Roller coaster designers Bollinger and Mabillard of Switzerland created a $13 million floorless coaster for Dorney Park in Pennsylvania.
Known as a floorless coaster because there is no floor, riders are positioned above the track with their legs hanging freely and nothing above, beneath, or to the sides of them. Riders will experience the sensation of floating in air.
Before leaving the station, the floor will drop out from under the train. Riders will twist upside-down after exiting the station in what park officials call the first-of-its-kind jojo roll. Riders will then climb up a 95-foot-tall lift hill and plunge down a 105-foot drop at 53 miles per hour. After racing through a rock-hewn canyon, riders experience an inclined dive loop, a zero-gravity roll, two flat-spins with inversions, and Hydra's signature design element, a tight cobra roll.
Hydra the Revenge is made up of 3,198 feet of tubular steel track and weighs in at approximately 1,368,000 pounds. Open-air trains seat riders four abreast in eight rows to accommodate 32 passengers per ride for an estimated 1,245 riders per hour.
"The addition of this exciting attraction is the perfect complement to our collection of thrill rides and family entertainment," said Greg Scheid of Dorney Park.
The eighth addition to Dorney Park's world-famous line-up of coasters, Hydra the Revenge is a thrill-machine like no other with a non-stop mix of twists, rolls, spirals and breath-taking drops into rock-strewn ravines that keeps its riders wondering what comes next.
The floorless rollercoaster will open on May 7, 2005, Dorney Park's opening day of the 2005 season.