Great America adds new thrill
Patriot, park’s first floorless roller coaster, to debut in 2017 after Vortex’s ‘Last Stand’
It’s not enough that your heart drops into your stomach when the roller coaster shifts into reverse, plunges you upside down or drops you hundreds of feet at a ridiculous rate of speed.
How about adding a leg-dangling sense of freedom — or fear — to the ride?
Thrill-seekers will be able to revel in that feeling when California’s Great America introduces its first floorless roller coaster next season.
Named the Patriot, the ride
will make its debut in early 2017 at the Santa Clara theme park, spokesman Roger Ross announced Thursday. The coaster will take riders 91 feet in the air before dropping them into a 360-degree loop at 45 mph.
Unlike the park’s leg-dangling Flight Deck ride, which suspends riders from a track above them, the Patriot’s track will be situated below passengers — giving them an entirely different sensation, according to one of the nation’s foremost rollercoaster experts.
“Especially in the front row, you get this sense of fear as, from your perspective, it looks like your feet are hanging just inches above the track,” said Robb Alvey of the Orlando, Floridabased Theme Park Review, who has ridden more than 1,400 coasters worldwide. “It works in other rows, too, but the front-seat ride is the best!”
An existing Great America coaster, Vortex, will be transformed into Patriot during the park’s offseason. Vortex, the oldest stand-up coaster in the nation, will operate through Labor Day weekend for those wanting one last ride that comes with a feeling of security under- foot. Alvey praised the park’s decision to reconstruct rather than build anew.
“I just think it’s great when a park puts some money into an older ride to give it new life again. I think this will be a welcome change,” he said.
More than a dozen floorless roller coasters are in operation worldwide; two are located at other California theme parks (Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo and Six Flags Magic Mountain in Southern California).
Great America is open weekends, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., through Sept. 4, then 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Labor Day, Sept. 5, for the Vortex ride’s “Last Stand.”