Six Flags Great America Building World's Most Extreme Wooden Roller Coaster
By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Aug 29, 2013 3:00PM
Chicago will soon be home to the world’s most extreme wooden roller coaster. Six Flags Entertainment Corporation announced plans Thursday to build Goliath at its Great America amusement park in Gurnee, Ill., north of Chicago, in time for its 2014 season.
Goliath isn’t just any wooden roller coaster. It’s being billed as the world’s fastest wooden roller coaster, with speeds of up to 72 MPH. It will have the tallest drop on a wooden roller coaster at 180 feet and its proposed 85-degree drop is the steepest drop on any coaster.
Goliath will boast three over-banked turns, a 180-degree zero G roll, an inverted drop and an inverted zero G stall. That's nowhere near the lengths, rolls and G-forces of the world’s most extreme roller coasters, but it is enough to obliterate the speeds and drops of Outlaw Run at Branson, Missouri’s Silver Dollar City, the current world’s fastest wooden roller coaster.
“Six Flags Great America is known for introducing record-breaking and first-of-its-kind roller coasters,” said Hank Salemi, Six Flags Great America park president. “All of the ride elements… make Goliath the most extreme wooden roller coaster in the world.”