Hello everyone! Welcome to our first update on Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s 2017 project! Earlier this year, Busch Gardens Williamsburg announced their first wooden coaster after teasing it in a long video series. As the park allowed the public to choose certain aspects of the ride, including the name InvadR, they also broke ground on the attraction in the New France section of the park! In this update, we will take a look at the progress made on the ride’s land clearing and some of the other recent updates on the ride!
Let’s start with an interesting detail of the attraction. Recently, Busch Gardens Williamsburg announced that certain pieces of Busch Gardens Tampa’s former Gwazi roller coaster would be used as a part of the attraction. The defunct GCI dueling wooden coaster’s lift chain among other parts are going to be used on InvadR. The other day, they announced in a blog post that another key feature of Gwazi would be used on InvadR. This feature is the ride’s trains.
Image via Busch Gardens Williamsburg
The former Gwazi trains, which were purchased in 2011 as an attempt to make the notoriously rough ride smoother, are going to be re-themed and reused for InvadR. The trains are GCI’s Millennium Flyer trains, which are known for providing a very smooth experience on pretty much every roller coaster but Gwazi (although they are probably not the reason for Gwazi’s roughness).
Now, let’s take a look at what’s going on from the actual construction site. You can get a good look at everything that’s going on from the train as it pulls into the New France station and from small viewing holes they’ve placed in the construction walls of New France.
This was my first view of the InvadR construction. As you can see from the image, the construction is taking place in a unique area. The ride is going to interact with terrain, the park’s log flume Le Scoot, and the train.
Much of the demolition of the ride’s site has already been completed. This dip in the terrain is where much of the ride’s interaction with the land will occur.
Although the bulk of the ride will take place in the dip on the right side of the train tracks, demolition on the small area to the left of the tracks has begun. The top of the ride’s first hill will be over here with a lift hill across the tracks.
Although we did not ride Le Scoot during our visit to the park the other day, the ride definitely looks a lot different without its wooded surroundings.
Somewhere very close to where this photo was taken will be where InvadR’s first drop will be placed. It will dive through the canyon and into a turn-around element behind the trees. There will be a service road running through the canyon, and the first drop will dive under this service road.
Some of the supports on Le Scoot have been covered with wood. I assume this is to protect them from any nearby construction.
The land clearing goes down from the train tracks to the pathways of New France.
Looking through a viewing hole in the construction wall, you can see the demolition for what will be the ride’s station and/or entrance area.
The ride’s entrance plaza will be located somewhere near here. You can see some of the remains of a former structure to the left of the image. I think this was part of the former pathway.
Several of the trees in the region are marked with pink tape. It appears that this means these trees will not be cut down (in another image, you can see some fenced off trees on the site have this same marking).
The following shots are from the bridge between New France and Germany. The area looks a lot different without trees, and is going to look a lot different soon once InvadR starts going vertical.
This is the same debris from the previous image. The ride’s entry plaza is going to be very close to Le Scoot’s entrance. The covered area in the image is Le Scoot’s entrance.
In this final image, you can see a little bit more of the work going on behind the railroad tracks.
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