The Swarm photo via Thorpe Park
Dollywood seems like a rather peaceful place, a place where you can take your family with little fear of bodily harm.
But that's reportedly about to change.
I was reading a happy little article over on Time.com about this new roller coaster they're getting in London mid-March which is so extreme they had to bring in real-life jet pilots to test it out because the crash-test dummies the coaster company was using couldn't take the abuse and kept having their limbs ripped off. It was rather of scary sounding.
The Swarm, as it's called, is a "winged" ride that lets riders fly around with their arms and legs dangling free on the floorless ride which has an inverted drop of 127 feet that gives you the illusion that you're going to run into buildings.
One of the coaster-testing pilots told The Metro after his harrowing ride, "I am a self-confessed adrenaline junkie but even as a pilot used to G-force, there were some gut-wrenching moments, and I have to admit the near miss element is eye-watering - you really do feel as if you are going to crash into the structures."
So it's not only a roller coaster that can rip the limbs from unsuspecting dummies, but it's also able to scare the ever living crap out of seasoned jet pilots. As a coaster junkie myself, I was jealously thinking, "Boy, those English blokes get all the fun stuff," but then I read the last paragraph in the article.
The winged coaster idea has caught on quickly in Europe (the U.S. will debut its first winged coasters this year with one at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., one at Hershey park in Pennsylvania and another at Six Flags Great America in Chicago).
Wow, Dollywood will be the first park in the states to get this pilot-scaring, limb-ripping extreme coaster.
I think I have a new respect for Dollywood.
Oh, and here's a joyful picture of the shredded dummies after a ride on The Swarm.
Sweet dreams, coaster lovers.
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