Wild Water West in Sioux Falls looks like its aiming to add a major roller coaster to the water park. Redditors found submissions to the Minnehaha County Planning Commission about approval to add a new roller coaster to the park. The meeting notes from the planning meeting included a sketch of a single rail Raptor coaster from Rocky Mountain Construction.
The first two Raptor models of coasters, known for their unique single rail and single file trains, opened in 2018. RailBlazer opened at California’s Great America and Wonder Woman: Golden Lasso opened at Six Flags Fiesta Texas. The sketch included in the planning documents appears to be Wonder Woman, so it seems likely it’ll be another copy of that model.
RailBlazer at California’s Great America is one of the first Raptors to open. This model for Wild Water West looks like it’ll be the same design or mirrored.
Regular readers will know that I’m a big fan of RailBlazer. The single rail coasters don’t have a huge capacity, but they pack a lot of punch with tons of airtime and some great inversions. They also fit nicely into a small footprint, and are relatively inexpensive as major coasters go. We thought these might be a perfect fit for small parks, and that looks like the case here.
Wild Water West has a few water park attractions, but it doesn’t really have any major dry side attractions (Go Karts and mini golf, that kind of thing). In a letter to the planning commission, park GM Francis Phillips said they “consider this to be a Flagship attraction for Sioux Falls.” The letter also stated that they hope to open the coaster this year. For a state that doesn’t really have any coasters – see our lists of longest and tallest coasters in each state – this is pretty exciting news.
The full letter from Wild Water West GM Francis Phillips to the county planning commission.
Rocky Mountain Construction also plans to open their first Raptor with a new layout this year. Six Flags Great Adventure announced the Jersey Devil coaster back in August. When it opens it will be the tallest, longest, and fastest RMC single rail coaster to date.
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