Silver Star
Specific Type: Hyper Coaster
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In the Spring of 2002, Rust, Germany's Europa Park pulled the wraps off of its tallest, fastest ride ever - Silver Star. While Europa started out and has been a park composed of rides exclusively manufactured by Mack Inc. - the park being, in a way, a testing ground for Mack's newest contraptions - Europa Park for 2002 built a ride that only Bolliger and Mabillard could create. Silver Star is the fourth 'Speed-Coaster' from B&M - a hypercoaster with sleek trains featuring a raised seating design.Silver Star also resembles the other Speed coasters in various ways but is perhaps most comparable to 2001's Nitro at Six Flags Great Adventure of Jackson, New Jersey.
Europa Park, as mentioned above, is in a way a testing ground for new Mack inventions. All of these rides are steel, but Europa Park has announced that they will build a new wooden coaster next year, manufactured by Great Coasters International. The rides existing Mack coasters areEuro Mir, a very unique coaster with spinning cars and a spiral lift; Matterhorn Blitz, a custom built wild mouse with a vertical lift; and the more recent blue fire Megacoaster, a themed launch coaster with four inversions. Silver Star set many records for B&M, as the tallest and fastest B&M coaster built at that time. The ride tops out at 239’ tall with speeds at almost 80 MPH. The ride is also 5315’ in length. Although the ride held the speed record from 2002 to the 2009 season, the ride was not as popular because of the very powerful trim brakes on two of the airtime hills. Riders say it killed the airtime on the rest of the ride. The ride in itself starts off with a turn to the 239’ lift hill. Once at the top, riders are suddenly tilted downward towards the highway. The train then starts to speed up to speeds up to 80 MPH. The ride pulls up into an upward turn to the left and into the first floater airtime hill. The train then rises into another, which features the first trim. Once over this hill, riders are thrown right, and then left into a hammerhead turn similar to the turnaround on Nitro. Riders then get a short breather in the block zone. But not for long, as the train violently drops down to ground level, and up into another airtime hill, featuring the second of the two trims. The ride then spirals up and to the left more than 270 degrees and drops down running parallel to the lift. The final element is an s-bend under the lift, which leads into the final brakes. |
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