Dorney Park: Hydra Website Goes Live

How do you get the videos to work?

Isn't this the first looping B&M that doesn't have a vertical loop? I must say that I am impressed that this B&M really doesn't strike any resemblance to any B&M built before. My only concern for the ride is the heart-line followed immediately by a flatspin might be a little redundant. Other than that, lets hope for some nice laterals and a pop of air on that "twisty bunny hill."

Notice how the 0-G roll twists you left while the first flatspin goes to the right - I'm assuming they did that so it *didn't* feel redundant.

I don't think it'll be traveling fast enough on top of the "s-curve" to get a great pop of air, but I'm definitely looking forward to the weightlessness!

Joe "surprised no one commented on how steep the first drop is" C.

What I'm drooling over at the moment [other than a picture of Nasai]: the 50' drop into the Cobra Roll coming out of the first flat spin.

YUM! ;)

mOOSH

I'm so excited. The lay out kind of looks like Talon a little bit, but whatever its a new coaster! At first looking at the pic on the website with the layout it looked like there was a launch lift.

The floorless version of Talon indeed

Moosh,

Vater is correct. The coaster I was talking about was Red Devil.

SFGAMDieHard,

If you count inversions on flying coasters, then Air doesn't have a vertical loop.

-Sean

I, for one, am glad I didn't argue about a pre-lift inversion. I was hoping beyond all hope there would be one. I'll definitly be going out to Dorney next year for this one!

Anybody else that's familiar with CBuzz games: Dosen't this kinda look like a real life 'Gonch-inspired' Floorless?;)

B&M gets twisted....sweet. I can't wait to ride and I am so glad its eight cars per train.

Sweet mother of crap! That is one hell of a great looking coaster! That jojo roll (bad name, cool looking element) looks like it will really get the peeps screaming.

No offense to Hercules, but I think Tiger Terror at Wild Adventures could have "brought it down". ;)

+Danny

I'm really enjoying this style of designing by B&M. Golden Lion (or Demon) is another unique floorless they've built recently. The only thing I'll be missing on Hydra is the little pre-drop which usually helped produce nice airtime, even on a coaster as small as the Georgia Scorcher.

Can't wait to finally visit this park in '05. Looks like I chose the right year to plan another trip to the east with SFGAdv also getting a new toy.

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TeknoScorpion said:

Anybody else that's familiar with CBuzz games: Dosen't this kinda look like a real life 'Gonch-inspired' Floorless?

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Thanks. I'm flattered.

In all honesty, that was one of my first thoughts, but mentioning myself seemed a tad egotistical.

Seriously though, it does seem very RCT inspired. There's a lot of things on this one that us RCT'ers use and do. In fact, I'm seeing it more and more with newer coaster designs. This really looks like some fantasy coaster that anyone could've made and uploaded.

That's a good thing. :)

-Gonch
where's my royalty check?

That 'inclined dive loop' is already a new type of inversion. Its on Deamonon, that cute lil B&M Mini-flooreless @ Tivoli Gardens. Its like the inclined loops on Chang & Mantis.

Can't wait for this one next year. I'm a firm believer that the "boom", while not as boomy, is still producing quality coasters. Quality is always better than Quantity.

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Lord Gonchar said:

Seriously though, it does seem very RCT inspired. There's a lot of things on this one that us RCT'ers use and do. In fact, I'm seeing it more and more with newer coaster designs. This really looks like some fantasy coaster that anyone could've made and uploaded.

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Not surprising to me. When I took part in an ACE tour of Morgan's offices back in 2000, one of their designers (the one giving the tour, in fact) had an RCT box on the shelf over his desk. When asked about it, he said he liked to play it for relaxation purposes, but not for too long as it got to be like work after awhile. ;-)

Gonch, that was the first thing I thought when I saw it "hey! Gonch isn't designing for B&M on the side, is he?"

I agree, its like all the designs that, though cool, always made me think "hey, that dosent' look like it will ever be a real coaster". Now its happening. I'm happy with it, too.

Silver Bullet & Hydra are both very non-B&Mish. And somebody said Intamin was the only company making raving coasters lately...;)

(ya know I'm just kidding, Homey!)

Personally, I'd say SB and Hydra looks *very* B&M-ish to me, the B&M of old. After some pretty stale designs after about 1995, these two remind of the inventive stuff they were doing early on, like PGA's Top Gun, Montu and Kumba.

Hydra looks like a great ride, but I'm still a bit skeptical on the Potato Roll. It looks kinda neat, but I'm not sure it'll feel too good in the execution.

A few people I've spoken to have said that the inversion looks "interesting" to which I have to wonder exactly what "interesting" means. Are we talking 'falling down the stairs in a box of rocks' kind of interesting, or are we talking 'doing a long, slow cartwheel in mid air' kind of interesting?

While I do really like the marketing tagline, is anyone going to bother to tell the Dorney Park folks that according to Mythology Hercules defeated the Hydra?

*** Edited 9/15/2004 5:32:36 AM UTC by Michael Darling***

Yeah, other than on Raging Bull, I'm not the biggest fan of the B&M pre-dip. I'm all for getting rid of it altogether, and just designing steeper drops right off the chain.

I'm actually pretty pumped about the bunny hill towards the end of the course. Either way, I'm definitely going to Dorney at some point next year.