7 New Coasters For 2019 You Probably Haven't Heard Of (But Should Have!)

A new year means a whole host of exciting new coasters under construction ready for us to greedily gobble up by the time the new season starts. The closed seasons always sees message boards and Facebook groups and Twitter feeds absolutely buzzing with the excitement of both watching the construction of the biggest and best the year has to offer folding out in front of our eyes and also keeping a close ear to the ground attuned to that continual hum of the rumour mill to see if anything unexpected might spring out of nowhere.

There's always your big hitters - the ones EVERYBODY can't stop talking about and the one everyone and their cousin have heard of and have booked a trip ready for opening day. 2018 all eyes were on the likes of Icon and Wicker Man here in the UK, or big boys like Steel Vengeance over in the states. Honestly, 2019 is a little slim pickings when it comes to big newness in the world's most popular parks. You've obviously got the Intamin Potter coaster heading to Islands of Adventure, the Mack launch Copperhead Strike going to Carowinds and the standard sprinkling of RMCs popping up globally, but that's kind of it.

So I decided to dig a little deeper. Because I'm sad, I spend a lot of time on RCDB and message boards having a dig through what some of the world's less known parks are investing in, and believe me when I tell you there's a whole world of awesome shit coming to these parks in 2019. Are they the biggest and best investments we've ever seen? Hell no - but they're definitely worth mentioning and should be on more coaster enthusiasts' lips than they currently are. Here's nine coasters due to open in 2019 that you probably haven't heard of but really should have!

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Debuting as part of an entirely new entertainment complex in Doha, Adventure Island is set to debut at Doha Oasis in 2019 - I'm willing to bet one big reasons for this development is to cash in on the expected influx of tourists during the 2022 world cup. Taking a leaf out of the UAE's book, being all hot and in the desert and that, Adventure Island is located inside the Doha Oasis Mall and is a largely indoor attraction to maximise those air con benefits. The coaster itself, dubbed Dragonfire, is a Premier Rides jobby and is said to be one of the largest and most sophisticated attractions ever built by the US based company - which is some claim considering they're the dudes behind the awesome Revenge of the Mummy coasters!

Alongside highly themed, state of the art dark rides sections, the coaster is also slated to include a ton of special coaster elements that Premier are known for - including magnetic launches, high-speed switches, multi-directional movement of vehicles and, perhaps most exciting of all, a backwards launch up an 'extremely high vertical spike' that will take riders out and above the mall to allow them to really take in just how high above the ground they are!

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Take this one with a pinch of salt as it's technically been under construction since bloody 2010, but fingers crossed 2019 will finally be the year for Catapulta! For those who don't know, this coaster is set to open at the truly unique Osteria Ai Pioppi, a restaurant in northern Italy whose owner also likes to build creds in the back garden as a little side hobby. From what I understand, if you buy food and drink from the restaurant you're allowed to enjoy the rides free of charge but don't hold me to that one.

The coaster, as I'm sure you clever little lot worked out from the name, is a launchy affair that operates on the quite crude system of a bunch of weighted bags on a little elevated platform. Raise the bags up first to lock in that sweet, sweet kinetic energy, have riders take their seats then boom, drop the weighted bags which would be somehow attached to the ride vehicle which consequently would send the riders hurtling down the track. Honestly, it sounds utterly terrifying and looking at photos of the thing only serves to cement those suspicions, but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't give this one a go, purely for the weird points!

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Way, way, waaaaay back in the long forgotten era that was 2012 it was announced that Dreamworks Animation & Triple Five (the guys behind the Nickelodeon Universe park at Mall of America in Minnesota) would be opening a new indoor theme park in a giant shopping mall in New Jersey formerly known as Xanadu. The original concept for the park seemed to focus around Dreamworks characters like Shrek, Kung Fu Panda and How To Train Your Dragon and was set to open in 2014. As is wont to happen with projects like this, sometimes deals don't go through as expected and as the project developed Dreamworks were dropped and Triple Five opted to work with their ol' pals Nickelodeon instead and the project pushed forward full steam ahead!

Fast-forward to EAS 2017 where Gerstlauer showcased a model of a couple of intertwined coaster designs of theirs proposed for the park, consisting of a custom Gerstlauer spinning coaster weaving in and out of the larger and entirely more exciting Euro-Fighter, whose layout is essentially a Takabisha clone but with, get this, a steeper drop (by .5 of a degree, the bastards!) The whole thing looks seriously impressive, a hulking, locked together mess of brightly coloured track including the iconic Euro-Fighter vertical lift hill that will take riders outside of the park building. Names of the coasters nor IPs to be attached to them have been revealed just yet, but considering it's due to open this year I don't expect we'll be waiting much longer to find out.

