Yesterday, TEC announced that Winter Wonderland is getting the largest indoor roller coaster in the world called the Höllenblitz. Technically it’s not the largest indoor roller coaster in the world, it’s the largest indoor roller coaster in the world that is portable, in the dark, and doesn’t contain any loops. But all of that doesn’t sound as catchy and wouldn’t have fit in my headline anyway.
The Höllenblitz was designed and built by the Renoldi family, who first released the world’s largest transportable indoor roller coaster at a fair in Frankfurt back in 1992. The ride was called Magic Mountain but was redesigned and renamed Star World in 1998, inspired by Star Wars. Years later, Klaus Renoldi Jr. watched Indiana Jones and was so impressed that he decided to transform Star World into an Indiana Jones–themed roller coaster, launching it as the Höllenblitz in 2007.
The roller coaster is an impressive 860 meters long and was inspired by the mine cart scene in Indiana Jones. Its structure resembles a rocky mountain, complete with a 30-meter waterfall, suspension bridges, fog, fire, and rotating gondolas.
Here’s an interesting bit of roller coaster trivia. Did you know that Shaab Park once had an ultra-rare, one-of-a-kind ride called the Spiral Coaster? I’ve posted about it previously here, it was a pipeline coaster, meaning the train rode between the tracks instead of above them like traditional coasters. The concept was meant to be the next big thing in roller coasters and was even featured in a National Geographic special while the concept was being tested.
The Spiral Coaster was marked as standing but not operational from 2005 until 2017 in the online roller coaster database. It had closed for maintenance in 2005 but never reopened. When Shaab Park was demolished in 2017, the coaster disappeared and the online roller coaster community lost track of it. Over the years, there have been numerous posts and even videos investigating its fate, but nobody seems to know what actually happened to it.