NEMESIS (ROLLER COASTER)

'''Nemesis''' is an inverted roller coaster located at Alton Towers, England. The ride was designed by Bolliger & Mabillard and opened in 1994 in the Forbidden Valley area of the park. It is built in trenches to reduce its height above ground in order to comply with local planning restrictions which require Alton Towers to build below the tree line. ''Nemesis'' is based around a legend created by the Tussauds marketing department; a monster which was disturbed during routine maintenance work has created a large hole in the Staffordshire landscape and had to be pinned down with hundreds of tonnes of steel. Alton Towers claim that it is the most intense ride ever. No two foundation footers are at the same height throughout the ride.

Contents

History

See also

External links

History

Plans for developing the site began in 1991, when Alton Towers began working on a pipeline coaster concept from Arrow Dynamics. The coaster, codenamed ''Secret Weapon 1'', was to be themed around a secret underground base. Development of the project was put on hold due to Arrow's financial problems, but was brought back a year later with the codename ''Secret Weapon 2''. However, the project was finally abandoned when John Wardley had the opportunity to ride the prototype and found it to be slow and lacking in thrills. The park began to look at alternatives to the pipeline coaster, around this time Wardley became aware of the rumours surrounding a new installation by Bolliger & Mabillard for Six Flags. Alton Towers contacted Bolliger & Mabillard who would not give out any specifics about the ride and informed the park to speak to Six Flags. John did just that and after a meeting Six Flags agreed to let Bolliger & Mabillard produce a similar ride for Alton Towers on the understanding that Alton Towers would return the favour.
John Wardley worked on this new ride concept which he codenamed ''SW3'' even though he eventually neglected the theme of a secret weapon for that of organic alien creature. The secret weapon theme was re-used for ''SW4'', ''Oblivion'', four years later. The ride opened in the spring of 1994 to much media fanfare and was one of many major installations at theme parks throughout the UK. The Pepsi Max Big One which at that time was the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world opened in Blackpool and Drayton Manor also released Shockwave an Intamin stand up roller coaster.
In 2004, ''Nemesis'' gained the world record for the most naked people to ride a roller coaster. 32 people took part, beating the previous record of 28 held by ''Nemesis Inferno'' at Thorpe Park. The event took place to celebrate 50 years of Guinness World Records. ''Nemesis'' was briefly renamed Wonderland for a month in 2005, to celebrate the release of boyband McFly's new album.

See also

★ Alton Towers

★ Inverted roller coaster

★ Bolliger & Mabillard

External links

★ Nemesis at RCDB

★ Nemesis at Alton Towers Almanac

★ Nemesis at Towers Nerd

★ Nemesis at Towers Times