South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Busch Gardens: Video shows how Iron Gwazi will roll
Busch Gardens Tampa theme park has released a point-of-view video from Iron Gwazi, a roller coaster expected to debut next year.
The video, posted on Twitter and Facebook, shows the view from the front row of the train, starting with the ascent of Iron Gwazi’s first lift hill. What follows is a 91-degree drop and a series of twists, turns and inversions. Beneath a tension-building soundtrack, screams can be heard. There’s lots of sky and other parts of the ride visible. About a minute into the video, the ride vehicle pulls back toward the loading station.
The coaster was scheduled to open in summer
2020, but its debut has been held up by various factors, including the coronavirus pandemic. Busch Gardens now says it will be available to the public in the spring.
Iron Gwazi is expected to top out at 76 mph and be
206 feet high at its apex, according to the Roller Coaster DataBase, a website that categorizes the world’s roller coasters. The site says there will be 12 points of airtime along its 4,075 feet of track.
Busch Gardens’ website touts the ride as “North America’s tallest and the world’s fastest and steepest hybrid coaster.” The design of its cars, revealed at the 2019 IAAPA Expo in Orlando but not seen in the video, are crocodile-inspired. The ride, designed by Rocky Mountain Construction, is built on the site of Gwazi, a dueling wooden coaster that closed down at the park in 2015.
The release of the video comes the day after the park was closed due to poor weather conditions stirred up by Hurricane Eta in the Gulf of Mexico.
Busch Gardens is operated by Orlando-based SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment. Sister park SeaWorld Orlando also has a coaster on hold. Its Ice Breaker is expected to open in spring 2021 as well.
Other Central Florida roller coasters under construction include VelociCoaster at Universal’s Islands of Adventure, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind at Epcot and Tron Lightcycle/Run at Magic Kingdom.
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