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Round 4: Skip forward one year, and you rejoin me not at Flamingo Land, but at Düsseldorf fair, where I am taking my seat on the “Big Monster” Polyp ride. It’s no wild thrill ride, but it is an incredible generator of unpolluted fun, and I have rarely received such a sense of pure joy from a ride as I did from that one. Generally, Polyps are not usually rides to get excited about, but this one was a true delight to ride and ride again. In fact, despite the fair playing host to my former favourite EuroStar, and a dozen-or-so of my most beloved spin rides, Big Monster was one of the surprise highlights of the trip. On the front of every Big Monster car, you will find a small logo. You won’t be surprised to learn that it simply reads “A. Schwarzkopf”. It’s that man again. 

My biggest regret of my coaster riding “career” is that my first visit to a German fair was just too late to ride what many call the greatest coaster of all time, Thriller. Here was a ride so extreme and so intense that folklore tells of riders having to be carried from their seats in varying degrees of unconsciousness, having been subjected to G forces far higher than anything today’s nanny society would allow. Thriller featured possibly the most audacious opening sequence in coaster history. From a truly exquisite-looking twisted first drop, riders were taken directly into two perfectly circular loops positioned to form a vertical spiral, a concept that nobody dared attempt before or since. For a designer to attempt such a bold design, they would have to be a genius or a fool, and I know perfectly well that Schwarzkopf was no fool. Today it remains the only coaster of which I can look at photos and footage, and be rendered speechless with admiration.

So, what is it about Schwarzkopf that makes me champion him above the modern crop of designers? Let me explain.

Hulk - a horribly industrial and samey design?

Today, whenever the various Internet forums come alive with the latest coaster from Intamin or B&M, I am left cold to see yet more rehashes of the same ideas, the same strings of inversions, with none of the effortless flair of Anton’s rides. Am I really the only one who sees a B&M ride and thinks that, compared to the awesome elegance of a ride like Olympia Looping or Lisebergbahn, B&M’s creations have all the visual allure of a disused oilrig? Sure, they can look stunning if the park makes the effort (Nemesis being a prime example), but they look horribly industrial and samey when stripped to the bone. Since my conversion to the joys of Schwarzkopf, I look at modern coasters and can imagine every curve being manipulated on a computer screen, which in turn makes them feel very “controlled” and therefore unnatural and sterile. Schwarzkopf’s rides, by contrast, have a natural fluidity that gives them the organic look and gritty feel that can only be rivalled by the classic wooden rides of yesteryear. Without wishing to sound too indulgent, I can only call “soul”, that indefinable sense that a ride is pulling out all the stops to make sure you know exactly what it is capable of. They feel wild and out of control, which to me at least, is the very point of a thrill-ride.

Schwarzkopf wasn’t only concerned with pleasing riders, however. His coasters were always built to entertain the spectators as much as the people in the hot-seats. This he did through such subtle devices as “staging” the ride to have the highest point furthest from the spectator, and the loops positioned to have maximum visual impact. Even today, very few modern coasters have this sense of showmanship. How many designers, for example, would have the eccentric idea of building a coaster with five vertical loops and then arranging them to resemble the Olympic rings? Moreover, if any other manufacturer did attempt that feat, can you honestly imagine that the result would match the quality of Olympia Looping?

Sticking to the aesthetics of Schwarzkopf’s rides, I defy you to find an example of a more elegant ride than his four large travelling coasters. If you consider all the constraints placed upon the design of these rides, you would expect them to be messy and unrefined. Stand in front of any of them, however, and you can’t fail to be impressed by the remarkably minimalist use of structure, which always saw the bulk of the ride being held by a series of neatly positioned tower supports, through which the track darts and dives repeatedly. A single tower can be used to hold up to five layers of track in place, and yet the obvious need for the rides to retrace their steps never once makes them look or feel contrived. In other words, despite the strict limitations, the rides still feel 100% natural and flow beautifully. As much as I adore EuroStar, the only non-Schwarzkopf ride with which to compare them, even this lacks the grace and tidiness of its Schwarzkopf predecessors.

The quality of these rides may have been extraordinarily high, but that isn’t the only reason for my admiration of the man. A look through his history shows him to have been so versatile and creative that he seemed capable of fulfilling the most ludicrously restrictive of briefs. Give him a sprawling hillside location, and he would give a long sweeping wonder of a ride. Give him a tiny patch of flat land, and he would give you a short sharp blast of ferocious intensity. Ask him to give you a shuttle loop, and he would give the best shuttle loop you could want; ask him for a family ride, and he would give you a better family ride than you could ever have expected. Want examples? Try Lisebergbahn, Bullet, Thunder Looper, and Phantasia Land’s Mountain Railway respectively. Fabulous rides, each and every one. It’s just a shame we can no longer ride the final two (or possibly three) entries on that list.

Mountain Railway, a fabulous ride that was destroyed in a fire

With the 1976 opening of the Great American Revolution at California’s Six Flags Magic Mountain, Schwarzkopf was the first to revive the idea of a looping coaster, thus laying the foundations for what we now take for granted. At the time, this was regarded as a fantastic achievement, and every park owner desperately wanted to offer this new sensation. Schwarzkopf, however, did not rest on his laurels, and soon started finding ways to more easily incorporate loops into rides. Just two years later, he had made it possible to incorporate a loop into a portable coaster, and the first Looping Star duly made its way onto the German fair circuit.

Next on the “to-do” list was a way of building a looping coaster for parks with a limited amount of money or space. Sure enough, mission accomplished, the shuttle loop came into being. Indeed, when Alton Towers opened the lamented Thunder Looper in 1991, how many riders would have guessed that the ride was already 14 years old before it made it’s way to England? Surely, though, the piéce de résistance of his launched coaster came in 1982, when he designed a shuttle loop for the German fair circuit, and Wiener Looping (latterly The Bullet) made its debut. Even after so many years, this remains truly one of the most aggressive and intimidating rides ever built. Arguably an even more inventive twist on the shuttle loop concept came two years earlier with Katapult, a travelling ride consisting of a tiny circle of track with a large loop. It would be interesting to see how modern designers would react if you asked them for a looping “coaster” that took up no more space than a Huss Break Dance, but that’s exactly what Katapult is. Continues...