Skip to main content
The largest online newspaper archive

The San Bernardino County Sun from San Bernardino, California • Page 51

Location:
San Bernardino, California
Issue Date:
Page:
51
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

Music: Billy Joel's fire is burningE13 TV: What's bubbling on the daytime Movies: Cowabunga! Turtles lingo catches onE15 E11 SUNDAY April 8, 1990 The Sun tow The coaster aLA'ffiti Magic Mountain wide-open spaces allowed the park to build Viper, the largest looping roller coaster in the world. The ride opened to the public Saturday. New killer coasters will make you loopy builders are on a roll By FRED SHUSTER Los Angeles Daily News Saturday, when Viper, the world's tallest and fastest steel looping coaster opened at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, enthusiasts were already asking what the future could possibly hold for this grandfather of amusement park attractions. Roller coasters are more popular today then they have been in more than 60 years. According to recent statistics, attendance at the nation's theme parks rose just 1.6 percent in 1989.

But the seven parks that added new coasters had an average attendance boost of 8.5 percent. With these new roller coasters, competition is rife. By the time Viper started its first 70-mph run Saturday, Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park was on its second day of operating its new $5 million corkscrew coaster, Boomerang. It is the theme park's first new coaster in 12 years and promises to "take you upside down six times in less than one minute both forward and backward," according to spokesman Stewart Zanville. The $8 million Viper features a 180-foot drop, the world's tallest loop at 140 feet, 3,830 feet of coiled steel track and, at one point, it keeps passengers hovering 188 feet off the ground.

Anaheim resident Bill Kern, a member of the American Coaster Enthusiasts, or ACE, rode Viper last week and described the experience as "one of the most thrilling rides I've ever encountered. It was fast. There's no place to catch your breath. It just doesn't quit." Paul Ruben, editor of Rol-lerCoaster! magazine, a glossy quarterly published in Pen-field, N.Y., by ACE, said technology is now in place to develop coasters 100 feet higher than Viper. "The only restraint the coaster builders are working under is financial," Ruben said.

Ruben believes the future holds towering coasters that drop passengers greater distances. "After all, higher is faster," he said, adding, "I would love to have the roller coaster manufacturers fly me to the moon and then drop me back to Earth. "Coasters can go as high as the parks can afford to build them. We can look for some diabolical new thrill elements, perhaps related to what you can do in a fighter plane. If they can do it in a fighter plane, I want to be able to do it on a roller coaster." Kern added, "We know they can go longer and higher.

But you won't see many because cost is so prohibitive. There are very few parks out there that can afford them." Viper and Boomerang are only the latest examples of the extraordinary lengths park operators are going to in order to satisfy the public's four-century-old thirst for coaster thrills. Coasters were invented in SeeCOASTERSE12 By JONATHAN TAYLOR Los Angeles Dai ly News ightnow, a roller-coaster designer somewhere is planning a new ride that LTlj will be longer, higher, with more loops and tighter turns than the Viper at Magic Mountain in Valencia. Such is the immutable law of amusement park thrill rides: Once one standard is set, it is only a matter of time before it will be surpassed. After all, once upon a time, the Matterhorn at Disneyland which today seems almost quaint was the standard for concept thrill rides.

Still, for this summer anyway, the Viper which opened Saturday will offer the most thrills, elicit the loudest screams, create the greatest amount of the wonderful fear that roller-coaster fans love the most the fear that there is no way we can get through this ride alive. The folks at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park likely will differ, since they unveiled their own new roller coaster, Boomerang, on Friday night. It got its name from its unusual configuration. Riders first traverse the drops, sharp turns and loops going forward, like a normal roller coaster, then rise up a tower and return over the same course, this time in reverse. It sounds impressive, is full of the expected scary effects and adds the new, backward twist.

But for sheer mass, size and thrills, nothing comes close to Viper. Perhaps only a couple of rides in Ohio and Texas compare with Viper for height or length, and none matches this Magic Mountain attraction's determination to go beyond reason to inflict that thrilling sense of fear. The thrills begin with the climb up to the first drop. This is the traditional suspense-builder in roller coasters, the slow chug-chugging of the car up to the top of the first tower. It gives you plenty of time to think about everything from all the time you spent in line (and, rest assured, lines will be endless for this ride) to the safety of those tall towers on the ride that seem to be supported by pencil-thin posts.

In all, it takes 45 agonizingly slow seconds to climb to the pinnacle, at 188 feet. After a moment's hesitation, the ride plunges almost straight down, curving as it falls so that, by the time you reach the bottom, you have made a 180-degree turn and are now facing the direction from which you started, speeding along at close to 70 mph. At this point, you might take the time to think about what an SeeTERRORE12 iiiiiiiMiiii fin wirtnTiinr tf-fflTr i 'm n'-. Jr MA -ittirf Viper, a huge looping roller coaster, It's seven stories taller than Colossus, the park's wooden coaster. Bigger, longer, faster opened Saturday at Magic Mountain.

racing coaster: the American Eagle, Six Flags Great America, 111. Other large new coasters recently opened or scheduled to open soon: The Georgia Cyclone, Six Flags Over Georgia, Atlanta: A mirror image of Coney Island's famous Cyclone, the classic wooden roller coaster that all others are compared to. Two stand-up coasters without seats set to open soon: Shock Wave, Great Adventure, Jackson, N.J. (it previously had been at Magic Mountain but was dismantled and moved to Great Adventure) and Iron Wolf, Great America, Gur-nee, 111. Disaster Transport, Cedar Point, Sandusky, Ohio: A coaster-based space adventure set to open soon.

