♪
Mateus Soto:
♪ ♪
You're already leaning forward,
spared by only the restraints
looking straight down at imminent death.
[coaster rumbles]
Canada's Wonderland recently unveiled
their newest attraction, Yukon Striker.
[riders screaming]
♪ [intense]
♪ ♪
Woo! That sure was cool.
Now you may be wondering
how does a roller coaster like this get built?
Today I get to spend some time at the park,
checking it out and talking with
some very interesting people who designed it.
[crowd murmur]
I've waited a long time to ride this.
I bet it's going to be fun.
I'm kind of scared. Kind of scared, not going to lie.
What is all this that's going on right now?
This is our brand-new ride for 2019 called Yukon Striker.
This is the world's tallest,
longest, and fastest dive coaster.
So what about it makes it a dive coaster?
Well a dive coaster's different
from a regular roller coaster in a few different ways.
One main difference is that we dive in a 90 degree dive
straight down towards the ground.
Another difference is that the coach that everybody rides on
is very wide.
This one has eight passengers sitting side by side.
How do you make a ride like the Yukon Striker,
especially one that breaks so many records?
A roller coaster's just like any other structure,
whether it be a building or a bridge or a tower,
the same principles apply.
One tricky part of the installation for us was
setting the track elements inside the tunnel.
I called it building a ship in a bottle.
It was trying to get those pieces
inside these little places,
and doing it without damaging
anything or getting anybody hurt.
Interesting. How do you make a coaster that goes so fast?
Well there's lots of
complicated calculations that need to be done.
So when the coaster's brought up to the top of the lift hill,
it's starting to build energy.
It's like jumping off a diving board into a pool.
The higher the diving board, the faster you get
when you get into the pool.
The same thing happens with the roller coaster.
The higher we take them, the faster that you'll go
when you get to the bottom of that hill.
When you were younger did you see yourself here
and did you ever dream of being a roller coaster engineer?
My children say that I have the best job in the world.
[chuckles]
And most of the time I feel like I do.
Mateus:
Now it's time for me to check it out for myself.
[rattling]
[riders scream]
♪ [fast beat]
[riders scream]
[crowd murmur]
First impressions: I'm alive, I'm not dead yet.
When you fall, it feels like it's more than 90.
It feels like a hundred degrees down.
Okay, point I'm trying to get across:
it's really scary and 30 seconds is way too long
to be sitting up there.
In the amusement industry, you know, with other parks
I think everybody's looking to
offer something new to their guests, right?
You want to keep things fresh for your guests
who are going to come back.
And so you're trying to find that new ride,
that new thing that nobody has.
And sometimes, you know what,
you can invest in a big coaster like this.
It's not going to happen every year,
but certainly when you're looking to
keep things fresh for people, that's a consideration.
What kind of person do you think would ride Yukon Striker?
You know, I think it's a thrill seeker
who's looking for something a little different because
this is a dive coaster and it's
unlike any other ride we have in the park.
How would you safety test a roller coaster like this?
We put hours and hours and hours of runtime on the coaster.
Before we put the first human rider on it,
we had to run it over 2,000 cycles.
Mateus:
to say about this ride.
I really liked it.
I was kind of scared, but like, kind of not scared.
I thought it was going to be scarier.
The ride was absolutely worth it.
It's great and everybody should go on it.
Mateus:
is there anything that people don't like about it?
I didn't like the line.
The ride is really good, but like, as you see the line up,
I don't think it's worth this line up.
I was just excited after at the fact I was up there.
♪ [intense]
Well that was cool.
We got to talk to some very interesting people,
and I even talked with some of the people
who just got off the coaster.
For cbckidsnews.ca, I'm Mateus Soto.
♪ [ends]