Hello fellow theme park and roller coaster fans - it's
time for some theme park and roller coaster news!
First up - big news for those roller coaster fans in Spain. A little while ago,
we saw pictures of new ride footers being constructed over at Parque Warner Madrid.
Recently the park released a press statement confirming that they do in fact plan to build not
just a ride, but a roller coaster! The new attraction is set to debut in 2023 and currently,
that’s all Parque Warner are saying. This hasn’t stopped us theme parks nerds guessing though.
Fans on the lamarde parques forum have already begun to create maps of the ride’s footers to aid
in guessing what the new roller coaster might be. Current speculation is pointing towards an Intamin
launch coaster - but nothing is set in stone yet! We’ll update you as and when we know more!
From new roller coasters opening in 2023, to new roller coasters opening well, now!
Fønix, the new Vekoma multi-looping roller coaster opened recently, to great reviews! The ride,
located at Farup Sommerland in Denmark, has become the country’s tallest, fastest and longest roller
coaster. The coaster also allegedly features the world’s first stall loop, kind of like a half loop
followed by a bit of a zero-g stall, and then a weird roll thing? Whatever it is, it looks cool!
But Fønix isn’t the only new ride to have opened recently. Tonnerre 2 Zeus, the reimagining of
Tonnerre de Zeus has debuted also! The ride is a wooden roller coaster at Parc Astérix.
It underwent a large amount of retracking work to improve the ride experience. This involved
removing aspects of the layout and replacing them with more modern and intense elements - including
a 90 degree banked airtime hill. The ride, originally built by Custom Coasters International,
also received new trains built by the Gravity Group, to further enhance the experience.
Oh, and for an additional fee, you can ride the whole thing backwards!
A ride that isn’t quite open yet, but is getting there, is Fireball at Adventureland. The roller
coaster is a roller ball model built by Ride Engineers Switzerland. It features a vertical
layout which guests navigate in vehicles that can swing from side to side. This isn’t your classic
4D roller coaster though, it’s made for families, so don’t expect lots of flips upside down.
If that sounds like your cup of tea, you’ll be able to ride Fireball this spring!
And finally, perhaps the weirdest news of the week comes from Liseberg. Sweden’s busiest
theme park have recently announced their plans to put VR onto their drop tower, Atmosfear.
That’s right - VR in 2022… Liseberg is currently home to one of Europe’s tallest drop tower rides,
featuring a 100m 328ft descent. CEO of the park, Andreas Anderson, says it’ll be “one of the most
intense VR experiences in the world”. There is good news though. One, the VR isn’t permanent.
And two, the park is offering it for free as part of the regular ticket.
Why VR you ask? Well, VR Atmosfear is currently serving as a replacement for Balder,
the park’s wooden roller coaster which is currently closed for retracking. VR AtmosFear
launches on the 23rd April, when Liseberg opens for the 2022 season. Currently it isn’t known
how long the temporary enhancement will last for - but Balder is set to return sometime late Summer.
And there you go, another week of theme park news done and dusted.
It's a bit of a shorter episode this week. Normally we'd have some more news about the
London Resort potentially not opening - but there's only so much they can say before
that gets boring - and their last piece of news was pretty negative, sad times.