Cheetah Hunt & Cheetah Run To Open on Memorial Day Weekend

Busch Gardens’ announced yesterday that the new Cheetah Hunt triple launch roller coaster will be up and running during Memorial Day weekend, along with it’s Cheetah Run exhibit of live cheetahs. I went along yesterday to take a look at the progress so far as Mark Rose, Busch Gardens’ vice president for design and engineering, led a group of reporters, news crews and photographers on a tour of the coaster’s construction site.

The Cheetah Hunt coaster will feature five trains seating 16 people each  and each will race along the 4,429-foot track, allowing 1,200 to 1,400 riders per hour to experience one figure eight, one turn upside down and three magnetic-propulsion launches that will increase the coaster’s speed to 30, 60 and 40 mph in just two seconds. Riders can also expect a peak-drop of about 120 feet and several seconds of weightlessness after the third propulsion.

Rose said “This is all about the celebration of the cheetah,” and that the world’s fastest land animal had inspired the steel coaster’s three-and-a-half minute long ride. “Busch Gardens has many roller coasters that have gravity as a source of energy. This will be very different because we use magnets to actually launch the coaster in three different places as you propel yourself around the track.”

Riders will board Cheetah Hunt in the former monorail building, race over the Clydesdale stables housing 14 cheetahs and plunge past Rhino Rally’s shallow river canyon. Busch Gardens has spent the past year-and-a-half repurposing the monorail, the Clydesdale stables and part of the Rhino Rally jeep tour to accommodate the exhibit and the coaster’s seven-acre span.

Cheetah Run will showcase both male and female cheetahs, adults and cubs, languishing in the shade or racing in shifts along a narrow stretch bordering  the coaster. Both Cheetah Hunt and Cheetah Run open to the public at 9 a.m. on May 27. More photo’s are at www.Facebook.com/FloridaLeisure … make sure you click “LIKE” and here’s a short video from yesterday’s visit :

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