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PANTHEON

Manufacturer: Intamin

Taron at Phantasialand. Image: Intamin

Long-favored by coaster enthusiasts for its innovative, boundary-pushing, and record-breaking rides, the Swiss ride manufacturer Intamin knows how to toe the line... trouble is, in the breakneck speed of the Coaster Wars in the '90s and 2000s, they often crossed it, with their rides requiring significant delays, downtime, and even redesigning. We explored the rise and fall of Intamin in our recent feature on its most infamous ride – Top Thrill Dragster – but suffice it to say that by the mid-2010s, their longtime number one customer and "Coaster Wars" patron – Cedar Fair – seemingly decided to take a break from Intamin's extremes. (They've instead focused on the notoriously crowd-pleasing, highly-reliable, tried-and-true installations of fellow Swiss coaster manufacturer, B&M – responsible for most of Busch Gardens' coasters.)

Though Intamin still did great business in the intervening decade largely outside the U.S., the manufacturer has made a massive return to focus in the last few years thanks to several high profile installations. In 2016, Phantasialand in Germany opened Taron (above) – a bonkers, terrain-following, multi-launch coaster that's got all the absurdity you'd expect of Intamin – plunging, twisting, accelerating, bucking, slaloming, and racing through a convoluted coaster of sensational and unpredictable manuevers.

VelociCoaster at Universal's Islands of Adventure. Image: Intamin

From there, you can see how Taron's precedent split in two. Its zippier features inspired Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure at Universal's Islands of Adventure with its record-breaking seven launches, switch tracks, drop tracks, and more, all packed into a convoluted course of twists and turns. Taron's more extreme half mutated into the breathtaking Jurassic World Velocicoaster (above), which likewise tears through a knotted layout of a velociraptor paddock before launching into an Intamin-iconic top hat and racing headlong through a soaring course over the park's lagoon. Both are often regarded among the best roller coasters on Earth in their respective genres. 

Though launches, top hats, spikes, and buttery-smooth intensity have always been Intamin's calling card, rarely have they been assembled in so poetic and powerful a form as Pantheon...

The Story

Image: SeaWorld Parks

Once known to enthusiasts only as Project MMXX (that's 2020 in Roman numerals), Pantheon was officially announced in July 2019. Fitting beautifully into the schema of the park's existing coaster titles (Verbolten, Tempesto, Alpengeist, Invadr, etc.), the ride's name refers to the central and most powerful gods of Roman mythology. Likewise, the ride's layout was introduced with the notion of different manuevers influenced by the powers of each member of the Roman pantheon:

  • Minerva, goddess of war, embodied in the ride's initial launch into a zero-G winder;
  • Mercury, messenger of the gods, with his winged shoes, powering the ride's forward and backwards launch;
  • Neptune, god of the seas, represented by the ride's vertical "trident" spike;
Image: SeaWorld Parks
  • Jupiter, king of the gods, brought to life as vertical ascent to and peak of the coaster's central top hat;
  • Pluto, god of the underworld, underwriting the ride's 95-degree, 178-foot plunge to the Rhine River below and its finale inversion – a zero-G stall

Like pretty much all projects destined for a 2020 debut, Pantheon didn't quite hit the mark. The ride was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with Busch Gardens offering a "2021" launch. That, too, ended up being missed... probably because it didn't make sense to "waste" a new ride's draw at a time when park capacity was limited and mostly full. After much delay, Pantheon officially opened on March 25, 2022. And boy was it worth it...

The Ride

Image: SeaWorld Parks

Pantheon really does read as a "best-of" Intamin's latest tricks. The ride begins with a rolling launch, accelerating the train into a zero-G winder. Then, it hops along two opposingly-banked bunny hills (a delightfully weird, Intamin-y manuever) before entering the ride's iconic middle act, accelerating down a straightaway, boosting over a launched airtime hill, and rocking up toward the peak of its golden top hat. But without the power to crest the hill, it falls backwards (without a holding brake to allow for a track switch, mind you!), accelerating backwards up a vertical spike.

Only on the second pass does the train crest the ride's peak, plummeting down the park's iconic waterside terrain (a move mirrored by the nearby Verbolten), dipping alongside the Rhine River. It pulls out from the move, launching skyward and into an outward-banked airtime hill that leans riders over the river, slaloming into upside down drop. Still packed with full-throttle speed, it slaloms up the hillside, twists through one last banked hill, and returns to the station.

Image: SeaWorld Parks

Even a lay person could read the familial DNA inherent in B&M's inverted Alpengeist and B&M's hypercoaster Apollo's Chariot and B&M's dive coaster Griffon, but this? This is weird. It's punchy. Odd. Unexpected. It goes forward and backward, launches, dips, twists, and catches you by surprise in ways that a B&M creation wouldn't. It's got the fingerprints of Taron and VelociCoaster and Maverick and Top Thrill Dragster, all remixed with Busch Gardens' quality-over-quantity formula.

Sure, Pantheon is so Intamin – which is to say, it's not like anything else at the park. But more to the point, it's not like anything else on Earth; a beautifully customized, terrain-following, joyful, inventive, and unique offering that makes excellent use of Intamin's skills, and also feels made for the park. 

Take a look at the point-of-view video below to get a sense of the experience of PANTHEON...

If there's one frustration to be had with Pantheon, it must be in its "decoration." For one, the ride happens to have been placed in one of the few un-forested spots in Busch Gardens Williamsburg, and approximately zero effort was made to seed new plantings around the ride. Maybe it's appropriate that it takes place on a grassy "acropolis" seen by all, reigning over San Marco and Festa Italia... but at least planting to ensure that the ride would be surrounded in greenery in a decade or two would've been nice.

Similarly, Pantheon also suffers from a distinct lack of theming that we'd like to chalk up to pandemic budget cuts (but, to be fair, may just be the new norm at SeaWorld Parks, whose financial struggles are well documented). Diverging greatly from Busch Gardens' own precedent, the ride's station isn't temple ruins, but a stark metal shed. (Better than SeaWorld Parks' other 2022 addition, Emperor at SeaWorld San Diego, which literally has no station cover at all.) Likewise, the ride's course is weirdly missing any crumbled ruins, vine tunnels, near misses with toppled columns, or even "giant" statue remains a la Poseidon's Fury, all of which seem shockingly obvious and almost expected given the park's usual thematic flourish around its rides.

Image: SeaWorld Parks

Oh well. There's no denying that Pantheon is an Intamin at the height of its game; a sister to Taron and VelociCoaster, with a poetic and beautifully-paced layout, a handful of innovative tricks, and the deliciously "weird" trick tracks, outward banks, and unexpected manuevers that have become Intamin standard. It's an absolutely breathtaking ride, a perfect diversification of the park's lineup, and the kind of well-integrated, customized, and smartly-placed ride we love...

But it's not even Busch Gardens' biggest addition for the year... Read on...

 
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Comments

I believe these “new” in park coaster wars were actually started when Dollywood announced Lightning Rod. That assured in a brand new era of parks wanting a new “signature “ ride, instead of a series of fillers.

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