Last November, Worlds of Fun Dot Org had the privilege to interview Great Coasters International President Clair Hain and Skyline Attractions Design Engineer Tyler Mullins about the new Zambezi Zinger. Skyline Attractions provided the engineering and design work for Zambezi Zinger while Great Coasters International will construct the new ride.
Hain started in the roller coaster business in the 1980’s when the Playland Park Rocket was moved to Knoebels’ Grove where it was reborn as the Phoenix. He would work under Charlie Dinn, and then Charlie’s Daughter, Denise when she formed Custom Coasters International. Yes, that’s the same Charlie Dinn that built Timber Wolf; Hain was involved with Timber Wolf, Prowler, and Zambezi Zinger, touching every wooden or hybrid wooden coaster ever built at Worlds of Fun. In 1994, Hain established Great Coasters International (GCI) along with Mike Boodley, and together would create a portfolio of world-class wooden coasters, including Worlds of Fun’s own Prowler in 2009.
In 2014, three GCI employees left to form Skyline Attractions. The new company, named in honor of Cincinnati chili, continues to partner with GCI. on numerous projects, including the new Zambezi Zinger. Skyline Design Engineer Tyler Mullins is responsible for creating the Zinger’s layout. Mullins is a Cincinnati-native, having worked at Kings Island before earning an engineering degree and interning at GCI. Another internship with Skyline led to his current full-time role.
in August 2021, Cedar Fair approached GCI about building a tribute Zambezi Zinger at Worlds of Fun. Hain explained that GCI prepared three concepts before they arrived at the final product. The first proposal a steel single-rail coaster that would reuse the Orient Express tunnel. Mullins explained that Cedar Fair had second thoughts about placing a homage to Zinger in the Asia section of the park and requested to move the design to the original Zinger site. According to Hain there would go on to be two more additional concepts, one being an all-steel track concept, and then the final concept with the spiral lift hill that the park chose to go with.
The spiral lift was identified as integral to the new Zambezi Zinger, Tyler states: “The spiral lift hill was an iconic element that we needed to retain, people see it and think Zambezi Zinger.” It was Anton Schwarzkopf that first introduced the spiral lift on the portable Jet Star II model and continued to include it on nearly all of his Jet Star and Speedracer coasters, including the Zambezi Zinger. The original was powered by a motor in each car, which connected to a power rail on the lift hill itself. A series of track-mounted feeder tires will propel trains up the new Zinger spiral. Feeder tires are common among amusement rides. Zinger’s will be quite different though instead of the tire coming in direct contact with the car, they will instead be mounted to grip (pinch) a fin on the bottom of each car. There will also be plenty of them, over a 120 different drive tires, Hain and Mullins both assured Worlds of Fun dot org that the tire system won’t be affected by rain. The new Zinger will also have a more traditional version of anti-rollbacks consisting of mounted with side-facing teeth. The original Zinger relied on a built-in clutch that would prevent unexpected rollbacks, but could be manually released to allow the train to roll back downhill in necessary.
The new Zinger will also be the first coaster to run GCI’s Infinity Flyer Trains. Infinity Flyers are built with class 4/class 5 restraints and can allow the train to accomplish crazy elements such as inversions, launches and more. Zinger obviously won’t have any of those elements, but three selling points made Infinity Flyer the obvious choice for Worlds of Fun’s new ride. Most importantly, Infinity Flyers come with a far tighter turning radius than the older Millennium Flyer trains. Infinity Flyers boast a an 8.95 foot minimum turn radius, compared to the older Millennium Flyers like Prowler’s that require a minimum radius of 18 feet. Why is this important? The train has to make it up a twisting lift hill, and only the Infinity Flyers can accomplish that unique feature. It also allows the overall ride to navigate far tighter, “zippy” maneuvers setting Zinger further apart from prior Great Coaster International coasters. The second impressive feature of Infinity Flyers is their rider-minimum-height requirement of 40” (though park operators may choose to set a higher height requirement). Thirdly, the new rolling stock are more accommodating to riders of difference sizes thanks to a hydraulic locking lap bar as opposed to the more typical mechanical ratcheting lap bar.
Once the new Zinger was announced the first questions that were asked is what material it would actually be composed of, wood or steel. It is advertised as a hybrid coaster meaning it is not entirely steel and not entirely all wood, but surprisingly the decision on wood or steel wasn’t based entirely on ride ability but instead on aesthetics. Tyler Mullins explains in his own words:
“There is over 600 feet of titan track, which statistically ends of being 25.6% of the ride just over a quarter of it is titan track, that consists of the full lift hill as well as the curve around the lift hill. The reason behind that is that we wanted to retain the very open aesthetic of the original Zinger’s lift hill, that if it was built out of wood it would be a very dense structure it wouldn’t really look like the iconic spiral lift hill, people wouldn’t associate it with the original.“
When Jack Steadman and Lamar Hunt built Worlds of Fun 50 years ago they chose a hilly, wooded Clay County site because of its natural beauty. Rides and attractions were designed around the trees, in some cases requiring multiple re-designs so not to disturb some of the older trees on site. Still that was then this is now. Only now it does seem like history is repeating. Mullins used a CAD drawing of the site, complete with tree locations, to design the new Zinger, specifically choosing the direction of the ride based on the trees on site, keeping the older ones even if it meant re-designing the entire coaster structure to accommodate it. They were even more squeezed by a nearby creek too. The same creek already caused a complete redesign of Prowler over a decade ago, This time the team went in with knowing not to cross the creek. According to Hain it was thanks to some endangered salamanders in the Prowler area, and now endangered Bats with Zinger area. Yes, bats. Maybe there really were bats living in the original zinger tunnel.
