Great Coasters International (GCI) started IAAPA 2013 off with a bang by making two announcements. The first is they will be supplying new trains to Coastersaurus at Legoland Florida. The new train design is called the Mini-llennium Flyers. Check out this picture of the themed lead car:
The second announcement is Viper, their tallest, fastest, and longest roller coaster to date! At 50m tall and 1,500m long, it will also be the tallest, fastest, and longest wooden coaster in China! Watch a video of the new wood coaster along with a POV below:
GCI also quietly released this animation which shows their new Switchback Reversing Coaster concept in action:
It appears that the virtual coaster is shown at a virtual Elitch Gardens, but there is no indication that the coaster will open there. Does anyone know more?
Stay tuned for more great updates from IAAPA this week!
That switchback reversing wood coaster looks very nice, and I’m assuming one-of-a-kind too. I do picture Elitch Gardens possibly getting that coaster eventually, and possibly being first U.S. theme park to get it, if a different U.S. theme park doesn’t beat them to it… the coaster debuting in 2015 season, if not in time for 2014.
looks like the concept of those Togo Ultra Twisters lives on in Swtichback, which makes me happy since while Ultra Twisters weren’t known for being that good of rides, the idea was cool, and those can get pretty dang big, Mount Olympus could use something like that, then again they need to fix Zeus, add more flat rides, and Eiltch Gardens could use one, and it would fit, it’s compact, and looks like they could offer thrills,
But why does China have to get all of the awesome wooden roller coasters? first the Knight Valley one, the Dualing Dragon, now Viper, I’m surprised that not company in China has designed a wooden coaster yet.