A Super Saturating Experience-Ride Review

The winner of the most innovative coaster of 2000 has to be Set Point's Flying Super Saturator at Paramount's Carowinds in Charlotte North Carolina. Set Point are the people who brought us Pteradon Flyers at Island of Adventure in Orlando Florida. You have to see this thing to believe it. The coaster is a, one of a kind, Swing Thing saturating water ride heavily themed to the Rug Rats on Nickelodeon. Water and lots of it, is the major star of this attraction. The coaster is a medium sized suspended swinging attraction built over a big shallow pool of water. The queue line snakes across the pool leading up to the loading station. Around the parameter of the pool are 24 or so stationary super saturation guns. These guns are for persons who care not to experience the full effect of the saturating experience by riding the coaster. Spectators can take pot shots at riders as they fly by with guns that are capable of shooting jets of water up to 50 feet in the air. All is not well for the land lovers manning the guns because riders flying above have a weapon of revenge of their own. Each rider is equipped with a 5-gallon water bomb that they can be dropped with the pull of a lever. The soaking experience begins as future riders enter the queue line. Riders must walk or run through a water fall, a shower sheet, dodge a geyser and try to avoid jets of water compliments of land lovers, just to get to the station. At this point you may not be too wet but you still have to beware of the armed riders flying above, considering that the queue line seems to be their target of choice. The coaster consists of 4-seater cars where riders sit two abreast with 2 additional riders behind them facing outward. In this type of configuration two riders are traveling forward while the other two are traveling backwards. The coaster has 4 of these cars but on this particular Saturday they were only running two. The loading area also serves as the refueling station. As passengers are boarded water from above is pumped into the 4 empty bomb containers on the cars. The loading and refueling process takes about 1 minute. Rides are ready to do battle as the car is pulled to the top of the 50-ft. lift hill. The car is quite fast as it soars through the first few water features. The coaster's fast speed may have something to do with the extra water weight the cars are carrying. All is well until the mid-course brakes slows the car down considerably. At this point riders are totally wet, but there is one more surprise in store before the 1000-ft course is completed. As the car slowly leaves the break run, a huge geyser erupts from the pool below and totally engulfs all riders. If riders had any hopes of surviving with a dry spot, this geyser quickly dashes them. The ride is very fun and is a must experience attraction. I had most of my fun manning a gun taking shots at sitting duck riders. I spent an hour doing this and became quite good at it. A local Charlotte TV station even featured me blasting unsuspecting riders. Once again Paramount has produced a unique attraction which is worthy of replication in all parks. Cheers to Set Point Inc. for making it possible.

Robert Caple RmCaple@uncg.edu

For immediate release