![]() ![]() So we decided to go with a wooden coaster, because we feel we can get more people on it.” Some people don’t like being tossed and turned in super-high twists. “People don’t like going upside down sometimes. “It seems like we get more ridership with wooden coasters over steel coasters,” Mr. It is unlikely that a steel roller coaster would need to undergo millions of dollars of renovations, raising the question of why parks continue to build coasters with wood. (The Voyage, at Holiday World in Indiana, with giant hills and five underground tunnels, was the top pick.) In Amusement Today’s poll last year, the coaster was back up to No. A trick near the end, where the track is intentionally uneven, making it seem as if the cars were wobbling from side to side, was replaced with the bunny hills. Some of the ride’s elements were also reconfigured. The park spent $3 million on renovations, replacing about 80 percent of the track and redoing some of its supports. That year the coaster underwent an overhaul. In 2004 Amusement Today, a trade paper for the theme park industry, ranked the Lake Compounce ride No. The wood of the Boulder Dash wasn’t immune to this, and coaster enthusiasts noticed. The park’s other wooden coaster, the Wildcat, has been around since 1927 and has all the bumps to prove it. As the wood wears over the years, and the track gets a little looser, riding them can be a brain-jangling experience. Wooden coasters are often criticized for their shakiness and jerkiness. Boulder Dash reaches impressive top speeds of 65 miles per hour, which is on a par with, and sometimes even faster than, many steel coasters. ![]() Riders are rarely more than 10 to 12 feet from the ground, so at some points it feels as if you were on the fastest forest hayride ever. The view to either side is of the surrounding trees and rocks. The first drop is 115 feet, banking heavily and leading into a series of hills and curves that follow the terrain of the mountain. The lift hill - the rise to the first drop - is literally up a hill and disappears into the woods, so the only way to get a true sense of where the coaster goes is by riding it. Small parts can be spotted through the trees, but part of the ride’s thrill is not knowing where you’re headed. It opened in 2000.įor those waiting to board, most of the track is hidden from view. It took a year and a half to construct Boulder Dash, and engineers used eight layers of Southern yellow pine to build the track. “We had to drill and core into the rock and anchor our foundations there,” said Jerry Brick, the park’s general manager. In the late ’90s the park worked with engineers from the company Custom Coasters International, now defunct, to build a wooden coaster into the 900-foot rocky mountain that lines the rear of the park. Lake Compounce has been loyal to its local following but wanted to create an attraction that would help put it on the map, something that would get people talking about it nationally. ![]()
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