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Storytelling

Image: Anna Marie, PullOverandLetMeOut

Your first sighting of Verbolten probably comes into view as you cross a bridge high above the park’s Rhine River from Italy to Germany. From that vantage point, you can make out something sinister rising from the woods high atop a forested hill: a covered bridge. The closer you get, the worse it looks: splintered and dilapidated… You might even hear it creaking in the wind. 

As you walk across the bridge with the covered bridge in the distance, you may seen a bright bolt as a roller coaster train comes rocketing from the forest and races up to the covered bridge. It creeps across the structure, then zooms down the imposing 85-foot drop toward the river below. At the last second, it pulls up and zooms along the water’s surface, racing back into the trees and disappearing yet again.

If you’re ready to tackle Verbolten, your adventure begins in the old queue house for Big Bad Wolf, now recast as Gerta and Gunter’s Tours and Rentals, a bright and festive tour center for Oktoberfest visitors run by a sister-brother duo. A single ominous sign: a crashed German roadster out front. Every few minutes, its engine struggles in an attempt to turn over, with smoke billowing from under its hood. If you dare glance inside, you’ll notice something strange: a network of vines crawling throughout the inside, snaking along the windows as if trying to break out.

Inside the Tour Center, elaborate posters advertise all of the many places you might visit on your tour of Germany – castles, countrysides, villages… Collections of antiques collected by Gerta line bookshelves and display cases. At the check-in counter, a sign signals that Gerta, unfortunately, can’t be here to check us in herself (she’s dressed in her Oktoberfest best, clearly out celebrating in the town square), but she appears on antique televisions with some very simple advice and one stern warning: “Whatever you do,” she offers emphatically, “do not go near the Black Forest. It is strictly verboten.”

The warning is simple, but effective: as you explore the countryside, be sure you keep a healthy distance from the old stone wall guarding the Black Forest. Going near would be dangerous – very dangerous – as its sinister vines could draw you in. If you do wonder too close to the forest, look for old covered bridge; it’s the only way out. 

With that being said, Gerta invites us to continue on toward the garage where we’ll board our zippy German roadster as she heads off to find her brother, Gunter, who’s been mysteriously distant. Easy enough!

But on the way, we pass through a shed out back. This shed has become a makeshift office for Gunter. Or, should we say, a makeshift laboratory? The spooky shed has a few security cameras trained somewhere in a dark forest – did one of those branches just move? Even creepier, it seems Gunter has been doing some experimenting, as strange, otherworldly vines are growing from test tubes, slithering through the glass cases they’re trapped in. The walls are lined with unclaimed luggage, mysteriously abandoned by the owners. Once you’ve passed through the shed, take a look back at it – it appears that one single vine has broken through the siding, climbing up the wall of the building…

Still, we press on and find ourselves in the garage just as a sleek roadster pulls up. We’re in for a gentle tour of the country and a picture-perfect day in Oktoberfest.

The Ride 

The roadster slowly moves from the station and parks just outside, where it rumbles and vibrates as it awaits its coordinates. With a sputter, the train rattles and is slowly pushed forward, entering a small drop and meandering twist through an S-curve and into a clearing. Our first stop on the tour.

But the sound of howling wind grows louder and louder as the train turns and faces something we hoped not to see: a crumbling stone wall with decaying vines curling outward. Before you can panic, the train contacts an LSM launch motor, which whines and shrieks as the train is drawn into the wall with the sound of a vacuum pulling you in.

The uphill launch accelerates, as in the distance poisonous leaves appear to glow with bioluminescence. They’re green with purple cores, and as you advance through this tunnel, they get closer and closer until you feel you might have to duck. Arching strobes signal a lightning strike around you as your upward trajectory finally ends, the train racing downward and spiraling through a wild and unpredictable helix through ever-closer gnarled branches. 

The train dives and twists until it enters another helix, circling around a most unusual feature: the moon, which is suffocated by branches as you pass, darkening the forest to pitch black. Then, the train rears up to a high point in the forest. For a striking second, silence.

Then begins the most impressive feature of Verbolten: the forest is alive, and you’re about to feel its force in one of three ways.

At this point, slowly advancing along the ride’s brakes, you’ll hear the sounds of an approaching pack of wolves, hear the inhuman melodies of an otherworldly guardian of the forest, or hear the distant rumbling of thunder. From this point on, the ride will diverge based on the forest’s response to your presence: wolves, the spirit, or a thunderstorm in a randomized selection of the three “paths.”

 

Just as you begin to register which of the three forces the forest plans to use, the woods appear before you, lit up in a massive floor-to-ceiling scene of glowing branches, leaves, and roots. You’re in the heart of the forest.

Reaching the end of the brakes, the train dives down beneath gnarled limbs and climbs back up to the height of the forest.

Now more dark ride than roller coaster, the train glides smoothly forward.

  • If wolves are your fate, this portion of the ride will be in pitch black darkness, inching you through a terrifying blackness. Then, slowly, pairs of glowing eyes appear around you as 3D audio places snarling, growling wolves surround the train.
  • If the Black Forest decides to defend itself using its guardian spirit, the otherworldly echoes of a supernatural song play as the train slowly advances beneath massive set-pieces of stylized branches, looking more like hands than trees as they envelope the car. Rings of poisonous leaves seem to create a tunnel, beckoning you forward as if hypnotized.
  • For some, the forest will instead use a thunderstorm to put an end to you, surrounded by the sounds of creaking, weak branches beneath you, pouring rain all around, and thunder physically rumbling the track and trains. 

Regardless of your fate, the train presses forward through the obstacles, surrounded by eyes, with the vision of a spirit formed from branches glowing faintly ahead, or lit by flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder. Then, the train lurches to a halt. You might anticipate that what’s about to come next is a sudden launch, or an unexpected reversal of the train to move backwards 

You’d be wrong.

With a final howl, word from the spirit, or lightning flash, the train drops. It falls vertically. The physical track your train is parked on is a drop tower. The 18 foot freefall makes Verbolten the first and only freefall roller coaster in America. While riders try to compose themselves after the surprising and unthinkable maneuver, the train is pushed forward back into daylight where it strikes the ride’s second launch blasting the train to its top speed in a matter of seconds.

Verbolten flies forward, erupting through the trees and racing up banked turns to its apex: the covered bridge. Brakes hold back the ride as it pauses on top, the bridge creaking and shuddering under the weight. Then, the ride’s biggest drop yet: an 88 foot plunge toward the Rhine River below. The train levels out along the water’s surface and races around a curve. Directly ahead: the stone wall. Refusing to be drawn back to it, the train pulls away dramatically and bolts up increasingly tight turns, dipping one final time before the station comes back into view.

After 3 minutes and 25 seconds, Verbolten has raced along 2,835 feet of track. It’s taller, faster, and longer than Big Bad Wolf, borrowing its predecessor’s finale as exactly as possible – piece by piece – in a stellar tribute.

As always, we'll include the best video we've yet seen of the ride, with the "thunderstorm" scenario chosen:

Verbolten backs a lot into a family roller coaster. How does it work? We’ll go Behind the Ride next... 

 
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Comments

Sorry, but I disagree. Verbolten is not a family coaster. I found it the single most aggressive coaster at BGW. The next nearest blitz-style coaster, Copperhead Strike at Carowinds, isn't as tall or fast, and though I haven't ridden that one yet, I doubt it's as forceful. If Copperhead Strike had a 48" minimum height, I'd call it a family coaster before Verbolten.

On top of that, the ride has aged like milk. It was awfully rattly, and the show building has deteriorated to about the same standard as Flight of Fear.

Mystic Timbers took the forbidden forest theme and did it better in every way.

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