4. Leviathan (2012)
Location: Canada’s Wonderland
Opened: 2012
Height / drop: 306 / 306
Manufacturer: Bolliger & Mabillard
Remember those three B&M hypercoasters gifted to the former Paramount Parks – Canada’s Wonderland, King Island, and Carowinds? The installation at Canada’s Wonderland had been the 230-foot tall Behemoth – named for a Biblical beast holding dominion over the land – living up to its name by towering over the park with almost-poetic parabolic airtime hills in its out-and-back layout. Like all B&Ms – but especially their crowd-pleasing, inversion-free hypercoasters – Behemoth was a fitting “big” coaster for any self-respecting thrill park. (Despite feeling ubiquitous, 200+ foot tall coasters are still a relative rarity, and serve as very good “anchor” attractions for thrill parks.)
So you can understand the shock and awe when Cedar Fair announced that despite just having gotten Behemoth in 2008, Wonderland’s 2012 season would introduce its sister: Leviathan, Biblical monster of the seas. Leviathan would be a gigacoaster – only the fourth on Earth, mind you! – but not just any gigacoaster. It would be the first 300-foot beast built by B&M.
By most any account, Leviathan is a legend. In keeping with B&M “tradition,” its four-across trains and soaring layout are butter smooth, high-capacity, and incredibly beautiful.
If there’s a complaint to be had (which, of course, only coaster snobs would bother having), it’s that Leviathan is… well… not much different than Behemoth.
Sure, it’s 70 feet taller – which is nothing to sneeze at – and its hills are more elongated with several speed runs in between, but ultimately, B&M’s first gigacoaster feels… a lot like its hypercoasters: soaring airtime, perfect parabolas, and giant, sweeping turns. It’s a whole lot of fun, and certainly a bigger ride than its sister… but not a fundamentally different one.
And therein lies the trade-off, right? B&M is tried-and-true; trustworthy; reliable; generally appealing. Operationally, any park would want a B&M over a risky Intamin with its snapped elevator cables, exclusionary intensity, reprofiling, and infamous downtime. But does a park with a B&M hyper need a B&M giga? (And for that matter, should we expect Canada’s Wonderland to introduce Ziz, Biblical monster of the air? Hmm…)
B&M’s first gigacoaster might not have had the industry impact that Millennium Force or Intimidator 305 did, but there’s no question that their next installation would diverge from the precedent of the hypercoaster…
5. Fury 325 (2015)
Location: Carowinds
Opened: 2015
Height / drop: 325 / 320
Manufacturer: Bolliger & Mabillard
In the 2010s, Cedar Fair started to get serious about Carowinds – a former-Paramount Park that straddles the border between North and South Carolina. Time and time again, then-CEO Matt Ouimet referred to the park as a “Cedar Point of the South” waiting to be developed – a park low on competitors and high on potential. Its own NASCAR-themed B&M hyper (plain-old “Intimidator,” no 305) opened in 2010 as the beginning of that investment, signaling the beginning of the park’s bulking up.
And just like Canada’s Wonderland, five years after its hyper, Cedar Fair announced an even larger follow-up. Named in homage to the Charlotte Hornets NBA team, Fury 325 at least feels like a bit more of an experiment for B&M, and a divergence from the hypercoaster model. Fury tests out some unorthodox maneuvers that feel drawn from the Intamin and even RMC playbook!
Technically both the world’s tallest (325 feet) and fastest (95 mph) gigacoaster, its first half isn’t continuous, parabolic airtime hills, but low-to-the-ground twists, speed straightaways, and unusual banking. Even the turnaround of its out-and-back layout skips the traditional hammerhead turn or overbanked turn common on B&M hypers in favor of a rising treble clef, and the return trip of the 6,602 foot long ride keeps up the personality.
Fury feels different! It’s a very, very good coaster, and a great omen for B&M gigacoasters going forward! Including…
6. Orion (2020)
Location: Kings Island
Opened: 2020
Height / drop: 287 / 300
Manufacturer: Bolliger & Mabillard
Once more, Cedar Fair returned to the home of one of its B&M hypers for a giga-sized encore… but this one took a while. In the gulf between 2009’s Diamondback and its 2020 giga follow-up, Kings Island did add a B&M inverted coaster (2014’s Banshee) and a GCI woodie (2017’s Mystic Timbers) leaving fans guessing that – for one reason or another – they simply weren’t going to follow Wonderland and Carowind’s hyper-giga pattern.
However, the 2018 retirement of Firehawk (a Vekoma flying coaster salvaged from Geauga Lake) opened a beautiful plot of land in the park’s sci-fi-themed zone, and after leveling some of the forest that surrounds the park, the blazing blue Orion arose.
Arguably, Diamondback & Orion share the same kind of relationship as Behemoth & Leviathan in that they come across as a little “same-y” – same trains, same out-and-back skeleton, same airtime hills, etc. such that even casual guests could probably note their relationship. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – just an odd thing, and for some, a testament to the need for for custom coasters packed with personality over B&M’s beautiful-if-bland creations.
Obviously, Orion is an immense thrill with a breathtaking first drop and a unique helix finale… but it’s also the shortest of the gigacoasters (and actually, shorter than several hypercoasters). In fact, its iconic first drop leads to a unique, 174-foot tall banked airtime hill (very cool!), which is then immediately followed by the ride’s turnaround to head on back toward the station – an odd use of the park’s limitless forested space.
So maybe it’s best to imagine Orion as a fusion of the two B&M gigas that came before – from Leviathan, it takes elements of a straight-laced, by-the-book upsizing of a B&M hypercoaster; from Fury, a few odd and unexpected elements or maneuvers along its route. So even if it’s not exactly groundbreaking (and surely wouldn’t steal any awards from its distant Millennium cousin just a few hours north), Orion means that a third of all the gigacoasters in the world reside in Ohio.
But the story isn’t over… and you may be surprised where the next gigacoaster – only the seventh on Earth – is rumored to be heading…