Behind the Bricks of Galacticoaster at LEGOLAND

Galacticoaster and LEGO Galaxy land is now open at both LEGOLAND Florida and LEGOLAND California! At the media preview for the Florida’s Galacticoaster I had a chance to speak with Blake Boyter, Senior Project Manager for Merlin Magic Making, to dive a little deeper into everything that went into the development of Galacticoaster.

Galacticoaster: Merlin’s Biggest Investment In North America

Galacticoaster represents part of Merlin’s largest-ever investment in North American Legoland parks, $90 million across the two locations. That investment resulted in a ride that’s unlike anything Legoland has seen before.

“For us, this is a game-changing roller coaster,” Boyter told us. “It’s a high-speed launch with controlled spinning. It’s a custom one-off track that’s never been developed by anybody else. It was never even assembled until it showed up here.”

Partnering with ART Engineering

That coaster design comes from ART Engineering. Coaster fans probably best know them from Wonder Mountain’s Guardian at Canada’s Wonderland and Primordial at Lagoon. But for Merlin the choice was about their past work with Legoland.

“If you’ve ridden Ninjago, you’ve ridden on ART’s work before,” Boyter explained. “We interviewed multiple companies, but they were the winner for this one. They’re a trusted partner…Our rides team, from a maintenance perspective, has a really good relationship with them.”

LEGO DNA in Galacticoaster

While the hardware comes from Germany, the heart of the ride comes from Denmark. LEGO itself was more involved on Galacticoaster than they had been on any previous attraction.

“We actually co-developed this with LEGO. This is the first integration of its kind. We were in Billund (Denmark) at the LEGO headquarters. We got to see a confidential LEGO set that got incorporated here,” Boyter described.

“We’ve never done such a tight integration to co-develop a ride like we did for this one. It’s about bringing the next generation of media, audio, and everything you see on the ride. It’s bringing that (LEGO) DNA into the queue.”

Being a LEGO fan, that partnership shines in the details. I loved seeing posters in the queue referencing things like the M-Tron and Ice Planet LEGO sets I played with as a kid. That nostalgia and LEGO DNA feeds directly into the ride’s “customization” feature of the ride. As Boyter puts it, it’s about “build together, play together,” but on a scale you just can’t get at home.

The Controls and Digital Effects

With the complexity of a hybrid dark ride, the AV and control partners were essential. Blake highlighted Actemium (controls) and 2Heads (media/AV) as the teams that ensured the characters and audio stayed true to the LEGO core.

“Actemium, they’re the main partner with Art, and with how this ride works. Being able to control the ride the way we want safely requires working very closely with them,” Boyter told us.

“2Heads did all the digital and virtual aspects. They work closely with LEGO to make sure the characters are true to their core—the audio is right, the voices are right. They have a warehouse where we got to mock up the ride vehicles and the audio,” Boyter explained. “It looks silly testing in cardboard boxes, but it really gives you a sense of the overall size of the vehicle and what guests are going to look like sitting in it.”

For Boyter, the real success isn’t just the tech, it’s the guest reaction. “Watching guests go on it now… it’s just so cool to see them in their spaceship. That emotional connection — they got to build it, they got to see it— that’s what pays off for us.”

A huge thank you to Blake Boyter for taking the time to talk to us all about the development of Galacticoaster! It really helps show how many different people and companies it takes to make a ride like this. And it paid off! Go back and check out our initial review of the ride, it really is a stand out for Legoland. And we’ll have a little more Legoland content coming soon, with the next episode of Coaster101 Podcast all about Galacticoaster and Legoland Florida. Hopefully I’ll make it to Legoland California to see if I can tell any slight differences between the two rides!