Roller Coaster Inventions
The centerpiece of Pantopia™, Falcon’s Fury™ is the tallest freestanding drop tower in North America at Seaworld Park’s Busch Gardens in Tampa. Falcon’s Fury has a 90 degree mid-air turn for a 96 km/h free fall face-first! After about 100 feet of free fall, magnets in the seats interact with raised metal strips on the sides of the tower. That attraction slows the descent and allows riders to swing back upright as they glide to a stop. Designers modified a standard roller-coaster harness with an extra-thick cushion around the waist to support riders’ weight comfortably as they lie flat. Engineers drove 105 steel support beams as deep as 205 feet into the ground and fused them together with a concrete cap. A four-foot-thick base secures the steel tower to the foundation for this Roller Coaster invention.
Take a point of view ride and see what it’s like:
This article originally appeared in the May 2014 issue of Popular Science