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X Factor!
Dutch family park Drievliet has just opened the world’s first X-Car launch coaster. Built by Maurer Söhne using an LSM (linear synchronous motor) launch, it’s thrilling a wide variety of guests. Owen Ralph visits The Hague to experience a new kind of launch coaster.
Formule X includes just 319-metres of track, but it’s been put to good use. Not for this launch coaster a giant hump that gobbles up all the ride time and acceleration. In keeping with the park’s target demographic, the launch is family-friendly and the ride that follows is fun not fearsome. It’s also exceptionally smooth.
A rolling start out of the station gives guests little time to contemplate what lies ahead and soon they are rushing at 65km/h into a compact loop with an acceleration of 0.8G. This is followed by an Immelmann curve, a sharp Camelback, a half Cuban Eight, a heart roll and finally a 127º banked curve before returning to the station.
“It’s 47 seconds from the station to the brakes,” details Jos Faaij, one of three brothers that own and run the park. “That’s quite short, but we didn’t have more space, and we don’t have any more money!”
Formule X is Drievliet’s fourth coaster and complements the existing three well. “We asked Maurer not to do a helix section on the end because we already have that on Dynamite Express, so we have put in the sharp curve instead,” explains Jos.
Dynamite Express, a powered mine train from Mack, was added last season and joins TwisTrix, a prototype spinning coaster from Switzerland, and Kopermijn, a Maurer Söhne Wild Mouse that begun the park’s relationship with the German manufacturer in 1996.
Open for Easter – and on time – Formule X now sits at the heart of the park and replaces a spinning coaster that was on loan from Maurer for the past few seasons. Even if the park had wanted to keep that ride, they wouldn’t have got planning permission.
Since it opened in 1938 in Rijswijk, just outside The Hague, the residential population has grown steadily around the park and you must now drive through an industrial estate to get there.
A 25-metre Ferris Wheel constructed years ago by the Faaij family was allowed as a one-off. “The municipality said ‘don’t ever do it again,” we are informed by Wim Faaij. “So now we have this 15-metre limit.” It’s a familiar story for parks the world over, although 15-metres does seem particularly restrictive. “We don’t like some of the buildings here, but that doesn’t matter,” adds Wim, and sure enough a new office block that probably exceeds 50-metres or more is taking shape on the horizon and casting its shadow all around.
With a maximum height of 14.9-metres, Formule X will appease the authorities. The ride’s footprint, meanwhile, is just 50 x 50 metres, built around a base frame. “When we put in the mine train, we spent the same again on foundations.”
Shaped by budgetary constraints and planning regulations, Formule X is still a thrilling ride. The X-Car vehicles and their open seating mean riders perform the two inversions without the need for shoulder restraints.
Maurer Söhne’s managing director Horst Ruhe believes it is one of the few launch coasters practical for a park the size of Dreivliet, hosting between 400-500,000 guests a year. “We’ve been able to make the ride so compact by using just one car at a time, although we can supply launch coasters with combinations of up to four X-Car vehicles,” he tells us.
“When we developed the first X-Car coaster, we always considered the possibility of a launch. We examined a lot of different systems and decided the LSM would be best to deliver a fantastic family-friendly launch that does not push onto the backside. Using LSMs also keeps the maintenance down compared to other launch coasters because it is contact free.”
Working with Intrasys in Munich, Maurer Söhne has developed a system using tried and tested technologies. An energy store, supplied in a container together with the control system, enables an output of 400kVA in spite of the park's power supply of only 125kVA.
“We have so far delivered four X-Car coasters, five with this one, Dr Rosner, has delivered nearly 20 launch systems, and the energy store has been supplied hundreds of times to different industries; so the biggest challenge was to bring it all together and make it successful,” says Horst. “The feedback is that we have got it right, and this is a good park that has been very co-operative in helping us realise the first one.”
According to Jos Faaij, choosing Maurer Söhne was a ‘no-brainer’ for his other brother, Piet. “If he didn’t work here, he would work for Maurer I think!” Piet says he loves the fact that the new ride is so quiet, but that this in turn creates a small problem. “We have to sound a siren before we launch the car so any maintenance people on the track know it is coming.”
It is hoped Formule X will help deliver an attendance increase of up to 10% for Dreivliet, pulling guests from surrounding cities like Rotterdam, Utrecht and Amsterdam, as well as The Hague. “One of the reasons for building the new ride was to cater for an older age group, because the structure of the family now is different,” says Wim. “The youngest child may be four, and the eldest child may be 14, and for all of them we have to have the ride that they like. Last year we did the mine train and the tea cups from Mack, but before that we put in the KMG Afterburner. If we have any more April days like this, I think in future it might be wise to put in some more water attractions.”
During a bright, warm Easter operating period, queues of over an hour were forming to ride Formule X. “It’s been very, very good, we have just had so much publicity, and we’ve had some of the best days since 1938,“ concludes Wim. “ We hope to get a lot more days like that as the year goes on.”
Let’s hope the sun keeps shining.
