one of those transitions on Intimidator 305,
except you have just a lap bar on Karnan so your upper body will be folded over like a ragdoll.
And you barely have time to recover before the ride does the exact same thing moments later,
flipping you in the opposite direction equally as abruptly.
Karnan then hugs the ground, allowing the coaster to showcase its blistering speed.
You whip around this drawn out U-turn that offers a faint bit of laterals because of how
much speed you have. You then get another mild dose of laterals on the S-bend that follows.
But the tight U-turn that follows is intense. It pulls some serious Gs and will cause your
legs to go numb like a Batman the Ride clone. You then get a catapult effect as you’re thrown
over a camelback. The positive Gs release your body and you get sustained ejector airtime.
The rapid transition from positive to negative Gs reminds me of the third
hill on the Ride of Steel clones at Six Flags American and Six Flags Darien Lake.
You then wind your way back towards the castle. The ride does start bleeding off speed in this
section and it is a bit of a dead spot on the ride. The ascent does give a faint pop of airtime,
but it pales in comparison to the airtime elsewhere on the ride.
But don’t worry, Karnan finishes strong. You’re thrown over a tiny bunny hill that
gives you another dose of sustained ejector airtime. And this one has a wicked headchopper
with a support too. You then hit the brake run and re-enter the castle.
There isn’t any theming during the entirety of this outdoor portion, but that’s understandable.
You fly through the course so quickly you really wouldn’t be able to comprehend any of it. And
the elements are so good the ride doesn’t need theming during this part of the ride.
If you want to skip ahead to my final thoughts, I have the time stamp on the screen.
Most people think the ride is over as the brake run slowed you to a crawl,
but once you enter the castle, there’s a super slow barrel roll. It’s analogous to the jojo rolls
on Hydra at Dorney Park or Copperhead Strike at Carowinds. It gives several seconds of sustained
hangtime. But this one has two additions. First, this one has a headchopper with the floor.
You are mere inches from it. Two, this one twists to the right while you’re inverting
so it’s extremely disorienting. There are two other points I need to
discuss with Karnan- the smoothness and pacing. The biggest complaint people have voiced with
this coaster is that some find it rough. The ride definitely has a shimmy to it,
but because you don’t have over-the-shoulder restraints, the ride caused me no discomfort. It’s
similar to the shakiness you can find on Skyrush. With regards to pacing, Karnan is darn near
perfect except for that brief stretch between the camelback and the final bunny hill. Karnan is
entertaining riders at all times outside of that- either with stunning visuals, powerful airtime,
or intense laterals. So what do I rate Karnan?
I give this coaster a perfect 10 out of 10. This is Gerstlauer’s masterpiece and there
isn’t another coaster quite like it in the world. This ride exceeded my expectations in every area.
It has an intriguing storyline and much better theming than you’d expect for a ride of this
scale. This is an extremely reridable coaster with a lot of unique elements.
And the forces the ride creates are top-notch as well between the airtime and laterals. This
is one of the most intense rides on the world. Karnan is in my top 5 steel coasters and it’s
only surpassed by rides like Steel Vengeance at Cedar Point and Untamed at Walibi Holland.
This coaster was the main reason I wanted to visit Hansa Park and it did not disappoint.
Hansa Park is a beautiful park, but this coaster alone is worth the trip to this German park.
So those are my thoughts on Schwur des Karnan, the signature coaster at Hansa Park.
Have you ridden Karnan? Or is this a coaster atop your bucket list? I would love to hear what you
think down in the comments. And on that note, please be sensitive to this ride’s spoilers if
others do not want to know about them. I’m happy to discuss the spoiler elements, but if you want
to leave them in a comment- just write SPOILER before your post. If you enjoyed this review, I’d
appreciate it if you gave this video a like and you considered subscribing since there will be a
lot more roller coaster and amusement park videos here at Canobie Coaster. Thanks for watching!