The Dipper, Mission Beach, San Diego: A 1927-built giant wood coaster, the ride will reopen this summer after it was saved from the junk pile by coaster fans. "Twin Peaks" may freak out middle America, and will be remembered only as a "critics' favorite." Hopefully, that won't be the case, for "Twin Peaks" challenges viewers in subtle, small, entertaining ways, but basically tells a mystery-cum-soap opera story that any fan of TV drama should be able to enjoy. Imagine a "Knots Landing" by Salvador Dali, and you come close to the strange charms of "Twin Peaks." More accurately, imagine a "Blue Velvet" without that controversial film's sado-maschism and sex. Lynch, who also directed the darkly engrossing "Elephant Man" and the mega-flop "TJune," has a unique talent for Los Angeles Daily News While Magic Mountain claims its newest ride, Viper, to be the world's fastest and tallest looping roller coaster, other rides throughout the country have their own distinctions. Not all have Viper's speed and height perhaps, but many claim another, more elusive element high thrill quotient.

The world's tallest free-standing wood coaster: the Texas Giant, just opened at Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington, Texas. The longest drop of any wooden coaster: Hercules in Allentown, Pa. The world's tallest roller coaster of any designation: Magnum XL-200, Cedar Point, Sandusky, Ohio. The longest wood coaster: Tte Beast, King's Island amusement park, Cincinnati. The tallest twin-track TV PREVIEW WHAT: 'Twin Peaks' WHEN: 9 tonight CHANNEL: ABC And at a slow time for new motion picture releases, it's safe to say the best movie of the season isn't at the multiplex it's on your TV screen tonight.

"ABC" must stand for "artistic, brash and courageous," for nothing has been seen before on network television with the originality, quirkiness, black humor and inventiveness of "Twin Peaks." There is even a fear that upside down six times. ABC scales daring heights with David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks' Boomerang, at Knott's, turns riders focusing his lens on comfortable aspects of everyday life and giving us reasons for not being quite so comfortable. "Twin Peaks" examines life in a fictional town of that name, located just a few miles south of the Canadian border in the American Northwest. Town life centers around a rustic lakeside lodge and a large lumber mill, and the town sheriff, Harry S. Truman usually has little to do beyond keeping the town's rambunctious teenagers in order.

Just beneath the surface where Lynch loves to dig things are not quite as pastoral in Twin Peaks. First, there's an on-going yrestling for power be By JACK GARNER Gannett News Service Who would have thought it? One of the first major film directors of today to be given control of a network TV series is that wunderkind of weird, David Lynch. Yes, the creator of "Blue Velvet" and "Eraserhead," two of the strangest, most nightmarish, and incredibly original visions in modern film, is now the director of a television series. It's called "Twin Peaks" and begins its run with a two-hour made-for-TV movie tonight at 9 on ABC. "Twin Peaks" then continues its run at 9 p.m.

Thursdays, beginning this week. tween the widow (Joan Chen) of the sawmill owner, and her bitchy sister-in-law (Piper Laurie). The townfolks also are wary of elaborate plans by developer Benjamin Home (Richard Beymer). An affair may be in the works between Norma Jennings (Peggy Lipton) of the Double Diner and Ed Hurley (Everett McGill) of Big Ed's Gas Farm (the corner service station.) Ed's wife is a shrew who sports a black eye patch, and complains constantly about wanting to "hang the drapes." But this is all atmosphere the real story starts when the body of a local high school prom queen washes up on the shores of the town lake, an Sheriff Truman (Michael Ontkean) finds he has a brutal murder case on his hands. A second incident of teen torture spills over state lines, and the FBI is brought in.

Kyle MacLachlan stars as the visiting FBI agent, Dale Cooper, who takes charge; and the character takes charge of the show as well. MacLachlan has once before played Lynch's alter-ego (in "Blue Here he's an incredible combination of gee-whiz social naviete and nuts-and-bolts investigation brilliance (like Andy Hardy as Sherlock Holmes). MacLachlan also generates much of the show's ample off-the-wall humor, as he constantly throws out non sequitur lines SeeTVE12.

Get access to Newspapers.com

  • The largest online newspaper archive
  • 300+ newspapers from the 1700's - 2000's
  • Millions of additional pages added every month

About The San Bernardino County Sun Archive

Pages Available:
1,350,050
Years Available:
1894-1998