DC’s International Amusement Park Newsletter, Vol. 9

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NOW: An interesting new coaster called the Adventure of Phoenix has opened at the indoor Wanda park in Nanning, China. Looking at the photos, the coaster track and train style kind of look similar to what Premier Rides built for Universal’s Revenge of the Mummy coasters, though this could be a knock-off design from a Chinese manufacture.

 

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NOW: What is being described as the first “waterproof” VR attraction has opened in France at O’Gliss Park. They call it Run the River and it is an outdoor attraction where guests put on VR headseat and have a seat inside what looks like a large inflatable raft. The raft is sitting on top of a motion base however and loaded with a variety of special physical effects gags like wind and water squinters. Run the River features two such boats, each able to hold 20 riders at once.

 

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FUTURE: New plans have been released for a $400 million dollar Jewish theme park on the theme of Jewish history and learning. Park Pla-im, or the Park of Wonders, which will be located in Israel’s Negev desert, has been designed by two rabbis – Rabbi Yosef Zvi Ramon, from the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut, and Rabbi Eli Targine.It will feature rides including one called The People of the Book Rollercoaster, built around a giant edifice in the shape of leather-bound books, and The Shabbat Attraction, a water ride which promises to “let the visitor experience the contrast between the craziness of modern life and the tranquillity of Shabbat”.

 

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2020: Evergrande Fairytale World in China will be the world’s first all indoor, all weather, all seasons large scale theme park featuring 33 cutting edge attractions from the world’s top suppliers. Attractions will include immersive multimedia, cutting edge theatres and high quality experiences. With a target visitor age group of 2 to 15 year olds, the themes will be inspired by fairytales and myths from Chinese culture and the rest of the world. At the entrance the park will have a fairytale castle as the main gate, housing ticketing, customer service, security, operations and other supporting functions. Upon entering the park, visitors will have a choice to either take a tram around the park, or explore on foot by either walking through interconnected corridors or outside the central landscaped area.

 

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NOW: Liseberg in Gothenburg, Sweden finally opened their new coaster Valkyria Dive Machine on August 7th. It is the largest and longest Dive Coaster in Europe.

 

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IMMINENT: The French-themed rollercoaster at Europa Park is currently undergoing extensive structural changes. In August, visitors will have the chance to admire the true-to-life replica of the Moulin Rouge from the Belle Époque. Guests can stroll through a waiting area full of the intricate Parisian decorations of the Moulin Rouge theatre, before embarking on the carriages of the Eurosat CanCan coaster for a nights journey through the City of Light. The genuine true-to-life replica at Europa-Park honors the tradition of the Moulin Rouge, a landmark of Parisian nightlife that has shone on the hill of Montmartre since the 19th century. The rails and trains are being completely renewed and all of the technology and thematisation will undergo extensive refurbishment. The entire facade will also be given a new look that will showcase to visitors the rich culture and history of France.

 

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DEAD: ‘Last year we wrote about how a former Disney Imagineer, Bob Baranick, who had moved to North Carolina was working on a plan to build his own little theme park to be called Whirligig Woods. Unfortunately, the latest update to the story confirms that Bob’s dream has come to a halt. Due to the lack of investors, his plan to build Whirligig Woods will no longer happen. Bob reports that he will still hang on to the 21 acres of property he purchased for the project and allow the trees to continue to grow there.’ — Screamscape

 

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2019: Linnanmäki Amusement Park, in Helsinki, Finland, announces their biggest roller coaster project ever: Taiga is Getting Ready to Launch! This new ride will have a top hat height at 52 meters, Finland’s longest track length of 1104 meters and a furious maximum speed of 106 km per hour. In addition, this new coaster will have two launches and four inversions.

 

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UPDATE: There is currently a huge an approximately 10 foot tall construction wall in the park blocking any chance of a view into the future Super Nintendo World site from within Universal Studios Japan, but the rumors are already starting to swirl that the way they are building the new land, Super Nintendo World will actually be built as a two-level theme park land.

 

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2019: Phantasialand is building on a new theme zone named Rookburgh. And in that zone, a new roller coaster will arise. The German park has announced it will be the world’s longest flying coaster and the world’s first launched flying coaster. Those facts in combination with the high level of theming we’re used from Phantasialand makes F.L.Y. (the name of the project) one of the most anticipated new projects.

