 The floorless roller coaster model manufactured by renowned roller coaster company Bolliger and Mabyard was introduced to the industry at the very tail end of the 1990s. Initially, these floorless roller coasters were very popular, but quickly waned. In the second episode of the series Whatever Happened To, we're going to be taking a look at the floorless coaster model, my thoughts on why it got so popular, as well as why it waned in popularity, and whether I think we could see any more floorless coasters being introduced in the future. The very first floorless coaster opened at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey in April of 1999. Now called Bizarro, this coaster opened as Medusa. At a height of 142 feet, a speed of 61 miles per hour and featuring seven inversions, which was really a lot for the time, and nearly 4,000 feet in length. Medusa was definitely nothing to scoff at. This was very exciting and very new for the coaster industry. Six Flags would basically bulk purchase a ton of these coasters and would open many of them in an extremely short period of time. In the year 2000 alone, four floorless coasters would open. Kraken at SeaWorld Orlando, Superman Crypton Coaster at Six Flags Fiesta Texas, Medusa at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, and Batman Night Flight at Six Flags Ohio, which would later change its name back to Giago Lake and the coaster would be renamed Dominator and it is now located at Kings Dominion in Virginia. Now I believe a big reason why the floorless coaster may have become so popular is the stand-up coaster had been introduced by B&M in the year 1990. In fact, the stand-up was the very first coaster that B&M ever built and many were built throughout the 90s, but the very last one opened in 1999, the same year that the very first floorless coaster opened. As we talked about in the first video of the series, the stand-up coasters ultimately proved to be very unpopular as the ride experience was not very comfortable and they would garner a bad reputation over the years. So I believe the floorless coaster is a much more comfortable option and was viewed as a suitable replacement to the waning stand-up coaster. However, the floorless coaster would also really wane in popularity very quickly, actually quicker than stand-up coasters. After this initial surge of all of these floorless coasters and many opening from the years 1999 through 2005, a brand new ground-up floorless coaster would not be built until 2011 and this is Hairraiser at Ocean Park, which is located in Hong Kong, China. Actually, this one specifically, if you watch a POV, it has a really unique layout and it is really unique in terms of where it's placed. It's actually a really beautiful looking ride with a really unique layout. It has a dive loop, a zero-G roll, an emelman, as well as a standard vertical loop, just really cool looking. The very last floorless coaster to open was in 2013 and that was Nitro at the park Ad Labs in Magica in India. This is also very unique for a floorless coaster. It's a smaller one at a height of 132 feet and it's only 2800 feet long, but it still features five inversions and this one has the vertical loop, a dive loop, a zero-G roll, and the interlocking corkscrews. Lots of floorless coasters were built and at least one opened every single year from 1999 through 2005. They experienced this big surge of popularity. Many different types of floorless coasters were built. There were a lot of larger ones but also lots of smaller ones. Ultimately they just sort of died out after that and if we look at the last ground-up floorless coaster to be built in this initial surge, which was Hydra the Revenge at Dornie Park in 2005, a lot of newer models were emerging around that time, things that were much more exciting and I think ultimately the appeal of the floorless just sort of fizzled out by this point. They are a bit gimmicky. I feel like sort of like the stand-up coaster although a much better ride as they're really just typical sit-down trains that don't have a floor, so it gives you that really open feeling. But also since they weren't that much different from a typical sit-down coaster, they weren't really that marketable beyond the early 2000s when they were initially introduced. Ultimately I don't think we're going to be seeing any more brand new floorless coasters being built besides like the dive coaster models that have floorless trains. There are many coaster types that feature floorless trains but purely a floorless coaster built from the ground up with just the typical sit-down floorless trains. I don't think we're going to be seeing any more of those. I think their time has come and passed and there's just a lot more newer, much more exciting models for parks to even think about building one of these at this point. Another thing we have to talk about though is although no purpose built floorless coasters have opened in recent years, there has been this ongoing trend and I talked about this in the stand-up coaster video and this is interesting because this kind of links stand-up and floorless coasters together. Many stand-up coasters are being converted into floorless coasters in recent years and this started with Mantis at Cedar Point which reopened as Rugeru in 2015 and featured brand new floorless trains. This treatment is also being given to Apocalypse at Six Flags America this year which was actually the very first B&M coaster ever built and it is being converted into Firebird for the 2019 season. In addition this treatment was also given to Vortex at California's Great America and this reopened as Patriot in the year 2017 and featured all new floorless trains. So these really unpopular stand-up coasters are being made into much more tolerable ride experiences by putting these brand new floorless trains on them. It's great for the parks because it allows them to market these as new rides, give them a new color scheme, a new name and all that, market them as a new ride experience and they're just much better than the stand-up coaster experiences and you could argue that the floorless model hasn't died out altogether because these stand-ups are being converted into floorless coasters but I think this is just a good way for parks to take rides that were very uncomfortable unpopular before and transform them into something that's much more of an enjoyable experience and I think the floorless trains provide that. In short I don't believe that the purpose-built floorless coasters are going to be making a comeback at any time soon and I don't think we'll be seeing any more floorless coasters built in the future. We have so many exciting things out there at this point. We have the B&M wing coasters, all of the new inverts and flying coasters, the RMCs, the T-Rexes, the Raptors, the hybrid coasters and the conversions. There's just way too much going on. The market is really saturated with all of these amazing rides that these parks can get for fairly low prices and it just doesn't make sense from a marketing perspective I feel like for these parks to spend $15 million or more on this big B&M coaster that ultimately isn't going to be that popular in 2019. Thank you guys very much for watching this video. Let me know in the comments what model you guys would like to see me cover in the future on this series. I would love to hear from you guys. I want your input on this. Make sure to let me know, like, comment, and subscribe. Thanks for watching. This is CoasterDaddy. Bye.