Negative-G - Six Flags New England 2014

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The Goliath roller coaster at Six Flags New England, Agawam, Massachusetts

Similar to Vekoma's Boomerang design and its inverted clone; Invertigo, Goliath starts by pulling you out of the station up a lift hill in reverse before sending you down through the station into a huge boomerang inversion.

Golaith is a little different than Vekoma's other Giant Inverted Boomerang coasters because Six Flags New England decided to scrap Vekoma's weird four across trains that had the the seats in a "V" shaped design with two individual outside seats about two feet behind the paired middle seats. I actually like that kind of seat set up because it was really cool being all by yourself out there in the back seat. The problem was the way the station was set up about 90% of the riders did not understand which seat to go to and as a result it exponentially slowed down the loading process as people milled around looking for the right place to sit.

An amusing little engineering note for you. See that huge platform in the middle of the boomerang? That was not originally part of the design for the ride. After several incidents where the coaster "valleyed" or slowed to a stop there it was decided to add the platform to make it much easier to evacuate a train from as it happened quite a bit when it opened in 2001.

Back to Goliath's trains. Shortly after Six Flags moved Goliath to Six Flags New England they announced that Premiere Rides would be manufacturing new trains for the ride with a four across seating configuration like you'd find on a B&M coaster in order to make loading simpler. The new trains were supposed to be added to Goliath in 2013 but ended up getting pushed off until this year as they had a few kinks to work out with the design.

The Goliath roller coaster and New England Sky Screamer at Six Flags New England, Agawam, Massachusetts

After making it through the boomerang; thankfully without coming to a stop, Goliath dives back down and crosses over the station with a 102 foot tall loop.