Walibi's Vertigo

Park management seem pretty proud that their new attraction is finally hurling patrons around a large portion of the park at 60km/h, since they've added Vertigonaut advertising everywhere, including targeting the captive toilet audience. If the people attending Walibi haven't noticed the Vertigo riders above them, then they're probably not ready for the experience themselves.

Technically, the ride has only soft-opened. Walibi Belgium will properly promote the ride as the new attraction for their 2008 season, with the current opening being seen as somewhat of a bonus. Perhaps by then the ride will be fully operational: Only six of the eight gondolas are in operation presently, allowing for a measly 600 riders per hour, although this is better than the anticipated 400 riders per hour that was predicted with the earlier gondola telemetry problems.

Despite the efficiency of the rides present through-put, Walibi has decided to implement a ticketing system where by you obtain a ticket which gives you a 30-minute timeslot to return and join the real queue for the ride. This would be a great way to keep queues reasonable. As John points out though, the concept is poorly implemented.

For those of you who don't want my usual nitty-gritty, since I seem to be berated lately for posting in my own style, you can go and read John's version of the event.

It should first be pointed out that this is truly an industrial engineer's design for a ride, with a much more complicated set of systems operating this beast rather than what you'd see from your average coaster engineer. Designers Input are owned by parent company Doppelmayr, who make their money dealing with a variety of ski-lifts, and material transport systems.

This over-engineering can be seen not only from the design of the ride, but also felt as you ride it. Everything is smooth and comfortable, and parts of the machinery slide past each other with seemingly narrow clearance. I'm tempted to believe that some sort of anti-graffiti system has been built into the ride, because there is a distinct lack of post-codes scrawled all over décor in the queue.

Vertigo's gondolas seem fairly simple, seating four-abreast with a non-restrictive yet very secure lap-bar mechanism. However, the gondolas can swing considerably front-ways, with quite a nice suspension system. As the gondolas pass through the station, they continue to slowly move towards the elevator-lift in order to keep the ride flowing quickly, so a large moving walkway exists to help loading and unloading.

While the elevator-lift isn't a new thing, Vertigo's implementation is interesting. The elevator consists of two sides, each with a small chunk of track and a tyre propeller. Each side alternates between the station and launching position, folding and unfolding depending on how the track must be aligned at the bottom and top. The lift is amazingly rapid, and yet so smooth that you don't realise you've risen 55 metres in seconds.

As for the ride itself: it's so smooth that you don't even notice the 3g's, and it's best experienced not holding onto the lap-bar. John took a video of the ride, but there's plenty of them on YouTube.

While the Vertigo is perhaps not the best ride in the park, it's still a great ride nevertheless!