It's not officially open until Memorial Day Weekend, but SeaWorld Orlando's newest coaster is now operating full-time, every day, for its soft opening "test and adjust" phase. After riding it I saw a few kinks here and there (on the two days we visited this past week, both times we witnessed a brief shutdown and queue evacuation), but by and large these are somewhat rare, and probably to be expected with a ride system this unique.

Manta, you see, is a "flying" coaster, which means the car is suspended from the track and the riders are "lying down," and facing the ground. By no means is it the first flying coaster in the country, but it is the first in Central Florida, and that alone will be a huge selling point for visiting tourists. Flying coasters are not that common yet in all parts of the country. My only previous experience with a flying coaster had been at Elitch Gardens (Denver, built by Zamperla), with the unoriginal name of Flying Coaster. This was a disappointment, since the tight layout made the experience more like Six Flag Magic Mountain's former (and painful) Flashback ride than anything large and expansive. I have not yet been back to Six Flags Magic Mountain in more recent years to ride Tatsu (another flying coaster), but Manta promises to be like Tatsu, since the track layout is much larger than that Elitch Gardens experience, and both Manta and Tatsu were built by coaster veteran B&M.

Manta beckons right from the entrance to the park.

In a nutshell, Manta can be compared to Dueling Dragons at Islands of Adventure. It's got a large, sprawling track layout. It's not quite as large as Dueling Dragons; maybe it's more the size of Tampa's Montu (which is to say, about 3 times the size of Six Flags Magic Mountain's Batman), but the overall "feel" of the coaster is pretty similar to Dueling Dragons. Both coasters have riders below the tracks, but at Manta, riders are facing downward, and this is a significant difference.

This early in the operation, at least, Manta is unbelievably smooth. I'm hoping that's not just a quirk of the newness of the attraction, but an actual design element. The theming certainly fits; manta rays glide through the ocean, almost as if "flying" on their "wings" underwater. This coaster somehow--and who knows how they do this--manages to capture the same sensation aboveground. It feels like we're gliding around.

It's not a majestic and dignified journey, though. We go through some inversions and tight turns in a way that generates real excitement. Maybe if two manta rays were engaged in a dogfight, with the front one trying evasive maneuvers to get away, then you'd get something like this track layout. I think it must be the smoothness of the ride that captures the essence of the manta ray, not the graceful and spare movement. It helps that this coaster is also practically totally silent in operation (though you'll almost certainly hear riders scream!) They filled parts of the track tube with sand to keep the noise down.

A heartline spin.

There are inversions aplenty: two from heartline spins (meaning the track is relatively straight, but the ride twists us around the track anyway), one from a corkscrew, and one from a pretzel loop. It's that first loop, the pretzel, that caused major excitement on my first ride. Remember, we are traveling suspended and face-down, so going into a loop, we experience the unfamiliar sensation of descending the loop face down and feeling the g-forces switch from pulling our bodies downward (away from the seats which hold us in place) to pressing us inward (toward the seats) by the bottom of the loop when gravity has re-asserted itself.

The pretzel loop, as seen from below.

The whole experience is new and exciting, almost as if re-discovering what "going upside down" on a roller-coaster had felt like for the first time. That's a particularly nifty trick, considering coasters have flipped me upside down for a few decades now and for a few thousand times, yet I still felt a thrill of discovery on this one. It's a genuinely new sensation if you haven't had it on a flying coaster yet. Not every coaster can make me feel like a ten-year-old, but this one did!

Much of the swooping and diving sensations in the ride reminded me of Tampa's Montu, though with riders in a prone position rather than sitting with legs dangling. But one turn felt more powerful, after the pretzel loop and before the transition to the front-side lagoon. Here, our speed was great enough (this might be the moment when the ride hits its maximum 56 MPH) and g-forces strong enough that this part of the ride reminded me of Busch Gardens Williamsburg's Big Bad Wolf, a highly powerful suspended roller-coaster. It's the sort of turn where you feel the wind thudding by, g-forces shredding each moment into a stop-motion photography of centrifugal motion, and you all but swear that you are personally responsible for rending the air asunder.

The lagoon of the front half.

After the ride moves to the front half, we experience a dip into the water on a particularly sharp bank. When I viewed this from the spectators' point of view off to the side, I would have sworn that the tip of the leading design element of the train, a manta ray shape, dipped into the water to create a splash effect. That held true for my first ride (in the middle of the train) also. But when I rode in the front row (and looking now at the photographs), I saw the truth of the effect; there are well-timed water jets that go off when the train passes nearby.

I didn't see through the trick as a bystander.

There's one more neat effect; a close pass to the entrance tunnel and nearby waterfall. This is another scene that reminds me of Dueling Dragons, which similarly has trains pass close by a large rocky structure that looms up out of nowhere during the ride. Another moment that reminds me of Dueling Dragons took place earlier in the ride, when our train skimmed the ground on a straight section of the track.

