Ride Profile
www.parkworld-online.com
Speed & Power T
he world’s tallest and fastest water coaster has opened at Mirabilandia near Ravenna, Italy. Designed by Intamin, Divertical represents the park’s largest ever single investment, a fitting birthday present for its 20th anniversary season. Mirabilandia technical director Vittorio Santelmo explains how the €20 million attraction took shape.
We were looking for something big for our anniversary, something the whole family could enjoy. We already have two big rollercoasters, iSpeed [Intamin launch coaster] and Katun [B&M inverted coaster], as well as many water rides. Now we needed a water coaster. We spoke to a number of companies, but in the end the proposal that best mixed water with coaster and pleased everybody was from Intamin. We defined the general layout of the ride before we signed the contract. After that, we decided on the final positioning within the park, the distance between the station and the lift, the theming and so on.
We stared work on site, cutting the grass on what was formerly a parking area, in the middle of October last year. We finished the construction April 20, and then started the commissioning. The official inauguration was on June 16. Last year, before we had started construction, we visited Holiday World in the USA with Intamin to see their big water ride [Pilgrims Plunge], which also features a vertical lift. Unfortunately we could not ride it because it was closed for maintenance, but the technical staff of the park were very collaborative and gave us a lot of information. As a result of this we made many modifications to the design of our ride, including the boats.
Coaster Boats
Our boats are the same size as Holiday World, the shape of the fibreglass is more or less the same, although the gauge is completely different, so the steel frame and supporting beam are different. Because of the characteristics of the coaster, the boats are split in two parts like a coaster train.
So where did the name Divertical come from? And what does it mean? “Divertical was my idea,” explains Mirabilandia commercial director Pietro Lanciotti. “We were thinking about the name and the theming for a long time.” “One day whilst driving on the highway I was thinking about the characteristics of this attraction,” he continues. “It features a big, big dive into the water. Also it has this vertical lift, so I mixed these two words and came up with ‘Divertical’. It does not mean anything in Italian, and I do not think it means anything in English either!”
And what about the theme? “I thought that the theming should be about speed and power. We already have iSpeed in this area of the park with its Formula 1 theme, and Off Shore motorboat racing is described as the Formula 1 of the water. We thought that would be a good theme, and made the shape of the boats to reflect that.”
Mirabilandia commercial director Pietro Lanciotti (left) and technical director Vittorio Santelmo
JULY 2012 33
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48