By Zachary Posted in Featured, News on December 24, 2023 4 Comments 27 min read
The following reporting is based upon actively in-development plans. Subsequent revisions could change many of the details described below. The following should be viewed as a description of what Kings Dominion is likely, currently planning to construct in 2025—not as an infallible depiction of what Kings Dominion will construct.
Journalists, content creators, etc. are free to use any of the content presented below. We just ask that you read this article in its entirety beforehand and cite KDFans as the source for any information, graphics, or analysis you republish. Please also link back to this article if your platform permits it. You may also use the pre-creation video and photos embedded in this post. If you do, please credit NoLimits creator ML Designs and link to his channel, here. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us via any popular social media channel.
A lot of folks have pitched in to make this article possible. I won’t attempt a comprehensive list (especially since there are some I specifically cannot name), but I do want to mention ParkFans members CoasterMac and Jahrules. Both made very notable contributions to this article in particular and I am incredibly grateful for their time and effort.
We have a lot of very juicy, never-before-reported information to share about Kings Dominion’s 2025 roller coaster in this article. However, as is so often the case with large projects at amusement parks, to fully appreciate what the future holds, we must first understand how we got here. Thus, though this won’t be a comprehensive history of the KD Project 2025 site, I do want to quickly recap the recent history—and maybe even drop a few new tidbits of information along the way.
Our story begins right on the heels of Twisted Timbers’ incredibly buzzy debut and just a few weeks into Kings Dominion’s 2018 season. On an unassuming spring day as everyone was laser-focused on the incredible new Rocky Mountain Construction masterpiece in Candy Apple Grove, something truly unfathomable happened on the other side of the park: Volcano, The Blast Coaster, arguably one of the most iconic roller coasters in the world, and easily one of Kings Dominion’s most popular attractions ever, gave its final rides.
Volcano’s death was sudden and, both for guests and Kings Dominion, completely unexpected. Per the rumors we’ve heard in the years since, a routine inspection of the coaster uncovered damage that rendered the attraction immediately inoperable. Following a thorough review of any potential options available to them, Cedar Fair concluded that The Blast Coaster was unsalvageable. Nearly a year after its sudden closure, Kings Dominion finally announced the removal of Volcano on February 8, 2019.
Tragically, the death of The Blast Coaster spelled doom for another park icon as well: the massive mountain-themed structure that Volcano had been built both around and through. The mountain, itself, had stood at Kings Dominion since 1979, and had housed many attractions in the years preceding Volcano’s 1998 debut. Unfortunately, unlike those prior attractions, Volcano was so thoroughly intertwined with the mountain’s structure that removing the coaster also required demolishing the iconic, nearly 150-foot-tall mountain as well.
Throughout the 2019 season, Kings Dominion fans watched in horror as both of these park icons were unceremoniously destroyed. It was a truly horrible situation, but there was a faint glimmer of a silver lining. During 2019, Kings Dominion started to tease a replacement for Volcano, promising new “expeditions on the horizon” for what was then the park’s Safari Village area.
By late 2019, we got our first taste of what one of those new expeditions could look like. KDFans exclusively obtained internal documentation depicting a small wing coaster layout which had reportedly been pitched for the former Volcano site by roller coaster manufacturer Bolliger & Mabillard. A wing coaster cantilevers riders on either side of the track, rather than positioning the seats above or below. An image from B&M’s website showing a wing coaster train—in this case Wild Eagle at Dollywood—is included below.
Throughout our original reporting on this leaked, 2019 wing coaster layout, we made clear that the plans we had obtained (roughly reproduced below) depicted a multiple-month-old, draft proposal and should not be treated as confirmation that Kings Dominion had decided to build a B&M wing coaster—let alone that specific layout.
