Universal Studios Hollywood has released additional renderings of its new Fast & Furious roller coaster that is currently under construction.
The images were recently posted to Universal & You, the theme park and film studio’s community outreach website.
The most intriguing of the new renderings shows the coaster at night with its track looping around the Starway escalator, which connects the upper and lower levels of the park. The image also shows another tall inversion and the building that will house the coaster’s station and queue.
Thanks to these official updates, along with research from theme park bloggers, we are getting a better picture of the wild ride parkgoers can expect.
Originally known as Project 409, the coaster will launch from the park’s upper lot and descend into the lower lot for a series of banked turns and inversions.
The cars will be able to rotate 360 degrees to replicate the drifting seen in the movie franchise’s famous race scenes. The rotation will also turn vehicles away from nearby residential areas at “key scream moments” and sections of the track will be encased in half-pipe shields to minimize the noise, the park says.
In fact, many of the updates on Universal & You involve noise reduction efforts.
The entire track will be filled with pea gravel to minimize sound. There will also be a massive sound wall longer than two football fields comprised of Acoustiblok, a state-of-the-art sound absorbing material.
Last September, ParkFans.net’s Zachary Strader, a self-described “professional fact finder” and “theme park whisperer,” published what appears to be the track design and created a composite image that superimposes it over a satellite view of Universal Studios Hollywood.
Strader says the new coaster is likely the work of Intamin, a Liechtenstein-based company that has been designing and constructing thrill rides since the 1960s.
With the name “Fast & Furious,” it is safe to assume Universal isn’t going to hold back on the speed factor.
Intamin developed the world’s first hydraulic launch system, including the one used to send riders from 0 to 128 miles per hour in 3.5 seconds on Kingda Ka, North America’s tallest and fastest coaster located at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey.
Strader says he pulled the plans from a government agency that Universal Creative is required to work with, however, neither Universal nor Intamin responded to KTLA’s requests for comment.
Construction on the coaster is underway in earnest and is visible from the 101 Freeway. An opening date has not yet been announced.
