Phantasialand announces the first and longest launched flying coaster F.L.Y.

When I see "a standingup position is aquired, during the ride the gondola's will be turn into the flying position" - my first (horrible, ghastly) thoughts are of the Zamperla flyers.

No God would allow such a thing to happen, right?

rollergator said:

When I see "a standingup position is aquired, during the ride the gondola's will be turn into the flying position" - my first (horrible, ghastly) thoughts are of the Zamperla flyers.

No God would allow such a thing to happen, right?

I once saw a pantent from Vekoma ( am now searching for it, was with pictures)

Picture it like this.

You stand at the gate and the coastertrain is hanging in front of you.. you step in, turn 180 degree ( so looking in the direction you came from the gate ) put on the harness and restraints. In this state the coastertrack is 90 degree turned to it's normal position ( either flying or lying) ... as the train starts the track will turn around it's axis by 90 degree and also the gondola will make a 90 degree turn so that now your face is in the same direction as the train is going.

edit:

Sort of picture found.

There however the track lies a little bit under an angle, where in the prototype in Vlodrop the track is on a 90 degreeangle compared to the ground, the idea is very similiar.

I know what you mean with those Zamperlacoaster, I did two of those and it kinda feels unsafe.. where in a flyer from B&M it feels much more relax. That position of lying in a Zamperlacoaster you also have in a caroussel and Huss had Enterprisetyperide in that position both of those ride are also not high on my favourites list.

More track has already been put into place.

With this pace the coaster is done in a few months? or weeks? But then again we know that Phantasialnd will make a lot of theming around the ride, see how they have build Taron and Raik,

I wonder what kind of layout we can expect.. a part is rumoured to be indoor, based on what is writen on the teaserboard

Free Translation

"discover a new dimension of interaction of themeworld , ride and expierence in day and night".

That loading arrangement is actually brilliant.

A propos of very little, I had the distinct unpleasure of riding a Zamperla flyer last week, the Flying Whatever at Rye Playland (I assume that is the type of ride in question). The bizarre loading process was bad enough, but then, as I was waiting for my sister to join me - having been told she had to hang her purse on the wooden fence, etc., don't ask - the car started toward the lift with the restraint wide open. At which point I hopped down. I do like to think something would have stopped the ride, but I wasn't going to find out.

For reasons unknown, we still rode it, and suffice it to say, there is another one-star ride on my track record.

I didn't think they were that bad. Were they different? Yes. Were they snappy? I guess so, but they weren't rough. I found it to almost be a flying wild mouse.

For reference, I rode the ones in Canada's Wonderland and Luna Park.

The one at Rye was a medieval torture device. And for comparison, I give the Coney Island Cyclone five stars.

Coney Island Cyclone was fine for me. Around the same as Beast at KI with roller couches. And I sat back row.

Jeff said:

That loading arrangement is actually brilliant.

As far as I know many of those ideas to do the loading/unloading are older then you might think. but as with all prototypes converting an idea into a working things is not always as easy.

Here is an other idea they had in the past with loading a flying coaster

So you enter the train on a similiar way tehn with the turning gondolas but this version would require a complicated station to be build having a floor for each of the rows the train is long, many staircases and sliding pathways closing the " gap" between the train and the floor on which you enter.

I've ridden Rye and Canada's Wonderland's Zamperla Flyers and both were absolutely awful. In addition to being rough and not thrilling, the loading, unloading, rider positioning, restraints, and basically everything else were terrible. On both operations, the car was moving and you had to chase it and climb up the back of it to get in.

How does that transition work (with the 90 degree track). Do you flip onto your side in station or does the track roll and then you twist?

@Apollo Andy, we just have to wait and see. Phantasialand has done nothing but prototypes in the past decade and did pretty good. They have good people in charge and I am sure they worked a lot on improving the loading system. I still have no clue where all the money is coming from, but that is not my problem.lol

You should come out next year, it is one of the best parks in Europe, not just for the rides, but also the entire package. It is a amazing park.

The prototype that now stand in Vlodrop is 99% likely for Phantasialand.

It is a short setup where they test out the new technologies.

On that version it seems that after the station follows a 90 degree rechthand turn with tirepropelled lift, on top of the lift an other 90 degree right hand turn follows with 90 degree barrelroll for the track, so in that situation the gondolas stay in the upright/standing position untill after the first lifthill.

As you can see some supports are in two parts, so that is is designed for being build to a mountain.. or in a digged hole. Didn't Phantasialand mad a big hole?

Fan made video of how the turning on that setup works, both loading and unloading

About the money.. I think it is better to rethink. Howcome that smaller parks, that are family owned can buy more expensive rides then parks that are in a big(ger) chain? The answer is profits. Chains like Six Flags and Cedar Fair just want make millions of dollars in profits to pay big fees to the topmangement. But by investing less you makeyour park less attractive to the competion and in the long run you will start to loose money, due to lost income.

In Europe the parks have to look at what other parks are doing and react on it to be able not to loose customers to other parks.

If you take Phantasialand which I believe has about 2 million visitors each year, which is twice the amount that Moviepark has but less then half of Europapark. The only of those 3 barely investing is Moviepark, yes a new ride in 2017 but the last major expansion before that was 6 years ago. And yes, Moviepark is part of a big chain of parks, it is owned by Parques Reunidos .

On the prototype are now one set of seats.

Vekoma has a 2nd prototype on an other location, but that one is inside a warehouse so perhaps even more "secret" then this one?

Launchtrack spotted at Vekoma.

Let's speculate how that will fit into F.L.Y. ..

A launched half-looping? Or sideways darkride part? or... ?

Guess it will be not a straight launch for a change, but what to expect? Phantasialand is not a normal park,lol A launch into a pretzel loop I can not imagine as that would be to intense. We have to wait and see.

Good news also on the Theming front, they already started with the 4 towers that you can see in the artwork and some steal buildings have gone up. They waste no time

Steal structures going up(all pics courtesy of coasterfriends.de

Black track at the factory in Vlodrop

for the darkridesection of F.L.Y.

Thanks to Sjaak we now can see on a video how it looks how the passengers are turned into fly positions, and back.

click for video

Looks like a smooth change to me.

It really is quite clever but I am still skeptical about putting the motors on the cars based on how poorly that worked out with X-Flight and Batwing. Remember reclining on the lift? It worked for like a day. Perhaps they've got it figured out by now.

I am rather confident here. Phantasialand is not buying something off the shelf , they are hands on with developing a ride and I think pretty much all rides in the past years have been prototypes and run(with some hick ups of course) just fine.