Project 2021/Drachen Spire: Intamin Multi-Launch Shuttle Giga Coaster [Cancelled]

General Information:​

"Project Drachen Spire," is a community-generated identifier for the Intamin-made, multi-launch, shuttle giga coaster that was originally slated to open at Busch Gardens Williamsburg in 2021. The attraction is planned to utilize the currently-vacant land behind Verbolten, Festhaus Park—the former home of Drachen Fire.

The coaster's main layout—as leaked before the addition was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic—featured two launches, two spikes (one spiral, one vertical-ish), and a couple of banked turns. Drachen Spire was designed to run two trains by means of a pair of switch tracks connecting the primary, shuttle portion of the layout to the station platform.

Important Articles:​

• Most Up-To-Date Understanding of the Layout:
  
  

  Leaked Electrical Plan Depicts Busch Gardens Williamsburg's 2021 Roller Coaster in Detail – BGWFans

  If there’s a god, he’s up there laughing this afternoon. Why? Because BGWFans just had one of those classic sitcom moments. Yesterday, we published our painstakingly detailed analysis of the footer plan for what we believe is Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s 2021 roller coaster—seemingly a huge...

  bgwfans.com
• Most Recent Status Update:
  
  

  Drachen Spire Height Waiver Extension Details – BGWFans

  Just over a week ago, we reported on the renewal of the notorious 355 foot Festhaus Park height waiver that was originally requested for the controversial, Intamin-made, multi-launch, giga, shuttle coaster we’ve dubbed Drachen Spire. In last week’s article, we were very careful to leave the door...

  bgwfans.com

NoLimits Model of the Layout:​

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Direct Link to Embedded Media Source

Additional Coverage (Newest to Oldest):​

• https://bgwfans.com/2022/drachen-spire-height-waiver-extension-details/
• https://bgwfans.com/2022/drachen-spire-height-waiver-renewal/
• https://bgwfans.com/2021/drachen-spires-slumber/
• https://bgwfans.com/2020/leaked-ele...-williamsburgs-2021-roller-coaster-in-detail/
• https://bgwfans.com/2020/busch-gardens-williamsburg-2021-shuttle-giga-coaster/
• https://bgwfans.com/2019/germany-expansion-site-plans/
• https://bgwfans.com/2019/2021-rpa-impacts-plan/
• https://bgwfans.com/2019/newly-leaked-document-depicts-project-2021s-station/
• https://bgwfans.com/2019/project-2021-height-waiver-vote-happens-tomorrow/
• https://bgwfans.com/2019/born-from-the-ashes/
• https://bgwfans.com/2019/bgw-project-2021/

Previous Thread:​

https://parkfans.net/threads/january-2019-festhaus-park-height-survey.5696/

 

[----------------------]

I got bored and this is what it might look like

View attachment 18651

That’s a really nice concept drawing man, nice work. Beats the iron gwazi concept art haha.


Maybe it’s just me but I keep seeing people throw around the word investment like they have any idea what this cost and it irks me. It certainly is disappointing to go from Madrid to pantheon in size, but pantheon looks like a cool coaster and the only thing lost with 2021 will be a bit of skyline and the old drachenfire station. There is still plenty of room in the park for another hyper or maybe even a Giga.

So yes, while I insist that this won’t be anything special, I don’t think we should immediately move to being upset with the park for adding this.

 

[warfelg]

Maybe it’s just me but I keep seeing people throw around the word investment like they have any idea what this cost and it irks me.

But investment can be more than just financial. The investment of the time, space, resources to something like this might not be wise. Add in the investment in reallocating new land to environmental concerns and the investment of reusing a station.

Right away without seeing the cost these investments are more than I want to be seeing BGW put into a shuttle coaster.

 

[Gavin]

Honestly, if you think about it, what @Zachary laid out is essentially what many considered the best part of Volcano but taller and without the Volcano. You get launched into a massive turn then into another launch up the spike, only to rollback all the way to the start. I’m sure it will go over great with the GP.

 

[Ghost of Pretzel Kaiser]

I think even if it is just the spike up and down, the height alone will make it very popular.

 

[JoeMama]

Any possibility 4 this concept I just saw? The track could interact with the expansion pathways just like candymonium and other coasters.

 

[GrandpaD]

So this is what I see as pretty much the last half of this coaster...

 

[Jonesta6]

Let's say it's a shuttle, but doesn't actually go where we think it's gonna go - maybe it's just a King Kobra looper launch and the really tall thing is still gonna be a Dippin Dots stand?

 

[CharCren]

Any possibility 4 this concept I just saw? The track could interact with the expansion pathways just like candymonium and other coasters.

This is what ur concept would look like irl, looks a little to intense ?

 

[chris33]

So after looking at all of the photos Zachary posted. I ran into this.

Before I explain what I found, I might as well introduce myself. My name is Chris, I'm a heavy equipment operator in the Air Force (currently deployed) and I recently have had some experience reading blue prints from what were constructing over here. So anyway back to the topic, what I noticed in the "Soil/Drainage drawings" I see this "Temporary soil stockpile area". Now its looks like it will only be about 5 feet tall, but unless its extremely temporary, I dont see them building on top of it. So unfortunately my assumption for the layout (as of right now) is with Zachary.

 

[Zachary]

Welcome to the forum @chris33! You make an interesting point for sure. Maybe that singlehandedly explains the seemingly inflated project area?

 

[chris33]

@Zachary that could be true, but just because there are fences on the ground, that doesn't mean the rest of the ride also isn't elevated. Correct me if I'm wrong, the fences are only for if the coaster reaches a certain height from the ground.

 

[JohnD]

I think even if it is just the spike up and down, the height alone will make it very popular.