Though not confirmation of any solid plans for the site, the 2019 wing coaster leak did give us nearly unheard of insight into the attraction design thought process taking place inside Kings Dominion at the time. Unsurprisingly, reaction to the leak from Kings Dominion fans was swift—and, decisively, quite negative. Such a small coaster replacing the iconic and beloved Volcano was not a winning proposition in the minds of many passionate KD enthusiasts. Fortunately, by February 2020, we were able to put those concerns to rest when we leaked that Kings Dominion had opted to pass on the draft B&M wing coaster proposal depicted above.
That was not the only news to leak out of Safari Village in early 2020, though. Mere weeks before confirming the death of the 2019 wing coaster proposal, KDFans was also first to report on the impending demise of the major flat ride directly across the plaza from the now-vacant Volcano site, a Huss Top Spin named The Crypt. Within days of our leak, Kings Dominion confirmed The Crypt’s removal ahead of the 2020 season.
About a month later, on March 2, 2020 to be precise, another absolute bombshell of a leak hit KDFans: Kings Dominion was planning to replace The Crypt with an S&S 4D FreeSpin slated for a 2021 debut. While replacing The Crypt rather than the massive Volcano site sitting empty right across the path seemed to be a wild and disappointing choice, the scale of the previously proposed wing coaster suggested that the park’s capital expenditure budget was fairly limited. Moreover, since fan reaction to the leaked wing coaster from late 2019 showed that many folks expected more than was under consideration, perhaps focusing on something smaller and saving the Volcano site for something more worthy of the site was the right choice.
But then, in the middle of March 2020, the funniest little thing happened…
When COVID-19 broke out in the United States, it shook the entire amusement industry to its core. Ultimately, essentially all of Kings Dominion’s 2020 season was cancelled and the S&S 4D FreeSpin we leaked in early 2020 was not actually announced by the park until August of 2021—long after its original, intended opening date in the spring of that year. That said, the project’s year-long delay offered Cedar Fair a lot of time to refine and perfect the addition. Kings Dominion announced far more than just a small 4D FreeSpin in the fall of 2021—the park unveiled that they would be entirely retheming the Safari Village area to an all-new, immersive theme park land dubbed Jungle X-Pedition.
When Jungle X debuted in Spring 2022, guests were floored to find Tumbili, undoubtably the best-themed 4D FreeSpin in the world, surrounded by a gorgeous, immersive, story-filled land with new theming, props, atmospherics, restaurant renovations, attraction rethemes, and much, much more. Hints throughout the land also pointed to potential, future additions in the years ahead, including three yet-to-be-discovered, animal-themed “temples” hidden in X (the fictional location at Kings Dominion, not the rotting corpse of a once-great social media platform).
In the time since Jungle X-Pedition’s debut, we have heard nearly incessant whispers from folks we trust claiming that X, as we currently know it, is only phase one of what has always been intended to be a multi-year evolution of the back, left corner of Kings Dominion. Subsequent phases have long been expected to include a major roller coaster replacement for Volcano, a full retheme of Backlot Stunt Coaster, alterations to better integrate Anaconda and its plaza, a renovation of Chicken Shack, and possible, eventual rethemes of both Flight of Fear and Intimidator 305.
While none of those expected, future undertakings materialized for 2023 and, thus far, there are no signs of further progress towards the rumored, long-term vision for Jungle X in 2024, we can now say with confidence that Cedar Fair is planning to deliver an enormous update to this stellar theme park land come 2025.
Throughout 2023, there have been rumors floating around Kings Dominion suggesting that 2025, Kings Dominion’s 50th anniversary, would finally be the year that the gaping crater left by Volcano’s final, devastating eruption would be filled. By mid-2023, those rumors began to coalesce around one specific rumor: Kings Dominion was planning a new, custom, much larger, launched, Bolliger & Mabillard-made wing coaster for the former Volcano site.
Then, at the end of September, another absolute bombshell of a leak occurred. In a now-deleted /r/rollercoasters post on Reddit, a user posted photos of three pages of station-area design documents that appeared to show a new, deep-into-design, launched B&M wing coaster for Kings Dominion. Cropped versions of the photos in question can be found below.
