Casper

She's a local from Gothenburg.

Yes, but I think it has been unmanned for a long time. They have cameras now instead.

Translation for those who don't speak swedish: "The new attraction "Uppswinget" will be located in the middle of Lisebergbanan. The experience of the ride will be similar to that of a roller coaster. The swing you sit in will accelerate from 0-80km/h no less than 10 times during the ride! Capacity: 32 persons/ride. 16 persons back to back in each swing. Top speed: 80 km/h Maximum height: 30 m Highest pendulum angle: 120 degrees Manufacturer: S&S Power (the same as Höjdskräcken and Uppskjutet) Investment: 30 million SEK Opens: 28th april 2007" 30 million SEK is roughly 4 million USD. Uppswinget means something like "the up swing".

They've said that they'll expand into the parking lot they own south of the park at some point and I think there would be room for a Balder-sized coaster there. They've already build a parking garage to replace the parking spaces. But it's close to a number of apartment buildings so the noise would probably be a problem. I think the mountain side will shield the closest neighbors from the noise. That's probably why they put it there.

There's a short press release here (in swedish) with a rendered picture in it. The press release doesn't say much except that it will be located in "the middle of Lisebergbanan" and it will open when the park opens on 28th april 2007. Judging from the picture it will be located on the mountain side in the middle of Lisebergbanans three helixes. The green thingies in foreground and in the background represents Lisbergbanans track. I was hoping for another coaster, but I guess they don't have the space for that yet EDIT: It's the 32-person model

That attendance list seems to be incomplete to say the least. SFMM isn't on there, neither is Alton Towers. Also, Liseberg should be on there with 3.5 million visitors and where's SFGAdv?

Somebody needs to invent a teleporter fast so that I wouldn't have to fly for 11 hours to get there.

Lisebergbanan also has a pretty hard brake run, there's even a warning sign on it just before the brakes. You can see it in the POV at this site. Also, it slams the brakes pretty hard again in the final block in the station. It's not going very fast at that point but it seems it stops in just a few inches. It's pretty funny to see peoples faces when it does that, because they're not expecting it.

Lisebergbanan is now running again, but from now on with only 4 trains as the 5th train that rolled back was too badly damaged and could not be repaired. The official cause of the accident according to Lisebergs own investigation was that a bolt in the chain unscrewed itself and the chain separated. The rollback dogs on the trains were coated with a low fricton material similar to teflon in order to reduce noise and that was why the train slipped of the anti-rollback "teeth". This material has been removed from the trains. They were worried this would increase the noise too much, but apparently it only increased marginally. Also, they've will inspect the chain more often. Before it was only inspected once a year, before the park opened for the season. The source of this is the local morning newspaper, Goteborgs Posten. AFAIK, the article was only in the printed paper.

I was there on August 2nd and it stuck then too, but in a level position.

This happened yesterday when I was at Thorpe Park. It wasn't funny, but stupid and irritating instead. A guy and his girlfriend are waiting ahead of us in the separate line for the front row on Nemesis Inferno. They get in and pull down the restraints. But when the ride-op comes around to check the restraints and seatbelts the girl suddenly decides she's too scared to ride in the front and makes them unlock the front row again so they can get off. This holds up the train for about 5 min. Then, after they've dispatched the train she decides she's not to scared to ride after all so they get on the next train instead in the third row.

I thought Alpengeist at BGW (BGE now?) was pretty intense when I rode it back in 2001. I can't pinpoint a particular element though since I rode somewhere in the middle of the train and couldn't see where we were going. I wasn't as much of a "coaster nerd" then as I am now so I wasn't very familiar with the layout of it when I rode it either.

Kanonen also has a smooth and even launch but it only gets up to 45 mph. What speed it ends up at seems to vary a bit though.

I was looking for the theme park review grafitti when I was there recently, but they've put them where they're not visible from the queue unfortunatly.

Technically the longest line I've been in was for Hypersonic XLC in late april the season it opened, although I left it after only 5-10 min because a park employee came up to us and said "Hey guys, do you know that this is a 3.5 to 4 hour line?".

I went past Liseberg this morning on the way to work, and there was a huge crane there pulling out the chain from the top of the lift hill. I don't think there's much chance of it becomming SBNO, it's kind of the signature ride of the park and the highest capacity ride there. Besides, with the lack of space they have it's either run it or tear it down.

I know and I did not mean to complain or anything. I just thought I'd give you some pointers so you can impress everyone with your amazing swedish skills. I am happy that you visit us here and I did plan to go to the park and meet you there, but I had too much to do at work so I couldn't make it.

Yes and no. I really think it depended on a number of factors that morning as it did roll back with TPR members several times! But other times it would fly over the top. I think I took about 6 rides on it during ERT, only one was really *close* to a roll back and the rest of them took the top hat at a fairly decent speed. --Robb Kanonen does seem to have a bit of an uneven launch. When rode it a couple of days ago it would sometimes go real slow, other times faster. I've not been on any other rocket (yet) so maybe they all do this? I've never seen it rollback though.

I love the video, it makes me feel fortunate that I live so close to Liseberg (15 min). Now for a little pronounciation lesson. The e in Liseberg is not silent. The lise part is pronounced similar to the english word listen, without the n-sound at the end. Liss-eh-berg. Balder is prounounced with a short a, like the a-sound i baloon.

If you are a norwegian citzen you don't need a passport to visit Sweden!

It says here (in swedish) that it will be closed for another month. They need to get a new chain, which apparently takes some time, and complete some investigations into what happened. After that they need to get re-inspected by the authorities to get a new license to operate it. I was there yesterday and checked it out, and there already are tyres there, but they apparently couldn't stop the train.

I heard a rumour that it will open again in about 2 weeks.

^ No, it was in the printed newspaper only and it's in swedish. Also, it was about 8 pages long, so I summarized it. The stuff I left out was mostly stuff that was in the other links and some sensationalism like "the nightmare on Lisebergbanan" and people saying that they'll never ride a roller coaster ever again because it not safe and stuff like that.

It says in today's morning newspaper here that the cause of the accident was that the chain snapped shortly after the train had engaged it. That's probably why they're looking into the channel in the picture above. Since only part of the train was on the lift hill it had not "activated" (their words) enough anti-rollback devices so those that had been "activated" were not strong enough to hold the train and prevent the rollback. According to Liseberg only 1 or 2 anti-rollback devices out of 11 on the train had engaged. Liseberg claims that if the train had made it just a little bit further up the lift hill the rollback would not have occured, and that the accident was "unforseeable". Accordning to Liseberg the entire train had not even left the station before it happened and only the first few cars were on the lift hill, but witnesses claim that the train were higher up the lift, even as far up as "the fifth or sixth flag" (which would mean the entire train was on the lift). The train struck the train behind it while it was unloading in the station so people were standing up in the train and were "thrown around" when the collision occured. No one was seriously injured though some may have sustained whiplash and similar injuries. Witnesses claim there were smoke as the colliding train pushed the train in the station through the station brakes. I'm guessing Lisebergbanan will be closed for quite some time now. First there's going to be an official investigation by the swedish equivalent to the NTSB and then I'm guessing they need to rework the anti-rollbacks so they engage earlier.

I thought that would fix it, but it didn't. I did some research and you need to add this somewhere between the tags: <embed type="application/x-mplayer2" src="http://www.themeparkreview.com/sfmmnew06/tatsutesting.mpg" name="MediaPlayer"></embed> Apparently, this is the correct way to do it for IE too, but it seems it's not as picky as FireFox is. I downloaded the page to my computer and tested this and it seems to work.