 

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2019: Dollywood has announced the details of their huge Wildwood Grove expansion for the 2019 season. The expansion is said to be the park’s largest capital investment in the 32-year history of Dollywood. Guests will enter Wildwood Grove by traveling through the hollow center of a giant fallen tree and enter into a new wilderness themed wonderland powered by imagination, full of attractions for the whole family. The new attractions will include: The Dragonflier, a new family sized inverted roller coaster that will dart along the landscape, past gushing geysers and more. Black Bear Trail – Climb onto the back of a black bear and go for a ride through the forest. Sycamore Swing – Swing back and forth on board a giant “leaf boat”. Treetop Tower – Riders sitting in giant acorns will spin around as they rise up in the air, before gently lowering back down to the earth at the end. The Mad Mockingbird – A Flying Scooters ride themed to the Tennessee state bird, where riders control the action by moving a large sail back and forth. Frogs & Fireflies – A kid sized round-about style ride, where they sit inside giant frogs that hop as they go around in a circle. Hidden Hollow – The giant indoor play structure featuring climbing areas, slides, games and areas to explore. Wildwood Creek – A run little pop-jet / splashing pool area outside for kids to play in.

 

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2021: Huge news came from the Disneyland Paris Resort on Tuesday as Bob Iger announced a TWO BILLION EURO multi-year expansion plan was being put into effect for the French resort that would heavily see a major expansion and renovation made to the Walt Disney Studios Paris theme park. The expanded Studios park will have three new themed areas added for: Marvel, Pandora and Star Wars, along with the addition of a huge lake at the back of the park. This mega-expansion will “roll out in phases beginning in 2021.

 

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NOW: Energylandia in Poland has shared a couple of new videos showing off on and off-ride footage of their new (opened July 18) Hyperion mega coaster making test runs, and it looks to be a very fast (88 mph) coaster experience from Intamin featuring trains that seat riders 4-across.

 

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2020: A new indoor theme park with a Nickelodeon theme will open in China in 2020 at The Mall of China. The park will have 29 attractions including the “world’s highest and fastest indoor roller coaster” and Asia’s first tilting drop-tower attraction.

 

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2020: ‘This what I think the new B&M Flyer coaster that’s gonna open at Cedar Point in 2020 is gonna look like.’ — CoasterGamer ‘Make shere u don’t screen in people ears’ — Mighty Force ‘ok sorry’ — CoasterGamer

 

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2021: A new theme park will be open in South Korea by mid 2021 to be called Lotte’s Magic Forest. The first phase of the new park will feature over a dozen rides and attractions, along with two signature roller coasters.

 

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NOW: The new Niagara Speedway elevated go-kart track attraction is now open on the Canadian side of the falls as part of the “overhauled” Clifton Hill attractions area.

 

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FUTURE: Dali Spiritual Park will offer a novel way to initiate a personal exploration of Buddhism outside of books and schools. Inspired by Buddhist traditions, the Spiritual Park will feature along the serpentine mosaic pathway numerous cultural and spiritual attractions. To name a few: a Zen Resort at the foothill of the mountain harmonizes vast landscapes of plants, water elements, stone sculptures, and poetry pavilions. It is envisioned as an ideal place for serene walking meditations and a spiritual climb through stylized elements of Buddhist, Confucian, and Taoist gardens and plazas. As the last point of the personal Buddhism discovery, the Spiritual Pavilion on the top of the hill will offer a tranquil place to admire the magnificent vistas and a quiet retreat for meditation or relaxation.

 

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DEAD: Jurassic Park – The Ride at Universal Studios Hollywood will become extinct on Sept. 3. When Jurassic Park – The Ride opened in 1996, fans were amazed by the size of the robotic dinosaurs, especially the immense T-rex that burst from the ceiling just before the water ride’s climactic drop. Over the decades, the robotic technology became the attraction’s most obvious dinosaur. The creatures’ stiff movements were no better than what you’d see in temporary installations at fairs or in museums.

 

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2019: Djurs Sommerland in Denmark has announced that they will open Tigeren in 2019, a nearly 150 foot tall spinning pendulum ride (Intamin Gyro Swing) that will swing riders up to 120º in each direction.

