Slamming Coastercore
Mega Poster
Tradition. It’s a funny thing isn’t it? From portable flat rides at Alton Towers to cauliflower at Christmas; the line between what is and isn’t traditional exists in a weird space of subjective blurriness.
As the coaster community is already very aware (Seeing loads of posts about it even on LinkedIn of all places. You ravenous goons) Fårup Sommerland recently decided it was finally time to give Piraten a run for its money and announced their rather sexy looking new Vekoma, Fønix. Along with being the tallest, fastest and longest coaster in Denmark, they’re also proudly claiming a brand new, never before seen element, the stall loop.
As far as new, innovative elements go, I personally can’t see other manufacturers picking the stall loop up and thinking “Back to the drawing board guys, we’ve got our Immelmann’s all wrong”… at least not in the same way that some newer elements in the 2010’s have caused manufacturers like Intamin to consider a change in approach to their inversions (designs looking increasingly zero g stally these days) and classic overbanks *Pantheon bats eyelashes seductively*. Whilst there is nothing wrong with it being unique and unlikely to be adopted by other manufacturers, they’ve decided to go with the stall loop over more traditional elements that will effectively do the same, if not an arguably better job. Obviously this is all stally speculation until it’s actually been built and ridden, but worthy of a conversation in its current form I’d say.
This brings me to the main question of this topic. Which elements do you consider to be traditional?
I think it’s easy to say that most elements on woodies (not including Wildfire and a couple of Gravity Group coasters) can be considered traditional. Lift hills, first drops and non-aggressively-banked airtime hills have been featured on the vast majority of coasters since the dawn of (coaster)time. Classic inversions like vertical loops and corkscrews have also made appearances more times than outdated IP’s at Thorpe Park so I think that puts those elements firmly in that camp…
But what about launches? What about the curvaceous cobra roll or the sneaky twisted first drop? Where does tradition end and innovation start?
It’s all up for debate and I’d love to see what you guys think!
As the coaster community is already very aware (Seeing loads of posts about it even on LinkedIn of all places. You ravenous goons) Fårup Sommerland recently decided it was finally time to give Piraten a run for its money and announced their rather sexy looking new Vekoma, Fønix. Along with being the tallest, fastest and longest coaster in Denmark, they’re also proudly claiming a brand new, never before seen element, the stall loop.
As far as new, innovative elements go, I personally can’t see other manufacturers picking the stall loop up and thinking “Back to the drawing board guys, we’ve got our Immelmann’s all wrong”… at least not in the same way that some newer elements in the 2010’s have caused manufacturers like Intamin to consider a change in approach to their inversions (designs looking increasingly zero g stally these days) and classic overbanks *Pantheon bats eyelashes seductively*. Whilst there is nothing wrong with it being unique and unlikely to be adopted by other manufacturers, they’ve decided to go with the stall loop over more traditional elements that will effectively do the same, if not an arguably better job. Obviously this is all stally speculation until it’s actually been built and ridden, but worthy of a conversation in its current form I’d say.
This brings me to the main question of this topic. Which elements do you consider to be traditional?
I think it’s easy to say that most elements on woodies (not including Wildfire and a couple of Gravity Group coasters) can be considered traditional. Lift hills, first drops and non-aggressively-banked airtime hills have been featured on the vast majority of coasters since the dawn of (coaster)time. Classic inversions like vertical loops and corkscrews have also made appearances more times than outdated IP’s at Thorpe Park so I think that puts those elements firmly in that camp…
But what about launches? What about the curvaceous cobra roll or the sneaky twisted first drop? Where does tradition end and innovation start?
It’s all up for debate and I’d love to see what you guys think!