What is: Tatsu
Tatsu is a steel flying roller coaster located at Six Flags Magic Mountain in California, USA.
The ride was manufactured by Bolliger & Mabillard, B&M, as the world's tallest, fastest and longest flying coaster.
Unfortanately, it no longer holds it's final title but still remains as one of the best flying coasters to date.
Tatsu opened on the 13th of May 2006, 6 months after it's initial announcement.
The ride was built at the cost of 21 million US Dollars,
making it one of Magic Mountain's largest single investments.
The name of the coaster, Tatsu, originates from Japanese mythology and translates to flying beast.
As a result the ride is loosely themed to the flight of a dragon.
To reflect this, the entrance sign of the ride consists of a large dragon and the tagline, 'Fly at the speed of fear'.
While the station resembles that of Asian architecture.
Tatsu, like many other B&M flying coasters, features two adjacent stations.
Therefore guests begin their ride with either a left or right hand S-bend to the start of the lift hill.
The trains then climb the 52m (170ft) hill, and crest the 34m (111ft) drop.
As they enter drop, riders bank right and complete a fast sweeping downward turn.
As this point in time, the trains reach their top speed of 100kmh (62mph).
Immediately after riders enter first inversion of the ride, a 31m tall corkscrew.
This is directly followed with the coaster's second inversion, a Zero-G roll.
Interestingly, Tatsu is the world's only flying coaster to incorporate a Zero-G roll.
Riders continue to navigate the track and experience a horseshoe turn as well as two further inversions.
The first of the final two inversions take place within the ride's most well known element,
it's giant 38m (124ft) tall pretzel loop.
As of now, Tatsu features the world's tallest pretzel loop, which offers incredible amounts of force.
The pretzel loop inversion can somewhat be described as an upside down loop.
The trains enter the top of the inversion before diving towards the ground.
At all times, riders face towards the centre of the loop causing them to be on their backs for a brief period of time.
The final inversion can be found instantly after the pretzel loop as riders enter an inline twist before completing a helix which leads into the brake run.
In total, Tatsu features 1098m (3602ft) of track, most of which takes place high above the ground.
Not only does this lead to a ride time of 46 seconds, but allows riders to experience the sensation of flight above the park.
Like on all B&M flying coasters, as guests navigate the layout, they face downwards perpendicular to the track.
This means that they ride in a prone flying position.
For this to occur, the trains of the coaster pivot 90 degrees to be parallel with the track.
The trains themselves consist of 8 cars with riders arranged in rows of 4.
This leads to a total of 32 riders per train.
Because of the dual station up to 3 trains can operate on the layout at once,
resulting in a impressive throughput of 1600 riders per hour.
Tatsu is well known for being one of the most intense flying coasters on the planet.
A large number of riders often applaud the pretzel loop inversion for being extremely forceful, while others find the element to be too extreme.
With recent opening of 3 new flying coasters over the past few years, does Tatsu still remain as one of the best of it's kind?
What's your opinion?
*Outro Music*