The Viper (Six Flags Darien Lake)

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The Viper
The Viper's 121-foot lift hill.
Location	Six Flags Darien Lake
Type	Steel
Status	Open
Opened	May 1982
Manufacturer	Arrow Dynamics
Model	Steel multi-inversion
Height	121 ft (36.9 m)
Drop	75 ft (22.9 m)
Length	3100 ft (944.9 m)
Max speed	50 mph (80.5 km/h)
Inversions	5
The Viper at RCDB
Pictures of The Viper at RCDB

The Viper is a steel looping roller coaster located at Six Flags Darien Lake. This was the first large ride at the park and the first roller coaster of its type anywhere in the world to have five inversions. The ride was built through a joint venture of the now defunct Arrow Dynamics and Huss. It opened in 1982, and still operates to this day. The coaster has three trains, color-coded red, yellow, and green, with seven cars each; riders are two across with two rows in each car. The track was originally all black, but it was repainted to a green track with black supports when Six Flags took Darien Lake over.

When new, The Viper ran all three trains at a time, with the safety blocks being distinguished as: The station house and lift hill, the top of the lift hill to the brake blocks just before the corkscrew, and from the corkscrew to the holding area just before the station house. Now there are only ever two trains running at a time, with the third stored underneath the station house. The brake blocks prior to the corkscrew are used for speed control before the train enters the second half of the ride.

[edit] Ride Layout

Exiting the station house, the track makes a wide U-Turn to the lift hill, which takes you up over 120ft above the ground. Technically speaking, the "first drop" of The Viper is about 10 feet, which gives the train enough momentum to round a bend to the right, before dropping you off the first real hill of roughly 70 feet. After the drop takes you through the vertical loop, you enter consecutive batwing rolls. By the time you exit those, you've turned 180 degrees and are now headed, after a left turn are on the mid-ride brakes. After those, you make a 180 to the ride and enter consecutive corkscrews, spinning you twice. Then its off to a large circle where, while making a complete circle and then some (540^o all told), you go through a 110' tunnel, then finally return to the station.