Balder
Specific Type: Wooden (prefabricated)
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Gothenburg, Sweden's Liseberg Park will be opening up a major new attraction in early 2003 that promises to put the Sweedish theme park on the worldwide map for wooden coaster enthusiasts seeking out the best and newest ride experiences to be found. The park, currently home to several steel coasters including HangOver, the first ever Vekoma Invertigo, is adding Balder a 118-foot high, fifty-six mph wood-tracked scream machine that will call Liseberg home as the region's largest, fastest wooden roller coaster. But it will also go down for one international record come Spring of 2003: the steepest-ever drop on a wooden coaster, with the wooden rails of a first descent reaching an unprecedented seventy degrees on the way down. The coaster comes from Intamin AG, a well-experienced player in the art of steep drops on steel coasters, with a number of wooden coaster projects under their belt over the last few years as well, including Europe's largest woodie, Colossos of Heide Park in Germany. With a ride time of just over two minutes and two thirty-passenger trains, Balder will shuffle 1,150 riders an hour through a 3,511-foot quadruple-out- and-back layout of eight curves and twelve hills, not to mention ten pops of airtime during the ride. And at 100,000,000 SEK, or 9,400,00 dollars, Balder is the single largest ride investment ever made at Liseberg Park since initially opening in 1923.
As the ride begins, Balder gets rolling out of its station with a rightward 180-degree bend to the lift hill. The five-car train load makes its way to the crest of the lift, reaching 118 feet above the ground, and starts around a second bend to the right, this time just a few degrees shy of a U-turn. Once lined up with the first leg of the multi-out-and-back style course, it's time to begin the plunge. The train starts down the first drop and the track veers downwards until riders are staring seemingly straight down, then the track levels back out, train speeding ahead at fifty-six miles an hour, and sends the ride back up into the sky. Over the top of a first camelback hill, the train is fed into the upper third portion of a triple-layer turnaround area and then encounters the second camelback, train hopping up into the sky and then heading back down. With another hill, Balder is sent into the second high-speed turnaround, curving around 200 degrees and beginning the second series of hops, with two more hill crests taking airtime enthusiasts into zero-g heaven and crossing underneath the first drop. Around the fifth turnaround curve, the coaster retraces the beginning area of the layout, next running parallel to the initial plunge with another pair of negative-g inducers and carving around another turnaround just below the fourth. The train load of riders plunges into the bottom section of the wooden structure and navigates a fourth set of airtime hills while careening through a tunnel of wood, then banks through the final 180-plus-degree curve, with two final final hops lifting riders from their seats and a small curve into the first brake run. A turn underneath the towering post-lift-hill structure leads passengers into the final straightaway back to point A |
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