Skimming the ground.

The g-forces appear to be the most intense when you ride in the back rows of the train. One person went so far as to say that it messed up her stomach the rest of the day and made her nauseous, probably as a result of displaced liquids in her inner ear. The middle rows are seen as optimal, with a roughly equivalent experience to the front row.

The typical view in the middle or in the back of the train, if you
look "up" rather than the direction you are facing (down).

However, the very front row does offer a visual experience unmatched in the rest of the train. Normally, we look in the direction we are faced: downward. If you're in most of the rows, looking up will reward you only with a view of the legs and feet of the row in front of you, and that's just not worth the effort. But in the front row, looking "up" gives you a view of the train as it goes "forward," and you get to experience another kind of excitement.

Let's not mince words. It's no accident that many of the flying coasters around the country have been branded with the "Superman" label. For those of us not from Krypton, this is as close to the Clark Kent experience we are going to get. And frankly, I will admit that it took a particularly concentrated repression of my natural instincts to not pump forward my arms, Superman-style, as I rounded the more powerful curves. A John Williams onride soundtrack (it's presently mute) would not have been out of place. Bottom line: if you want to feel like Superman, head to Manta and request the front row.

Some people *do* put their arms out like Superman.

The new ride imparts enormous dynamic energy and kinetics to the entire front area of SeaWorld. It's the first visual that greets visitors upon entrance to the park, and so forms the kind of wienie they've been missing at this park since it opened. There are several close passes to the ground, so passers-by will be treated to a close encounter if their timing is correct. Several other moments feature the ride swooping by just overhead, and it's impossible not to look up and watch.

Disney rides do a much better job of all-inclusive theming once you're on the ride, but bare-steel rides in non-Disney parks almost always do a better job of interacting with walkways and bystanders, generating the "I gotta ride it!" feeling among park visitors. Manta is so integrated into the footprint of the park's front area that it not only succeeds in this endeavor; it raises the bar for future competitors.

Lifthills aren't usually scary.

I would be lying if I claimed that my first ride, despite my credentials as a coaster veteran on multiple continents, kept me from feeling apprehensive as we crested the lifthill. I didn't scream, but boy did I seize those handlebars in a deathgrip as we stared down 140 feet below. You're there, dangling facedown and prone, with no nets or anything else standing between you and the ground, and you're 14 stories up.

Um, there's nothing below me, and I'm parallel to the ground!

If you can handle that, you are going to love--LOVE--Manta. If not, this ride will terrify you. But do your best to overcome your instincts. My wife, who is scared of heights and afraid to ride Tower of Terror alone (but loves it with company), is able to ride Manta by herself and likes it quite a bit.

There's a photo-capture technology, of course (available for purchase at $17 a pop). They seem to have mastered the technology of making each row its own picture, inserted inside a standard manta ray background image. The overall effect is pretty convincing.

Ready for your close-up?

You're told via signs to not have any loose articles with you, and overhead speakers boom with the same message. Frankly, you wouldn't want a camera or a purse flapping around anyway. They let you by with sunglasses, but my guess would be that they won't stay on your head during the ride (this hypothesis remains untested by me, however). There are nets strategically placed below the ride, especially when inversions are involved, but who wants to risk it? Lockers are available nearby for purses and packages. The penny I placed in my front pocket experimentally made it through the ride just fine, so things in your pocket are probably safe.

The set of nets includes one net when trains first start up the upramp, in full view of the guests below. One assumes these nets are there to prevent mischievous guests from dropping things on the visitors below, but what's to stop the inevitable spitting teenager?

The view from on the train.

Riders must be 54 inches tall (let me assure you, my 47.5 inch tall six-year-old was dismayed in the extreme), and there didn't seem to be a "plus-size" seat (sometimes crudely referred to as a fat seat) on the ride, at least not that I saw. There is a test seat available in front of the ride, so riders can assess whether they fit. I did see one person make it all the way onto the ride, only to not be able to snap shut the restraints and have to request to be let out.

The usual restrictions also apply: no one may ride who is pregnant, or with back, neck, or heart problems. Also, no recent surgery, and in this case, no one with casts (arms or legs) or with prosthetics. Then, in a twist that may be less common, visitors must wear shirts (and a bikini top doesn't qualify). I saw someone turned away at the loading dock directly when she wasn't wearing a shirt. The reason wasn't explained, but I assume it has to do with hygiene. The chest restraints are vinyl and cover most of the chest area, and a lot of exposed skin would probably leave behind a significant amount of sweat, especially in summer. Those restraints, by the way, are pretty comfortable. My wife (who claims Six Flags Magic Mountain Revolution's over-the-shoulder restraints are nothing less than a torture device) says these are ergonomically sound, and not discriminatory against the, er, well-endowed.

