Who designed the earlier ride that was modified to become the Gravitron?
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Gravitron The Gravitron (also known as the Starship, Starship 2000, Starship 3000, Starship 4000, Starship Area 51, Starship Gravitron, Starship Exodus, Alien Abduction, Alien Invasion, Twister, Devil's Hole, Area 51, and Enterprise) is an amusement ride, most commonly found as a portable ride at fairs and carnivals. The Gravitron first appeared at Morey's Piers in 1983 and quickly became a fixture at amusement parks in many countries. It is a modification of an earlier ride called the Rotor. The ride was originally designed and manufactured by Wisdom Industries, though several examples of the Gravitron were produced under license by ARM in the UK and Ferrari in Australia.
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Rotor (ride) The Rotor is an amusement park ride, designed by German engineer Ernst Hoffmeister in the late 1940s. The ride was first demonstrated at Oktoberfest 1949, and was exhibited at fairs and events throughout Europe during the 1950s and 1960s. The ride still appears in numerous amusement parks, although travelling variants have been surpassed by the Gravitron.
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Enhanced motion vehicle An enhanced motion vehicle, or EMV, is a ride vehicle developed by Walt Disney Imagineering, a component of The Walt Disney Company, for use in amusement park rides located at Disney's theme parks. Riders are seated on a modified motion simulator base that is mounted on a wheeled chassis. As the vehicle travels through the attraction, the motion base simulates movement, such as driving over rough terrain or leaning through a turn, that makes the ride experience appear more realistic.
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Reverse bungee The reverse bungee (also known as catapult bungee or ejection seat) is a modern type of fairground ride that was invented by Troy Griffin in c. 1978.
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The Joker (Six Flags Discovery Kingdom) The Joker is a steel roller coaster at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, California. The ride opened on May 29, 2016, as a rebuild of former wooden roller coaster Roar, adding a new steel track on top of Roar's wooden support structure. This hybrid configuration was implemented by Rocky Mountain Construction and is themed to the Joker, a comic book character villain featured in DC Comics publications. The original Roar roller coaster was constructed by Great Coasters International and opened in 1999.
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Pegasus (Efteling) Pegasus was a wooden roller coaster located at the Efteling amusement park in the Netherlands. Designed by Curtis D. Summers and manufactured by the Dinn Corporation, the roller coaster opened to the public on July 1, 1991.
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Maelstrom (ride) Maelstrom was a log flume dark ride attraction located in the Epcot theme park at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. Designed by Walt Disney Imagineering, the ride opened on July 5, 1988, in the Norway Pavilion of the park's World Showcase section. It was a mix between a log chute and a traditional film attraction. Visitors rode boats patterned after longships that passed through various scenes that featured audio-animatronic figures. The attraction was originally supposed to be called SeaVenture, with the entrance sign during construction even displaying it as such. But sometime between March 1988 and the ride's opening, it was changed to Maelstrom.
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World of Motion World of Motion, sponsored by General Motors, was the former tenant of the Transportation pavilion at Epcot at the Walt Disney World Resort. It was an opening day attraction at EPCOT Center in 1982 and it closed in 1996 to make way for Test Track, a new thrill ride through a GM testing facility.
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Horizons (Epcot) Horizons was the name of a dark ride attraction at Epcot (then known as EPCOT Center), a theme park at Walt Disney World in Bay Lake, Florida. Located on the eastern side of the "Future World" section of Epcot, the attraction used Disney's Omnimover conveyance system, which took guests past show scenes depicting visions of the future. It is believed to be the sequel to Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress, an attraction in Tomorrowland at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom. Horizons was the only attraction in "Future World" to showcase all of Epcot's "Future World" elements: communication, community interaction, energy, transportation, anatomy, physiology, along with man's relationship to the sea, land, air, and space. The attraction officially opened on October 1, 1983, as part of Phase II of Epcot. Horizons originally closed in December 1994, a little more than a year after General Electric had ended its sponsorship of the attraction. Horizons re-opened in December 1995 due to the closure of two other attractions that were down for refurbishment in "Future World", Universe of Energy and World of Motion. The attraction permanently closed on January 9, 1999, after which the attraction was dismantled and its structure demolished to make room for , a motion simulator thrill ride that opened on October 9, 2003.
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History of the roller coaster Roller coaster amusement rides have origins back to ice slides constructed in 18th-century Russia. Early technology featured sleds or wheeled carts that were sent down hills of snow reinforced by wooden supports. The technology evolved in the 19th century to feature railroad track using wheeled cars that were securely locked to the track. Newer innovations emerged in the early 20th century with side friction and underfriction technologies to allow for greater speeds and sharper turns. By the mid-to-late 20th century, these elements intensified with the introduction of steel roller coaster designs and the ability for them to invert riders.
