Monte Makaya

Monte Makaya
Location	Terra Encantada
Park section	Terra Africana
Status	SBNO
Opened	1998
Type	Steel
Manufacturer	Intamin
Designer	Werner Stengel
Model	Eight-inversion coaster (Monte Makaya)
Lift/launch system	Chain lift
Height	121 ft (37 m)
Length	2,624 ft (800 m)
Max speed	50 mph (80 km/h)
Inversions	8
Duration	1:45
Capacity	1500 riders per hour
Height restriction	4 ft 3 in (130 cm)
Monte Makaya at RCDB
Pictures of Monte Makaya at RCDB
Amusement Parks Portal

Monte Makaya is a steel, looping roller coaster manufactured by Intamin and located at Terra Encantada in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. When it opened in 1998, it tied Dragon Khan's then-record with eight inversions; although it and Dragon Khan were made by different manufacturers and have very different layouts.

Monte Makaya is located in the Terra Africana section at the back of Terra Encantada, at the park's far northwest corner.^[1]

Layout

After ascending the 121-foot lift hill, riders turn around and make the first drop, which is then followed by a vertical loop. Coming out of the loop, they pass over a small airtime hill next to the station and then go into a cobra roll. The fourth and fifth inversions, two consecutive corkscrews, follow after the train exits the cobra roll. After another turnaround, riders pass through a triple heartline roll (three consecutive zero-g rolls); a downward helix; and a short banked hill, which turns them around one last time before the final brake run.

Although Monte Makaya has eight inversions, its layout is still compact; it is nearly 1500 feet shorter than Dragon Khan, another coaster with eight inversions.^[2]

Similar coasters

Monte Makaya has paved the way for similar coasters around the world. Monte Makaya was Intamin's first roller coaster with eight or more inversions; since its opening, Intamin has built two clones of Monte Makaya (in Guatemala and China) and two ten-inversion coasters which have a similar layout to Monte Makaya. In 2002, the first clone of Monte Makaya, Avalancha at Xetulul, and the world's first ten-looper, Colossus at Thorpe Park, opened. In 2006, exact replicas of Monte Makaya (Flight of the Phoenix at Phoenix Mountain's Happy Park) and Colossus (Tenth Ring Roller Coaster at Chimelong Paradise) opened at parks in China.

The ten-inversion coasters differ from Monte Makaya in that they feature two more inversions instead of a helix and a final banked hill. Instead, they pass riders through four consecutive heartline rolls, followed by a banked turn to the left and one more heartline roll, which ends just before the brake run.

References

1. ^ "Wikimapia". Terra Encantada. http://wikimapia.org/17410/. Retrieved 13 December 2006. 
2. ^ "Dragon Khan". http://www.rcdb.com/qs.htm?quicksearch=Dragon+Khan. Retrieved 13 December 2006. 

External links

• Monte Makaya page at Terra Encantada's official website (in Portuguese)