Volume 2, No. 19. October 11, 2002
New Arrivals
It’s
a roller coaster!
Cliff’s Amusement Park in Albuquerque, New Mexico, announces the arrival
of The New Mexico Rattler, September 28, 2002. Measurements: 80 feet
high (24 meters), 2,750 feet long (838 meters), one 24-passenger train. Conceived
by Custom Coasters International and home birthed; train delivered by Philadelphia
Toboggan Coasters.
Talk about a long, difficult labor. Even on the Friday afternoon before the
day Gary and Linda Hays had targeted—for the fourth time this summer—to
open their park’s new wood coaster, the birth wasn’t certain. The
train had yet to make it through the whole coaster course, stalling on the final
hill.
“We oiled the track, spun the wheels, put more weight in the front, held
our breath and prayed, and it went over the hill,” Gary Hays said. “It’s
been sweet ever since.”
Finally, three months after its originally scheduled opening date, the coaster
caught up in the crash of CCI and completed by the park itself opened to the
public on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. The crowd was “decent,”
Hays said. “We didn’t do a lot of advertising because it was touch-and-go.”
Late that Friday, once certain the coaster was ready, the park invited the media
and the mayor out for the inaugural ride at noon the next day. Joining Mayor
Martin J. Chavez, the Hayses and corporate sponsors on the first train was the
project foreman Dudley Hazelwood, the former CCI employee who stayed on at Cliff’s
to see the coaster completed.
Also on hand was Joshua Romero, who provided the winning entry in a name the
coaster contest. He didn’t get to ride because, just 4 years old, he didn’t
meet the 48-inch height restriction, but his family took seats on the first
train. The rest of the train was filled out with park guests selected through
a drawing.
The media gave the new ride plenty of good coverage, with one television station
garnering commentary from guests getting off the coaster. “We’ve heard
nothing but praise,” Gary Hays said. Meanwhile, the local paper covered
the coaster’s testing phase using a dummy filled train. Rattler
is New Mexico’s first large-scale coaster, and as delayed as it was and
without the hype an on-schedule construction could have provided, Cliff’s
still benefited from the sense of event surrounding the opening.
Beyond the opening? Well, lacking a local coaster enthusiasts community, the
Hayses relied on feedback from the engineers who built and tested the ride.
“They thought it was one of the best coasters Custom built,” Hays
said. Albuquerque could yet become a community of coaster enthusiasts thanks
to Rattler. And for the Hayses, when it was all finally done and said,
long and troubled though it may have been, Rattler’s has proven to be a
labor of love.
©2002, Minton Enterprises
LLC
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