If you ever got around to reading my first ever blog about Steel Vengeance, you’ll know after reading this blog that these two rides are like cousins. Goliath has a wooden frame with a steel track, giving it the ability to twist and turn like any other steel coaster. In fact, Goliath includes two inversions and two banked turns. The coaster was made by Rocky Mountain construction and designed by Alan Schilke, well known for designing X in Six Flags Magic Mountain. The ride is located just about an hour north of Chicago in Gurnee, Illinois. Gurnee is home to Six Flags Great America, which is where Goliath and several other rollercoaster behemoths are located. The roller coaster managed to break three wooden roller coaster records: It has the longest drop at 180 feet, steepest drop angle at 85 degrees, and the fastest speed at 72 miles per hour. I know in the last blog I said El Toro has the second steepest at 76 degrees, only passed by T Express, but because Goliath is a hybrid coaster, it has its own category.
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Goliath opened on June 19th, 2014 and was officially announced on August 29th, 2013. Goliath replaced a rollercoaster known as Iron Wolf, which was repurposed and built elsewhere. Iron Wolf was rebuilt in Six Flags America and is now known as Apocalypse: The Last Stand. The ride name comes from its incredible size. With a total of 3,100 feet of track, it is without a doubt one of the longest track’s in the park. The track itself is made of six layers of laminated wood and a steel cover as the topmost layer. The purpose of the steel layer is to reduce maintenance required and to create a smoother ride experience. Rocky Mountain Construction Engineers spent 4 years developing the technology to bend wood, giving the coaster the ability to include elements that normal wooden coasters don’t have.
The ride begins with a 45 degree climb to the top of the first hill. After dropping 180 feet and reaching a maximum speed of 72 miles per hour, the coaster soars to an elevation of 125 feet to perform an overbanked turn around. After completing the turn, the train descends and hits a small airtime hill. This is immediately followed by the ride’s first inversion, known as a dive loop. A dive loop twists upward and then dives toward the ground. This next attraction is its second inversion, a zero-gravity stall, where the train is held upside down while cresting over a hill. The last element is a second overbanked turn before hitting a final brake run.
Figuring out a rating for this ride is certainly difficult. The ride does hold three world records, the fastest, tallest and steepest wooden roller coaster in the world. Based on that criteria, I would give the ride a 10 out of 10, but since I’ve never actually been on it, I don’t know if that would be an accurate representation of the ride. Even though I cannot represent it accurately, several professional critics have said this one of the most intense roller coasters they’ve been on, and for that, I would say this ride deserves a 10 out of 10.