In an effort to avoid burying the lead, let’s jump right into the news.

One of our forum members, kingadam, tipped us off to a new filing with James City County regarding Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s Festa Field plans (codenamed Project Madrid). The site plan included in this new round of documents depicts impervious areas of the addition within the Chesapeake Bay Resource Protection Area (RPA) buffer zone.

In layman’s terms, what does this mean? It means we have the locations of all Project Madrid foundations that impact the area within roughly 100 feet of the Rhine River.

Thankfully, what we can spot in that buffer zone is, well, massively newsworthy. Before I explain, take a look at the new site plan for yourself.

The areas shaded in yellow in the site plan above show regions of new land clearing that will take place for Project Madrid. What are the green boxes you ask? That’s where this gets really exciting. Those are footers.

Though we only have a few fragments of what is certainly a much larger Project Madrid site plan, we can deduce a handful of things about the attraction being proposed.

The Project Madrid impact area is isolated to the Festa Italia-side of the Rhine River. Two curving lines of (very large) footers in ravines makes it next to impossible to believe that this is anything other than a roller coaster. Working on the assumption that the footers above are for a coaster, it appears that said coaster would feature one of the park’s signature drops down towards the Rhine River. The park was granted a height waiver for 315 feet above grade. If this coaster reaches that height and dives into the Rhine River’s ravine, the first drop on this attraction could be truly monumental.

To give you a better idea of the scale of this attraction, below you’ll find the site plan in question overlayed onto a satellite map of the area.

Note the size of Project Madrid’s footer arcs compared to Verbolten’s Rhine River turns. This is a very, very large coaster.

Anyway, I know this is a short article (especially considering the subject matter) but for now, this is where I’m going to leave things. Be sure to check out the Project Madrid thread on the ParkFans forum for more thoughts, analysis, and discussion about this news in the coming days—there’s sure to be plenty!

Additionally, to stay up to date with all the latest on Project Madrid (and Project 2019 too!) feel free to like BGWFans on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and Instagram!

Project Madrid