9 ways the Yukon Striker roller coaster is going to rock your world

You’ve all seen the animations showing the kind of ride you can come to expect on Yukon Striker next year (and if you haven’t, you’re missing out! Watch here). The videos are good, but it’s impossible to do this ride justice. While we’re waiting for this record-breaker to get built and ready for next season, let’s talk about the many ways Yukon Striker is going to rock your world in 2019.

1. The trains are floorless and seating is stadium-style

With no floor on this coaster’s train, you’ve got nothing beneath your dangling legs but track and open air! And the stadium-style seating means that each of the three rows is situated a little higher than the one before it. This gives riders an unparalleled view out over the park and looking down that massive drop.

2. The train pauses just before the dive

As if the height and drop weren’t intimidating enough, Yukon Striker is going to hold riders just over the summit. For three whole seconds (it’ll feel like forever!) you’ll be pitched forward staring down that drop before the brakes release.

Riders dive 90 degrees, through Vortex's horizontal loop and into an underwater tunnel!

3. You’ll dive 90 degrees down into an underwater tunnel

Image a straight line from the sky to the ground. No slight angle or slope. Yukon Striker offers an unforgiving 90-degree dive, 75 metres into a tunnel built in the middle of Vortex lake! It’s the highest drop for a dive coaster in the world.

4. It’s a fast, long ride

As the fastest dive roller coaster in the world, when the train dives it will go from zero to 130 km/h in mere seconds! Yukon Striker is also the longest dive roller coaster, with its track running 1,105 metres. The ride duration is about three minutes and 25 seconds.

5. You’ll go head over heels for our Immelmann inversions

Straight out of the tunnel you’ll experience a special flip called an Immelmann, which climbs into a vertical loop then twists away into a partial roll. The inversion is named after an air combat maneuver from World War One. This twist is so amazing, Yukon Striker will take riders through two of them!

Here, Yukon Striker spins riders through its zero-G roll, right after the Immelmann inversion out of the tunnel.

6. Riders will experience zero gravity

It’s just like in space! Yukon Striker features a Zero-Gravity Roll, where the track twists 360 degrees into a barrel roll as it rises and falls in elevation, giving riders a momentary sense of weightlessness.

7. It’s the only dive coaster with a loop

Get ready for a unique experience, doing a complete 360-degree loop on a dive coaster, which doesn’t currently exist anywhere else. And interesting fact, the entry and exit of these loops usually pass fairly close to each other, but because the trains on Yukon Striker are so wide, this loop needs to accommodate a larger bypass at its base.

8. Yukon Striker takes you below ground not once, but twice

After you experience the underground tunnel, the coaster will dip below grade again after the loop into a ‘mineshaft’, before climbing out and into the second Immelmann.

9. You’ll take a horizontal spin on our helix loop

To cap off the experience, riders will enter a 360-degree horizontal turn called a Helix, just before returning to the station. This happens right on top of the Frontier Canada pathway where guests will be walking underneath.

Of course, it’s one thing to read about the thrills, but it’s another to actually experience them! And everyone will get a chance, come Spring 2019. It can’t come soon enough…