Volume 3, No. 8. April 25, 2003
New Arrivals
It’s
a spinning coaster!
Lagoon in Farmington, Utah, announces the arrival of The Spider, April
19, 2003. Measurements: 53 feet high (16 meters), 1,414 feet (431 meters) of
track, 11,388-square foot (1,058-square-meter) footprint not including queue
and exit areas, eight four passenger cars. Delivered by Maurer Soehne.
This was a troubled birth. Maurer Soehne’s first spinning coaster in North
America opened on its due date, April 12, but it was late that Saturday afternoon
and ran only 15 minutes before being shut down. The next day, it ran for three
hours and shut down again when problems developed with some of the wheels on
the cars. Maurer Soehne overnighted new sets of wheels, and after nearly 72
hours of almost continuous work the coaster was ready for its second opening
day last Saturday. At 2 p.m. on a clear, sunny day (much better weather than
the windy cold of the previous weekend) when The Spider was deemed ready,
a queue numbering in the hundreds cheered and ran to the ride’s entrance.
They came off the ride nattering amid giggles and laughter. It’s that kind
of ride, like hanging onto a pinball in action or, more to the theming, riding
a foraging housefly on caffeine. It’s fun enough just watching the wide-eyed
passengers on the ride. Even if he hadn’t seen this reaction, André
Meacham, Lagoon’s ride division operations manager, knew he could count
on The Spider’s success. On a day when about 3,000 people passed
through Lagoon’s front gates, about 3,000 people passed through The
Spider’s turnstile, and the queue was still about an hour long as closing
time approached. However, many of those 3,000 riding The Spider were
obviously repeats as several people ran from the exit back to the queue. Not
that they would repeat the experience; because the seating platform free-spins
from the second drop to the final brake block, The Spider gives a different
ride every time.
Repeat visits is why Lagoon engages in an annual capital improvement and is
especially aggressive in getting “state of the art rides,” Meacham
said. “Most of our guests are the same guests year after year, so we really
want to be doing something nice and something new.” One such new ride was
the Maurer Soehne Wild Mouse seven years ago, and the ongoing success
of that coaster prompted Lagoon to return to the manufacturer for this year’s
addition. “We really like working with Maurer Soehne,” Meacham said.
“They build a really good product and more than anything else stand behind
it,” as evidenced last week when the company sent the replacement wheels
in time for the park’s second weekend of operation.
Newfangled rides mesh with clever decor at Lagoon. Of The Spider’s
$4 million price tag, about $1 million went into theming and landscaping. “We’re
to the point where we realize you can’t just buy a ride and put it in,
it needs to be themed,” Meacham said. “We could have poured cement
and put a ride in the middle of it, but all this stuff adds to it.”
“This stuff” includes a 16-foot-tall (5 meters) wrought iron spider
under which guests pass entering the ride’s plaza, a castle-themed station
house with metal spiderwebbed windows and baby spiders hanging on walls and
fences. “I found some metal balls and gave them to our welder to turn into
spiders,” said Lori Capener, director of Lagoon’s art and sign shop.
The spider at the entrance was accomplished by a local fabricator and will eventually
hiss blasts of air through its mouth while the red hourglass on its belly lights
up. Park officials were so pleased with the $50,000 sculpture, they ordered
another to be placed inside the coaster itself reaching out as if snatching
at a passing car.
Which is what the ride psychologically does to spectators; with all the squeals
and peals of laughter going on in there, its hard to resist entering The
Spider’s web.
THE LOOP is written and produced by Eric Minton, Minton Enterprises, LLC. To see more examples of Eric Minton's work and Minton Enterprises services, visit www.ericminton.com.
©2003, Minton Enterprises
LLC
All rights reserved
