Cupcakes and Coasters meets Vekoma
Time for another installment of Cupcakes and Coasters meets! This time I caught up with the awesome Vekoma about the old, the new and everything else inbetween!
Thank you so much for
taking the time to answer my questions. I’ve always loved Vekoma, and am very
excited to see you guys making a name for yourselves again with some of the
incredible new designs we’ve been seeing. This seems like a bit of a change in
direction from what we usually see from Vekoma, is this the case and if so why?
We can
imagine that you see this as a change in direction, especially with the newly disclosed
designs and recent openings like the Space Warp Launch Coaster (Formula 1), the
Bermuda Blitz (Lech Coaster) and the upcoming Firestorm Launch Coasters in
Vietnam and China. Of course we are
extremely proud of these accomplishments.
Over the last years we have invested in the development of both new
design and production methods with a terrific result. Vekoma has a team of very creative and
knowledgeable concept design engineers in-house who continuously work on new
designs.
While Vekoma
continues to design many more custom designed coasters we cannot always
disclose or market those, but we can certainly state that these new designs are
conquering the market!
There’s lot of buzz
currently around the incredible looking Lech Coaster that seemed to just appear
out of nowhere! Can you tell us how this ride came into existence?
The
coaster was a new Vekoma design named Bermuda Blitz, designed in 2016. Quite a number of customers were immediately
impressed and excited by this magnificent layout and ride experience and it did
therefore not long for Vekoma to actually sell this.
With technology
changing rapidly, there is a danger that coasters may become old hat in the
theme park industry in the future. How does Vekoma aim to keep parks investing
in their products?
Although I
think that coasters never become “old” you certainly need to make sure that
there will be excitement and new elements or sequences of elements in your
design. We think about this in every new
design.
People
will continue to go to theme parks and families enjoy time together at a park
for a fun-filled day. Parks also look
for more and more diversity in their park, a mix of coasters, interactive
rides, dark rides and media-based attractions.
When the Family
Boomerang debuted in 2011, Vekoma brought repacked the high octane thrills of
the traditional Vekoma Boomerang down to a size enjoyable for the whole family!
Can we expect to see any other traditional Vekoma designs repurposed for the
family market?
The
Boomerang conversion to the Family Boomerang (Rebound) was something that was rather
recent but in the past we used for example the Boomerang also as a basis to
change this into an inverted thrill coaster, the Giant Inverted Boomerang.
In
designing new coasters, you need to always keep in mind the public visiting the
parks. We have a really wide variety of
family and thrill coasters, suspended or sit down, non-coaster attractions such
as the Sky Shuttle, the Madhouse and media based attractions, the latter we
offer together with our partner Brogent Technologies. The I-ride for example is a panoramic flying
attraction which is really becoming a best-seller with very successful
installations in Taiwan, China, Canada, Japan, USA with new projects coming up in
the Netherlands, Germany and Spain, all opening in 2017.
What would you say is
the key essence of a Vekoma coaster?
Quality,
safety and new innovative smooth designs!
Custom Designs are our strength because we have all disciplines in house
from Concept Engineering, to Engineering, Production, Supervision &
Service. Immediate and fast communication
between these divisions are absolutely an advantage.
Videos were recently
circling the internet of a Vekoma hyper coaster cited for Energylandia in
Poland. Although this coaster will now not be built at this park, are there any
plans for it to go to another park any time soon or is this just another design
for the portfolio?
This is one of the many new designs that we present to our customers and
time will tell when the first will be seen in the parks.
What is your
best-selling product?
Our family
coasters are definitely very successful, varying from the Family Coaster,
Family Boomerang, Suspended Family Coaster to our Mine Train have been and
still are best selling products. The new
Thrill Coasters recently launched are however so successful and well received that
these are already sold to various parks world-wide and many prospective buyers
have already announced to follow.
In the early
noughties, Vekoma created three wooden coasters in Europe. Can we ever expect
to see any new wooden coasters from Vekoma and if not, is there a reason why?
Vekoma does not intent to design new wood coasters as we have a
partnership with RMC (Rocky Mountain Construction) offering new Topper- and
IBOX tracks combining a wood structure with a steel track. This combination considerably improved the
experience, smoothness and intensity of the ride, enabling for new features in
your wood coaster and smoothing out the ride.
One of those projects in partnership between Vekoma and RMC was the
magnificent Wildfire at Kolmarden, Sweden.
What changes and trends have you seen in the rollercoaster industry over the years?
It is amazing to see what is going on in the amusement industry. New parks are developing world-wide and
existing parks keep expanding. Not only
with coasters but also with media based attractions. We are extremely proud of having a partner
Brogent, with whom we are very successful with the Panoramic Flying Attraction,
I-Ride. This year 3 new i-Rides will be
opened in Germany, Spain and the Netherlands.
What can we expect to
see from future Vekoma projects?
We
hope to surprise our fans with new designs to come!
I'd like to thank Vekoma for taking the time to chat to me for this interview and I can't wait to see what they come out with next!
Talk later xoxo,
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