June 12, 2011
From the outside, Six Flags over Georgia in Austell, Georgia and Canobie Lake Park in Salem, New Hampshire appear to have little in common. One is part of the best-known regional theme park brand in the United States and has a coaster collection a mile long, while the other is a trolley park that dates from 1902 and just got its third roller coaster.
While they appear different from the outside, we were lucky to work with both properties on two very unique Euro-Fighter projects this year and, now that they are open, have to talk a little bit about the projects. Georgia’s Euro-Fighter, “Dare Devil Dive”, stands nearly 100-feet tall, featured the first use of our new lap bars, and was really shoe-horned into the site. This area of the park, the U.S.A. section, needed some new investment and we were fortunate enough to offer the unique Gerstlauer product at just the right time. There had been a lot of rides in the area over the years. One of the earliest Intamin/Giovanola Free Falls (the “Freefall”) stood on the site, as did a theater and in recent years an enclosed Eli Bridge Scrambler had taken up residence. By hook or crook, Siegfried Gerstlauer and Ron Ebert, the park’s Director of Maintenance and Construction, were able to shoe-horn a big ride, all the additional supporting buildings, and a stage into a triangular corner of the property bounded by train tracks. “Dare Devil Dive” with its red and yellow color scheme, screaming riders, and fantastic theme package (a control tower and air racing pylons), breathed new life into the site. With all of the great investment, the ride looks brand new and feels like it was custom-designed to slide right in.
Over one thousand miles north in the small town of Salem, New Hampshire we installed another Euro-Fighter at Canobie Lake Park. It was the 320+ model, which had already been a hit at the family-owned parks of Adventure Island in the United Kingdom and Duinrell in the Netherlands. What Canobie faced were some severe code restrictions. The ride had to stand less than 80 feet tall and be quieter than 55 decibels at the property line. To give you an idea of how loud 55 decibels is, a quiet living room is 40 db and a normal conversation at four feet is 60 db. For most roller coasters, that’s unheard of. However, Gerstlauer had experience making their roller coasters silent for over a decade. Today when “Untamed,” Canobie’s Euro-Fighter, runs the only thing you hear are the screams- and there are lots of them. The beauty of a family-run park is that they do things differently. In March this area of Canobie was a mud field. Now, it houses not only a roller coaster, but also a beautiful garden within the ride, and one of the best roller coaster stations you will find in the country. From the local stone that comprises the station’s structure, to the antler chandeliers, to the handmade wooden fencing, this is a roller coaster station like no other. Like Canobie’s other ride installations in the past decade such as the Chance Wipeout and the Wood Design Wave Swinger, “Untamed” looks like it has been integral part of the park for decades, when it only opened a few days ago.
None of these great things can happen without the right people. There is a lot of talk about America’s corporate theme parks being run on shoe-string budgets and that they are not run “the way they used to be”. We can tell you that is just not the case at Six Flags over Georgia. There, Park President Melinda Ashcraft and Director of Maintenance and Construction Ron Ebert have built a team that does everything in a first-class manner. We could tell it throughout the project, and if you tour the park with them you can see that they seem to know every employee in the park, no matter how long they have worked there, by name. Up north at Canobie, the Berni, Captell, and Ulaky families run Canobie Lake Park and do so in a wonderful way. Their ownership dates from the purchase of the park in 1958 and it still functions like a well-oiled machine. Unfortunately America has lost many of its trolley parks over the decades. These were amusement parks started by trolley companies in the late 1800’s and often have a very traditional feel. Canobie Lake Park is still running strong thanks to a family commitment and wonderfully combines the old with the new.
We hope you get to visit both these parks this summer and not only go for a ride on the great Euro-Fighter roller coasters, but truly get time to take in the atmosphere these properties provide and enjoy what sets them apart from the competition.