New Ride Has Its Ups, Downs

If you go just before dusk, you can admire the sunset from atop the new HammerHead attraction at Knott’s Berry Farm. But hanging upside down with all the blood rushing to your brain, you might feel like a human tequila sunrise.

Designers fine-tuned HammerHead at the Buena Park facility last week, programming the speed and correlation of revolutions for a preview run that began Saturday. What it previews is a new Boardwalk area scheduled to open May 25 (replacing the Roaring ‘20s attraction) and dedicated to the beach culture of Southern California.

At rest, the ride resembles an upside-down T, or a vintage carpet sweeper. Or if you think of a hammerhead shark, then the 42-passenger gondola would serve as the head, and the decorative shells at each end of the gondola are its eyes.

The gondola spins while it orbits, describing a 360-degree arc that ascends 82 feet at its high point. In trial runs for park employees and media, rotation was four times per minute and spinning was three revolutions per minute. (The rotation rate has been increased to six per minute since the test runs, a park spokeswoman said.)

The high point of the attraction is its literal high and low points, when passengers are turned upside down for more than the fleeting moment one might experience on a roller coaster.

At the apex, one rider’s glasses fell off, landing either on the pavement or in the water garden below. (Riders are instructed to remove glasses and secure, or leave behind, other loose articles.)

At bottom, just when the ride seems to have ended, the gondola flips 180 degrees again and fountains on the ground turn on. The water shoots up to within inches of the passengers, who feel as if they are looking up at the fountains, with the water shooting down at them. According to Knott’s spokeswoman Dana Hammontree, riders won’t get wet during the spring months, but there are no guarantees come summer.

Back on terra firma, one park employee offered his evaluation: “Rad; the best ride here. And I’m a ride operator.”

Park visitors later proved more restrained, with most comments in the “really good” and “pretty cool” range.

During the ride, the scream factor nevertheless seems to be high.

As for where HammerHead fits into the hierarchy of the park’s heavy hitters--at least at the speed during the media trials--it was tamer than Montezooma’s Revenge and Boomerang but had more bite than Jaguar.

The relatively mild speed of HammerHead kept passengers from getting green, which happens to be the predominant color of the ride. It also features blue seats, yellow shells and an orange squid latched on to one end. (More than one journalist asked whether the squid and the shark were, shall we say, intimately involved. “No, no, no,” Hammontree chided. “This is a family park!”)

The surrounding landscaping, which suggests the ocean, also is mostly green, though cactuses resembling undersea coral are purple and red. A water garden directly below the ride features a mermaid, a sea lion and a male figure called Atlantis holding a hammerhead shark by the tail. HammerHead sweatshirts, T-shirts and dolls are sold nearby.

* Knott’s Berry Farm, 8039 Beach Blvd., Buena Park. Park hours today: 9 a.m. to midnight. $17-$29. (714) 220-5200.