If height’s the draw, BGW needs to deliver. As others in this thread have previously noted, with which I agree, they may not get more bites at the apple with the planning board.

 

[KDcoasterMAN]

View attachment 18659

So after looking at all of the photos Zachary posted. I ran into this.

Before I explain what I found, I might as well introduce myself. My name is Chris, I'm a heavy equipment operator in the Air Force (currently deployed) and I recently have had some experience reading blue prints from what were constructing over here. So anyway back to the topic, what I noticed in the "Soil/Drainage drawings" I see this "Temporary soil stockpile area". Now its looks like it will only be about 5 feet tall, but unless its extremely temporary, I dont see them building on top of it. So unfortunately my assumption for the layout (as of right now) is with Zachary.

Could this "raised hill" be constructed as a visual barrier between this and the Verbolten show building? I know the park had tried to take measures to keep the building hidden

 

[warfelg]

Ok, so I dreamt up something really unique last night that could make this hit all the things I would like to see which is:
~Different enough from Pantheon that it doesn't feel like a repeat
~Close to full circuit coaster (so no shuttle element)
~Hits the peak height and footers we know of
~Some tribute elements to Drachen Fire


So taking you through it
~Start with exiting the station and turning some to the left to be connected to the main track. To the right is the maintenance bay.
~When the track switches, the train slowly backs up (red arrow) to the block (concrete block)
~After a slight delay (I'm imagining a recording of a voice saying something) which the track switches to straight and the blue area is launch 1.
~Diving banked turn to the right before a large sweeping diving turn to the Rhine (the green)
~A second boost launch to help push you up a massive 300+ foot top hat, with a slight turn to the right and twisting as you reach the top.
~From the top, an inward twist with a slight right turn at the bottom.
~Now the next few parts had some difficulty properly depicting, but the launch up is lower, and the bottom of the drop is directly over top.
~The purple almost perfectly mirrors the green outgoing part, but it's rising a large amount then diving back to ground level.
~The big loop....that's not a helix. It's an inclined loop.
~The pink is a little airtime hill directly over the initial launch.
~The almost maroon is a downhill "bleed brake" not designed to stop the train, but really kill off a bunch of speed.
~Yellow is a slight immelman loop over the photo stand (resumed) with final breaks as you come down off the inversion
~slight bend back into the station.

So I did pull inspiration from other coasters. The inclined loop was inspired by Phantoms Revenge "loop" after the second drop. The over lapping and immelman was inspired by Steel Curtains turnaround. The tophat turns were a thought of combining a tophat and hammerhead turn.

 

[Lcucu3]

I know the area seems too thin for a standard top hat, but have we considered a top hat that rotates 180° and drops back towards the entry? (Sort of like a supersized vekoma shockwave top hat)

 

[Jonesta6]

If it could be done with a knife's edge to KM, then that seems like fun to me

 

[warfelg]

Ok, so something that's been bothering me some, why I've been coming up with something that uses the extra space of the field, and maybe @Zachary you can answer a few questions/thoughts I have here:
The High Point Area:
I would assume that the group think here is going to be that they could theoretically keep a grove of tree's there by using Bolt's access road to get the crane in to construct.
The presumed 'boost launch' and turn area:
Ok, so this is where the thinking really kicks in high gear. There's the second grove of trees that are hiding the second launch point on an area to construct. Additionally that area is massively sloped, so getting as close as possible is important. But either there needs to be a second crane that needs to be MASSIVE to get anything up over the trees, or another LONG crane that sits at the top where the curve is. Is there a likelyhood that one of these two groves of trees comes out in construction? I seem to remember InvadR looking like pockets of trees were going to be kept (I wish I could easily pull up Project 2017 plans that showed that) which ultimately did not make it to the end.

Aha - found what I was thinking:




This is what was originally shown in the InvadR plans. I wonder if there's going to be some form of this happening with Project 2021 to 'throw off' the end product.

Wasted space in construction plot:
At least since I've been in VA, every time these plans seem to come up, the edges of the construction site seem to hit almost perfectly the overall reach of the actual coaster. When you splice together the pages, and overlay it on the map, there seems to be a lot of space that's being wasted as brought in to the project that isn't being used. So either there's something off in the proposed layout OR there's more than just a coaster with this one.

So that leads me to a few 'theories':
1 - Something in the plans are not 100% truthful or they were done in conjunction with the country to not reveal too much. Wouldn't be unheard of for a park to have agreements with the local government to allow certain things to be represented that eventually will be left out.
2 - There's going to be 'changes' to these plans as more comes out about the ride. Again like point 1, is pre-agreed to with JCC that they just needed to major structures first.
3 - There is going to be a 'mini-hamlet' built out and Kevin saying that the focus was on rides not hamlets was a 'lie' to protect future projects. Wouldn't be the first time something like that happened.

 

[Jonesta6]

So maybe they could truly make a mile high sandwich in the high point spot. /s

But seriously, @warfelg - you bring up some good points. Since I'm not good at reading these kinds of plans, is anyone noticing a larger than needed stormwater runoff system included? Thinking that might be a clue as to if/what else we may expect.

 

[warfelg]

Also @Zachary (sorry to mention you a few times here today but I keep spotting things) some things within the full plans that piqued my interest.

Ok so this page. The temporary soil line is built up at 95', (based on the elevation markings) but the line is listed at 92 feet. Also in the page match line, notice how the cut in line is extremely squared off? Almost the size of a....track?

In this page, and in the page for the new maintenance building, the amount of replanting that they show going on is very extensive. That building also had a rather interesting notation it for me, that it's going to be built on stilts. So no even formal foundation. It also looks like almost everything that was part of the dredging work from the Madrid possible scrapped is actually being put to work here.

 

[GregSwitzi]

is it possible that they could also use this space? all the concepts stay out of that zone