Earlier today, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and the people who run Coney Island’s amusement park broke ground on the Thunderbolt, a brand new steel roller coaster being constructed to replace the wood one of the same name that operated for nearly six decades. It was decommissioned in 1982 and illegally torn down by then Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 2000, who saw it as a symbol of urban decay.
According to the press release, this lengthy, “vertical lift steel roller coaster” will reach speeds of 55 miles per hour while taking riders through a “jaw-dropping 90-degree vertical drop, followed by a 100 foot vertical loop, a 80 foot zero-g roll, a 112 degree over-banked turn, a unique heartline dive, a corkscrew, and several airtime hills.” Fun!
At the event, there was a scale model of the roller coaster that makes it even more terrifying-looking than its official renderings. Miraculously, the $10 million Thunderbolt is expected open by this Memorial Day, a feat in and of itself, considering that nearby residents in public housing are still waiting for NYCHA to replace the temporary boilers that were installed after Super Storm Sandy rocked the area in 2012.
(Photos: Aymann Ismail/ANIMALNewYork)
