A growing trend in the amusement industry right now is the rise in popularity of family coasters. Traditionally, a family coaster would be something built for exactly that… a ride good for the whole family.
Unlike a kiddie coaster, it would use full-size roller coaster trains and tracks, with restraints able to accommodate the majority of rider sizes. Scale-wise, they aren’t too big or scary-looking. They often stayed lower to the ground with track layouts that may have emphasized length over height. Most avoid inversions, but over the years the inclusion of one or two has been acceptable.
For many parks, the classic Mine Train coaster checked the box nicely.
Disney and Universal family coasters
The concept is nothing new to the Disney theme parks. Disney has always been focused on building epic attractions good for the entire family, rather than high-speed multi-inversion thrill machines. In fact, Hong Kong Disneyland just opened the new Wandering Oaken’s Sliding Sleighs in November 2023. And a clone is now under construction at the Walt Disney Studios Paris theme park.
Walt Disney World has also opened two new family coasters back-to-back at Walt Disney World with Tron: Lightcycle/Run opening at the Magic Kingdom in 2023 and the innovative Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind at Epcot in 2022. Over the past decade, Walt Disney World has opened four family coasters in total, with the addition of the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train in the Magic Kingdom in 2014 and Slinky Dog Dash at Disney’s Hollywood Studios park in 2018.
The trend is growing, however. Universal is set to open three family-sized coasters at the new Epic Universe theme park in 2025. Each will have a unique style and theme such as the Donkey Kong-themed Boom Coaster, the spinning Curse of the Werewolf (Mack Rides) and a family-launched coaster themed around How to Train Your Dragon (Intamin).
Look to Universal Studios Japan to first open the prototype Donkey Kong concept this year. Over at Universal’s existing parks, you can also include the incredible Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure at Islands of Adventure. This opened in 2019.
SeaWorld, Merlin and more
The two SeaWorld Entertainment parks in Florida will each open new family coasters this summer. SeaWorld Orlando is opening Penguin Trek, (B&M), featuring indoor and outdoor sections and two launches. Sister park, Busch Gardens Tampa will open Phoenix Rising, a new family-inverted coaster also from B&M.
B&M (Bolliger & Mabillard), a Swiss company known for high-thrill roller coasters, has been quietly entering itself into the family coaster market lately.
Pipeline: The Surf Coaster was launched at SeaWorld Orlando in 2023. This is a new take on the old Stand-Up coaster concept. It adds a new device to the restraint system that provides unique moments of floating ‘airtime’ to the riders on a very modest-sized layout. It stands just 110 feet tall and begins with a launch instead of a lift hill. There is only a single inversion.
Merlin Entertainment also tasked B&M with creating a pair of unique Wing coaster designs in 2023.
The Jumanji-themed Mandrill Mayhem coaster opened at Chessington World of Adventures as the park’s first launched shuttle coaster, featuring a single inversion.
The pair also created what may be the most unexpected location for a B&M wing coaster when they opened Maximus – Der Flug des Wächters at Legoland Deutschland. This is a pint-sized coaster just under 56 feet tall. It is tucked into the landscape to keep it close to the ground. It features two inversions and a top speed of only 33.6mph.
Dollywood is no stranger to building fun family coasters. It opened the park’s largest one yet with Big Bear Mountain in 2023. Provided by Vekoma, this coaster is nearly 4000 feet long with three launch boosters. Riders enjoy a thrilling rush across the Smoky Mountain landscape in trains themed like off-road vehicles with an onboard sound system.
A year of innovation
Lagoon in Utah opened a very unique custom indoor/outdoor coaster creation in 2023 called Primordial. The majority of the ride takes place inside a large fake mountain structure. Riders are seated in cars that can fully rotate 360º and feature an onboard soundtrack. The guests are given 3D glasses to wear that work with mounted laser guns in each car, able to shoot at targets as the cars pass by a series of interactive screens, provided by Triotech.
For the ultimate re-rideability, the ride features several different possible finale scenes on the screens. Plus, the track splits the cars off towards two different tracks for an entirely different physical experience. One has a hidden slide track (that can be taken forward or backward) and the other has a hidden freefall drop.
The 2023 season perhaps saw more family coasters open than ever before. There were new creations like Zokkon (Fuji-Q Highlands), Zambezi Zinger (Worlds of Fun), Uncharted (PortAventura), Lightning (Furuvik), Arctic Rescue (SeaWorld San Diego), DarKoaster (Busch Gardens Williamsburg), Wild Mouse (Cedar Point), Luna (Lisberg), Aquaman: Power Wave (Six Flags over Texas), Mission Ferrari (Ferrari World), just to name a few.
