THE Gold Coast’s newest roller coaster will open in time for the winter school holidays in 2021.
Sea World’s $20 million Leviathan will be the first new wooden rollercoaster built in Australia since the 1980s and has already made its presence felt in the city’s skyline.
The first major peak of the attraction can already been seen soaring above the theme park, with construction only just passing the 25 per cent mark.
Village Roadshow theme parks chief operating officer Bikash Randhawa said the new ride would be a “game changer” for the city.
“We did our research and spoke to a lot of people and what we found was that every park which had a wooden roller coaster saw their attendance go up and this it is great point of difference for us because nobody has done a ride like this in decades,” he said.
“It is an impressive structure and we believe it will feature in almost every future marketing campaign for the city, because it will be the first wooden coaster in the world to also have backwards-facing seats.
“A lot of engineering has gone into this and let me say, you don’t buy a $20 million ride just because you like it, it has to hit the mark (for bringing in new patrons)”.
The Leviathan is the centrepiece of Sea World’s $50 million, 1.5ha New Atlantis precinct which is expected to be completed in mid-late 2021.
It will stand at 32m tall and its carriages will hit speeds of up to 80 km/h along its 1km track.
Village Roadshow had initially planned to open it for Christmas 2020 but construction was delayed because of the COVID-19 shutdown of theme parks.
https://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/news/gold-coast/future-gold-coast/gold-coast-theme-parks-first-look-at-sea-worlds-new-wooden-roller-coaster/news-story/886299411d58db1e2fdc5d508c669b05