Verbolten

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The first entry in this thread is a WikiPost. As such, it can be edited by anyone with the appropriate permissions.

Manufacturer
ZIERER

Model
Elevated Seating Coaster w/ Vertical Drop Element

Hamlet
Oktoberfest (Germany)

Official Opening
May 18, 2012

Soft Opening
May 11, 2012

Tallest Drop
88ft


Top Speed
53mph

Inversion Count
0

Launch Segments
2

Riders Per Train
16

Number of Trains
5

Height Requirement
48in



Verbolten is an indoor/outdoor ZIERER Elevated Seating Coaster that features a Vertical Drop Element. It officially opened in mid-May 2012 on the site formally occupied by the Arrow Suspended Coaster, Big Bad Wolf.


Videos​

Development Documentary​

Ride Recordings​

On-Ride Videos​

Backstage Footage​

 
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If I'm correct, Gunter's Office is the part of the queue that looks like a shop. It's got suitcases and stuff? That was pretty cool. The lore of the ride is cool. I think that's what does it for me. I watch a lot of Missing 411 cases in National Parks, so Everytime I think of the Black Forest, I think of a scary encounter with the paranormal.

It fit well with the theme of the area. Bush Gardens also has a lot of trees, so the Black Forest theme makes sense. The queue building looks almost exactly what you see when you look up images of the Black Forest on Google.
 
This is cool. I remember Devin Olsen and his site.

Realistically; what could the park do for Verbolten's 10th year anniversary? Change the theme? Combine all three themes? Extend the ride course? Or just leave it the way it is and say happy 10th year anniversary. Theme parks generally don't touch rides once they have been built. Especially if they have something else planned. Right now; SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment might be focusing on Pantheon.

Just something fun to think about. Could Verbolten's event building be extended? Or is there not enough space behind it to extend and add to the existing indoor course?
 
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Mwe BGW said:
I think they should fix the existing building first.
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So the existing building's theme needs to be fixed. That's right? You said you appreciate most of the working theme. I like the utter darkness inside the tunnel. My imagination and people's screams do the majority of the work for me.

Unless they want to add realistic looking trees in there, I'd say the ride is fine. Fix the curtain that you spoke about and we have a scary ride again. Why do you think they took the curtain down? How many years was it up?
 
Sorry for the double post.

I was at the park yesterday. Of course; most of the park's attendance left due to the weather. Ride operations were suspended for two hours or so. Eventually things opened back up, which lead to numerous rides on Verbolten. However, I did notice something very distinct with the event building yesterday. The "Werewolf" theme was not on. For some odd reason the "Storm" theme ran all day long. At times you'd get "Spirts", but 99% of the time the Storm theme queued every single time. When I told the ride attendant, he told me that maintenance was aware of the issue.

So the question I have; has this ever happened before? What causes this? As the solution as simple as resetting the computer in the event building? How does the system work?
 
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MikeLovesKD said:
Sorry for the double post.

I was at the park yesterday. Of course; most of the park's attendance left due to the weather. Ride operations were suspended for two hours or so. Eventually things opened back up, which lead to numerous rides on Verbolten. However, I did notice something very distinct with the event building yesterday. The "Werewolf" theme was not on. For some odd reason the "Storm" theme ran all day long. At times you'd get "Spirts", but 99% of the time the Storm theme queued every single time. When I told the ride attendant, he told me that maintenance was aware of the issue.

So the question I have; has this ever happened before? What causes this? As the solution as simple as resetting the computer in the event building? How does the system work?
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So the themes cycle with every train in the building. How many trains were running? If there were only 3, the theme will stay with the train. 4 will be offset by 1, 5 will be offset the other direction. Ive never heard of it being "stuck" on one before. Should go Storm->Spirit->Wolves over and over again. Again, there is no way to know unless they are running only 3 trains, which one you will get. For me, it always seemed like I got wolves or spirit all the time, but almost never storm. I always liked the storm one the best since there are no cues from the theme for when it's going to drop.
 
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ControlsEE said:
So the themes cycle with every train in the building. How many train were running? If there were only 3, the theme will stay with the train. 4 will be offset by 1, 5 will be offset the other direction. Ive never heard of it being "stuck" on one before. Should go Storm->Spirit->Wolves over and over again. Again, there is no way to know unless they are running only 3 trains, which one you will get. For me, it always seemed like I got wolves or spirit all the time, but almost never storm. I always liked the storm one the best since there are no cues from the theme for when it's going to drop.
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Shortly after the weather passed, the maintenance technician came out and moved the orange train off the track. The yellow train was parked in the garage. This leaves "Red, Blue and Green" in operation; with only one loading bay. The loading bay in the back of the station was closed. At one point, I rode back to back. But even when I got on another color, we still got the "Storm" theme.
 
MikeLovesKD said:
Shortly after the weather passed, the maintenance technician came out and moved the orange train off the track. The yellow train was parked in the garage. This leaves "Red, Blue and Green" in operation; with only one loading bay. The loading bay in the back of the station was closed. At one point, I rode back to back. But even when I got on another color, we still got the "Storm" theme.
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Well with 3 trains, unless you switched colors, it will seem to be the same. It is odd that when switching colors it was the same. There probably was something up, but it is supposed to cycle as I mentioned previously.
 
