Today is the big day. Silver Dollar City is announcing its largest project to date. Oh and did we happen to mention that today is also National Roller Coaster Day?
Members of the media packed the stands in the Red Gold Heritage Hall for today's event.
Lisa Rau, Director of Publicity for Herschend, welcomed everyone to the event.
She also mentioned two hashtags that the park wanted everyone to use on social media when posting photos of the event.
Next we were treated to the backstory of the new ride.
Brad Thomas, General Manager of Silver Dollar City next took the stage to discuss the theme behind the ride.
We were next treated to a history montage of the park.
It was fun to see some of the old photographs.
Finally it was time to get down to the details of the ride with a great animation and ride specifications montage video
After a great video of the new ride Brad broke down all of the elements of the ride.
This thing is going to have a great layout.
First the cars will be able to spin 360 degrees in a controlled spin.
The ride starts off with a 90 degree vertical drop.
The ride will have 3 different inversions - a dive loop, a vertical loop.
The final inversion is a Zero-G Roll.
There are also two different launches on the ride.
Next, Dennis Gordt from Mack Rides joined Brad Thomas on stage to discuss some of the process that went into designing the ride.
The attendees were treated to an amazing medley of songs by the Missouri State Chorale.
They even had a house band to accompany the chorale.
They are a very talented group. We really enjoyed their performance.
Finally we were treated to videos of Time Traveler.
We ended the presentation portion of the event with a POV video of the ride.
Amazing videos - this is going to be a great ride.
Attendees were next invited backstage for lunch.
It was quite the festive area.
We were treated to a very tasty lunch of rotisserie chicken sandwich, twister fries, 5-cheese grilled cheese sandwich, and for dessert we had a bowl of the new Time Traveler ice cream from Highland Dairy.
Really loved the atmosphere that the park was able to create for lunch.
It's time to move over to the Time Traveler station for the next part of the event.
The park really went all out for this portion of the event as well.
First, we were treated to a bowl of the brand new Time Traveler ice cream flavor that is being produced by Highland Dairy to celebrate the new ride.
Next we were treated to a "ride" on the new Time Traveler thanks to VR technology.
Finally the park built this skybox that you could stand in for a photo opportunity. Notice how it protrudes out from the station. (It will be removed once the track for the station arrives)
Inside the sky box this was your view if you looked straight down.
The first drop was right there if you had your back to the station while standing in the box.
We want to thank the park for inviting us to this amazing event.
We cannot wait to take Time Traveler for a ride next Spring.
Thanks again to Lisa, Brad, Martha, Nick and everyone else that worked hard to put on this event. It was a day to remember.
If you are interested, there are new shirts with the Time Traveler logo on the back now available for purchase in the Hospitality House.