Right off the bat, it was pretty clear that these plans were almost certainly authentic documents. They matched perfectly with the rumors we had been hearing about KD’s 2025 plans; they were covered in minute details that would have been nearly impossible for anyone but a true professional with a ton of time on their hands to fake; and the full (uncropped) photos contained copious amounts of identifying information that provided additional, circumstantial evidence.
A ton of information could be gleaned from these images. In the second photo in the first image, we can clearly see a B&M wing coaster train schematic with a traditional, double-sided station setup to allow simultaneous loading and unloading on both sides of the train. In the “Station 3” image in the bottom left of the second photo, we can see a final brake run extending directly out from the back of the station platform as well as a B&M wing coaster maintenance bay set to the left of the coaster’s direction of travel. The first figure in the third photo is clearly labeled “Launch Tunnel” and seems to depict a preshow room at the start of the launch track followed by a partially enclosed launch area. The documents even had a progress date on them to show how current they were.
While this leak confirmed many of the rumors that had been floating around regarding the attraction type and propulsion method for the rumored 2025 Kings Dominion coaster, it didn’t offer us any information about the coaster’s layout, positioning, size, scale, etc. Fortunately, thanks to new documentation we have obtained, KDFans can now fill in many of those gaps. Below you’ll find a full site plan for Kings Dominion’s planned-for-2025 Bolliger & Mabillard-made, launched, wing coaster.
To provide some better context, below I’ve included a composite map showing the changes proposed in the site plan overlaid onto a satellite map of the area with some major surrounding landmarks noted.
Before we go any further, please do take a moment to note the scale of this ride area. It uses a little less of the northern side than Volcano, but it extends far further east and notably further south than its predecessor. In fact, note just how close this coaster’s site comes to Tumbili and Excavator’s Taters! That entire plaza between Tumbili, Reptilian, the former Volcano site, and Arachnidia is about to be covered in coaster track. Insane! Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Sometimes when we get these site plans, we only have the foundation areas depicted, but in this case Kings Dominion was kind enough to leave the actual footer locations visible in this document. All of the circles located inside the square and rectangle outlines represent the footers for Kings Dominion’s 2025 coaster. This means that we don’t even need to extrapolate the likely footer locations from a raw foundation plan as we needed to for Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s 2025 coaster most recently.
Another sweet thing about this site plan? All of the footers are labeled with the standard B&M footer notational format that we’ve come to know and love from other, recent Bolliger & Mabillard leaks we’ve dealt with (namely SeaWorld Orlando’s Pipeline and Penguin Trek). This footer notation gives us the type of track each footer will carry, any footer pairs throughout the layout, and, perhaps most helpfully, the order in which the footer will be used. Because of the incredible degree of specificity offered by this plan, we can generate what is likely to be a very accurate support map. I’ve done exactly that below.
Because we already know the coaster’s make and model, there’s a fair bit less uncertainty than normal when it comes to theorizing track locations on these supports. Plus, as mentioned previously, the standard B&M foundation notation tells us exactly what type of track (launch, gravity-fed, station area, etc.) is being supported by each footer. Taken all together, we can start stringing theoretical track between the supports with a fairly high degree of confidence. Below you’ll find my best, 2D, top-down approximation for the layout of Kings Dominion’s 2025 project.
In the graphic above, purple represents station track, green signifies launch track, blue depicts gravity-fed, “normal” track, red shows the brakes, pink portrays the transfer table track, and orange delineates the maintenance bay/storage track.
To attempt to, once again, contextualize this project within the surrounding site, here’s a labeled composite map of the KD Project 2025 layout within Kings Dominion.
So, thus far, we are feeling very confident in what we’re showin’ here. Will the track shaping on the final product precisely match the top-down above? No. Will it be close? Yeah, for sure. The real hat trick here is taking this 2D, top-down understanding of the coaster and translating it into a realistic, three-dimensional conceptualization of the coaster.