New family coasters to come
Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri will open a completely new Fire In The Hole indoor dark ride/coaster in 2024.
The new coaster from RMC (Rocky Mountain Construction) will serve as a modern replacement for the park’s original custom-built Fire In The Hole dark coaster. This opened in 1972 and retired on 30 December 2023. After thrilling park guests for 51 years, the course of action was clear to park owners, Herschend Family Entertainment. The company set in place the plans to build a modern replacement to thrill guests for years to come, as it was time to retire the original.
The new Mattel Adventure Park opening in Arizona in 2024 will feature two family coasters themed to the Hot Wheels line of toy cars. In addition to the more thrilling Twin Mill Racer, the park will also offer up the Boneshaker as a fun family ride experience.
Other family coasters opening in 2024 include Bobcat (Six Flags The Great Escape), Choco Chip Creek (Energylandia), Good Gravy! (Holiday World), Jungle Rush (Dreamworld), and the new Alpex Express replacement at Europa-Park, just to name a few.
The appeal of family coasters
A good family coaster has always been a staple of any good theme park lineup. However, they’ve been overshadowed over the past few decades with attempts to alternate between giant mega thrillers and tiny kiddie coasters.
While most of the focus on kiddie coasters was just to make something small, compact and cute, most of the big coaster innovations over the years have been focused entirely on the arms race between the giant thrill rides instead. So, apart from Disney, the majority of parks had their focus elsewhere. This allowed their classic family-style coasters to just get older (some to the point of nearing retirement), while unfortunately ignoring this valuable market class.
So, why the sudden change in focus now? It may be due to the switch in what is considered a marketable attraction. For many years, marketing teams were just too focused on trying to promote their “est” attractions… the longest, fastest, tallest. If it wasn’t a record breaker of some kind they could promote, then often they felt that the only other thing they could successfully promote were attractions on the other end of the spectrum, aimed at the smaller guests.
In reality, this was just falling back on the same “est” style of marketing. Only now fighting over who had the cutest new characters and attractions.
Changing demographics
One of the reasons behind this trend for family coasters is that the world’s population is growing older. The Baby Boomer generation (born between 1946 and 1964) is retiring, becoming grandparents, and generally has the most disposable income.
This was followed by Gen X, born between the mid-60s to mid-80s. Gex-X’rs, who are now rapidly approaching retirement age, were born and grew up during the big theme park boom that took place across most of Europe, Japan and North America. Gen-X also thrives on entertainment consumption, with theme parks falling right in line with movies, music (remember MTV?) and video games.
These two ageing groups are now visiting theme parks (often with their children or even their grandchildren), while perhaps finding themselves unwilling to ride all those “est” rides that the parks spent the last two decades building.
Earlier generations were perhaps more willing to just sit on a bench and watch their kids ride (as Walt Disney himself so often described doing before building his park. But today’s theme park guests enjoy riding things together. They want a multi-generational ride experience that they can ride with their parents as well as their children.
There will always be a market for big thrill rides. Yet I believe the common focus of today’s marketplace is a need to have an “experience”. While you can have an experience alone, perhaps the best way to etch that experience in your memory is to undertake it with someone else. For instance, a partner, a family member, or a whole group of friends.
This fits right in with today’s “selfie or it didn’t happen” culture, popular with the Instagram-savvy youth who are also seeking to digitally immortalize their own experiences through social media.
More new family attractions
This all translates well into a family theme park experience where everyone is willing to enjoy good roller coasters together. Provided that the elements don’t look too over the top.
Following this line of thought, I think we’ll also see several other attraction styles that will benefit from this movement. Already I think we are starting to see a surge in the number of new dark rides being ordered. We might also see flying theaters as well as other simulator-style attractions return to the forefront.
The desire for more family-friendly or multi-generational attractions could also lead to the creation of more unique concepts. One idea that may gain some attention could be building new walk-through experiences. For example, the new Journey of Water at Epcot and the upcoming Universal Horror Unleashed in Las Vegas. Or we might see the return of older visual illusion concepts like Casa Magnetica at Six Flags over Texas or the retired Haunted Shack at Knott’s Berry Farm.
Another line of thought could be the creation of more interactive style attractions for small groups. These could incorporate moments of interactive gameplay, role-playing, or even escape-room-style elements into the experience.
With the entertainment desires of today’s world seeming to currently be in flux, it should be fascinating to see who is willing to take the leap into the unknown and create something entirely new.