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Space Mountain (Magic Kingdom) Space Mountain is an indoor dark outer space-themed steel roller coaster at the Magic Kingdom theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. Opened on January 15, 1975, Space Mountain is the oldest operating roller coaster in the state of Florida, and is the original version of the iconic attraction that has since been replicated at all of The Walt Disney Company's Magic Kingdom-style theme parks worldwide, except for the Shanghai Disneyland Resort. RCA helped fund Space Mountain's construction and sponsored the ride from 1975 to 1993; FedEx sponsored Space Mountain from 1994 to 2004.
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Vernon Keenan (coaster designer) Vernon Keenan was an American roller coaster designer most well known for his involvement with the "Cyclone" at Coney Island.
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Falcon's Fury Falcon's Fury is a free-standing Sky Jump drop tower attraction at the Busch Gardens Tampa amusement park in Tampa, Florida, United States. Manufactured by Intaride (a subsidiary of Intamin), the ride reaches a maximum height of 335 ft making it North America's tallest free-standing drop tower. Riders experience about five seconds of free fall, reaching a speed of 60 mph . The ride's name was chosen to invoke a falcon's ability to dive steeply at high speed to capture prey.
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Wild Rider Wild Rider was a compact steel roller coaster located at Six Flags Great Adventure. It was designed by Schwarzkopf and operated from 1978 through 1980.
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Rock-O-Plane The Rock-O-Plane is an amusement park ride designed by Lee Eyerly in 1948 and manufactured by the Eyerly Aircraft Company of Salem, Oregon.
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Accelerator (roller coaster) Accelerator is a steel Family Boomerang roller coaster at Drayton Manor Theme Park. The park officially announced the ride in December 2010. The ride is a prototype steel Vekoma Family Boomerang roller coaster. The ride features one lift hill driven by wheels that release the train into a curving figure 8 layout that concludes up a tower with a hump. Upon reaching the top of the tower the coaster train goes through the layout in reverse to the station. It opened on April 21, 2011. In 2017 "Ben 10 – Ultimate Mission" got a name change to "The Accelerator."
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Great Coasters International Great Coasters International, Inc. (GCI or GCII) is a Sunbury, Pennsylvania-based roller coaster manufacturer which has created several award-winning rides since its formation in 1994. Starting in 2006 with Thunderbird in Finland, the company expanded beyond the United States and began building coasters in Europe and Asia. Günter Engelhardt GmbH handles the company's marketing rights in Europe. In addition to designing and building new roller coasters, GCI also refurbishes and re-tracks existing roller coasters, regardless of manufacturer.
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Alan Schilke Alan Schilke is an engineer and roller coaster designer based in Hayden, Idaho, United States. He first made his mark on the industry by designing the 4th Dimension roller coaster, X, while working with Arrow Dynamics. Schilke now works as a Design Engineer at Ride Centerline LLC.
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Caterpillar (ride) The Caterpillar ride is a vintage flat ride engineered by the inventor Hyla F. Maynes of North Tonawanda, New York who dubbed it the Caterpillar when it debuted in Coney Island, NY in 1925 generates a decent helping of centrifugal force, causing the riders on the inside of the seats to crush the riders on the outside of the seats. It was once found at nearly every amusement park around the USA, but is now so rare that an original Caterpillar ride can only be found operating in two parks today. Though only two Caterpillars are known to be operating, there have been reports claiming there are additional Caterpillars in storage or standing (but not operating) at a few other parks.
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Frederick Ingersoll Frederick Ingersoll (1876 – October 23, 1927) was an American inventor, designer, and builder who created the world's first chain of amusement parks (known collectively as "Luna Parks" regardless of their actual name) and whose manufacturing company built 277 roller coasters, fueling the popularity of trolley parks in the first third of the twentieth century. Some of these parks and roller coasters are still existing today.
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Superman the Ride Superman the Ride (formerly known as Bizarro and Superman: Ride of Steel) is a steel roller coaster located at Six Flags New England in Agawam, Massachusetts. Built by Intamin in 2000, it features a 208 ft lift hill, a 221 ft drop, and over 1 mi of track. The park announced plans to change the name from Bizarro to Superman the Ride for the 2016 season, as well as adding a virtual reality feature to the ride, starting June 11.
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Harley Earl Harley J. Earl (November 22, 1893 – April 10, 1969) was an American automotive designer and business executive. He was the initial designated head of design at General Motors, later becoming vice president, the first top executive ever appointed in design of a major corporation in American history. He was an industrial designer and a pioneer of modern transportation design. A coachbuilder by trade, Earl pioneered the use of freeform sketching and hand sculpted clay models as automotive design techniques. He subsequently introduced the "concept car" as both a tool for the design process and a clever marketing device.