Before we wade deeper into that pool of uncertainty though, I want to take a moment to make sure we’re all on the same page by giving the CliffsNotes version of what I’ve shared so far, alongside a number of other rapid-fire datapoints that I haven’t bothered expounding upon yet.
Due to the advanced nature of the design of late-stage elements such as the queue layout and station area, we believe this coaster is very deep into development—almost certainly either nearing or past the point of finalization. Things can still change, but the bulk of what we’re looking at in this site plan should be very accurate.
All signs (rumors, leaked documentation, public record info, likely timeline, etc.) point to this coaster opening for the park’s 50th anniversary in 2025.
This attraction will utilize the majority of the former Volcano site in addition to a bunch of new land to the south and east of that plot. The addition of this coaster will result in major impacts to the plazas and path areas between Tumbili, Reptilian, the Volcano plot, Arachnidia, Excavator’s Taters, and Flat Rock.
Kings Dominion’s 2025 roller coaster will be a Bolliger & Mabillard-made wing coaster featuring a gently-slopped, uphill launch and multiple inversions.
This coaster appears to be designed to run five-car long trains with four riders per car for a total per-cycle capacity of 20. Given that it’s a launch coaster, lacks a mid-course brake run, and only has a single bay maintenance area, it’s very likely that the coaster is designed to run a maximum of two trains.
A large portion of KD Project 2025’s launch will be fully enclosed within a new building. This structure includes both a pre-launch show scene room and a tunnel past it to house a substantial part of the launch track itself.
The leaked station area documentation shows a burnt orange color for this roller coaster’s track and a white or silver color for the coaster’s supports. It’s possible that these colors are simply placeholders, but, given that they are displayed in design-focused documentation, that seems less likely to me.
Guests will enter KD Project 2025 through the base of the previous Volcano queue and exit building. The path will then continue out the back of the structure and snake through the middle of the new coaster’s layout before eventually finding its way to the station at the back of the site. There’s also a dedicated FastLane route, which bypasses the many switchbacks found in the main queue. The exit path takes guests back through the coaster’s infield and then, ultimately, through the former Volcano exit gift shop.
Though no scenic elements are explicitly noted in this site plan, that is not unexpected. We are still well over a year out from this attraction’s debut and detailed theming plans are typically among the last items to be finalized. Additionally, many of those elements can likely be installed without any filings with the local government. The plans we have do, however, show a queue area that appears to have been designed around a number of potential locations for scenic elements. That detail, in addition to the construction of a very large station and launch building, suggests that we can likely anticipate theming to be a priority for this addition just as it was for Tumbili in 2022.
Okay, as promised before, here is where things start to get really spicy. Up until this point, we’ve shared basic facts and analysis with direct evidence as justification for our claims. From this point on, this process switches from a hard to a soft science. There is nothing in the documents we have that provides track height. That said, working with the size and shape of the elements we believe we see throughout the 2D layout, we can guestimate likely altitudes. There is nothing in the documents we have that provides any track banking/rotation metrics. That said, working with the flow of the layout, the positioning of footers, and the direction of foundations, we can estimate likely track rotations, as well. Merging these estimates into the 2D coaster layout, we can begin to theorize the actual roller coaster elements.
Again, I want to emphasize that this is not a precise science. Historically, we’ve been pretty damn good at these assessments, but we have never (and will never) nail it perfectly. Additionally, I must note that I’m only one of the analysts involved here. ParkFans member CoasterMac (ML Designs on YouTube), is responsible for a large portion of our 3D conceptualization of this attraction and is unilaterally responsible for any actual 3D mockups you see below. Please head over to his YouTube channel and hit the subscribe button—this article, in its final form, wouldn’t have been possible without his (fantastic) work.
With those disclaimers out of the way though, let’s get into it.
Above, I’ve included another layout graphic—this time with the track segmented into 10 different sections. Broadly speaking, these are the nine main elements we anticipate will make up the ride experience on Kings Dominion’s 2025 roller coaster with a tenth segment allocated for the station-area portion of the attraction. Below, I’m going to tackle each section one-by-one using the image above as a guide.
