Negative-G - Busch Gardens Tampa Bay 2020 Page Eighteen

Busch Gardens Tampa Bay
Tampa, Florida
December 21, 2020
Page Eighteen

Click on any photo to see a larger version of it.

The Anton Schwarzkopf designed Scorpion Roller Coaster at Busch Gardens Tampa, Tampa, Florida

The Timbuktu; now Pantopia, portion of Busch Gardens along with Scorpion opened in January of 1980. The area connected the Stanleyville and Nairobi sections of the park creating a large loop so guests could see all of the park without having to double back after reaching a dead end.

The Anton Schwarzkopf designed Scorpion Roller Coaster at Busch Gardens, Tampa, Florida

The Scorpion takes up a rectangular portion of land with the loop in the middle and helices at each end of the rectangle.

What's great about Scorpion is that the ride doesn't slow down for a second as it really packs everything that it can into such a small layout.

That's a thing about Schwarzkopf's coasters is that he began designing most of his rides for the traveling fair circuit and those designs worked a huge amount of track and elements into a really small package. Scorpion is really one of Anton's portable fair coasters because it is one of his production line "Silver Arrow" coasters. There were three of them made but two of them had portable bases and Scorpion was built on permanent footers. All of the three are running with one of them at a park in Croatia and one still moving from fair to fair in Africa.

What really made me smile after every ride on Scorpion I wasn't the only one running around to get in line again. For each ride there were always kids and parents running around just like Rick and I did back in 1981 for one more lap on this amazing creation. It is good to know that despite being over forty years old Scorpion hasn't lost any of its magic.