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>The Making of a Thrill Ride

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Amusement parks are back atop America’s list of popular vacation destinations. What’s the big draw? For many, it’s the thrill of roller coasters.

Your heart is racing like a jackhammer, and you haven’t even left the station. What the hell were you thinking, anyway? This is insane!

But it’s too late to back out now. A hydraulic launch rockets you horizontally from 0 to 128 mph in 3.5 seconds, then vertically 90 degrees into a quarter turn. You crest the coaster’s tower a heart-stopping 458 feet above the ground then plunge vertically into a terrifying three-quarter spiral.

Before you can catch your breath, the train swoops down a valley and climbs a 129-foot “camel hump” hill, leaving you feeling momentarily weightless before making a left turn and gliding you — and your stomach — safely back into the station.

Congratulations! You’ve just survived Kingda Ka at Six Flags Great Adventure & Wild Safari in Jackson, N.J. — the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world.

Wanna go again? Expect to wait in line. Amusement parks, once in decline, have in recent years become among America’s most popular vacation destinations, with total annual attendance climbing from 253 million in 1990 to 335 million in 2005, reports the 4,500-member International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA).

The U.S. is home to approximately 600 parks and attractions, and the majority of them have thrill rides of one sort or another. In addition to Kingda Ka, Six Flags Great Adventure & Wild Safari boasts more than two dozen rides, including several roller coasters, water rides, and swings.

Busch Gardens Tampa and Adventure Island is also renowned for its thrill rides — 30 total, including seven roller coasters, says Mark Rose, vice president of design and engineering. The first was a water flume ride that premiered in 1972, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that the park really started to ramp up its thrill-ride offerings.

Today, some of the park’s most exciting rides include SheiKra, which hurls riders down a record-breaking, 90-degree vertical dive from a height of 200 feet; Gwazi, which features two intertwined wooden coasters; and Rhino Rally, which begins as a casual drive through live-animal exhibits and concludes with a tidal wave that carries your vehicle and a “runaway” pontoon bridge down a raging river.

According to the readers of Amusement Today Magazine, however, the greatest fun park in the U.S. is Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio, which received the 2007 Golden Ticket Award for best amusement park. Cedar Point boasts an astounding 69 rides, including 17 roller coasters — the most in a single location, says park representative Tony Clark. This figure includes Cedar Point’s latest roller coaster attraction, The Maverick, which will premiere in the 2007 summer season.

“We’ve consistently broken world records in new coaster design starting in 1978 with Gemini, which is a wooden racing coaster with a steel track,” says Clark. “At 125-feet tall, it was the tallest and fastest coaster in the world. That was looked at as earth-shattering.”

But Gemini didn’t hold the record for long. In 1989, Cedar Point premiered the Magnum XL-200, which was 205-feet tall, and followed it in 2000 with the 310-foot-tall Millennium Force. “That ride broke 10 world records when it opened and sustained that feat for quite a while,” Clark says.

In 2002, Cedar Point opened Wicked Twister, a unique double-spiraling impulse coaster, and followed it a year later with Top Thrill Dragster. Although the latter ride lasts only 17 seconds, it’s a real knuckle-whitener. “We’ve had professional drag racers tell us it’s as close as you can get to performing an actual drag race,” Clark says.

According to enthusiasts, thrill rides are an essential element of almost every American amusement park, regardless of size, and greatly enhance the overall amusement-park experience. “From a participation standpoint, I believe that roller coasters are the greatest thrill rides [at most parks],” says Eric Gieszl, who as editor of Ultimaterollercoaster.com has ridden more than 250 individual coasters. “There is no other thrill ride that is enjoyed by so many people every year.”

“Theme parks are part of the fabric of American history,” adds David Mandt, the IAAPA’s vice president of communications. “The experience is really multigenerational, as people who first visited parks as 5-year-olds now visit them with their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. There’s always something for everyone.”

It’s not unusual for diehard coaster enthusiasts to go to extremes to indulge their passion, Gieszl says. “Many have been known to become obsessive over the number of different roller coasters they’ve ridden,” he explains. “In fact, some have even been known to borrow a child to get a credit for a children’s roller coaster that requires an accompanying child rider. I personally think that’s going too far.”

The oldest continuously operating amusement park in the U.S. is Lake Compounce in Bristol, Conn., which opened its doors in 1846. Cedar Point is the second oldest, premiering in 1870. Over the ensuing decades, thrill rides became a popular draw at many amusement parks, with one of the first — and most famous — being the Cyclone roller coaster, which opened at New York’s Coney Island in 1927.

“At the turn of the century and after, amusement parks were almost always found at the end of a trolley line, because the trolley companies needed somewhere for city riders to go on weekends,” says Mark Cole, president of American Coaster Enthusiasts (ACE), which has 8,000 members worldwide. “The park in Lake Compounce, Conn., was built at the end of a trolley line.”

The very first roller coasters were developed in Russia in the 1600s and consisted of little more than carved-out blocks of ice that were sent careening down snowy hillsides, reports the IAAPA. Contemporary rides are a bit more sophisticated, though no less exciting.

One key component of today’s high-end attractions, explains Rose, are computers that constantly monitor every aspect of a ride from start to finish.

“Computers are able to keep track of where the coaster is on the track and how it’s performing, comparing it to what it should be doing and making sure everything is safe,” Rose says. “The sophistication of that has improved significantly over the past decade and a half as computers have become more powerful.”

Advanced launch and braking systems also have helped thrill rides reach almost unimaginable extremes, Rose says. Linear induction motors, for example, incorporate a series of powerful magnets to accelerate a roller coaster at the beginning of the ride and bring the cars to a gentle stop at the end.

Of course, contemporary thrill rides don’t come cheap. The Maverick, Cedar Point’s newest roller coaster, cost an estimated $21 million to design and construct, says Clark. Skyhawk, a swing-type ride, cost between $6 million and $7 million, and Top Thrill Dragster was a $25 million investment.

“Part of these figures has to do with the cost of steel and other materials,” Clark says. “Right now, the price of steel is astronomically high, which makes the cost of anything we build with steel go up.”

As amusement parks across the country continue to up the ante with bigger and better attractions, the question remains: Why are thrill rides so popular? Why do people get in line again and again for an experience that makes their hearts race, their palms sweat, and their lungs ache from screaming?

“People want that controlled sense of danger,” says Dan Aylward, president and general manager of Magic Springs and Crystal Falls Theme Park in Hot Springs, Ark., home to 24 rides, including the Arkansas Twister, The Gauntlet, and the X-Coaster. “You feel exposed and vulnerable, but you know in your heart it’s a controlled environment. Doing things that are out of the ordinary, but in a safe way, has always had a lot of appeal. That’s really the history of thrill rides.”

If you’re new to the world of extreme thrill rides, ACE President Mark Cole — who has ridden more than 400 roller coasters worldwide — has some advice: “Go in with an open mind, and be willing to scream your head off. There is absolutely no shame in screaming. In fact, it’s encouraged.”