USA TODAY International Edition
New Knott’s coaster leaves riders hanging
Dating back to the 1940s, the venerable Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California is known for its Old West Ghost Town and classic themed attractions such as the Timber Mountain Log Ride (one of the earliest log flumes) and the Calico Mine Ride. Yet the park also is home to some wild thrill rides, including a posse of fearsome roller coasters.
For the latest addition to its midway, Knott’s unveiled HangTime. The 150foot-tall “dive” coaster pays homage to Southern California’s surfing culture and offers features not found on any of the state’s other thrill machines.
With its bright teal color and surfboard-inspired trains, HangTime makes a bold statement in the park’s Boardwalk area. Its designers were able to wedge all 2,200 feet of track into a relatively tight footprint by incorporating a vertical lift hill. Riders had better empty everything out of their pockets before boarding, because the 90-degree climb will dislodge anything and send it hurtling to the ground.
The ride straight up is disarming, but it’s what happens at the apex of the lift hill that makes HangTime unique. The wide-body, 16-passenger trains crest the top, slowly glide forward as they tilt down the other side, and gradually come to a halt. And hang there. And then hang some more.
Stalled out some 150 feet in the air, riders express their apprehension in sometimes, er, colorful fashion. “This sucks!” one adolescent passenger fretfully screamed, to the amusement of the rest of the rattled riders aboard my train. What makes the hold at the top of the hill—the only California coaster to include such a feature—all the more intimidating is that passengers can’t see what comes next. That’s because the first drop is 96 degrees, and the track seems to disappear.
Combined, the stall and the beyondvertical drop gives Knott’s additional bragging rights as the home of the state’s only “dive” coaster. After passengers stew for a few anxious moments, they dive down the other side and accelerate to 57 mph. A fair amount of thought went into just how long the train should be held before the dive, according to Jeff Gahagan, the park’s VP of construction and maintenance. Initially, the stall lasted four seconds.
“That just seemed like a weird stop,” he says. After reducing it to two seconds, it felt more like a momentary pause. Bumping it up to seven seconds turned out to be the magic number. “Now you get to the stop, and the anticipation builds.”
Most coasters play on passengers’ innate fears as the train click-clacks up their hills. Grinding to a halt at the top bumps up already racing pulses. Mercifully, HangTime finally dives.
What follows is a blur of five inversions punctuated by some brief pops of out-of-your-seat airtime. (Unlike most coasters that incorporate upside-down elements, HangTime does not include over-the-shoulder restraints.) Through it all, the ride remains fairly smooth.
To help launch HangTime, pro skateboarder Tony Hawk was at Knott’s on the coaster’s opening night. He said the ride experience was like dropping in on a half pipe. Befitting the coaster’s theme, a comparison could be made to surfing as well—with some major differences. “It’s completely safe, and there’s no learning curve,” Gahagan notes. “You get the same exhilaration, but anybody can do it.” Despite the inversions and relatively extreme height and speed, HangTime has a fairly low height requirement of 48 inches.
The coaster looks sharp during the day. But at night, it glows. A sophisticated lighting package, which includes spots that bathe the columns and track lighting designed to chase the trains through the course, makes HangTime a spectacle. The park can access programs to change the lights’ colors, including red and green for Knott’s Merry Farm holiday event and deep purple for its Boysenberry Festival.