Loading takes a bit longer than on a standard coaster.

You load in sitting up; for this part of the ride, the vehicle is swung around so it looks like a standard "inverted" coaster with legs dangling. Your legs are held into place, too, though, via vinyl calipers that close when your shoulder restraints lower. Later, they rotate the rows so that you're facing downward, just dangling helplessly there in the loading platform, looking down at the troughs which are below each row (presumably to generate extra space for the rotation).

Ready for liftoff!

There are two equivalent loading platforms at Manta; a T-intersection at the end of the queue offers you a choice of opposing staircases. At this point, there are also smaller QuickQueue (the Busch version of FastPass, which you have to pay for) lines on both sides too. At the top of the staircase, you'll be met by a grouper, the employee who asks how many are in your party and sends you to a specific row. At first, this seemed pretty pointless to me. Why not let folks choose their own row? But this way ensured no empty seats, and that's a good thing since throughput is probably going to be an issue on this ride. The ride is almost 3,400 feet long and lasts 2 and a half minutes, with a theoretical hourly capacity of about 1,500 riders. To keep lines down, they are going to need to fill every seat, so I appreciated the grouper! Yes, you can request the front or back rows, though few people seemed to be doing so on my visit.

The queue entrance has waterfalls and a rocky cave.

During these preview days, the line is seldom very long. We saw it at forty minutes once, but more often hovered at five or ten minutes. That will doubtless change in the coming weeks. If you do end up stuck in the queue, though, don't despair. In fact, you may be happy about it. In what I hope is a new direction for Busch and SeaWorld, this thrill ride comes equipped with a themed queue. Not just "themed" in the Disney sense (in this case, like a seaport village), but also themed in the SeaWorld sense--there are animals to look at, in the form of multiple aquariums.

If you can resist the urge to run by when there are no lines, you'll get some great views!

All of the aquariums are gorgeous. The small one with live coral may seem a bit bare, but the tetras and danios in a large cylinder reaching up to the ceiling will seem much more breathtaking. Ditto the bay windows of a coral scene with tropical fish right up next to you, and visible in the background (though subtly separated into another tank) are larger creatures like sting rays, in keeping with the ride's theme.

It turns out the ray aquarium is a large one, and a central structure for the queue. We wind around it on most sides, seeing it from several angles, including a startling one that dominates a whole wall with a view of the 300 rays inside. Most impressive. This is the queue?! It's an attraction unto itself, really.

Those who don't (or can't) ride Manta can still enjoy this aquarium via separate portholes accessed from a side entrance that isn't yet open for business. The queue overall has ten aquariums and 3,000 animals (comprising sixty species).

Bottom line: this ride is definitely enough to get you on an airplane and jetting across the country. It's on par with a major coaster (SFMM's Tatsu, Knotts' Xcelerator), and frankly, it puts to shame both Atlantis and Kraken right here at SeaWorld Orlando.

True, this coaster ride itself is "bare metal" rather than a themed mountain, like you might see at Disney. But Disney's version of a ride like this would have fewer inversions (or none at all), and they would dramatically ratchet down the heart-racing quotient. I'm of the opinion that there's room in the theme park world for both kinds of experiences: gentle ultra-themed ones (Big Thunder Mountain Railroad) and pulse-quickening bare-metal coasters (Manta, or Williamsburg's Apollo's Chariot, among many others) so long as the bare-metal ride is a *good* ride. And friends, Manta is a good ride indeed.

Bare metal, yes, but fun!

Walt wanted families to have fun together, riding simultaneously on the same rides, whereas Manta will require my child to be 54 inches (and probably ten years old) before he can ride, and he's already vocal about how hard it will be for him to wait four more years. I'm OK with this kind of family separation occurring at Universal or SeaWorld, but I've never been as comfortable with it happening at Disney parks. After all, Walt wanted something "different" in his parks. At Uni and SeaWorld, it's enough when the "usual" is taken to an extreme and executed well.

We have higher expectations for Disney attractions. But that shouldn't mean a lack of enjoyment at the non-Disney stuff. There are almost too many full-sized theme parks in Orlando; I can't keep up with them all. And it's hugely satisfactory when a major ride opens in any of the parks, especially when the ride is as good as Manta.

The Great Balloon Nazi in the Sky must have something against me. Over the past few weeks, I've driven a few times by Downtown Disney and seen the balloon wasn't operating. Last week I called a friend who was over there, and he said it was grounded at that second due to winds, so I went to the Magic Kingdom instead.

This past weekend, I stopped by again, and was heartened to see the balloon was up! We joined the short line (about 15 people) at the ticket window, and shortly figured out that this was only the first line. And the line doesn't move often. There were other folks up ahead of us, on the other side of the ticket booth, seeming to wait for their shot in the balloon.

