Inventor of Skycoaster to debut Unicoaster concept

Posted | Contributed by Jeff

The Orlando inventor of two of the theme park industry's most unusual and successful rides --the Skycoaster and the SkyVenture wind tunnel -- is finishing up the engineering work at his Sand Lake Road workshop on his newest design, the Unicoaster roller coaster. The ride has Ferris wheel-type seats, which are suspended from an axle that's turned by a large revolving wheel moving along the track. Each wheel can be s different color with different lighting and designs, creating a visually attractive kinetic sculpture as the ride operates. Daring riders also can spin their own wheels while in motion to do a forward somersault.

Read more from The Orlando Business Journal and the official Unicoaster site.

Yet another 4-D design. Perhaps with several companies to choose from some US parks will gamble and buy a few. I wonder why they chose to go the route of Setpoint and essentially have half of a train run the course...it has to be a structural thing and them not wanting to need massive supports for their track and trains like on X. Although Setpoint remedies it by making it possible to mount a train on each side of the track at once. I would think that Setpoint's setup would be the favored design since it has the same abilities but much better capacity.

Props to Ole for someone else from the industry utilizing his design tool.

This looks interesting. Hope it works out well, especially from a technical point of view.

It looks kinda wierd, It would look better if there were cars on both sides of the track. Maybe that is the "Unknown" Coaster that is in the new RCT3 Wild screen shots.

Every park that bought an Arrowbatic will surely buy this, too ;)

According to the article in FunWorld on this product it has been designed this way to minimize costs - making it affordable to both FEC's and smaller parks.

Very strange indeed. It will be interesting to see what developes.

-Tina

So, ecactly how does this 4D decide when the cars will flip? Is it completely user-controlled or it there something special along the track like Arrow's extra 2 rails?

The article states that riders can do their own flips on the ride. It sounds like it's a little different than X because the ride is free to flip on its own as opposed to being controlled. I don't know if one will give a better ride experience than the other.

So it's a Roll-O-Plane on a track?

Man, there was a picture of something like this in a 1930s esque looking magazine once... A design that was basically a ferris wheel rolling along a roller coaster track... I wish I could find that picture again.

And I've often wondered why no one ever invested in the Arrowbatic... it sure seemed like a solid design...

-Esch

escher26, I think I know what you're talking about. There's a picture in a book I have, The American Roller Coaster by Scott Rutherford. On page 20 there's a photo of a postcard with a rollercoaster called the "Whirl-Fly." It is a 4 gondola ferris wheel riding on a coaster track. The caption says it was set to debut at Coney Island but it is unknown whether it was ever built.

I'll see if I can scan and post the page.

More like a Rock-O-Plane. On a track. Looks like fun to me .

I'd like to echo Moosh on this one.

Unless the engineering improves significantly (and, you know... becomes possible), I both shudder at the thought and anticipate with morbid fascination the first installation of one of these things.*** This post was edited by BBSpeed26 8/10/2005 12:08:35 AM ***

I think they should make a large version of one at Valleyfair. That'd go in GREAT!

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