Pulsar
Wet summer in store at Walibi Belgium!
Ride Profile
After a 15 year drought without a new rollercoaster, Walibi Belgium has made a big splash with the debut of Pulsar, the world’s first launched shuttle coaster on water. Supplied by Mack Rides, pretty much every rider is guaranteed to get wet, including reporter Marcus Gaines
P
ulsar's track layout appears similar to a stretched-out W. Featuring 44.6m-tall (1245m) vertical spikes at each end and a large hump in the middle, the new
water coaster occupies a footprint of 160m by 30m. The 20-seater boats are loaded on a large turntable,
with one boat out on the track whilst the other is in the themed warehouse area being loaded. When one boat has finished the ride and the other is loaded and checked, the turntable rotates putting a fresh (and dry) load of riders into position for the launch, and bringing the other boat of now wet riders back into the warehouse to disembark. The ride begins with a 54km/h (33.5 mph) backwards LSM launch that propels pas-sengers over the central hump, with some mild airtime, and half way up the rear spike. Gravity takes over, bringing the boat back over the hump and immediately into a more powerful 83km/h (51.5 mph) forward launch that sends riders towards the top of the for- ward spike. The vertical drop backwards provides some hanging airtime, and without a moment to catch a breath the boat is again launched backwards, this time to 100 km/h (62 mph), which leads to some great airtime over the hump.
Reaching the top of the rear spike, the boat is back under control of gravity, freefalling down but this time before reaching the hump the boat splashes down in the lake, sending a huge plume of water towering in to the sky, and over the riders. Although there are some scoops and pipes on the boat to ensure a good spray effect from the back, what the riders experience isn’t an artificial spray, this is a real splash.
Splash on tap Creating the splash proved to be a challenge for the designers at Mack. The boat could only go in the water at the end of the ride, so that section of track has to be dry for the first two passes. This means that whilst the boat is racing up the rear spike on the second occasion, there is just six seconds to flood the track area with 200 cubic metres of water. The ride's loading method also presented some challenges too as the turntable had to be precisely lined up for the boats to run at high speed smoothly back and forth along the join. The boats are of a new design, and different to those
found on the Mack Rides' Super Splash water coasters. The 20 passengers are split across five rows and each rider has their own lap bar, which is comfortable and reassuringly snug. Utilising two boats, the ride has a capacity of approximately 900 riders per hour. The attraction is themed by Jora Vision, with the
backstory that a strange power source has been captured inside a warehouse. Walking through the queue, guests won’t fail to spot a large metal container with a heart like
This beating “heart” features as part of the ride’s theminng by JotraVision
The turntable loading dispatch area
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