The looks of Ice Breaker, SeaWorld Orlando’s soon-to-open roller coaster, may be deceiving. From the ground, the ride appears to be straightforward with its ups and downs and arounds with a dead-end spike on one end.
But on board, riders experience dramatic surges courtesy of launch maneuvers, two of which go backward, and the ride’s amount of airtime rivals bigger coasters, including a major ride just on the other side of the park.
Ice Breaker opens officially to the public Feb. 18, but annual passholders will be getting sneak peeks in phases beginning Sunday. Members of the media previewed the ride Thursday.
“We talk about rider demographics when we design attractions,” Jonathan Smith, corporate vice president of rides and engineering, said Thursday. “We call this a ‘family thrill’ demographic. It’s the perfect balance of great dynamics, but fun for lower rider heights.”
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Here’s what happens on Ice Breaker.
The train, seating 18 passengers in rows of twos, moves forward out of the loading station slowly, stops, then glides directly right on a platform, like fancy parallel parking, to another part of the rail. Riders now face toward Bayside Stadium with the park’s central lagoon on the right.
From here, the vehicle launches backward into the dead end on the Shamu Stadium side, the spike that tops out about 93 feet. SeaWorld indicated that the rail is “beyond vertical” at this point. The train doesn’t reach the tip before rolling back toward the ground, past the station and launching aggressively toward a hill.
But it doesn’t quite reach the top of that hill either, rolling backward again, past the station again, relaunching into that spike, going higher this time before returning toward the ground and the hill again.
It crests this time, flowing into a top hat element.
“It’s just not like any top hat. You actually twist and rotate 90 degrees as you’re maneuvering that element,” Smith said.
From there, Ice Breaker moves away from the water, into a backstage area of SeaWorld, where it rapidly rolls through maneuvers such as a sidewinder and a sideways camelback. It loops back to the lagoon side, goes through a series of gallops and turns around to the station, right where it started.
“Then you go in the back and there’s that airtime, the low-to-the-ground maneuvers,” said Rob McNicholas, SeaWorld Orlando’s vice president of operations. “It’s almost like two different rides. … But it works really well together.”
While it’s smooth and surprising, the secret to Ice Breaker’s success is the amount of airtime. It has 13 moments of airtime moments, executives say, as compared with Mako, its taller, faster, longer sister coaster that opened in 2016.
“When you think about that, it just doesn’t make sense. How can that be?” McNicholas said.
Height requirement for Ice Breaker is 48 inches. It tops out at 52 mph. It has no true inversions, but seats have lap bars and a flexible over-the-shoulder harness held in place by a carabiner.
Ice Breaker’s debut will be the first in a big year for new coasters in Florida. Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, owned by Orlando-based SeaWorld Parks, will introduce Iron Gwazi in mid-March. Peppa Pig Theme Park in Winter Haven will include a kiddie coaster called Daddy Pig’s Roller Coaster when the attraction opens next month. Walt Disney World’s Epcot will be home to Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind this summer. Disney is also working on a Tron ride at Magic Kingdom, but an opening date has not been announced.
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