Park section Thrill Zone Opening date June 1994 (1994-06) Status Closed Opened 28 April 1994 Track length 962 m Park Kings Dominion | Status Operating Park section Candy Apple Grove Height 25 m Max speed 80 km/h Height restriction 1.22 m | |
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Opening date April 28, 1994 (1994-04-28) Similar Rebel Yell, Grizzly, Anaconda, Carolina Cyclone, Dominator | ||
Hurler is a wooden roller coaster at Cedar Fair's Carowinds park. An identical roller coaster by the same name also operated at Kings Dominion and closed at the end of the 2015 season. Both coasters opened in the same year, 1994. Built by International Coasters Inc., the coasters both have exactly the same design, with exactly the same statistics. Following the closure of Kings Dominion's Hurler, park officials have yet to release information regarding the future of the coaster.
Contents
History
The Hurler installations opened at both parks in 1994. The coasters originally borrowed their theme from the 1992 Paramount motion picture Wayne's World, whose main characters frequently used the word "hurl." Paramount sold both parks in 2006, and new owner Cedar Fair retained the name but removed references to Wayne's World.
The Kings Dominion roller coaster was closed for part of the 2006 season to be re-tracked. In 2010, a new trim brake was installed immediately after the first hill prior to the season opening. Hurler closed again for part of the 2014 season for regular maintenance. In March 2016, Kings Dominion posted a notice on their website that Hurler would be closed for the season while undergoing extensive maintenance, and that it would likely reopen in 2017. However, in October 2016, Kings Dominion released a teaser video on Facebook that Hurler would be closed and not reopen, but will re-emerge in some form for the 2018 season.
Ride layout
Riders are hoisted up a 83-foot (25 m) lift hill and make a wide turn before reaching the initial drop. During the drop, an on-ride camera automatically takes photographs of passengers. The ride continues with a wide, heavily banked, flat turn, then a series of hills and drops which jerk and shake passengers, giving the coaster a reputation of being bumpy and rickety.
The overall layout is a standard paperclip arrangement with two out-and-back style runs (in Kings Dominion this extends into the courtyard adjacent to Grizzly).
The Hurler is also a mirror image of Thunder Run at Kentucky Kingdom.
Theming
Originally, the queue wound underneath the coaster through a "hot set" on location filming scenes from Wayne's World. Upon entering the station building, park guests passed through a full-scale set of the iconic basement hideout of Wayne and Garth. Since removal of the Paramount references, the queue and station building are loosely themed with the remains of the original theming. Movie-making paraphernalia including stage lights, cameras, props and signs are scattered sparsely about. At Carowinds, some of the original props (notably baby doll pieces) were recycled into the SCarowinds Maze of Madness. Although the Wayne's World Theme has been removed from the coaster at Kings Dominion, many signs of the theme were still present until the ride's closure, including many stickers and stamps of the Wayne's World logo around the Hurler station, such as the columns by the exit.