Roller Coaster Mania

They climb! They loop! They corkscrew and plunge underwater. They even erupt! They are Virginia's roller coasters at Kings Dominion and Busch Gardens!

The Dominator is the newest thriller
at Kings Dominion near Richmond.

Kings Dominion
Doswell, Virginia

If you missed its debut last year, you should definitely make plans to ride Dominator this year! Steep climbs and just as steep falls lead into a gut-wrenching, record-breaking vertical loop. You'll love the Dominator’s two minute and six second adrenaline-pumping ride!

Backlot Stunt Coaster puts you behind the wheel of a tricked-out MINI Cooper. Twist through a parking garage, dodge near-collisions, race down stairs, chase through tunnels and barely escape massive explosions.

A launch coaster, Volcano, The Blast Coaster, shoots passengers straight up and out of an erupting volcano and plummets them 80 feet at more than 70 mph! Invert four times and circle back around the mountain before dropping another 80 feet like red-hot lava!

Volcano, The Blast Coaster is an explosive adventure!

The Flight of Fear blasts riders to a speed of 53 mph within four seconds and in complete darkness! This enclosed ride is based on the '60s sci-fi TV series, The Outer Limits. Speeding through 30 vertical turns amid an alien invasion makes this flight quite frightening.

Get wrapped up in the coils of Anaconda as you drop 144 feet to speed through an underwater tunnel.

The Shockwave stand-up coaster takes riders through a 360-degree horizontal loop.

Older fanatics remember when all roller coasters were wooden. KD has four wood-framed coasters . . . more than any other theme park in the USA.
» The Grizzly, with its double figure-eight, was modeled after Coney Island's Wildcat (1911-1964).
» The newest woody is the Hurler in Wayne's World. Take note of its name.
» Don't miss the everpopular Rebel Yell, where one coaster moves forward as a second coaster moves backward.
» Richochet makes some tight hairpen turns and drops 50 feet.

Kids Love a Thrill, Too!

Kings Dominion offers great roller coasters for little thrill seekers, too. They love the exciting Taxi roller coaster as it's their first introduction to the excitement of being just a "little bit" scared. As they get older, Scooby Doo introduces them to some rickety up-and-down motion that even their parents can enjoy.

Busch Gardens
Williamsburg, Virginia

It's The Big Bad Wolf's 25th Anniversary!

It’s a great year to visit Busch Gardens! The park and coaster fans will honor the 25th anniversary of The Big Bad Wolf. Among the world’s first suspended roller coasters, The Big Bad Wolf sends guests “howling” at the speed of fright. Hanging from 2,800 feet of track, the coaster races through dense forest and skims over the Rhine River.

Busch Gardens also will commemorate the 10th anniversary of Apollo’s Chariot, the park’s thrilling hypercoaster. Hold on to your seats, as you plummet a combined 825 feet, more than any other steel roller coaster in the world. Seats on are elevated, giving riders a thrilling free-flight sensation.

Apollo's Chariot celebrates
its 10th Anniversary in 2009.

Defining a whole new generation of roller coasters is Griffon, the world’s tallest and first floorless dive coaster. The park’s steel marvel plunges thrill-seekers a record-breaking 205 feet at 75 miles per hour. Named for a mythical beast that is part eagle and part lion, Griffon is an adrenaline-pumping adventure that’s unlike any coaster experience in the world.

Continually rated a favorite by park guests, the Loch Ness Monster gives a peek at Scotland’s most infamous serpent. For more than 30 years, “Nessie” has hurled passengers along 3,240 feet of steel track into the air, over water and through a dark cave. It is the world’s first, and currently only, interlocking, double-looping, steel roller coaster. Since its debut, the Loch Ness Monster coaster trains have traveled a distance equivalent to 150 trips around the world.

Alpengeist takes skiers for the snowblast of their lives when an innocent ski lift goes berserk, flipping and spinning on a breathtaking avalanche of adventure! Pulling 3.7 G’s during the cobra roll, moving so fast at speeds up to 67 mph, your dangling feet get as cold as they would in the Alps! It's the world's tallest, fastest, most twisted inverted steel roller coaster!