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It has been a while since I rode my last Corkscrew and it was neat getting to add another one to my count this design and my coaster obsession go way back.
The second Arrow Dynamics Corkscrew opened at a little park called Old Chicago that was being built a few miles away from where I grew up in the Chicago suburbs. I had only heard about coasters from family members discussing how much fun they would have at Chicago's long gone Riverview Park. I was a three year old when I discovered the lead car to the "Chicago Loop" sitting on blocks of wood at a local airshow. The car was there to promote Old Chicago then under construction. It was the most amazing thing that I had ever seen sitting there glaring in the spring sun. The hooks were in and at that point I became a coaster enthusiast. Between then and now it is one of those memories that that has stayed as fresh as if it just happened in my mind. I spent that day climbing on it, pulling the shoulder harness down and even crawling under and spinning the wheels over and over.
That was a magical moment for me and I did feel a bit of that magic and awe when I climbed into the Vortex and heard the familiar clicks of the over the shoulder restraints as I pulled it down over myself as I did way back then.
Heading up the seventy foot tall lift hill it didn't seem as insanely tall as I thought the Chicago Loop was when I was a kid but at Calaway Park you do have the Canadian Rockies looming off in the distance like a giant wall to put size into perspective.
The layout for the Vortex just like Knott's Corkscrew (now at Silverwood in Idaho) and Old Chicago's Chicago Loop (now at Canobie Lake Park) is simple. You have a drop, hundred and eighty degree turn, corkscrew and another hundred and eighty degree turn into the brake run.
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Copyright 1999 - 2025
Paul B. Drabek
