Loaded Couch Potatoes

This is possibly the biggest coaster news story for 2010.  Updates have been coming out surprisingly fast, so I’ll give a quick recap.

The news that Kings Dominion would be building a new coaster for 2010 came out late in April when permits by the local government made their way into the news.  The pages only mentioned the expansion of a coaster without much details.  Kings Dominion made no no comments about it. Then in May orange land markers were spotted behind the coasters Anaconda and Rebel Yell.

In early June a truckload of yellow support columns were unloaded near the pakr and quickly become the hot subject in the coaster community.  There was a lot of speculation about the coaster designer among fan sites.  The unusal shape of the square support columns kept people guessing – Intamin’s new 2009 coaster “iSpeed” (at Mirabilandia in Italy) does feature the new square supports, instead of the traditional round shape.  Considering that the park just removed Hypersonic XLC (much to my chagrin) it looked very possible that it will be another launched coaster.  In the last 7 years Intamin has built just over a dozen launched coasters – or as they call them “accelerator” coasters.

Then in the middle of June to everyone’s surprise, the support pieces were loaded back on to trucks and hauled off.  Within a week, trucks were back and unloading new red track that featured a unique double spine.  Screamscape (theme park news and rumors site) then reported it had sources claiming the track “is in fact a new track design from Intamin, which was first spotted a few months ago being installed over in Abu Dhabi at the Ferrari World park.  In the case of Ferrarri World, the track was being used for a coaster promised to be a contender for the coaster world speed record, but no exact details have been given.”

unique double spine track

With all this information it looked most likely that Kings Dominion would be building a new launched coaster for  2010.  Then more gasoline was thrown on the coaster news fire when a member of a roller coaster message board posted a picture of an Intamin shipping label with the words “Giga Coaster”.

Currently there is only one Intamin coaster in the world classified as a giga-coaster: Millennium Force at Cedar Point.

side bar:  A giga-coaster is generally considered to be a full circuit roller coaster with a drop between 300 – 399 feet (the term mega-coaster is used for coasters between 200-299 feet, and strata-coaster is 400-499).

Over the last couple weeks pictures have been coming out of lots of different track pieces as well as new land cleared and even footers for support columns.  One picture shows a clear sign that it will use a cable lift system just like Millennium Force.  While some people say that the track could be for a cable launch system.

If you look carefully you can see “L05″ written on the right side track rail.  Of course L could stand for Lift or Launch.  Whether it is a launch or a lift hill, it seems 99% certain this will be an Intamin coaster towering between 300-399 feet.  I think Kings Dominion will take it’s time and let the buzz keep building before they make any announcements.