ControlsEE said:
Well with 3 trains, unless you switched colors, it will seem to be the same. It is odd that when switching colors it was the same. There probably was something up, but it is supposed to cycle as I mentioned previously.
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Hey, you probably know a lot of these things; but do you know the ceiling clearance of Verbolten's event building? How how many feet from the tallest point of the ride(the top of the launch hill) are you from the ceiling? Also, how tall is the (drop track)?
 
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MikeLovesKD said:
Hey, you probably know a lot of these things; but do you know the ceiling clearance of Verbolten's event building? How how many feet from the tallest point of the ride(the top of the launch hill) are you from the ceiling? Also, how tall is the (drop track)?
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On the ceiling, I do not have a hard answer, other than I know it gets relatively close at the first hill in the building. The drop is 16 or 17 ft. Just enough to scare you, but make you think it's a lot further.
 
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ControlsEE said:
On the ceiling, I do not have a hard answer, other than I know it gets relatively close at the first hill in the building. The drop is 16 or 17 ft. Just enough to scare you, but make you think it's a lot further.
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I'm a good judge in height. I'd say that the ceiling in the picture I provided is probably 50 ft. from the floor. If I am right; to the top right and out of view of the picture is the drop platform. If that is 16 or 17 feet, down to the floor; I'd say it's about another 33 or 40 feet to the ceiling.
 
MikeLovesKD said:
I'm a good judge in height. I'd say that the ceiling in the picture I provided is probably 50 ft. from the floor. If I am right; to the top right and out of view of the picture is the drop platform. If that is 16 or 17 feet, down to the floor; I'd say it's about another 33 or 40 feet to the ceiling.
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Now that drop number I listed is how much the train drops. There is another good 15' or so under the track at the lowest end and the drop track structure extends 10-15' above the track at the top.
 
How did Premier Rides come up with the price for Verbolten? Is it the drop track, or was it the tech ology involved in making the ride work. Cause there don't seem to be too many more special effects in there than what the Mummy at Universal cost. But yet though, Verbolten cost more. For that cost, it seems like they could have gotten a lot more out of it.
 
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MikeLovesKD said:
How did Premier Rides come up with the price for Verbolten? Is it the drop track, or was it the tech ology involved in making the ride work. Cause there don't seem to be too many more special effects in there than what the Mummy at Universal cost. But yet though, Verbolten cost more. For that cost, it seems like they could have gotten a lot more out of it.
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Keep in mind that the numbers floating around often include the dismantling of BBW, the refurbishment of the station and Queue, as well as covering a lot of extra engineering costs associated with developing a prototype.
 
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ControlsEE said:
Keep in mind that the numbers floating around often include the dismantling of BBW, the refurbishment of the station and Queue, as well as covering a lot of extra engineering costs associated with developing a prototype.
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My mistake. I thought it was Premier Rides. Not sure how I missed that 😅

So in reality, if they were building it from scratch, without ride removal; the cost would be lower than 54 million? Given the fact that Verbolten exist; the ride cost would be cheaper because they don't have to develop the concept? If that is true, then it makes sense. So in reality; theme parks are also paying for the company's time to develop a prototype, if the ride concept does not already exist within the ride manufacture's technology.
 
MikeLovesKD said:
So in reality, if they were building it from scratch, without ride removal; the cost would be lower than 54 million? Given the fact that Verbolten exist; the ride cost would be cheaper because they don't have to develop the concept? If that is true, then it makes sense. So in reality; theme parks are also paying for the company's time to develop a prototype, if the ride concept does not already exist within the ride manufacture's technology.
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Potentially. The ride having to be removed before the site was prepared definitely added costs. And coming up with a new concept and making sure it works well enough to sell it is always more time consuming and expensive. Obviously the park knew of this and was willing to pay more. I can almost guarantee that if the park went the Intamin route, it would have been cheaper for the ride itself, due to the drop having already been designed and in use at Alton Towers, but they picked Zierer for I'm sure a number of reasons only the Design & Engineering Department knows.
 
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ControlsEE said:
Potentially. The ride having to be removed before the site was prepared definitely added costs. And coming up with a new concept and making sure it works well enough to sell it is always more time consuming and expensive. Obviously the park knew of this and was willing to pay more. I can almost guarantee that if the park went the Intamin route, it would have been cheaper for the ride itself, due to the drop having already been designed and in use at Alton Towers, but they picked Zierer for I'm sure a number of reasons only the Design & Engineering Department knows.
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Agreed with a ton of this, and I would add in the need to terraform everything to put in the event building and the launch up to the bridge. That level of terraforming they had to do is expensive, along with the show building. To the best of my research with the area, the terrain pre-BBW looks like it would have been much easier to build out and less expensive.

I also get the feeling that the queue/loading platform retrofit was part of the huge expense as opposed to just building a new station.
 
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