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Schwaben Park | Wilde Hilde | RES Roller Ball

CrashCoaster

CrashCoaster

CF Legend
So remember that new company, RES (Ride Engineers Switzerland)? Yeah, well they're building one of their Roller Ball coasters at Schwaben Park for late 2018, named Wilde Hilde. I think this coaster will be a good fit alongside the two Zierer coasters they already have. Finally the RCT3 Dizzy Dropper concept has come to life!
 
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It'll be interesting to see how this compares to the ZacSpins and Free Spins. Their animation appears to pitch it as a lot less intense, which could make it an interesting alternative to the 'standard' family coaster. My worry is that the flipping will still be too intense, but maybe if the speed of the car is controlled enough this could be mitigated.

Plus, I hope it comes with real gravity-defying chickens.
 
It's also worth noting that one of the guests in the rendered video is very young, an obvious intentional decision to ensure that it appears to appease the entire family. These could be really popular if it works well for this park and I can imagine we see a lot more of them popping up.

It makes me question why Intamin have never actually proposed a family version of them for parks, it would be incredible easy for them to amend their current design to accommodate younger guests with less spinning. I suppose it's never been wanted by a park before?
 
Lofty said:
It makes me question why Intamin have never actually proposed a family version of them for parks, it would be incredible easy for them to amend their current design to accommodate younger guests with less spinning. I suppose it's never been wanted by a park before?
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Intamin are an expensive manufacturer, and so if no park was willing to pay the premium and no-one else was offering something suitable, something like this wasn't going to be built. Parks looking for family coasters had plenty of other ways to spend their money.

I suspect it's similar to the situation of the B&M family invert (and why we've only seen one) - why bother paying the mark-up when cheaper alternatives will do the same job?
 
Forgive my ignorance but how exactly are they supposed to get the train to engage and disengage the lift when the chain is sideways? That was the one aspect of the Dizzy dropper that I could never figure out.
 
Here's an interview with some of the people involved in the project:-
(English subtitles are available).

Three cars are confirmed on the ride, and a special bearing will be used in each 4-person car to ensure that the train will not go upside down. Also, the ride will use magnetic brakes, and a special elevator lift system, similar to that used on Russian mountain trains long ago. Construction is due to start in April.
 
Schwaben have created a construction diary on their website. The first post revealed some stats about the coaster.

Footprint: 18m x 7m
Total height: around 25 m
Highest riders will go: 20 m
Lift speed: 0.25 - 0.3 m / s
Total distance: around 100 m
Number of gondolas: 3
Ride Duration: around 90 seconds
Capacity: approx. 360 persons / hour
Investment: 1.2 / 1.3 million euros
Opening: Summer 2018
Start of construction: April 2018
Manufacturer: RES - Ride Engineers Switzerland

http://www.schwabenpark.de/de/bautagebuch/
 
So this lift hill only moves 25-30cm (about a foot) a second? That's the same length as a standard ruler... Meaning the lift could take up to 80 seconds!
 
I doubt capacity will be a big issue for this park, but if RES wants to sell more of these to bigger parks they better up the capacity!
 
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The park have posted on Facebook a first look at one of the track parts.
 
The engineer in me is really puzzled by this track design. That's a pretty strong moment on those welds holding the ties to the spine, and a weld is a stress concentrator, which would ultimately drop the factor of safety in repeated combined stress. Now obviously they aren't stupid and they have it under control so it's safe and they had to make the decision for a reason, but this "track twisted sideways" concept always seemed strange to me. Should be a fun little coaster though, it's clearly geared towards families which should set it apart from similar products on the market.
 
CoasterMac305 said:
^oh my god we get it, you're an engineer.
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I actually say that all the time both IRL and online before I bring up any technical opinion...

Regardless, I still think it’s unusual mounting it to the side of the track instead of having it just go above and below. Even in RCT3 I thought it didn’t make much sense.
 
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