 

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2019: An elaborate Immersive Tunnel installation from Simworx will be one of the key attractions at the new Amikoo Theme Park opening later this year in Mexico. Located on the sprawling Riviera Maya between Cancun and Playa del Carmen, the resort style development will cover an area of almost 120 hectares. Simworx’s Piratas de Bacalar attraction will be based, as the name suggests, on the history of local pirates. The attraction will feature a new version of the UK media attractions specialist’s Immersive Tunnel. A real water basin around the galleon will help to simulate a journey on the sea while special effects such as wind and water spray will add further to the experience. Amikoo has also opted for a hybrid-type, 7m high screen. The whole system will offer a 4K audio visual solution. Pirates de Bacalar will be a standalone attraction within the resort and will be a 50-minute experience in total, with a series of pre-shows leading up to the main ride element.

 

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2020: A clone of the Ratatouille Attraction from Disney Studios Paris is under construction at Epcot’s France Pavilion. Concept art for the attraction reveals the name as Kitchen Calamity. The show building for the attraction will be placed between the existing Morocco and France Pavilion. The entrance for the attraction will be on the International Gateway side of the France Pavilion with a path to the attraction entrance that will be behind the existing Impressions de France pavilion. The ride will use the trackless/LPS (Location Position System) ride system and the expected opening date is Summer 2020.

 

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NOW: ‘I take a seat in the 12-car train and await my fate, having just been told by a booming voice that we are about to be sacrificed to the spirit of the Wicker Man that rules the land. The concept of the Wicker Man coaster at Alton Towers has no relation to the film, in case you were wondering, so although spooky folk music is pumping through the speakers while you wait, no one is doing a naked dance. Moments later, I’m flying down the track, the train clattering along, twisting, turning and plunging, then diving through the flaming Wicker Man effigy, which has a face on one side and a ram’s head on the other. While the rush doesn’t compare with that of a high-G-force, cheek-quivering thrill ride, there’s an intensity that comes from hurtling around a track that looks like a delicately arranged pile of matchsticks.’

 

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NEVER: Before he was a Disney Legend, Tony Baxter was a Disney fan. He was just a teen when he landed a job at Disneyland selling ice cream, and later, when he needed a senior project in college, he decided to submit a ride concept for one of his favorite Disney movies: 1964 film Mary Poppins. The result was a ride-through attraction he called Jolly Holiday. To start, guests would board horses on mini-carousels reminiscent of the scene inside the chalk drawing. As the ride got underway, the horses would “jump” from the carousel into the rest of the chalk picture, out into the countryside and through the fox hunt. This would all be accomplished by a revolving theater mechanism, similar to the Carousel of Progress. After meeting the famous penguin waiters, a toe-tapping, supercalifragilistic sing-a-long would ensue. Then, a flash of lightning would signal a rainstorm that would “wash” guests out of the painting.

 

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2019: A new roller coaster is coming to Canada’s Wonderland theme park in Vaughan, Ontario. The Yukon Striker is set to be the fastest, longest, and tallest dive roller coaster in the world. Passengers on the ride will hang over a 90-degree, 245-foot drop for about three seconds before suddenly diving, seemingly endlessly, into an underground tunnel. The ride is 245 feet tall and 3,625 feet long, with a massive 360-degree loop and speeds up to 80 mph.

 

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NOW: Time Traveler, the World’s Fastest, Steepest and Tallest Complete-Circuit Spinning Roller Coaster, is now open at Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri.

 

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IMMINENT: The 20th Century Fox World Malaysia is slated to open by the end of 2018, and it’s expected to be one of the most exciting theme parks in Malaysia. Replacing the Genting Highlands Outdoor Theme Park, you can expect 25 thrilling rides and attractions inspired by Hollywood blockbusters such as Planet of the Apes, A Night at the Museum, Titanic, and Ice Age. This will be the first 20th Century Fox World theme park in the world.

