Wooden Roller Coaster - Modern Designs

Modern Designs

After CCI went bankrupt in 2002, members of the design team came together again to found The Gravity Group coaster manufacturing company. Intamin, a company perhaps most well known for its steel coaster designs, came to the scene with their Prefabricated Wooden Roller Coaster (see below), though they have designed traditional wooden coasters in the past like American Eagle at Six Flags Great America and White Cyclone at Nagashima Spa Land. Great Coasters International has grown increasingly prolific in modern times, with at least a dozen new coasters opening between 2000 and 2012.

In 2000, Kings Island premiered the world's tallest and fastest wooden roller coaster, Son of Beast. Up through 2006, it was the only modern wooden roller coaster to feature an inversion. Following a structural failure accident that year, the loop was removed before the 2007 season in order to allow for lighter trains that would prevent the structural problem from occurring again. After another major incident in 2009, the entire coaster went into SBNO (Standing But Not Operating) status for 3 years and was demolished in November of 2012.

Newer wooden roller coasters often break the rules and restrictions traditionally associated with the type. Many new wooden roller coasters feature extremely steep drops (see El Toro (Six Flags Great Adventure)), 90-degree banked turns (see The Voyage), and normally feature trains other than Philadelphia Toboggan Company trains. Great Coasters International usually run their coasters with their signature Millennium Flyer trains. The Gravity Group has developed Timberliners to compete with Millennium Flyer trains. Timberliners are scheduled to be added to The Voyage in the future and have been added to Gravity Group's newest coasters, Wooden Warrior at Quassy Amusement Park and Twister at Grona Lund.

At Upper Clements Park in Nova Scotia, a wooden roller coaster was built in 1980 that today still wins awards for the terrain that was used in dictating its design and the terrain that it still covers. Built using a natural setting beside the sea, Roller Coaster (formerly called Tree Topper) curves its way over a river, through a marsh, up onto hills, and into a forest. The coaster is one of the premier attractions at this park.