Green Fire - The ride that didn't happen
Two renderings of the coaster known as Green Fire popped up on the Helix Blog just now!!
These two renderings shows the result of the first coaster that Liseberg started to co-design together with Mack in 2010. But in 2011 they decided against going forward with it due to three reasons:
1: The coaster would dominate the mountain, at 83 meters tall then it might have ended up as a coaster with a park around it, instead of a park with a coaster in it, not the best idea for a small inner-city park.
2: Green Fire didn't fully utilize the mountain, in the same way that Lisebergbanan and Helix do. The mountain sort of worked against this design, and big parts of it would have ended up as a forest of supports, not a pleasant sight. I mean the top-hat is bad enough, but way more than that, absolutely awful!!
3: Even if the Mack Mega coaster design is one of the quietest coaster type there is. The massive scale of this design would make people scream so it would have received loads of complaints from people around the park. Not something that Liseberg wants.
So during 2011 they started over (which is why Helix is delayed one year compared to when it was supposed to open) and the new design would use the following guidelines: close to the ground, as long as possible and include a great variation of elements.
And the result was Helix!!
Source:
http://projekthelix.se/banan-som-inte-blev/
Massive!!
I mean, it would have been the tallest coaster in Europe by a good margin, and also been well within the top 10 in the world.
Helix is way more bang for the buck :)