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The life and death of the Drachen Fire
May. 12th, 2011 10:38 pmI guess it's summer, or close enough; I'm reading pages about roller coasters again.
Here's a really interesting (to me) 2009 article on the history of the Drachen Fire, the short-lived 1990s coaster at Busch Gardens Williamsburg that I've mentioned here several times before; I happened to get to ride it multiple times (with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
whiskeyrivers and his wife) when I was visiting Williamsburg for the wedding of my friends Holly and Phil.
It appears that the Drachen Fire was something of an interesting failure, an attempt by classic steel coaster manufacturer Arrow Dynamics to move outside of their comfort zone and show up upstarts Bolliger & Mabillard (now the leading giants of the industry), who had abandoned the project in its early stages. The result was a ride that was much rougher than even many coaster fans were willing to stand, mostly because of twists and rolls that were centered around the train car rather than the rider's center of mass.
When I rode it, I remember there was almost no wait. Since I was not much of a coaster enthusiast and had no experience of anything newer than the Loch Ness Monster and the now-defunct Big Bad Wolf, I assumed that the short lines were because of the marginally out-of-the-way location, and that the way it flung us around violently was just the way big roller coasters were these days. (And I was impressed and had fun, but after that day I wasn't inclined to ride a coaster again for quite some time.) It was, I now realize, actually much worse in terms of lateral g-forces than most coasters of the era, or of today, and that people were avoiding it because it was getting a bad reputation.
And the thing has apparently gained some sort of dark mystique in subsequent years from the fact that they shut it down for being too badass after just a few years. I imagine the three gigantic coasters they've put up at Busch Gardens since then are probably more entertaining for real-life visitors, Fabio excepted.
(As for what's going to be built to replace the Big Bad Wolf, it looks now like the plans are rather different from the flying coaster rumored there: it's some autobahn-themed launched coaster partly following the Wolf's old layout.)
Here's a really interesting (to me) 2009 article on the history of the Drachen Fire, the short-lived 1990s coaster at Busch Gardens Williamsburg that I've mentioned here several times before; I happened to get to ride it multiple times (with
whiskeyrivers and his wife) when I was visiting Williamsburg for the wedding of my friends Holly and Phil.It appears that the Drachen Fire was something of an interesting failure, an attempt by classic steel coaster manufacturer Arrow Dynamics to move outside of their comfort zone and show up upstarts Bolliger & Mabillard (now the leading giants of the industry), who had abandoned the project in its early stages. The result was a ride that was much rougher than even many coaster fans were willing to stand, mostly because of twists and rolls that were centered around the train car rather than the rider's center of mass.
When I rode it, I remember there was almost no wait. Since I was not much of a coaster enthusiast and had no experience of anything newer than the Loch Ness Monster and the now-defunct Big Bad Wolf, I assumed that the short lines were because of the marginally out-of-the-way location, and that the way it flung us around violently was just the way big roller coasters were these days. (And I was impressed and had fun, but after that day I wasn't inclined to ride a coaster again for quite some time.) It was, I now realize, actually much worse in terms of lateral g-forces than most coasters of the era, or of today, and that people were avoiding it because it was getting a bad reputation.
And the thing has apparently gained some sort of dark mystique in subsequent years from the fact that they shut it down for being too badass after just a few years. I imagine the three gigantic coasters they've put up at Busch Gardens since then are probably more entertaining for real-life visitors, Fabio excepted.
(As for what's going to be built to replace the Big Bad Wolf, it looks now like the plans are rather different from the flying coaster rumored there: it's some autobahn-themed launched coaster partly following the Wolf's old layout.)