Upon exiting the station, trains will traverse an approximately 45-degree right turn and slowly roll into what we believe will be a pre-launch show scene of some sort. Much like Thunderbird at Holiday World, we expect that trains will stop in this launch pre-show room for a brief effects sequence. A map depicting this segment of the attraction is included below.
At the conclusion of this expected pre-launch show sequence, trains will be accelerated into the second portion of the coaster’s launch tunnel and then, ultimately, outside of the building entirely for the remainder of the launch track. We know from the leaked station design documents (and can surmise from the change in the footers throughout this section) that there is a slight upward pitch to the launch segment. What we can’t say for sure is whether or not there’s a leveling out or even a small dip at the end of this section. The footer spacing on the tripod support at the end of this area of the coaster does suggest the termination of the upward slant, but that’s the only indication we have.
Upon exiting the launch portion of the layout, we are essentially positive that the trains will rise up toward this coaster’s tallest point. Our confidence level in the shaping and classification of this element is, unfortunately, relatively low when compared to most of the rest of Project 2025’s layout.
From the single footers at the entrance and exit of this element, we know it starts and ends quite low to the ground. Meanwhile, the increasing and then decreasing footer pair spacing approaching and departing from this element’s midpoint strongly indicates a highest point right in the middle of this nearly perfectly symmetrical footer pattern. The difficulty comes from the fact that in examining other recent B&M coasters we could not find any element with a footer pattern that looks anything like this one.
The closest elements we found were all hammerhead or overbanked turns, though none were great matches. Ultimately, our best guess is that the second element on this coaster is some sort of very large, overbanked turn with a relatively slow cresting speed or something closer to a massive cutback inversion—neither of which have really been attempted by B&M previously. A look at the 3D interpretation we settled on as the most likely outcome is pictured below.
We should also mention that there’s some chance that this is more top hat-esque than we’re currently picturing—likely an inverted one, but we can’t rule out the possibility of a non-inverted one either. Sadly, like the other possibilities, B&M has never attempted either form of top hat, meaning that we lack potential comps for this explanation as well.
Unlike the previous segment, we are very, very confident in our analysis of KD Project 2025’s third element. Coming off of the coaster’s highest point, trains will dive back down to ground level before rising back up and rolling into what will almost certainly be a quite sizable dive loop. A rendering of how CoasterMac/ML Designs has conceptualized this inversion can be seen below.
The coaster’s footers clearly show that the element begins high and ends low and that the track is slated to double back on itself making a dive loop overwhelmingly likely. A dive loop is a fairly exciting inclusion in this layout: There’s only one existing B&M wing coaster in the world with a non-inclined dive loop—and it’s located in China. For the vast, vast majority of enthusiasts, this will be the first non-inclined dive loop they’ve experienced on a wing coaster.
The dive loop described above ends at ground level and appears to flow directly into what is likely a very large half-corkscrew that should reach its apex around the point where it crosses over the coaster’s launch. Once inverted, we expect the coaster to complete the corkscrew, but with a much smaller, tighter second half that ends well above ground level. We know it remains elevated, because another section of the coaster’s layout crosses below the entirety of the second half of this corkscrew. You can also see the size change between the two halves from the dramatic change in the turning radii.
While we do believe that both the large span in the middle of this element and the supports for the turns entering and existing the apex strongly suggest that this is an inversion as pitched above, it’s not impossible that it could be a non-inverting element with similar 2D shaping—likely an S-hill.
Upon exiting the uneven corkscrew, Kings Dominion’s 2025 wing coaster clearly curves up and to the left into what B&M would likely call a horseshoe turn. A rendering of what we’re imagining can be seen below.
The element begins low, likely gains significant altitude as it banks and curves left, and then, judging by the footer pair spacing, seems to reach an apex about three quarters of the way through. This dynamic turn then finishes with a plunge back to ground-level where the track dives back under the second half of the previously discussed corkscrew. A similar element can be found on 鹦鹉过山车 (Parrot Coaster) at Chimelong Ocean Kingdom in China.
