Can you picture dangling over a sheer drop, staring 245 feet down into the gaping mouth of an underwater tunnel? Now you don't have to imagine it.
You can head to Canada's Wonderland, a huge theme park just outside Toronto, and get that rush for yourself on the Yukon Striker roller coaster.
It opened on Friday at 10 a.m. local time, along with the rest of the park's attractions. According to park officials, the winners of a charity raffle got an early ride on the Striker on April 25. But now everyone else can climb aboard too.
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Canada's Wonderland calls it the "longest, fastest and tallest dive coaster in the world."
So what exactly is a dive coaster? According to coaster designers Bolliger & Mabillard, dive coasters feature a "straight vertical drop that leaves riders facing downward, (which) creates a different riding sensation."
"The Yukon Striker ride is simply breathtaking," said Norm Pirtovshek, general manager of Canada's Wonderland, in a press release.
As the name Yukon Striker suggests, the ride is themed around Canada's gold rush era of the late 1800s, when adventurers poured into the Yukon in the northwest chasing quick fortunes.
Speaking of quick, here are a few stats provided by the park that will take your breath away:
- 80 mph (130 km/h): That's your top speed.
- 3,625 feet, 1,105 meters: That's how far you'll travel (the length of 10 American football fields including the end zones, or 12 fields if you count 100 yards from goal line to goal line).
- 4: That's the number of inversions (coaster speak for being flipped upside down and then turned back over) you'll go through.
And in case all of that isn't special enough, the Striker features floorless seats for "enhanced visibility," a three-second hold before you plummet into the straight drop, and a 360-degree loop that the park says has never appeared on a dive coaster before.
The coaster's opening went smoothly.
"I had the chance to ride with the first guests in line this morning, and everyone was so excited," Grace Peacock, the park's director of communications, said Friday afternoon. "They cheered as the first riders boarded the train and clapped when they returned to the station after the ride. ... I think everyone was blown away by that 90-degree drop."
If the Yukon Striker feels like too much to handle, the park has plenty of other coasters to choose from.
