Nemesis (roller coaster)

Nemesis
A Nemesis train travelling around the stall turn immediately after the vertical loop.
Location	Alton Towers
Park section	Forbidden Valley
Type	Steel - Inverted
Status	Open
Opened	March 18 1994
Manufacturer	Bolliger & Mabillard
Designer	John Wardley
Model	Inverted Coaster
Lift/launch system	Chain lift hill
Height	43 feet (13.1 m)
Drop	104 feet (31.7 m)
Length	2,349 feet (716 m)
Max speed	50 miles per hour (80 km/h)
Inversions	4
Duration	1:20
Capacity	1,400 riders per hour
Cost	£10,000,000
Max g force	4.5
Nemesis at RCDB Pictures of Nemesis at RCDB
Amusement Parks Portal

Nemesis is an inverted roller coaster located at Alton Towers, England. The ride was designed by Bolliger & Mabillard and opened in 1994 in the Forbidden Valley area of the park. It is themed around an entirely fictional legend created by The Tussauds Group (the park owners at the time) in which a monster, disturbed during routine maintenance work, creates a large crater in the Staffordshire landscape, and is necessarily restrained using the hundreds of tonnes of steel that make up the roller coaster tracks.^[1] The subterranean aspect of the theme was born of the necessity to build the ride in trenches to reduce its height above the ground, in compliance with local planning restrictions which require Alton Towers to build below the tree line.^[2]

History

Plans for developing the site began in 1991, when Alton Towers began working on a pipeline roller coaster concept from Arrow Dynamics. The ride, codenamed Secret Weapon 1, was to be themed around a secret military facility.^[3] Development of the project was put on hold due to Arrow's financial problems, but was brought back a year later with the codename Secret Weapon 2. However, the project was finally abandoned when John Wardley had the opportunity to ride the prototype and found it to be slow and energy inefficient.^[3] The park began to look at alternatives and around this time Wardley became aware of the rumours surrounding a new installation by Bolliger & Mabillard for Six Flags. Alton Towers contacted Bolliger & Mabillard who would not give out any specifics about the ride and informed the park to speak to Six Flags. Wardley did just that and after a meeting Six Flags agreed to let Bolliger & Mabillard produce a similar ride for Alton Towers on the understanding that Alton Towers would return the favour. John Wardley worked on this new ride concept which he codenamed SW3 even though the theme of a secret weapon evolved into that of organic alien creature. The secret weapon theme was re-used for SW4, Oblivion, four years later.^[4] Nemesis opened in the spring of 1994 to much media fanfare and was one of many major installations at theme parks throughout the United Kingdom. The Pepsi Max Big One, which at that time was the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world, opened in Blackpool and Drayton Manor also unveiled Shockwave, an Intamin AG stand-up roller coaster.

In the media

Nemesis's stall turn.

In 2004, Nemesis gained the world record for the most naked people to ride a roller coaster. 32 people took part, beating the previous record of 28 held by Nemesis Inferno at Thorpe Park. The event took place to celebrate 50 years of Guinness World Records. Nemesis was briefly renamed Wonderland for a month in 2005, to celebrate the release of boyband McFly's new album. The band took a ride on Nemesis on CD:UK, a popular music television program.

See also

• Alton Towers
• Inverted roller coaster
• Bolliger & Mabillard

References

External links

• Nemesis at RCDB
• Nemesis at Alton Towers Almanac
• Nemesis at Towers Nerd
• Nemesis at Towers Times