Quoted from www.screamscape.com
General News - (4/1/08) It seems there is a race on in Europe to design an all new waterslide design that will allow them to invert the riders upside-down for a moment. From what I??????ve been told a company by the name of Hartwigsen (Germany) and another by the name of Klarer (Switzerland) both apparently have prototype designs on the way into production.
Of course these will not be the first ??????loop?????? water slides ever built however as that honor goes to Action Park in New Jersey who built a slide that was rarely open. However anyone I??????ve ever heard from who had been on it, never had anything nice to say about it. The experience was often described as being utterly disorienting and physically brutal on the body at the same time.
Klarer seems to have the lead on the new design style however. If you scroll down to page 3 on this Klarer news letter published in September 2006 you can see some of the first concept artwork for the concept which involved a more traditional vertical loop design. Apparently the G-Forces proved to be too harsh and instead they??????ve now come out with a functioning prototype as seen over at Freizeitparkweb where the inversion has been tilted over on it??????s side a bit, much like the Incline Loop found on B&M Standing Coasters. Scroll down a bit and you can see a few different images of it where the temporary scaffolding has been moved around so they could test it out at various angles to see what works the best, from mild to wild.
Now I have to admit, the idea of a looping waterslide, while interesting at first, could end up being the stuff of nightmares. I can??????t help but wonder just what would happen if the water flow slowed to the point where it could no longer make it through the inversion and began to flow back, flooding the bottom half of the slide. Obviously the next guest down the slide would be in for a rude shock as they could suddenly find themselves submerged underwater in darkness and unable to get out. The pictures are a bit small, but I didn??????t really see any kind of emergency exit hatch to prevent such a thing from happening. This leads to the rumored news about the Hartwigsen slide which is said to have a similar design, but with the planned addition of some kind of escape hatch. If our sources are correct, their first production model may open somewhere in the Czech Republic in late 2008.
Of course these will not be the first ??????loop?????? water slides ever built however as that honor goes to Action Park in New Jersey who built a slide that was rarely open. However anyone I??????ve ever heard from who had been on it, never had anything nice to say about it. The experience was often described as being utterly disorienting and physically brutal on the body at the same time.
Klarer seems to have the lead on the new design style however. If you scroll down to page 3 on this Klarer news letter published in September 2006 you can see some of the first concept artwork for the concept which involved a more traditional vertical loop design. Apparently the G-Forces proved to be too harsh and instead they??????ve now come out with a functioning prototype as seen over at Freizeitparkweb where the inversion has been tilted over on it??????s side a bit, much like the Incline Loop found on B&M Standing Coasters. Scroll down a bit and you can see a few different images of it where the temporary scaffolding has been moved around so they could test it out at various angles to see what works the best, from mild to wild.
Now I have to admit, the idea of a looping waterslide, while interesting at first, could end up being the stuff of nightmares. I can??????t help but wonder just what would happen if the water flow slowed to the point where it could no longer make it through the inversion and began to flow back, flooding the bottom half of the slide. Obviously the next guest down the slide would be in for a rude shock as they could suddenly find themselves submerged underwater in darkness and unable to get out. The pictures are a bit small, but I didn??????t really see any kind of emergency exit hatch to prevent such a thing from happening. This leads to the rumored news about the Hartwigsen slide which is said to have a similar design, but with the planned addition of some kind of escape hatch. If our sources are correct, their first production model may open somewhere in the Czech Republic in late 2008.