Ride Profile
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must include significant animal education or conservation- related elements. This mandate is in place with the aim of preventing the park from turning into a thrill park, which SeaWorld executives have long claimed will never happen. In 2004, SeaWorld was able to work within the mandate to open ‘Journey to Atlantis,’ a water-coaster ride from Mack Rides, which had a 60 foot drop but contained the necessary educational elements. Eight years later, SeaWorld opened Manta, with a maximum height of at 30 feet - it used two magnetic launches within its route to allow the train to complete the 2,835 foot circuit - and a bat ray touch pool for the educational requirement. With the opening of Electric Eel, SeaWorld used part of its 25 percent height allotment to soar to 150 feet. Despite Sea World’s assertion that it will remain a sea life
Raising the stakes With Electric Eel from Premier Rides, SeaWorld San Diego has definitely upped the coaster race not only among the sea life and wild animal parks, but within San Diego itself. “Electric Eel will bring a whole new level of excitement to SeaWorld,” said SeaWorld San Diego's Park President Marilyn Hannes. “This new, first-of-its-kind coaster at SeaWorld will give riders the rare opportunity to feel what it's like to move like an eel as they twist and flip along nearly 900 feet of undulating track.” A Sky Rocket II by Premier Rides, Electric Eel is the tallest
and fastest roller coaster in San Diego. Themed as a wriggling eel, it is a triple-launch coaster with high-energy twists, loops and inversions, the coaster propels riders forward and backward as they speed through the ride’s station house, accelerating to more than 60 miles per hour in just seconds. The coaster then rockets skyward nearly 150 feet, followed by an inverted heartline roll and a twisting loop which create a breathless feeling of airtime at the peak of the coaster, before the cars return to the station. Complementing the Electric Eel roller coaster and forming
an educational aspect to the attraction is a hypnotic live eel habitat featuring a collection of moray eels. The eel habitat, located at the edge of the existing Ocean Explorer realm, features large viewing windows “where visitors can plunge into the world of the eel as they swim and dart through the caves and crevasses of their naturalistic deep-ocean environment,” the press release states.
Riding around restrictions With Electric Eel's opening, it is clear that the park is appealing to younger crowds who may not always want to spend the money on the 100-plus mile drive north to Los Angeles for its plethora of thrills at Knott's Berry Farm, Universal Studios, Six Flags Magic Mountain, and even the relatively mellower Disneyland. Further, local competition must have been felt from the 1990 reopening of the 1925 Belmont Amusement Park on Mission Beach, less than a mile away from SeaWorld. Unlike Belmont Park, SeaWorld has plenty of space to
expand, but still faces restrictions imposed by the city of San Diego: no more than 25 per cent of SeaWorld can exceed 30 feet, and at least 75 per cent of SeaWorld's attractions
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park, one can't help but be reminded of Marine World on the San Francisco Bay, which opened in 1968. Falling short of its attendance goals, Marine World moved in 1986 to nearby Vallejo, added thrill rides, and has now become Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. Sure, the animals are still there, with their wonderful shows and encounters, but do the crowds really care? With all due respect to the animal kingdom, probably not. The animal area is clearly more of a sideline to the thrills than a draw, sitting quietly in its own beautifully themed area (away from the screams, thankfully, for the animals' sake). Although Sea World San Diego's executives have repeatedly claimed at community meetings that roller coasters are not in the park's long-term plans, like it or not, the coaster is king of the amusement park world. SeaWorld, at this point, is unobtrusive and blends in with its
surroundings, but like everything and everyone else in the amusement industry, it has to grow. Its position within the San Diego restrictions means that in order to generate the thrills demanded by today’s park visitors, Electric Eel has had to get creative with multiple launches, theming and track layout…with excellent results. Gary Kyriazi is the author of The Great American
Amusement Parks, and the writer/producer of America Screams, the first pictorial history and television special about American amusement parks. He has been a researcher and historian on American amusement parks for 40 years.
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Riders
can feel what it is like to twist and flip like an eel along nearly 900 feet of undulating track.
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