New Thunderbolt Ride In Coney Island Is Trucking Along

The Thunderbolt roller coast is moving along and has now erected parts of the ride. Of course, it’s not moving quite as fast as the 65 miles per hour that the ride will deliver to thrill seekers. The ride is set to open next summer and it will be a 125-foot-tall roller coaster with more than 2,000 feet of track.

The name of the ride comes from the original Thunderbolt, which opened in 1925 and was then demolished in 2000. Back in March we reported that this newest incarnation had broken ground, initiating the construction process.

More from that article:

Coney Island’s newest amusement tycoons, Central Amusement International (a.k.a. Zamperla USA), broke ground on the Thunderbolt yesterday, the first roller coaster in more than a century at the People’s Playground to throw riders through a literal loop.

The three-car coaster will hold 27 people as it zooms along 2,233 feet of track at 55 miles per hour. It’ll reach its peak height at 115 feet before plummeting nearly straight to the ground and into a 100-foot vertical loop, then an 80-foot zero-g roll followed by a heartline dive and corkscrew. The whole shebang lasts two-minutes.

The ride will sit near the historic B&B Carousell and the new Steeplechase Plaza, and mark another important milestone in Coney Island’s rebirth. We first got whiff of the story last summer when city officials expressed emotions that we didn’t think they had:

City officials expressed excitement over the future construction of the new attraction.

“For a decade, the City has made investing in Coney Island a priority. The Thunderbolt roller coaster will build upon that commitment by providing visitors to Coney Island with a fantastic new attraction, boosting the local economy and helping create jobs in the neighborhood still recovering from Hurricane Sandy,” said New York City Economic Development Corporation Executive Director Kyle E. Kimball.