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Spinning Coasters

If spinning round like a cat chasing its tail is your prerogative, then this year is a veritable smorgasbord of all things rotary with no less than four spinning mouse coasters opening.

Fabbri's Spinning Madness coaster Images: Fabbri Group

Most unimpressively, Pleasurewood’s (questionable) loss is Bagatelle’s gain with their Reverchon spinning coaster, Mousetrap, returning to its country of origin, France.

Renamed Ragondins, the ride should fit the small north-France park well joining two other French coasters; Train en l’air and Spirale des Dunes, both from French coaster designer Soquet who has had limited success outside of France.

Meanwhile, back in old Blighty, Botton’s Pleasure Beach near Skegness is opening Spinning Madness, one of the first permanent coasters of the same name from Italian manufacturer, Fabbri.

Fabbri, normally the first to copy other manufacturers ideas, nearly missed the boat with spinning coasters, but finally enter the arena with their super-compact version that includes a two-part wrap-around lift hill into the usual run of hairpin bends.

Overall, Spinning Madness looks pretty dreadful. While we are as sick as you at the sight of Reverchon’s Crazy Mouse, compared to Fabbri’s offering it certainly looks the better of the two with several large and abrupt drops, while Spinning Madness is only three-quarters of the size and seems to lack any of the aggressive manoeuvres that Reverchon’s version humours us with.

Elsewhere, our eyebrows raised at the prospects of another company’s spinning coaster making its debut in our fair continent.

Unfortunately, upon further inspection it appears that Zamperla’s Twister Coaster which opens as Tyfonen in Denmark’s Tivoli Friheden (not to be confused with Tivoli Gardens) is not much more than a carbon copy of Reverchon’s similarly-named ride setting the park back a reasonably poor value 12m Kroner (£1.1m GBP).

Here’s the first instalment in a new feature to Coaster Kingdom Magazine – Spot the Difference. On the left, Zamperla’s mouse (Pictured: Galaxy Spin), and on the right, Reverchon's (Pictured: Dizzy-Mouse). If you find any differences let us know, because we’re damned if we can.

Left: Zamperla's mouse at Cypress Gardens (Image: Johnny Upsidedown). Right: Reverchon's mouse at Vienna Prater (Image: Wolfgang Payer)

Family Spin Rides

Celebrating something of a 21st century renaissance is the family spin ride. Until recently spin rides have been like oil and water – either hardcore to the extreme spinning those with iron stomachs in every conceivable direction, or softcore to the extreme, with those who are barely able to walk going round and round and round in circles while the parents smile politely from the sidelines.

At a Glance...

Unknown, Plopsaland Funtime Star Flyer Unknown, Hellendorn Zierer Waveswinger Grizzly, Nigoland Zamperla Disk'O Coaster Himmelskibet, Tivoli Gardens Funtime Star Flyer Honey Pots, OK Coral IE Parks round ride  Lilla Lots, Liseberg Rockin' Tug Maibaum, Tripsdrill ABC Engineerign Maypole Swinging Bears, OK Coral IE Parks round ride Click here for full 2006 listing...

While rides like the Wave Swinger help bridge this gap, until recently there has been something of a drought when it comes to providing entertaining alternatives for the entire family to enjoy.

The Rockin’ Tug helped. Maybe too much.

Fortunately, the flotilla of Tugs seems to have dispersed somewhat, with just the one for 2006 from what we can see; Lilla Lots at Liseberg in Sweden.

There’s nothing wrong with them – they’re a fun ride (assuming it isn’t run by Tussauds), but the novelty is threadbare now that almost every park seems to have one.

Zamperla were faced with the same problem Huss were a decade ago when their equally nautical Pirate Ship was moored up at just about every park globally. Like Huss, they simply gave a successful ride a new twist. While Huss added the spinning disk onto the Pirate Ship thus creating the Frisbee, Zamperla enlarged the Rockin’ Tug, adding a circular platform and saddle-type seating. Behold, the Disk’O.

Following a bumper year last year with two massive park versions opening, and one at a fair, even this remedy is wearing thin, so it very much looks like Grizzly at France’s Nigloland will be the first Disk’O Coaster.

While last year we had a coaster that looked like a zero (See X for Skywheel, Skyline Park), and while the Disk’O is normally U-shaped, Grizzly is bought to you by the letter ‘W’.

Instead of the usual half-pipe shaped track, Zamperla have added a drawn-out bunny hop between the two ends forming a vague ‘W’ shape and meaning Grizzly is probably more coaster than it is spin ride. Grizzly is 245ft long, and about the same height as Flamingo Land’s popular Navigator Disk’O seating 40 riders on outfacing saddles on a rotating disk.

While earlier I cited the Wave Swinger as a good example of a ride to bridge the gap between extreme and mundane, Funtime have created the StarFlyer, a cross between a tower ride and a chair-o-plane.

While the fair version of Star Flyer comes in more palatable dimensions, the park version pokes holes in our ozone layer at 210ft tall. Admittedly the idea of a Wave Swinger taller than Thorpe Park’s much-fan-dangled new multi-million pound ‘icon’ coaster is probably stretching the definition of ‘family’ to breaking point, but StarFlyer definitely isn’t a spin and spew.

Two StarFlyers are planned for 2006; a yet unnamed StarFlyer at Plopsaland in The Netherlands, and most impressively, Himmelskibet at Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark.

I say most impressively because everything Tivoli Gardens touches turns to gold – literally. Himmelskibet – in English, Sky Ship – will be an opulent and extravagant ride, bathed in shades of gold with a spectacular wrought iron platform cantilevered from the tower, itself topped with a lavish globe.

As a particularly scenic park, and in the middle of a city, Himmelskibet looks to be a fantastic choice. As our review attests, Star Flyer seems to be little more than a scenic ride anyway, and although low capacity, it should be remembered rides are not ridden by all visitors to Tivoli Gardens who also go just for the gardens themselves.

ABC Engineering, manufacturers of Storm Force 10, Excalibur and the new Wild ‘n Wet river rafting ride on the German fair circuit have sold their first Maypole attraction to Tripsdrill in Germany.

Maibaum features a tall tower around which eight gondolas spin. ABC Engineering say that riders can determine themselves what height they spin making the ride sound like the product of a twisted relationship between a Flying Elephant and Paratrooper. Make of that what you will. Continues....