With two major expansions in two years, Six Flags Great Adventure have announced its newest roller coaster, a mile-long ride the park is touting as "a new breed of thrill experience."
Nitro will take riders up 230 feet -- 23 stories -- before plunging them down 215 feet at speeds that approach 80 mph. Seven steep drops produce long "air time," a roller coaster enthusiast's term for a rider being lifted off the seat from negative gravitational forces. It is slated to debut on the park's opening day April 7.
In a report by the
Albury Park Press, the new coaster is manufactured by Bolliger and Mabillard of Switzerland, which also designed Medusa, another of the park's 12 coasters. That floorless coaster was the cornerstone of the park's 1999 $42 million "renaissance" expansion.Great Adventure matched itself a year later with last season's opening of Hurricane Harbor, a separate $40 million water park with a million-gallon wave pool.
Park officials also announced yesterday that theme park visitors won't pay extra for the 350-acre drive-through Wild Safari wildlife preserve during the 2001 season. Previously a combination ticket for the safari cost about $2 more per adult.
The coaster is under construction and can be seen looming over the trees and lake of the Prospertown Wildlife Management Area on Route 537. Referred to as a "mega coaster" in the amusement industry -- meaning it has a tower in excess of 200 feet - the ride features a pair of horizontal loops, an s-curve and a series of tight twists and turns. Riders will sit four-across in tilted-back carriages secured by lap bars.
