Bolliger & Mabillard

Bolliger & Mabillard, abbreviated B&M and formally known as Bolliger & Mabillard Consulting Engineers Inc., is a roller coaster design consultancy based in Monthey, Switzerland. The company was founded in 1988 by Walter Bolliger and Claude Mabillard, with Bolliger as president and Mabillard as vice-president. Since 1988, B&M has built 100 roller coasters around the world and have pioneered several new ride technologies, most notably the inverted roller coaster. Since 1990, all coasters designed by B&M that have been built within North America have been manufactured by Clermont Steel Fabricators which is located in Batavia, Ohio, United States. B&M started with four employees and has since grown; as of 2012 it employs 37 people, mostly engineers and draftsmen. In 2016 the company will complete its 100th coaster.

History

Walter Bolliger and Claude Mabillard starting working for Giovanola, a manufacturing company who supplied rides to Intamin, in the 1970s. During their time at Giovanola, they helped design the company's first stand-up roller coaster, Shockwave at Six Flags Magic Mountain. They also worked on other projects, such as Z-Force at Six Flags Great America. Bolliger & Mabillard left Giovanola, but the company continued to use their track design, so the company's roller coasters, Goliath at Six Flags Magic Mountain and Titan at Six Flags Over Texas, use a track style very similar to B&M's.

Cedar Point

Cedar Point is a 365-acre (148 ha) amusement park located on a Lake Erie peninsula in Sandusky, Ohio. Opened in 1870, it is the second-oldest operating amusement park in the United States behind Lake Compounce. Cedar Point is owned and operated by Cedar Fair and is considered the flagship of the amusement park chain. Known as "America's Roller Coast", the park features a world-record 72 rides, including 16 roller coasters which ties it with Canada's Wonderland for the second-most roller coasters in an amusement park behind Six Flags Magic Mountain. Its newest roller coaster, Rougarou, opened in May 2015.

Cedar Point's normal operating season runs from early May until Labor Day, when the park is open daily. The park is then open only on weekends until the beginning of November for HalloWeekends, a Halloween event. Other attractions near the park include a one-mile-long (1.6 km) white-sand beach, an outdoor water park called Soak City, an indoor water park called Castaway Bay, an area known as Challenge Park, two marinas, and several nearby resorts.

Thorpe Park

Thorpe Park, styled THORPE PARK Resort, is a theme park with a temporary hotel in between the towns of Chertsey and Staines, Surrey, England, UK. It is operated and owned by Merlin Entertainments. After demolition of the Thorpe Park Estate in the 1930s, the site became a gravel pit.

Thorpe Park was built in the 1970s on the gravel pit which was partially flooded, creating a water-based theme for the park. This essentially allows guests to view the park as an island, which is where the "island like no other" slogan originates from. It was officially opened to the public by the late Lord Louis Mountbatten in 1979.

Major attractions include Tidal Wave, Colossus, Nemesis Inferno, Stealth, SAW - The Ride, and The Swarm

The park is mainly geared towards a young adult/teenage audience due to the vast majority of signature attractions being roller coasters and thrill rides. The tallest of these being Stealth, an Intamin Accelerator Coaster, which launches riders from 0-80 mph in 1.8 seconds sending them 205 ft into the air. The newest is The Swarm, which is the only B&M wing coaster in the UK, has a total of 5 inversions and is 127 feet tall.

The Swarm

The Swarm may refer to:

Music

Film and television

Literature

Other uses

See also

Wing Coaster

A Wing Coaster is a type of steel roller coaster manufactured by Bolliger & Mabillard where pairs of riders sit on either side of a roller coaster track in which nothing is above or below the riders. Development of the Wing Coaster began between 2007 and 2008 leading to the opening of Raptor at Gardaland, the world's first Wing Coaster, on 1 April 2011. There are currently eight Wing Coasters operating worldwide.

History

According to Walter Bolliger, development of the Wing Coaster began between 2007 and 2008. In 2010, Bolliger & Mabillard announced a prototype Wing Coaster design that would be built at Merlin Entertainments' Gardaland. It became known as Raptor, which opened on 1 April 2011. A year later, Merlin Entertainments opened a second Wing Coaster on 15 March 2012, called The Swarm at Thorpe Park.

In the United States, the first Wing Coaster to be announced was X-Flight, which opened at Six Flags Great America on 16 May 2012.Dollywood's Wild Eagle actually opened earlier on 24 March 2012, making it the first Wing Coaster in North America. On 13 August 2012, Cedar Point announced plans to build a new Wing Coaster called GateKeeper, which set new records for a Wing Coaster including longest track length, fastest speed and drop height. The first Wing Coaster in Asia, Parrot Coaster, opened at Ocean Kingdom on 25 January 2014. Thorpe Park announced that the last two rows of The Swarm would be turned backwards – a first for a Wing Coaster – for the 2013 season. On 24 July 2014, Holiday World & Splashin' Safari announced Thunderbird, the first launched Wing Coaster.