Following the dive out of the horseshoe and under the first corkscrew, we believe the coaster will roll up and to the right into a second corkscrew. Much like the earlier corkscrew, this one also looks somewhat asymmetrical with a notably tighter exit radius than entry radius. Below is an image of ML Design’s mockup of this corkscrew.
The span traversing the apex of this element is quite long—notably longer than the span on the first corkscrew. This could indicate a slower roll than the first, which could either be used to induce a bit of hangtime in the element or to allow the train to take the inversion at a higher speed. It should also be noted that this roll takes place directly behind the waterfall structure next to Arachnidia. Given its placement, it could give some exciting, new views from the pathway out of Jungle X heading towards Flight of Fear.
After trains exit the attraction’s second corkscrew near ground level, we are pretty certain that they will then climb up into an airtime hill, which will take riders back over the launch track and the attraction queue parallel to the station building.
Following the plunge out of the airtime hill, we expect trains to rise back up and roll to the left through what we believe is likely an in-line twist that resolves into a banked turn. A map showing the rough train centerline we anticipate through this segment of the coaster can be seen below in yellow.
Before trains complete the full 360° rotation of a traditional in-line twist, we expect them to enter a heavily-banked, 180° turn. Note how the train centerline above begins above the track, rotates left around the track, rolls under the track through the in-line twist, and then back to the right of the track where it holds that banking through the 180° turn-around. While the inversion and turn are technically two distinct elements, we wanted to show them together in one image as the in-line twist terminates early to flow directly into this turn. A glimpse at how we envision this this ending inversion and turn to look in 3D can be seen below.
Finally, we have the end of Kings Dominion’s 2025 B&M wing coaster: the brake run, transfer table, maintenance area, and station platform.
The image above is pretty self-explanatory, but for good measure, the blue shaded building is the station and the red shaded building is the maintenance and storage bay. One of the bridges over the track in the station is clearly depicted in this site plan and has been shaded a darker blue color in the graphic above. Thanks to the leaked station plan, we know there is a second bridge at the other end of the station platform, as well. There’s very little evidence of its exact location in the site plan though, so it’s not depicted above.
Taking all of our Best Guess predictions together, we end up with a Kings Dominion 2025 roller coaster assessment that looks something like this.
As mentioned previously, we worked with ParkFans member and NoLimits creator CoasterMac/ML Designs to bring our understanding of this new Kings Dominion launched wing coaster from words on a screen and ideas in our heads into a fully 3D environment. The model below integrates all of the measurable data with our Best Guess assessments, all based on the leaked station documents and the KD Project 2025 site plan.
As always, this will not be 100% accurate. Many estimations and assumptions have needed to be made throughout the process of creating a full mockup of this coaster project. That said, we do believe that this should be a close approximation of what folks should be expecting out of Kings Dominion’s new-for-2025 roller coaster.
Once again, a huge shout-out to ML Designs for all of his hard work on this incredible pre-creation and for allowing us to use his work throughout this article.
For anyone who made it to the end of this article, thanks for reading! We’d love to hear what you think about Kings Dominion’s 2025 roller coaster plans over in the dedicated project thread on our sister site, ParkFans.net! If you want to keep up with all the latest news and rumors out of Kings Dominion, be sure to follow us on social media as well! We’re still most active on Twitter and Facebook, but you can also find us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky if you’re so inclined!
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Could the asymmetrical Corkscrew elements be places where near-miss elements will come in play? Thinking about the keyholes on Gatekeeper and the barn slot on Thunderbird at Holiday World.
Bateleur. A beautiful looking African eagle. Fits the theme and style. Thoughts?
My family is extremely excited for this presumed rollercoaster! I’m curious on how this’ll take place. Better see some constructions in this next season!
If this ride looks anything like the rendering it will be awesome. Volcano was my favorite all time ride and I miss it terribly. But, this will make JX look awesome!