Roller Coaster War Flexes Technology

Ron Toomer knows roller coasters. He knows how to design them, how to build them and how to test them.

He also knows enough to stay off them.

“I don’t ride them anymore.” said Toomer, a 25-year veteran of the roller coaster industry and designer of a new coaster opening this week at Six Flags Magic Mountain. “They’ve gotten too big and crazy to ride.”

But for some people, roller coasters still aren’t big or crazy enough.

And so theme parks across the county, trying to lure roller coaster fanatics, have for 10 years engaged in an escalating roller coaster “arms race” to see who can build the tallest, the fastest or the longest coaster, said Paul Ruben, editor of Roller Coaster! magazine.

“For roller coaster enthusiasts this is a wonderful time to be alive,” Ruben said Monday in a telephone interview from Rochester, N.Y. “Coaster enthusiasts go all over the country looking for moments of negative gravity.”

The country is experiencing a roller coaster renaissance, a throwback to the 1920s, when there were 1,500 roller coasters throughout the United States, Ruben said.

By 1978, the number dwindled to 147 but now there are 203.

Seventeen more will open this spring and summer across the country.

Ruben will be on hand Saturday when Magic Mountain unveils “Viper,” a 188-foot-high ride that will send cars racing at 70 m.p.h. over a course that includes seven loops.

It took more than 800,000 pounds of steel and 600,000 pounds of concrete to erect the $8-million structure, developed by Toomer’s firm, Arrow Design, of Clearfield, Utah.

Some pilings supporting the rails are sunk 40 feet into the ground.

Coaster design is driven by marketing as well as the search for thrills, Toomer said.

Advertising executives always want to apply superlatives to their rides.

In Magic Mountain’s case, Viper will be the world’s tallest looping roller coaster.

“I think every amusement park would like the bragging rights for the ‘biggest’ and ‘fastest’ for at least a year,” Ruben said.

The tallest roller coaster in the world, without the qualifiers, is a 205-foot monster in Cedar Point, Ohio, where cars go 72 m.p.h at the bottom of the first 195-foot drop. That coaster opened last year, and Ruben said he expects that another park will top that record in the near future, if only by a few feet, to qualify for bragging rights.

Improved technology is making roller coasters faster, more complex and less inviting to the squeamish.

In 1971, Magic Mountain opened Gold Rusher, which at 50 m.p.h. was the fastest roller coaster of its time.

Today, roller coasters such as Viper go much faster, due in part to improved synthetic gear that won’t melt under intense heat, Toomer said.

Engineers also made the wheels bigger, reducing the number of revolutions per wheel, thus reducing heat buildup.

Some theme parks have asked Toomer to design the world’s first 100-m.p.h. roller coaster.

The technology exists, he said. All it would take is a tower 300 feet high to start the cars on their runs.

“I used to think there was some kind of limit,” Toomer said. “I’m not sure any more.”

Ruben, meanwhile, can’t wait.

“I would love to build a 100-m.p.h. coaster,” he said. “Fly me to the moon!”