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. I like all three. ** Wolf, Wolf! Wolfie! I was just going to write to you to tell you about the ‘PGL’ event at Cabinet and try to sweet-talk you into coming. But you’re coming! Awesome! I’m very happy! You’re super kind to offer lodgings. The folks who are bringing us over have gotten us an Air BnB near the gallery, so in Vauxhall, I guess, wherever that is. They’re kind of zooming us in and out of London — as part of the deal, I’m reading at an Artaud-revering event on Saturday too — but maybe we can hang on Sunday if nothing else before Z & I hit the Eurostar or something? Your post-move state sounds very fun, yes. I love that part. And you expanded, which is, like, not just icing on the cake but kind of the cake too. That’s all so rockin’. And we can discuss further with our faces in each other’s faces’ way! Life is good! Me, I’m busy working on projects, as always, and so digging fall’s new destruction of miserable summer. And you, other than the immediate context revising? So great to see you! Love, me. ** Ferdinand, Hi, man. Oh, yeah, The Associates are fantastic, no? Nice discovery. Sweetness about the birth of Striptease! I can’t with to feast visually on it. Everyone, Fine and excellent fella Ferdinand has made a little preview to introduce ‘Striptease’, his new literary zine thats in the making. And, get this, if anyone simply sends him/them their P. O box, they’ll get a copy of the zine in the mail! I’m gonna go give him/them my postal info right now. Join me. Like this. Congrats! ** Shane Christmass, Well, having traveled to Antarctica, I think that place might have you beat, but yes.  Shit, yeah, I’ll scoot back to your C&W comment as soon as I get through this. Thanks! ** Chris dankland, Hi, Chris! Oh, cool, a Barth reader. I really just feel like his work has become Chernobyl or something, which is unfortunate. Mm, all I know from what I’ve been told is that what makes someone a good hypnotism subject is trust. The guy who used hypnotise me for fun and the entertainment of our friends was my best friend of the time, so that probably made a huge difference. Well, in terms of the weird scenarios, in addition to getting pretty rid of my self-consciousness, I remember feeling like my sense of humour and irony were mostly erased, so that probably helps. Luckily my hypnotist friend wasn’t into embarrassing me, so he didn’t make me do stupid things. It was more like … he read me an extremely long series of numbers just once, and, later, when I was un-hypnotized, he asked me to tell him the numbers, and I rattled off the entire huge list of numbers in perfect order. Or, like, he told hypnotised me that when I next heard a certain album I knew, I would believe it was a different album. And I did. Stuff like that. He did have me lie stiff between two chairs and jumped on me and a few things like that. Yeah, as you said, you can’t make a hypnotised person do something they don’t want to normally do. But, if, say, one was secretly nursing fantasies of being a sex slave and was secretly attracted to someone, and the hypnotist told you to be that attractive person’s sex slave, you would probably do it with no problem. When I was hypnotised and told to do something I didn’t want to do, I just said, No, very calmly. It didn’t un-hypnotise me. Happy to answer the questions, but yeah, don’t let any reality that I’m feeding you fuck with your fictional premise. You take care too, and have a big day! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Oh, I didn’t know Eve Fowler made work like that. How odd. I only know her photographs and stuff. Yeah, that doesn’t look very exciting at all. Hm. ** Misanthrope, My parents’ library was like that too. Lots of Readers Digest books and ‘the classics’, not 20th century classics but like the old, old stuff. I always assumed they just bought a bunch of respectable seeming books in bulk. For me, the weird one was Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’. It was a total sore thumb. I don’t know your mom or how she talks and stuff, but that quip of hers is pretty hot to imagine anyway. That sexual harassment claimer might have even won his case if he did it this year the way things are going. I hope your bed was a whole lot more like the poppy field just outside the gates of Oz last night. ** Steve Erickson, That’s sad. I mean sad for his film. Do you think it’s because MotMI is such a trek? Yay, another Barth reader. We should form a self-help group or something. Oh, yeah, Let me alert the folks to your page. Everyone, As you might know, Steve Erickson is about to make new film entitled ‘Culture Shock’, which is, of course, great news, and he has set up a Facebook page for the film, and I urge you Facebook users to go Like the page so you can keep up with all the latest scoop and stuff. You can both see and Like the page right here. But, if you’re not a Facebook person, you can alternately follow the film via its page on Steve’s blog, and that’s here. ** Bill, Hi, B. It’s been a while since I read them, but I feel pretty confident in saying, yes, it’s very worth reading his earliest and shorter books, i.e. the novels ‘The Floating Opera’ and ‘The End of the Road’ and the short fiction book ‘Lost in the Funhouse’. Tsai Ming-Liang’s ‘Journey to the West’? Why, no, I haven’t seen it. Mm, not the greatest, eh? I’ll sort of semi-watch for it then. Remaking ‘Suspiria’ is just the laziest, most moronic idea. I mean, you never know, but it’s, like, how clueless can you get? Blah. ** Okay. Today’s post is for my fellow Theme Park lovers out there. I guess I’m hoping there are a few of them amongst you commenters. Otherwise, your goose may be cooked today. See you tomorrow.