It's up! Let's hurry in!

After twenty minutes in the grueling sun (it was 93 degrees, humid, and 2:00pm), we got to buy our tickets: $16 for the adults, $10 for the six-year old, and free for the 2-year old. We were waved forward to the next area, which as in the shade. From here, we watched the balloon finish a cycle or two of riders; they seemed to stay up in the air for ten minutes at a stretch. It looked like the balloon is fully inflated with hot air and wants to go up all the time; the tether which keeps it in place must be retracted by electronic winch whenever they want to descend, and allowed to play out when they want to ascend. I didn't notice any additional injection of hot air from my vantage point on the ground, anyway.

The wind, which had been negligible when we arrived, picked up, gusted, and started to stay strong. The balloon trips ahead of me were not all the way full, I realized. The gondola holds up to thirty folks at a time in theory, but a sign by the cash register pointed out that in moderate winds, they cut down the number of passengers to twenty and in medium winds down to ten, which is where they were operating on this day. The balloon would move all around when deployed, no doubt a result of the brisk winds. As it descended, it swayed left and right more than my wife would like.

The balloon promises to rise to 400 feet… unless the wind is high
(then it's only 300). Do you get a partial refund, I wonder?

Around this point, a worker got off his walkie-talkie and said the pilot was declaring the winds even stronger, and he would cut the passengers to five per ride. We had been in line for forty minutes by this point, and the worker counted off to show us how much longer it would take: another 30 minutes. We were uneasy about the buffeting winds and even more unhappy that a further increase in winds would mean the balloon was grounded entirely, so we opted not to wait and took the proffered refund to the credit card.

As we left, I saw they had closed the queue for tickets, despite not removing those of us in line who had wanted to wait. Desiring to avoid many more fruitless trips down here, I asked a nearby worker if there was a number I could call from a distance and learn if the balloon was flying. Yes, he said, just call Guest Relations at 407-828-2222. I wrote it down on the spot, thanked him, returned to the car, and promptly dialed the number since I was curious to see if they would have updated info. Well, the man had the number wrong. The correct number, I learned by looking at my wife's iPod (where we have it stored), is 407-824-2222. When I asked about Characters in Flight, the nice lady put me on hold to find out, and returned a few minutes later. Yes, she said, it's operating today. I thanked her and signed off without bothering to update her that they aren't selling tickets at the moment.

Sorry, Guest Relations...it's not working right now.

Glancing out the window at the presently-grounded balloon, I shook my head silently. I guess there's no telephone number I can call to find out reliably if the balloon is working at that moment. Guest Relations must only know if the balloon is scheduled to run, not whether it's presently in the air. I really want to like this thing, but Disney and the Aerophile company which owns/operates the balloon are not making it easy on me. They need to install a live-updated phone line, and they need canopies for shade in the line!

I'm not giving up yet, but it's a shame that Disney opted to install a ride which might be closed so often. For my part, I'm a local who can return later at his leisure. But what of the tourists who came from afar and carved out time from their day to do this? It doesn't matter that Aerophile owns the balloon; it's Disney who will get the public-relations black eye.

First announced here a few months ago and available only by direct sales (PayPal), the newest edition of my book, "101 Things You Never Knew About Walt Disney World" is now also available at Amazon. Sporting a new cover and a ton of new content, as well as photos this around, the second edition chronicles even more of the hidden history, tributes to past rides, homages to Disney park designers and workers, and historical trivia that you just can't find in other books.

These "101 Things" books began life as tours I would give in person to interested friends when at the parks. The written versions are a kind of tour of the park, pointing out the interesting history of unobtrusive items all around. I hope you enjoy the tour!

Kevin is the author of many books on Disney theme parks, including:

• Mouse Trap: Memoir of a Disneyland Cast Member provides the first authentic glimpse of what it's like to work at Disneyland.
• The Walt Disney World Menu Book lists restaurants, their menus, and prices for entrees, all in one handy pocket-sized guide.
• Tokyo Disney Made Easy is a travel guide to Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySeas, written to make the entire trip stress-free for non-speakers of Japanese.
• Magic Quizdom offers an exhaustive trivia quiz on Disneyland park, with expansive paragraph-length answers that flesh out the fuller story on this place rich with details.
• 101 Things You Never Knew About Disneyland is a list-oriented book that covers ground left intentionally unexposed in the trivia book, namely the tributes and homages around Disneyland, especially to past rides and attractions.
• 101 Things You Never Knew About Walt Disney World follows the example of the Disneyland book, detailing tributes and homages in the four Disney World parks.

More information on the above books, along with ordering options are at this link. Kevin is currently working on other theme park related books, and expects the next one to be published soon.