The Inaugural Post - Loopy for Waterslides

Welcome to the Watershoot Connoisseur blog, a place to find all the waterslide information you should ever need!

My first point of call is the holy grail of waterslides, the AquaLoop, the first ever successful looping waterslide.

A simple search on google will yield several videos and other blogs that have already covered the innovative waterslide. Most of the coverage focuses on the first AquaLoop at the Therma 3000 complex in Slovenia - unfortunately the coverage of the slide does not extend to the English section of the site.

Since the completion of the slide in Slovenia the company responsible, Aquarena, has been busy building. More recently they have built one in Germany at the Aqualand in Köln, and two in Austria, one at the Familien-Soletherme Altenmarkt and the other at the worgler wasserwelt - which deserves a special mention. The AquaLoop worgler wasserwelt has been named the L2. If one loop wasn't enough, how about two?

The riders of the L2 can reach speeds of 65km, and riders are offered a DVD of their descent as cameras inside the shoot capture their ride.

All the AquaLoop Slides feature the AquaRocket Launching system where the riders enter the shoot through a trap door at a 75 degree angle.

This ensures the rider has enough speed to make the loop. In the unlikely event the rider is stuck there is a trap door just before the loop where it is possible to exit - though I would have thought it would be far more scary doing it that way.

The design of the AquaLoop hopefully ensures that riders can experience a loop in a watershoot safely, and that brings me to the original looping watershoot. You may have noticed that at the beginning of this post I claimed the AquaLoop was the first "successful" looping slide, there was indeed another, at the now defunct ActionPark. The ride opened in 1985 and featured a vertical loop, it was closed within several days of opening due to the injuries sustained by riders. The ride was reopened several times in the park's history but again was closed quickly due to injuries, it was then dismantled when the park was closed in 1996.

Luckily for us it seems as though the designers at Aquarena have designed the AquaLoop with safety as a priority, and I look forward to trying it myself at the earliest opportunity!

Thanks for reading!

The Watershoot Connoisseur.