T Express at Everland – ProQuest

Headnote Keywords Wooden roller coaster, theme park, popular rides, traffic flow, viral marketing, UCC NEW RIDE PUTS THEME PARK ON TRACK Upon entering Everland Resort in the Seoul suburbs, visitors have a panoramic view of one of the theme park’s most arresting landmarks: a roller coaster with a mountain as its backdrop. Dubbed the “T Express,” this roller coaster’s wooden construction harkens back to the earliest wooden roller coasters and provides a fitting counterpart to Everland’s natural surroundings. The roar of its near-vertical drops and the screams of its riders can be heard nearly everywhere throughout the park. T Express opened to the public in March 2008 after an investment of three years of preliminary surveys, planning, and construction, and W28 billion in funding. The new ride replaced a previous snow slope attraction in the European Adventure Zone of the theme park, and rapidly drew new visitors to Everland. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE T EXPRESS The decision to install a wooden roller coaster (Korea’s first and only one thus far) put Everland in a class of its own among Korea’s theme parks. With everything except the wheels and rails made of wood, the T Express enthralls riders with the unpredictable rattle, rumble, and roar that only wooden coasters can provide. At the same time, the coaster was designed using the latest technology to extremely tight specs, allowing it to hurtle its passengers through winding structures that provide the “headchopping” thrill of nearly colliding with the grid work. As of now, nearly 170 wooden roller coasters are in operation at theme parks around the world. Among them, T Express ranks high in all categories: it is 56 meters high (the second highest wooden coaster in the world), 1,641 meters in length (the fifth longest in the world), 46 meters in vertical drop (the fifth largest in the world), and 77 degrees in slope (the steepest in the world). It has 12 “air time” sections where passengers can experience the feeling of nearly leaving their seats in complete weightlessness. Its maximum speed of 104 kilometers per hour puts it among some of the world’s fastest coasters (“EL Toro” at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey is the No.l wooden coaster at 113 kilometers per hour). EFFECTS OF…