Unfortunately not every tree could be saved. Mullins mentioned specifically two very large trees a 36” and 40” diameter set of trees that the park specifically requested to be saved, with the larger of the two dating to the Civll-War era. Once grading began they realized the roots of the oldest tree was more extensive than originally thought, and the structure of the ride was changed again to a unique cantilevered structure design at that location to maintain the original track profile, and help keep the trees roots intact. Even that wasn’t enough to save the tree. Hain states: “we had to salvage the trees. I think one had to go. We were going around it, and it ended up getting, its roots were getting hit. So we had to take it down. The one tree we wanted to save got taken out. It’s really quite a shame”. It was. A Nearly 200 year old tree. Hopefully the tree itself was saved for its wood and will be re-used in some way. The funny part of this though is that it wasn’t the first time this nearly exact same story happened. Four decades ago Orient Express was also designed around a very specific, old tree. Then park General Manager Lee Derrough told us about the ironic twist: after Orient Express opened the tree they had once tried desperately to save… also died. History does love to repeat itself.
When one thinks of the original Zinger what are the defining features? The spiral lift hill? The bobsled-style seating? And the tunnel. Yes, we are going there now. Mullins had a little to add to what we already know and it’s exciting to hear,“There will be a tunnel. Yes. I don’t know if I can say where it is going on the ride. I know the tunnel was a later commitment which is why it is not in the POV. It's been full committed, we’ve designed it, it’s going to be very exciting though because its in an area where you are going to get close to the ground. You are going to dive into the tunnel, it’s going to be one of those cases like on the Beast at Kings Island where you don’t know if the train is small enough to make it into the tunnel, you are going to lower your hands a little bit. I wish I could say more about where it was. “
Worlds of Fun is definitely playing poker face on the tunnel location, but Mullins would continue to detail the overall ride experience. “With Zambezi Zinger you are already very close to the ground, this is the closest that any Great Coasters ride has gotten to the terrain. I don’t think people realize how exciting this element of the ride will be. We have designed new structure to accommodate putting this train as low to the ground as we can in some areas. And it is custom designed to the location with the hillside its on. You are going to be right on top of some of that terrain as you are tilting, it’s going to feel like you could stretch your hand out and brush the grass. And of course you can’t but it’s going to be so exciting.”
There are two details there that shouldn’t be missed, it will be the closest Great Coasters ride to the ground EVER built, and it will be so close to the ground you feel you could brush the grass with your fingers. Worlds of Fun dot org Editor Jeff Mast rode and operated the original Zambezi Zinger more times than he could count. He recounts how the original Zinger had a very similar “close to the ground” feature where you could literally run your hands through the puddles on the sides of the track.
Getting into the nuts and bolts of it all though, when will the new Zinger open? Hain says they are focused on meeting the deadline, weather permitting. I hate to mention that fifty years ago was one of the harshest winters on record, and it does seem that this year’s weather is looking to say “hold my beer” on that record. Hopefully not. Regardless Great Coasters is trying to hedge its bets and get ahead where they can. This winter Hain stated Great Coasters will be testing portions of the spiral lift in their offices in Pennsylvania.
“The biggest challenge right now is control systems.” Hain said. ”The control system is really difficult right now, because we aren’t the only ones, everyone in the industry is having difficulty getting electronic parts. We actually saved ourselves, we have two rides being built in China that I thought we sent everything over there for, but we haven’t built it yet, but the control system did not leave. Our control system company came in yesterday and stole the guts out of them, so that they could get the mother boards to put the control system together for this ride and one in Japan.” Don’t ever discount the importance of the system that runs the coaster, remember Mamba and the one train operation this year? Same thing. Sounds like a possible disaster was averted thanks to a little luck, a lot of experience and some good planning.
So what is happening right now you may ask? According to Hain the park just obtained permits in November, foundations are going in, and some of the ride has gone vertical!. So we should hopefully get some more visuals from the park itself soon!
Ever since the new Zambezi Zinger was announced in August many of us have dealt with a roller coaster of emotions, how is it like the old Zinger, how is it NOT like the old Zinger, is it really enough like the old Zinger to be called Zambezi Zinger? Many questions, with few straight answers. One item that is indisputable though, there is a certain amount of “magic” attributed to even just the name, to the concept of Zambezi Zinger. The moment the sign went back up on the queue house at Worlds of Fun is testament to that. Just simply mentioning it and everyone from Kansas City has their own story, or stories. Hain tells a story of going out for lunch in Kansas City recently “at this barbecue place, in the middle of this industrial area, by the train tracks” (one guess which one it was), he continued that when they walked in the greeter recognized the Great Coasters and Worlds of Fun logos and immediately said “oh you guys are building the Zambezi Zinger!” And of course they had to deny it, but that employee knew. It IS exciting, and the excitement is contagious. Hain expressed his opinion of the new Zambezi Zinger best “They are going to s**t! I think the people are going to s**t because of how insane this is going to be.”
Special Thanks to Todd Swetnam for proofreading!