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I'm not going to pretend I wasn't a little heartbroken that the addition of this coaster meant the demise of fabulous Vonkaputous, but for an Intamin Blitz coaster I'm willing to let bygones be bygones. Coming to the Helsinki based city park Linnanmaki, Taiga appears to be the latest development with Intamin to their iconic Blitz coaster. 'Taiga' is Finnish for 'forest' and going be the 80s electro music video looking teasers the park seeded out early 2018, we can expect the coaster to be themed around some kind of magical bird of prey swooping around the forest.

And swoop we shall - the layout features a ton of beautiful swooping transitions peppered with those infamous snappy Intamin elements inbetween including no less than four inversions - the most Intamin have ever built on a Blitz coaster. These will be a dive loop, an immelmann, an in-line twist and something called a 'zero-g winder' which will apparently interestingly also feature on the new for 2019 B&M dive machine Yukon Striker coming to Canada's Wonderland. For such a huge coaster coming to a country so accessible to the UK and Europe, I'm really confused as to why more people aren't gagging over this one and clawing for updates, but there we are hopefully this article does its bit to push people in the right direction!

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I always think of Walibi Rhone-Alpes as the weird hermit-like cousin of the Walibi brand who lives in exile in the mountains. There's always an air of strangeness and intrigue about their developments and being slightly out in the sticks it's not a park you hear of many people visiting. I hadn't even heard about their new for 2019 news until I was randomly browsing RCDB the other days and my jaw dropped at the stunning concept art for their new Gerstlauer Infinity Coaster Mystic! Seems that whilst everybody was oohing and aahing over Walibi Belgium's mega plans for the next few years and an RMC coming to Walibi Holland later this year that Mystic just kind of snuck by.

But seriously, look how pretty! Sometimes I find myself magnetically drawn to a coaster solely for the theme along and Mystic is definitely one of those. The Voodoo/witch doctor/bayou theme is seriously underused in theme parks which is surprising given the rich lore than surrounds it with all the magic and whimsy and colour! From the looks of the concept art, the coaster will have fabulous lap-bars for added fabness, will reach speeds of over 50mph and include elements such as a Zero-G Roll, an LSM launch and switch track (which I'm hoping could potentially mean a backwards section?)

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Ever since I first caught a glimpse of a piece of track of this thing, I've been hooked on keeping an eye on it's development. It's probably the weirdest, most innovative and most ambitious coaster concepts set to open this year. Let me explain. Another incredible feat of engineering from fabulous Intamin, Dual Dragons will be the headline attraction at the new park Guangzhou Wanda Theme Park as part of a three coaster line-up. It's worth noting that 2019 is just an estimated opening date suspected by park fans given the state of construction.

The coaster is actually two coasters that interlock at various sections throughout the layout. And get this - one side is sit down and one side is inverted, meaning there will be a train above/below you as you traverse the layout, including a vertical loop and spike track. Even without the trains on the track the thing looks absolutely mad and I absolutely cannot wait for this thing to start testing because I bet it's going to look absolutely marvellous. The track has actually been complete since August 2018, so fingers crossed for some testing very soon and I truly hope everything goes smoothly for this one!

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I'll be honest - I'd completely forgotten that a new Plopsa park had opened in Poland 2018 so I was super shocked to learn that a new wooden coaster was being built here because, well, I didn't even register that the park existed! It's actually kind of spiteful because until this park opened I had the full collection of Plopsa parks so booooo to that aspect. But yes, always up for new Plopsa parks opening, they're really fab. The other two indoor Plopsa parks are explicitly not aimed at older families so it's pretty cool that the Poland park is adding something that will outwardly appeal to an older demographic. I'm intrigued to see if that's the direction Plopsa want to go with this indoor park and how this one will develop if it is indeed the case and I'm not just talking a load of bullshit.

But yes, the coaster! The concept art shows some super freaky haunted house vibe from what I can gather - it being a Plopsa park we can assume this will be themed to a Studio 100 IP. I have what I would call a very top line understanding of Studio 100 brands and after an extremely half-assed Google search I can't see any show that would match a theme like this but then like I said, I'm no expert so it might be something glaringly obvious that I'm completely overlooking. The coaster will be a small family woodie built by GCI to be similar to the Heidi The Ride coaster at Plopsaland De Panne, which is essentially a way of guaranteeing a small, awesome little coaster complete with an awesomely themed station to set it all off.

Of course, there's also the usual influx of 'Chinese knock-off' crap popping up all over China, a butt load of SBF Visas which as we all know are this decade's Big Apple as well as a whole host of other 'unknown' project whose details are yet to be revealed. All we can do is keep a close eye on the message boards, social media and RCDB to see what other weird and unusual theme park goodness 2019 brings.